Hi Best Buy Canada,

I am addressing this note to you directly (and tagging you in a tweet!) because if your social media team is anywhere near decent enough, you’ll see this. If not, it just reinforces my belief that your customer service is not providing, you know, customer service.

I spent many hours researching the product I wanted. I saw the item on sale at Best Buy and quickly bought it. I’ve waited almost two weeks for a delivery date, and you have no idea when I might receive it. That is deplorable.

The item was in stock when I ordered it (at least according to the website at the time and at several points since), so I do not see why it has not yet been delivered. Your systems should not accept orders when you do not have the items in stock and they are on back order.

This leads me to believe one of two things: your systems are woeful and allow customers to place orders even when you have no idea of when that item might be in stock or when the delivery might take place. Or, this is an intentional move to off-load overstocked, less desired units by replacing out-of-stock items. There’s certainly anecdotal evidence I’ve heard pointing towards the latter. Again, my belief (and that of others), not a cast iron accusation.

You ignored my very polite email complaint. You fobbed me off on numerous phone calls. You asked me to wait at home to see if a call from the delivery agent (that the scheduled delivery for last Wednesday was cancelled due to the back order status) was a mistake in case the item actually turned up during the scheduled delivery time. That tells me your systems are not up to scratch, since you couldn’t provide a hard answer. You’ve twice told me to expect updates from the home delivery team by a certain time, neither of which were forthcoming.

I’ve called at least eight times over the last week. You have done little to expediently resolve the matter. Your call centre agents mentioned twice that I would be offered an alternative product, if my item was not available by yesterday. I’ve yet to receive such communication.

This is a really unacceptable shopping experience. The wait-and-see mentality does not work for me, not when I am paying you good money for a product and service I expect to be fulfilled in good faith and in good time. Your service is not good enough.

I’m giving you one more day to resolve the matter amicably before I take my business elsewhere. Let’s talk this out. Soon.

Regardless of what happens here, I doubt I will be shopping at Best Buy again. I’ll be advising anyone I know who plans on shopping with your company (or subsidiaries) to exercise caution.

Good day.

bookshop:

12 crucial Tumblr tricks you probably don’t know

1) Know your limits.

  • The tag limit. Only the first 5 tags you put in a post are searchable.
  • The search limit. Only the first 200 posts under a tag show up when you search that tag.
  • The posting limit. You can post or reblog no more than 250 posts a day, and only 75 of them can be photos. The day ends at midnight EST.
  • The friending limit. As many people discovered during the Mishapocalypse, you can only friend between 250-300 people on Tumblr in a day.
  • The queue limit. The queue can only hold 300 posts at one time.
  • The ask limit. You can only send 10 asks within a single hour, and only 5 of them can be anonymous.

2) Keep Tumblr from truncating long text posts.

Tumblr’s default behavior when reblogging long text posts is to reblog them as links instead. To make sure long posts get reblogged as text—or to truncate them if you only want to link to a shorter text post—go to the top right corner of the post and click the icon next to your settings. The drop-down menu will give you the option to change the format of the post. If you have a text post, clicking “Reblog as text” will retain the text of the post up until its original “read more” line.

3) You don’t need to insert a blank .gif at the bottom of your photosets in order to show full-sized photos. There’s already a workaround for this. Just go to your settings, select the Dashboard, and click “show full-size photos.”

4) Allow anyone to reply to any of your posts directly from the dash. For reasons no one can fathom, replying to people on Tumblr is a tricky thing. Sometimes you can’t reply until you’ve had someone friended longer than two weeks. Sometimes you can’t reply with photos. It’s a strange world. But one thing is certain: sticking a “?” in your post will cause the message, “Let people answer this” to appear. Check the box and profit.

5) tumblr.com/photos lets you see a mosaic of photos on your dash. Try it and be amazed.

6) Filter your dash by type by using “/show/[mediatype]”. Appending “/show/text” to tumblr.com will let you see only the text posts on your dash. This also works for photos, links, quotes, audio, chats, and videos.

LEARN ALL 12 TIPS FOR BETTER TUMBLING!

I am learning so much about Tumblr today.

mattpatches: I want to raise a minor stink about the recent trailer for Carrie. Do you know who Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa is? He’s writer who started in theater, dabbled in comic books, and now has a place on the writing staff for Glee. I’m sure he is a super nice, talented guy! But I don’t think he’s a “name,” the kind you would use to sell a movie. I won’t argue that Carrie director Kimberly Peirce is a name either, but answer me this: why does Aguirre-Sacasa get the first credit in the bumper for Carrie, over the director? This seems pretty unusual — even considering possible contract arrangements. You might see Peirce credited solo after the release date, or the director and writer paired. But with the writer first and director second, each with equal font size… this strikes me as odd. My immediate thought is: Screen Gems feels uncomfortable crediting only a woman as a director. I feel like I’m being tricked into thinking Carrie was helmed by Aguirre-Sacasa in the quick final seconds this credit whizzes by. Am I reading too far into this? What’s the deal? I’m ready to be convinced I’m overreacting and this is standard practice, abiding by contractually obligated font sizes and name placement. Is that the case?
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mattpatches:

I want to raise a minor stink about the recent trailer for Carrie.

Do you know who Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa is? He’s writer who started in theater, dabbled in comic books, and now has a place on the writing staff for Glee. I’m sure he is a super nice, talented guy! But I don’t think he’s a “name,” the kind you would use to sell a movie.

I won’t argue that Carrie director Kimberly Peirce is a name either, but answer me this: why does Aguirre-Sacasa get the first credit in the bumper for Carrie, over the director? This seems pretty unusual — even considering possible contract arrangements. You might see Peirce credited solo after the release date, or the director and writer paired. But with the writer first and director second, each with equal font size… this strikes me as odd.

My immediate thought is: Screen Gems feels uncomfortable crediting only a woman as a director. I feel like I’m being tricked into thinking Carrie was helmed by Aguirre-Sacasa in the quick final seconds this credit whizzes by. Am I reading too far into this? What’s the deal? I’m ready to be convinced I’m overreacting and this is standard practice, abiding by contractually obligated font sizes and name placement. Is that the case?

We'll see you at the movies, Roger Ebert. R.I.P.

dailydot:

image

Roger Ebert passed away Thursday.

The Chicago Sun-Times, the newspaper where he plied his trade for decades, reported Ebert’s death at the age of 70 after a battle with cancer.

Ebert, a Pulitzer Prize winner for criticism, lost his physical voice when he lost his lower jaw in 2006. He found a new voice on the Internet. He has noted on many occasions how his site brought him closer together with his readers.

[More]

These are just 19 of hundreds of thousands of words written by Ebert that have informed my work and my life.

I’m getting a new TV soon. When it arrives, the first thing Melodie and I watch on it will be The Lion King. That film means so much to us both. Choosing how to break in the TV wasn’t even a discussion.  

Thank you, Roger.

Digg Blog: We're Building A Reader

rethinkdigg:

Like many of you, we were dismayed to learn that Google will be shutting down its much-loved, if under-appreciated, Google Reader on July 1st. Through its many incarnations, Google Reader has remained a solid and reliable tool for those who want to ensure they are getting the best from their…

I was going to write a bit about Google Reader and RSS and whatnot but TL;DR ILU Digg.

shortformblog: thisistheverge: Twitter discontinuing iPhone, Android, and desktop versions of TweetDeck That sound you heard was the social media journalist in the other room smashing his head into his desk in the wake of this news. To be clear, “desktop” means Adobe AIR. The native clients still work. Knew it was coming, really. Doesn’t make it any less shitty.
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shortformblog:

thisistheverge:

Twitter discontinuing iPhone, Android, and desktop versions of TweetDeck

That sound you heard was the social media journalist in the other room smashing his head into his desk in the wake of this news. To be clear, “desktop” means Adobe AIR. The native clients still work.

Knew it was coming, really. Doesn’t make it any less shitty.

Source: theverge.com

The very first thing I wrote about Twitter

In March 2009, I was on a week-long training/induction course despite having been at my newspaper sub-editing job for a year. One of the tasks which I was assigned in journalism 101 (I don’t even know what to call it) was to write a column. I chose to write about Twitter.

Thankfully, I think I’m a better writer now. 

—————————————————-

If you don’t know your tweets from your toes, then get ready to discover a whole new world.

I make absolutely no bones about being a technology and media addict. I try to keep up with what’s going on with mobile phones, computers, video games, films, TV and in the online world, particularly using the Internet as a news source; it’s fascinating to see various stories develop as they break.

But, with newspaper circulations dropping everywhere, there is an argument to be made that all these distractions are vacuuming up readers’ valuable time, and leaving them with little or no interest in shelling out around £2 per week and spending half an hour per day finding out what’s happening locally in the paper.

Although tech fans may be derided by some as geeks, gadgets and gizmos are constantly altering the way we live our lives. From finding out what our friends are up to at any given time, to drastically altering the way we receive our news, there’s no denying the power and immediacy of telecommunications.

This is why Sky News is to be applauded for its foray into the world of Twitter.

Launched in 2006, Twitter is a popular ‘micro-blogging’ website, with more than five million users — a number which is growing exponentially by the day.

It allows anyone to update their friends (or ‘followers’) with their thoughts, jokes or simply what they are doing — all in a mere 140 characters or fewer, in messages known as ‘tweets’.

Its fans are numerous and widespread, coming from all walks of life. The popular, witty Stephen Fry, for instance, is perhaps its most famous user. Fry is a self-confessed addict, regularly interacting with several of his 278,000 followers (yep, told you he was popular).

Other prominent Twitterers include granddad-bothering Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand; housewives’ choice Phillip Schofield; oddball film director David Lynch; and even the most powerful man in the world — US President Barack Obama — all with tens of thousands of friends and fans eagerly awaiting their every word (although, the president’s account has not been updated since his inauguration. Funny, that).

I signed up to Twitter a couple of months back out of curiosity, and, I have to admit, I’m completely hooked.

I follow a few of these famous types to find out what interesting things they are up to at any given time.

But (mainly to show I’m not completely socially inept), I’ve forced several friends to start using it too, and it’s becoming increasingly valuable to me as a communications device, getting a message out to several pals at once to, for instance, find out who’s up for heading to the cinema that night or to the pub.

So, it is undoubtedly a popular service, but there’s more to it than mere banality and idle chit chat.

From a news standpoint, Twitter has received widespread attention over the past few months. Most notably, news of the Hudson River plane crash in January first broke over the service, while last year, an American journalism student let his followers know he had been arrested in Egypt for photographing an anti-government protest. They contacted his university, who hired a lawyer and got him released from prison the next day. Twitter can be a powerful tool, to say the least.           

In light of the fast growing development as the site as a news source, last week, it was reported Sky News had appointed a full-time Twitter correspondent.

Online tech bible CNET revealed Ruth Barnett had been appointed to the role, the first time a news organisation anywhere has put stumped up the cash to employ someone whose job it is to scour Twitter for breaking stories. A nice cushy job, if you can get it.

For my money, Sky is spot on in making such a bold step.

There are millions of voices on Twitter, all vying to be heard. Critics may write it off as another distraction from modern life or merely another way for despondent, fame-hungry nut cases to try and have their voices be heard, but it’s becoming much more valuable than that.

Viewing Twitter as a constant, non-traditional stream of news (there are thousands of tweets from over five million users every minute), there is a potentially vast number of stories out there. The move shows Sky News is one service that wants to be ahead of the game and give its viewers and online readers a broader view of what’s going on in the world.

With more and more of us now having ‘smartphones’ — mobiles that do everything from taking pictures and acting as our music players to accessing the Internet and switching on your kettle when you’re a few minutes away from the front door (well, maybe not the last one yet, but it can’t be far off) — many of us are choosing to abandon the more established news channels for a more instant (and, indeed, cheaper) source.

Now, even if it weren’t for this newspaper paying my wages and allowing me to do all my Tweeting and web-browsing, I’d still say there is definitely a place for the print media. For all the websites and 24-hour news TV stations, there’s very little that can compete with pouring over the local daily, even just to find out about old school buddies getting married or what the latest news from Tannadice is.

However, newspapers, instead of trying to ignore the Net, must accept it, not just as competition or as a deadly distraction, but also as a valuable news source.

To print editors, all I have to say is this: There’s a lot of information out there. Let’s use it to everyone’s advantage.

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