Barrett

Beware of IKEA Home Delivery

If your furniture home delivery can’t make it through the front door, does that mean you automatically receive a credit? Not if you’re shopping in the Tech Twilight Zone!

If your furniture home delivery can’t make it through the door, does that mean you automatically receive a credit? Not if you’re shopping in the Tech Twilight Zone!

What happens when the sofa bed you just bought doesn’t fit through the front door? Pray you didn’t buy it from IKEA.

Let me explain…

My wife and I recently went shopping at IKEA as part of a refresh project for our guest room.

I really love IKEA.
Spending time there is always a fun ‘experience.’
Kind of like going to the circus…
We even brought our three-year-old son along.
(Well, that’s another story.)

That’s the Signpost up Ahead. Your Next Stop… IKEA
We ate some Swedish meatballs, purchased an ‘Ektorp’ sofa bed we really liked and finally walked over to the home delivery counter.

We spoke to a friendly IKEA representative, and he scheduled our new pride and joy to arrive two days later.

It was the perfect shopping experience.
(Plus my wife bought me some IKEA-branded dark chocolate for the ride home.)

All good!

Little Couch Lost
The only problem was we had forgotten to measure the width of our front door.
So when the delivery men showed up, they were sadly unable to get the sofa bed inside our house.
(I’m not really into outside living…)

Off they went, and our sofa bed drove away into the sunset.
And that’s the end of the story, right?

Uhhhh…

The Fifth Dimension Begins
A couple weeks later, my credit card bill arrived.
I took a peek and saw the IKEA charge.
But there was no matching credit listed!
So I pick up the phone.

This Could be Heaven, or This Could be Hell
And at that moment is when I realized IKEA is the opposite of
the Eagles’ ‘Hotel California.’

-You can check out any time you like.
But you can never return!

After answering a series of automated phone questions to determine which IKEA store I had shopped in, a human finally came on the line.

He was quickly able to confirm my story with one minor variant…
His records showed that the sofa bed had been successfully delivered.

I politely disagreed with his version of reality and repeated I was not…
nor had I ever been in possession of their Ektorp.

He politely concluded that there was nothing he could do, and that I would have to return to the store itself and take my ‘story’ to the store manager.

What?!

A bit ruffled, I said, “Well, why don’t we talk to the store manager right now?
Please connect me.”

“I’m sorry, sir. The store doesn’t take phone calls.”

WHAT?!!

I explained the store was a 45-minute drive from my house, and as much as enjoyed visiting, I really wasn’t at all excited to commit myself to another
90 minutes, plus a date with the Swedish court of customer justice.

Was there nothing he could do?

There was not.

And to add insult to injury, his records showed that I had paid by cash…not by credit card. So there was no way for him to issue a credit.
(Huh?!!!)

Click.

A Shopping Dimension as Timeless as Infinity
Okay, so maybe this story is simply about bad customer service.

But shouldn’t technology be able to correctly handle this kind of thing in a nanosecond?

This shouldn’t be hard for IKEA.
More importantly, this shouldn’t be this hard for me…

I decided to email my tale of woe to an IKEA complaint address to see if I could generate a different response.

I could not.
The resolve in their email reply was unwavering:

“In regards to your documentation for a refund, it is the store’s discretion whether they will issue that refund/store credit. Once they assess your documentation they will be able to provide you with the options available.”

Entering a Not So Wondrous Land of Imagination
I just couldn’t believe in this age of customer convenience and with IKEA’s shining brand that IKEA was unable to correctly handle their own mistake.
Not without inconveniencing the customer to do the heavy lifting by embarking on a 65-mile quest for a refund.

I suspected the problem lay somewhere between the third-party delivery company and IKEA. I then began conjuring the possibility of an extended epic journey beyond the IKEA store into the forest of evil home-delivery lords.

It wasn’t a pretty picture.

So what’s an innocent IKEA shopper to do?

It’s a Good Life
Then my wife had a brilliant idea:

“Why don’t you just call up your credit card company and dispute the charge?”

“Uhhh… because IKEA told me I had to go to the principal’s office?”

Wait…No!
Must…fight….Swedish…mind control!

A few minutes later, I called up my credit card company and explained my story of woe.

The response…
“No problem!”
(what?)

Within five minutes, I was issued a credit on my bill.
The credit card company would work though the details with IKEA, and if there were any problems with my story, I’d get a call back.

Otherwise, I should consider my problem resolved.

Click.

I sat there… stunned.
That was so easy!

I thanked my wife for her consumer tip and then decided to email IKEA my update.

If the Shoe Fits…
Within minutes, IKEA emailed back:

“Please call us at the number provided to report this properly. Via e-mail we cannot document this without having you verbally on the phone giving us permission to access your information.”

IKEA wanted to talk with me…NOW?

I already had my credit. And I was feeling rather done.
So I moved on with the rest of my day… sans phone call.

The Middle Ground Between Light and Shadow
A few weeks later, I received a letter from IKEA.

“Thank you for your recent purchase…
We want to also thank you for allowing us to assist you with your shopping experience…
We have issued a refund for you…
Enclosed please find your refund receipt…
We appreciate your business at IKEA and hope that you will visit us again in the near future.”

I scoured the text in search of the pivotal five-letter word.
No, it was not there.
There was no ‘sorry.’

No hint of an apology.

Well, at least I got money back.
(Oh, yeah. I had already taken care of that…)

At least there was consensus on the whole matter.
A certain balance had been restored to the universe of commerce.

But seriously…

I think IKEA has a weak link when it comes to tracking their home deliveries.
And this is not the first time it’s happened to me.
(Though it’s the first time we couldn’t resolve the problem without bringing in a third party.)

And I acknowledge that the fault may rest more with the delivery company IKEA outsources the work to.

But the bottom line is my transaction went through IKEA.
They should be connecting the dots.

Traveling through Another Shopping Dimension
With all the amazing tech commerce tools available today at the cusp of science fiction, if feels like you’re in the Twilight Zone when a nineteenth century phone call still has the power to both destroy and revive your shopping sanity.

And if you’re wondering if we ever solved the problem presented by our width-challenged front door…
Have no fear.

Crate & Barrel sells a great ‘Rory’ daybed that is delivered ‘unassembled.’
And that’s what we ended up buying.

But get this…
The home delivery guys built the daybed for me as part of the standard delivery fee!
(sweet!)
Not that I couldn’t do it myself.
(grunt)

Cue Rod Serling’s Closing Monologue
So stash this cautionary tale in your smartphone under B for ‘Buyer Beware.’
…The next time you find yourself at home in the Tech Twilight Zone.

3 Comments

February 23, 2014

How Your Email can Help Group-Think Succeed

Would you rather be copied on a group email you don’t care about or left off a cc distribution you really need? The answer is why you need to perfect the art of group-talk. Only then can you properly join in group-think!

Technology can separate us as much as it brings us together.

Yes, it allows us to stay connected no matter how far apart we are.
But the inverse reality is it enables people to drift further and further apart.

How many of you work with colleagues in different cities?
…in multiple time zones?
…or on more than one continent?

Exactly.

The age of the work team strictly defined by four walls is long behind us.

So when you don’t have proximity to help you get the job done,
technology picks up the slack with any number of collaboration tools.

As a result, email has increasingly become a team sport.

Group-Talk
The easiest way to keep everyone connected on a group project is to ‘cc’ the whole team on everything.

It’s overkill. But it’s easy.
And it gets the job done.

As a result, what I will call ‘group-talk’ is the standard way to communicate in so many emails these days.

Detractors would say that this ‘buckshot’ methodology isn’t efficient, because everybody doesn’t need to be included on every email.

A more targeted form of point-to-point email strategy would be more effective.
But that’s more labor intensive to generate.
And who’s got the time to maintain individual contact with 6 of the 10 people on an email chain, when ‘reply all’ will essentially get the same job done.

Sure, you’re wasting the time of the other 40%, but the collateral damage is considered mostly tolerable.

Group-Think
Even though we all feel like we’re drowning in too much email at work, the irony is it’s still not enough.
That’s because using email as your primary communications tool has its limitations.
We all know how difficult it is to interpret the emotion index of cold words on a screen, even with the help of emoticons.

Plus, there’s that annoying baseline tendency to accidentally exclude individuals from your group message. Email writers can unintentionally leave participants off larger email distributions.
If the email train leaves the station, and you’re not on it, you’re in trouble.

So to counter this risk, the logic is to over communicate.
If you’re not certain if someone belongs on your email list,
Add ‘em in!

We’re all trapped in what is effectively an endless series of group cyber discussions.

And often it takes this resulting ‘group-think’ to move the ball down the field.
More and more, we’ve grown reliant on email group-think to get the job done.
(not to be confused with the 1972 ‘groupthink’ term which often gets the team to the wrong place)

Group-Do
I’m sure you’ll remember the Borg from ‘Star Trek: the Next Generation’ who were quite the efficient villains.
That’s because their brains were wirelessly connected allowing them to work together as the perfect team.
Much like a beehive.

Individuality had no place.

Today, we are truly more Borg than we realize…

If a Digital Tree Falls in a Forest…
Say you’ve been given the task of cutting down a digital tree.
And when you’re done, you let out of shriek of victory.
But if nobody’s there to hear it, did you actually accomplish anything at all?

I would say you haven’t.

“But look there,” you might protest.

“There’s the tree. I made it fall! There’s the proof!!”

Doesn’t matter.
If nobody else knows the tree fell, the misperception of an unchanged digital forest will quickly overtake the truth.

The Proof is in the Email
What you need is an email that says the tree fell.

You might jump up and down like my three-year-old boy at the idea that people will not trust your upfront commitment to fell that tree.

If everyone needs an ongoing series of cc reminders that you haven’t spontaneously combusted, leaving your deliverable in ashes…

Isn’t there something wrong?

I would say,
Get over it!!

Join the Team
It’s not that bad.
You just need to learn to embrace the concept of a team sport.
Because after all, you work on a team!

And the more everyone remains connected with the whole, the more effective and efficient individual members will be.

This is not about trust.
(Well, it is. But it’s not only about you.)

You’ve just got to look at the equation from the other side.
And as soon as you do that, you’ll see how messy it is.

If we were really all Borg, things would get much easier, because we would all be working in precise unison and harmony.

But we humans… we’re chaotic beings.
Our creative brains are focused in so many places at once.

We’re unpredictable. Inconsistent. Yet so endearing…
(But I digress…)

Do you think your little tree is the center of everyone else’s galaxy?
Do you believe everyone’s got a lifetime subscription to the Force and will immediately recognize the disturbance in a galaxy without your tree?

Look… You’ve really got to provide your ongoing message of progress.
There’s a lot of noise out there.

A team’s sense of timing moving a group project forward is delicate, because everyone can’t possibly know the exact status of each of the moving parts.

Not unless a meeting provides a momentary snapshot or an email reports it!

If you want the Borg hive to assimilate your accomplishment,
you’d better email it out, loud and clear!

Only then will you have successfully contributed to ‘group-do!’

Email can Make You Clairvoyant
Individual accomplishment is clearly still important, but the efficiency of a Borg-like workflow is hard to dispute, especially when the work team is separated.

It’s really a simple mindset adjustment:

Perfect the art of group-talk!

We all need those emails…

And the silver lining is you’ll never have to remember if you’ve told someone what you’ve done….
Nor pester a colleague whether they’ve done it yet.

WE’LL ALL ALREADY KNOW…

Call it ‘cyber clairvoyance.’

Embrace your inner Borg, and join the team.

February 16, 2014

GoDaddy Says Four Paths to Your Blog is Better than One

Want to corner the market on your blog’s name? Is .com not good enough for you? Well, GoDaddy is there to help you buy up all the available matching top-level domains.

The calendar on my iMac recently reminded me it was time to renew the ownership of my blog’s domain name.

All right, then…
Wouldn’t want ‘At Home with Tech’ to suddenly disappear.
(I know you would all feel a disturbance in the Force.)

So I jumped onto GoDaddy to renew my ongoing pledge:

To help frustrated citizens live in harmony at home with their sometimes not-so-helpful technologies

Would You Like Fries with That?
I’ve always found shopping on GoDaddy’s website to be something of a circus.
(though I’ve noticed their TV advertising of late has moved back from that cliff)

In every nook and cranny, there’s an attempt to ‘upsell’ you.
(It’s like walking into a department store to buy a pair of shoes and walking out with a bulletproof tuxedo.)

Not that all the bells and whistles for your website aren’t a good thing.
It can just be a bit overwhelming.

That said, I did notice one ‘opportunity’ that peaked my interest.

I was presented with a ‘bundle offer’ that would extend my ownership of the
At Home with Tech name beyond the .com world to other top-level domains. (TLDs)

Now, I could also own the matching .net, .org, and .info suffixes.

And the low, low price for this ‘massive’ jump in web presence beyond my blog’s current .com existence?

$17 per year.

Interesting…

So I thought about it a bit.
I already owned the URL I wanted.
And I wasn’t really sure why I needed to corner the market on the name using other suffixes.
(When was the last time you used a .info address?)

The Brand, the Brand, the Brand…
So I called up GoDaddy to see what they had to say about their offer…
I spoke with a very down-to-earth customer service rep and explained my situation.
And even though I knew it was his job to sell more ‘product,’ he gave me a simple, well-balanced answer:

It’s all about protecting and building your website’s brand.

You wouldn’t want some other parallel universe ‘Lester Barrett’ blogging about his little tech woes using .org. That would get really confusing.
(And then I’d have to meet him in some Star Trek-like Lazarus/Thunderdome Nexus to work out our differences.)

Also, what happens if the occasional reader gets your URL extension wrong and can’t find his way back to your blog? Owning a broader market of the possible URL suffixes will help her find you.

So theoretically, this $17 investment will increase readership.
And isn’t that the endgame?

Click.

The entire At Home with Tech team immediately held a party to celebrate this important moment of expansion.
(Translation: I went to the kitchen to treat myself to a chocolate chip cookie.)

Then I sat down again at my computer.
Now what…?

How to Forward your New Domains
It was time to forward my new URLs back to
the mothership – athomewithtech.com.
Because at the end of the day, remember, I’m still writing only one blog. I’m not trying to duplicate my content across the new URLs.
(Google spiders actually frown on that kind of practice.)

And I’m not trying to confuse anyone.
(That can happen easily enough on its own when I go off on some tech rift.)

So how exactly do you forward your new domains back to your main one?
Well, I figured GoDaddy should easily be able to easily explain this.
I called GoDaddy back and spoke to an equally friendly customer service rep.
And he explained the simplicity of domain forwarding on GoDaddy’s interface:

On the Domains page, select the domains you want to forward
Click on Forward
And then click on the drop-down Forwarding Domains
Type in your main domain name
Click on 301 Permanent
Click on Forward Only
(not masking)

And that’s it!
Now, when someone types in .org or .net, it immediately goes to the .com address.
Ta Dah!…

GoDaddy’s website said it may take a few moments for updates to take effect.
My GoDaddy buddy admitted it could take up to 2 hours.
(I liked the honesty.)

But then I felt like my three-year-old son staring at his Valentine’s Day cookie jammed with M&M’s on top. I just couldn’t wait that long…

Ten minutes later, I tried on one of my new URLs.

BAM!
There it was!

BAM!! BAM!!!
There were the other two!

Q.E.D.
(Quite Easily Done!)

The More the Merrier
So there you have it.
Or rather, now I’ve got them…
Three more top-level domains to help you find your way to
‘At Home with Tech.’
(should you ever get lost)

And everyone’s happy!

GoDaddy is psyched, ‘cause they’ve got more of my money.
I’m excited, because I feel I’ve done something good for my blog’s health.
And maybe you’re happy too?

Well, two out of three isn’t bad…

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