Promises of Progress

This year, I decided to test out moo.com - and make some friends and family happy with some X-mas cards.

The bad part

October 27. Ordered Holiday Cards+Envelopes and a stickerbook
November 3. Stickerbook ships.
November 7. Stickerbook arrives.
November 30. Holiday cards still marked as “printing”. Wrote to customer service.
December 1. moo.com: “Sorry. Your order was corrupted due to poor cropping of images. Coupon?”
December 3. Me: “Thats okay. Can you re-print the order?” 
December 3. moo.com: “Free coupon! Please don’t put text near the border due to cropping. Retry plz.”
December  4. Me (in a hurry): “I have no text in the images anywhere. I’m okay with white borders. Just print it anyway.”
December 9. Me: “Did you get my mail? Are you printing my holiday cards?”
December 11. moo.com: “We totally trashed your order ok? There - we said it. Coupon/refund?” 
December 11. Me (annoyed): “Refund plz”

The good part

December 13. I order a second batch of Holiday Cards. Being stubborn and all.
December 16. Second order is shipped. Express.
December 17. Refund for the October 30. order shows up on my bank account.
December 19. Second order arrives. Cards are looking great!
December 22. The Christmas Cards show up in the mailboxes of friends and family. They like.

How moo.com could let my “corrupted” order sit for more than a month without contacting me, still baffles me. But I’ll still recommend them. Just remember to check your order status.

…guess who wins?

Photo by zαxεr on Flickr

Yesterday I dropped by the humac (the biggest independent Apple reseller in Denmark) flagship store hoping to leave with a Time Capsule unit. After all - the Time Capsule is the #1 selling item on the Apple Store (in DK anyway) - so I kind off assumed that humac would stock them.

The response from the sales clerk was dissapointing: “No units in stock - but I could write you up for one. And we’ll give you a call once we have one for you.” I quickly remembered that I did the same thing in April. I actually have a piece of paper from humac, confirming that I have reserved a Time Capsule and that they would contact me. I have heard nothing from humac. No calls. No e-mail. Nothing.

“No thanks - I really don’t have time for that” I quickly responded and left the store.

In the afternoon, I went onto apple.com and ordered a Time Capsule (and some other stuff). The delivery estimate was Dec. 1 - Dec. 5. Around evening I received a shipment confirmation. The delivery estimate was now Nov. 25 - Nov. 28.

Just before lunch today I received a SMS telling me that my 2 parcels from Apple in Netherlands had arrived.

My conclusions:

• Physical shops will only survive if they have the goods in stock (or can get it faster that others can provide it).
• It is probably not fun being an icelandic owned company at the moment.
• I hope that the norwegian newcomer to the danish market, Eplehuset, have already learned that lesson. Maybe I’ll drop by their new shop, when they open and see.
• Apple knows how to pick logistics partners.

Anyway - I have now learned not to bother with physical shops with regards to Apple kit.

3D Secure is also known as “Verified by Visa(TM)” and “MasterCard SecureCode”. Like a lot of people, I really do not like how it is implemented - mainly due to bad UX. Normally, when I shop with a Visa or MasterCard - I’m sent (via the danish payment hub PBS) to my own online bank, where i enter a OTP.

Just the other day, something had changed in the process; I was now being presented with a page from PBS. Acting on a hunch, I took extraordinary measures to confirm the authenticity of the site. Everything checked out - It was legit.

“Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.” I thought - and continued.

Create your “Verified by Visa” code. Create my what now? Could you please tell me the purpose of this before you start asking questions. 

The user experience was terrible. With popups and mixed languages. “Write a personal statement, that will be shown, every time you shop in a participating online shop. It’s safe for you to enter your code, when you see your personal statement.” 

I quickly entered by “personal statement” that contained <script> tags.

But - to my astonishment, the “Personal statement” was accepted. 

The common phishing site has better user experience than this.

Back when I was a child, you had to dig up crayons and glue if you wanted to make a personalized greeting card. Nowadays there are sites like moo.com and zazzle.com, that will let you be creative without getting paint on your finger. Just dig up your favorite photo and upload it - and if your credit card has money on it, you’ll receive your very own holiday cards in the mail a couple of weeks later. Me like. But does it work.

I’ve tried MOO.com, (UK based) which I’ve heard great things about. Their ordering and design interface (great UX and lots of ajax) certainly leaves the impression, that these guys know what they are doing. Received my stickers within 9 days, and while they are not flawless (mostly my own fault), they are most certainly usable. My christmas cards were ordered on October 27, but they are still marked with status “printing” under order status. It seems that the business processes are not as smooth as the ordering interface. I’d better contact MOO.com customer service.

I’ve tried the book-print-on-demand Lulu.com, (US based) which so far has been a disappointment. Only one of my 2 orders have been delivered (now 40+ days under way). It seems that the priority shipping option is a must for international deliveries. I’d better contact Lulu customer service.

I really hope that my luck with these on-demand printers change soon.

Update 2008/12/13: How about a custom propaganda poster

Sometime during friday, some of my sites (including this one) dropped off the net. I was out drinking, so the fix had to wait until saturday. The reason seemed to be related to the hardware in the soekris powered gateway. A quick Google search returned something interesting: The Soekris-shipped power supply, SMP 12V 1.5A, part no SBD212, is known to spontaneously fail. A quick run to Brinck Elektronik, and I had a replacement unit (12V/1.7A SMP at 169DKK) - and we were back up. 

I would have loved to know of this risk before stuff died. 

And honestly - supplying a crappy poweradapter like this with quality hardware - seems a bit like serving a sirloin steak on a paper plate.

And you’re right - I have no idea of the reliability of the replacement adapter.

When travelling by air, I prefer to fly with SAS. The tickets are typically a bit more expensive, but the service level is good (and pretty consistent).

A couple of days ago, I received a mailinglist newsletter from SAS, asking me to participate in a questionaire with the title “what does time mean to you”. Among other things, the survey showcased the various special benefits that SAS offers in order to reduce wasted time while travelling.

So I entered the site and began answering the questions. The only problem was that the server was so bogged down that it took more than a minute after you answered, before the next question would show up.

“What a waste of time”, I thought - and dug up the e-mail address of the VP of marketing in SAS Denmark.

The next day, I got the response from SAS that they certainly did not intend to waste their customers time. Excuses (”we did actually do a load test”) and promises of fixing the issue took up the biggest part of the email.

I just checked - and the server is now responding pretty fast - as you would expect in the first place. The only problem is that the really busy people (that the campaign probably was directed towards) has long forgotten that site that didn’t work. The email is in deleted items. Their input is lost. You fail.

Once you have learned from your mistake you may try again.