(original post-date: March 10, 2010)
Last Friday, a friend called and asked if I was okay. She had sent me two fairly time-sensitive emails over the course of two weeks, and she hadn’t heard from me.
I appreciated her concern and let her know that I was fine (notwithstanding the state of the world). I also shared with her that I had replied to her emails shortly after receiving them. For some reason, though, she never got those replies.
She and I both have Earthlink accounts, so I became curious. I sent myself a test email, and while it showed up in my Sent file, it never reached my Inbox. Hmm….
I went online to the Support Center and saw alerts regarding email outages and a large volume of calls. I figured they were “on it” and didn’t pursue it further. Besides, it was the beginning of Oscar weekend, so I had things to do. You know… prepare a speech, borrow some baubles from Harry Winston, consult with Vera regarding the length of my train, decide on an updo, all that stuff. (And on another astral plane, I had to clean my low-rent apartment in advance of friends gathering ‘round the telecast.)
By Monday, I was ready to get back to my life outside the Academy, and I still was not receiving test emails. I headed to the online Support Center. Seeing no indication of outage alerts, I pushed the buttons that would begin my live chat with a techie named George.
Devoted to the script in front of him, George began his end of our cyber-logue by apologizing for the inconvenience. Then, over the course of 30 minutes or so, he coached me through some maneuvers, ultimately enabling me to receive a test email. Problem solved?
I closed the window on George and did another test. No sale. The problem persisted.
I won’t go into the details of my subsequent pursuits of technical support, but by the end of the day, I had spent about six hours with Earthlink. I tried an actual telephone conversation following the first chat with George, and when that didn't resolve the issue, I returned to online live chatting, the fourth session ending well after midnight. But whether I was communicating with George, Paul, John, or Ringo, the lines they typed were always the same: “I apologize for the inconvenience;” “the problem is solved;” “you will not have this problem again;” etc.
Apparently, there is no statement on their script that says something to the effect of, “We have no idea how to solve this problem, but we’ll do our best to figure it out and we appreciate your patience.”
The thing is, the problem itself is really minor, as computer issues go. I seem to be getting all my other email, and others are receiving mine. I also now know where to look for the emails that are not making it into my inbox. So that part is not so frustrating. What frustrates me is that this feels like another instance of corporate unwillingness to confront a problem candidly.
Granted, Earthlink issues do not lead to cars speeding out of control, and there’s no threat to life here, but please, don’t blame the floormat if it’s not the floormat’s fault. And if you don’t know what the problem is, quit pretending that you can solve it.
Own up, people! Believe me, I’m not looking for perfection. If I were, I’d have to start with myself, and if I ever tell you that I’m taking that on, well… that’s just a load of spam.
Showing posts with label email. Show all posts
Showing posts with label email. Show all posts
Monday, March 14, 2011
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
This is Going to Sound Weird, but...
Last week, one of my favorite clients sent me an email. She let me know that they’d soon be “adding a sub-domain to their splash page,” and so… she might need my help with some language. Before ending her missive, she commented on the jargon she was using, and I could sense that her eyes were rolling with irony and amusement as she typed.
I appreciated what drove her comment about the jargon. The fact of the matter is, she and I have laughed – for a few years now – over our common (and often reluctant) emergence from the luddite trenches. Both of us baby boomers, we are doing our best to keep up with the times.
That same day last week, I sent an email to another client. This particular email was sent to assuage my client’s concerns. I wanted to ensure her that I had not missed a prospective grantmaker’s automatic reply to our online Stage One application. In fact, I had retrieved that reply from my “Suspect Mail” just an hour before my client sent her relatively alarmed message.
“Don’t worry,” I shared, typing quickly before hitting SEND, “I check my spam at least four times a day.”
And that’s when it hit me.
Imagine, for a minute…
Imagine if, 15 years ago, someone had said to you, “I check my spam at least four times a day.”
How many red flags?
Okay, the first and most obvious one is the OCD flag. And, mind you, I’m not belittling that issue; I’ve got some of my own OCD manifestations. I’m big on expiration dates, for example. (Don’t get me started.) And, the checking thing? There’s a pre-departure routine that revolves around my kitchen; I always do it at least three times.
So, okay, that’s one way the statement might have seemed alarming 15 years ago. The “checking” … The “four times a day”…
But what about the reference to spam?
And what's in those cans, anyway? Does that weird meat concept even exist anymore?
(Pardon me while I do a Google search...)
I’m back, folks, and guess what. Spam does exist anymore. Not only that, it was the first hit!
Forward-thinkers, those meat canners. How smart they were to grab the domain of “www.spam.com” and make it their own before the cyber-geeks had a chance to take it and run with it. Damn. Good for Spam. But still, I’m not quite sure what it is… And, that site of theirs (however primary on the search results page) isn’t helping.
(Pardon me while I go to Wikipedia…)
Okay, I can’t possibly paraphrase (nor do I want to, really), so I’ll just share here what we might as well call the Wiki Executive Summary of Spam. (And if this whets your appetite, I strongly suggest a nutrition counselor.)
Spam is a canned precooked meat product made by the Hormel Foods Corporation. The labeled ingredients in the classic variety of Spam are chopped pork shoulder meat with ham meat added, salt, water, modified potato starch as a binder, and sodium nitrite to help keep its color. Spam’s gelatinous glaze, or aspic, forms from the cooling of meat stock. The product has become part of many jokes and urban legends about mystery meat, which has made it part of pop culture and folklore.
Pop culture and folklore, huh?
It’s kinda nice to know those concepts have a shelf life in our fast-paced cyberworld.
… I’ve never eaten Spam, and I don’t think I ever will (despite its undoubtedly seductive gelatinous glaze). And so I am especially glad that there aren’t seven or eight cans of it confronting me when I peer into the kitchen cupboard. If there were, I’d have to throw those cans in the trash. I’d have to make room for the seven or eight more that are likely to appear out of nowhere in the next several hours.
***
A Post Script to my Post: It's still Wednesday (barely, here on the West Coast), and what I've come to share has nothing to do with spam. Just want to alert you to my being a featured guest blogger on Eliza's Silver & Grace website, which is dedicated to "guiding graceful women into beautiful aging." Eliza has deemed me "spunky," which is not -- to my knowledge -- a synonym for "grace." Regardless, she is kindly featuring my little rant on menopause, which I originally posted here, some months ago. Go there, enjoy, and check out her site!
I appreciated what drove her comment about the jargon. The fact of the matter is, she and I have laughed – for a few years now – over our common (and often reluctant) emergence from the luddite trenches. Both of us baby boomers, we are doing our best to keep up with the times.
That same day last week, I sent an email to another client. This particular email was sent to assuage my client’s concerns. I wanted to ensure her that I had not missed a prospective grantmaker’s automatic reply to our online Stage One application. In fact, I had retrieved that reply from my “Suspect Mail” just an hour before my client sent her relatively alarmed message.
“Don’t worry,” I shared, typing quickly before hitting SEND, “I check my spam at least four times a day.”
And that’s when it hit me.
Imagine, for a minute…
Imagine if, 15 years ago, someone had said to you, “I check my spam at least four times a day.”
How many red flags?
Okay, the first and most obvious one is the OCD flag. And, mind you, I’m not belittling that issue; I’ve got some of my own OCD manifestations. I’m big on expiration dates, for example. (Don’t get me started.) And, the checking thing? There’s a pre-departure routine that revolves around my kitchen; I always do it at least three times.
So, okay, that’s one way the statement might have seemed alarming 15 years ago. The “checking” … The “four times a day”…
But what about the reference to spam?
And what's in those cans, anyway? Does that weird meat concept even exist anymore?
(Pardon me while I do a Google search...)
I’m back, folks, and guess what. Spam does exist anymore. Not only that, it was the first hit!
Forward-thinkers, those meat canners. How smart they were to grab the domain of “www.spam.com” and make it their own before the cyber-geeks had a chance to take it and run with it. Damn. Good for Spam. But still, I’m not quite sure what it is… And, that site of theirs (however primary on the search results page) isn’t helping.
(Pardon me while I go to Wikipedia…)
Okay, I can’t possibly paraphrase (nor do I want to, really), so I’ll just share here what we might as well call the Wiki Executive Summary of Spam. (And if this whets your appetite, I strongly suggest a nutrition counselor.)
Spam is a canned precooked meat product made by the Hormel Foods Corporation. The labeled ingredients in the classic variety of Spam are chopped pork shoulder meat with ham meat added, salt, water, modified potato starch as a binder, and sodium nitrite to help keep its color. Spam’s gelatinous glaze, or aspic, forms from the cooling of meat stock. The product has become part of many jokes and urban legends about mystery meat, which has made it part of pop culture and folklore.
Pop culture and folklore, huh?
It’s kinda nice to know those concepts have a shelf life in our fast-paced cyberworld.
… I’ve never eaten Spam, and I don’t think I ever will (despite its undoubtedly seductive gelatinous glaze). And so I am especially glad that there aren’t seven or eight cans of it confronting me when I peer into the kitchen cupboard. If there were, I’d have to throw those cans in the trash. I’d have to make room for the seven or eight more that are likely to appear out of nowhere in the next several hours.
***
A Post Script to my Post: It's still Wednesday (barely, here on the West Coast), and what I've come to share has nothing to do with spam. Just want to alert you to my being a featured guest blogger on Eliza's Silver & Grace website, which is dedicated to "guiding graceful women into beautiful aging." Eliza has deemed me "spunky," which is not -- to my knowledge -- a synonym for "grace." Regardless, she is kindly featuring my little rant on menopause, which I originally posted here, some months ago. Go there, enjoy, and check out her site!
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Earthlink, We Have a Problem
Last Friday, a friend called and asked if I was okay. She had sent me two fairly time-sensitive emails over the course of two weeks, and she hadn’t heard from me.
I appreciated her concern and let her know that I was fine (notwithstanding the state of the world). I also shared with her that I had replied to her emails shortly after receiving them. For some reason, though, she never got those replies.
She and I both have Earthlink accounts, so I became curious. I sent myself a test email, and while it showed up in my Sent file, it never reached my Inbox. Hmm….
I went online to the Support Center and saw alerts regarding email outages and a large volume of calls. I figured they were “on it” and didn’t pursue it further. Besides, it was the beginning of Oscar weekend, so I had things to do. You know… prepare a speech, borrow some baubles from Harry Winston, consult with Vera regarding the length of my train, decide on an updo, all that stuff. (And on another astral plane, I had to clean my low-rent apartment in advance of friends gathering ‘round the telecast.)
By Monday, I was ready to get back to my life outside the Academy, and I still was not receiving test emails. I headed to the online Support Center. Seeing no indication of outage alerts, I pushed the buttons that would begin my live chat with a techie named George.
Devoted to the script in front of him, George began his end of our cyber-logue by apologizing for the inconvenience. Then, over the course of 30 minutes or so, he coached me through some maneuvers, ultimately enabling me to receive a test email. Problem solved?
I closed the window on George and did another test. No sale. The problem persisted.
I won’t go into the details of my subsequent pursuits of technical support, but by the end of the day, I had spent about six hours with Earthlink. I tried an actual telephone conversation following the first chat with George, and when that didn't resolve the issue, I returned to online live chatting, the fourth session ending well after midnight. But whether I was communicating with George, Paul, John, or Ringo, the lines they typed were always the same: “I apologize for the inconvenience;” “the problem is solved;” “you will not have this problem again;” etc.
Apparently, there is no statement on their script that says something to the effect of, “We have no idea how to solve this problem, but we’ll do our best to figure it out and we appreciate your patience.”
The thing is, the problem itself is really minor, as computer issues go. I seem to be getting all my other email, and others are receiving mine. I also now know where to look for the emails that are not making it into my inbox. So that part is not so frustrating. What frustrates me is that this feels like another instance of corporate unwillingness to confront a problem candidly.
Granted, Earthlink issues do not lead to cars speeding out of control, and there’s no threat to life here, but please, don’t blame the floormat if it’s not the floormat’s fault. And if you don’t know what the problem is, quit pretending that you can solve it.
Own up, people! Believe me, I’m not looking for perfection. If I were, I’d have to start with myself, and if I ever tell you that I’m taking that on, well… that’s just a load of spam.
I appreciated her concern and let her know that I was fine (notwithstanding the state of the world). I also shared with her that I had replied to her emails shortly after receiving them. For some reason, though, she never got those replies.
She and I both have Earthlink accounts, so I became curious. I sent myself a test email, and while it showed up in my Sent file, it never reached my Inbox. Hmm….
I went online to the Support Center and saw alerts regarding email outages and a large volume of calls. I figured they were “on it” and didn’t pursue it further. Besides, it was the beginning of Oscar weekend, so I had things to do. You know… prepare a speech, borrow some baubles from Harry Winston, consult with Vera regarding the length of my train, decide on an updo, all that stuff. (And on another astral plane, I had to clean my low-rent apartment in advance of friends gathering ‘round the telecast.)
By Monday, I was ready to get back to my life outside the Academy, and I still was not receiving test emails. I headed to the online Support Center. Seeing no indication of outage alerts, I pushed the buttons that would begin my live chat with a techie named George.
Devoted to the script in front of him, George began his end of our cyber-logue by apologizing for the inconvenience. Then, over the course of 30 minutes or so, he coached me through some maneuvers, ultimately enabling me to receive a test email. Problem solved?
I closed the window on George and did another test. No sale. The problem persisted.
I won’t go into the details of my subsequent pursuits of technical support, but by the end of the day, I had spent about six hours with Earthlink. I tried an actual telephone conversation following the first chat with George, and when that didn't resolve the issue, I returned to online live chatting, the fourth session ending well after midnight. But whether I was communicating with George, Paul, John, or Ringo, the lines they typed were always the same: “I apologize for the inconvenience;” “the problem is solved;” “you will not have this problem again;” etc.
Apparently, there is no statement on their script that says something to the effect of, “We have no idea how to solve this problem, but we’ll do our best to figure it out and we appreciate your patience.”
The thing is, the problem itself is really minor, as computer issues go. I seem to be getting all my other email, and others are receiving mine. I also now know where to look for the emails that are not making it into my inbox. So that part is not so frustrating. What frustrates me is that this feels like another instance of corporate unwillingness to confront a problem candidly.
Granted, Earthlink issues do not lead to cars speeding out of control, and there’s no threat to life here, but please, don’t blame the floormat if it’s not the floormat’s fault. And if you don’t know what the problem is, quit pretending that you can solve it.
Own up, people! Believe me, I’m not looking for perfection. If I were, I’d have to start with myself, and if I ever tell you that I’m taking that on, well… that’s just a load of spam.
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