The quick update for Usable Web Solutions, LLC is that I carried through on my plans to remove all of my third party clients and now the business operates as a shell corporation that owns several independent websites. While I enjoyed working with most of my clients most of the time, I began to run into issues where certain clients just wouldn’t pay for my services. In business, I live by a simple code – you pay a person/company what you promised to pay them, assuming that the good or service provided was of the expected quality. Simple. I never had a complaint about the very high standards that I set for my work; rather, the clients who stopped paying me ran into their own financial troubles and their financial troubles became my issue. Not good. As you might suspect, once those clients stopped paying regularly I cut them off and canceled those contracts.

Then I ran into several issues where clients began to think that since I was their website designer, then I was also their in-house technology person. They were wrong. Some folks just didn’t understand that the guy who makes your website isn’t the guy who is tasked with fixing your Microsoft Word when a document doesn’t open… particularly when the contract you signed with that website guy clearly states his responsibilities being tied solely to your website presence! Thankfully, I only had one or two of these clients over the years (each with several websites, come to think of it). Spinning them off to other web designers in the area was an easy decision when their contracts came due.

And then there was my favorite type of head-shaking client – the ones who knew almost nothing about technology, but they would boss me around demanding that complex activities (think highly sophisticated database building) take place in a matter of days. I had one client that demanded an integrated third party payment system be installed on their website by the end of the day. Granted, if they were using PayPal or Google Wallet that would have been an annoying, but rather easy task. But, as I’m sure you suspect by this point, they didn’t want to use the easy option. They wanted to use the most complex, obscure website payment system on the internet. What fun?! After I finished that job (it took a weekend to get it working correctly), I let that client know in advance of their contract expiring that I wasn’t going to renew it and they should find another company for their website services. Last I checked, their website still hadn’t been updated and I spun them off as a client some 3 or 4 years ago.

Sure, I had many great clients, but my aggravating ones easily won the day and forced me out of the third party website management business. It just wasn’t worth the aggravation.

Today, I keep Usable Web Solutions, LLC open and I use it to manage and build my own suite of websites. You’re reading my personal blog site – JerseySmarts.com. In the coming weeks, I plan to release some new websites and reintroduce some of my old websites that I’ve retired over the years. None of these websites will have input or management-level requirements from anyone on the outside of Usable Web Solutions, LLC (and as the guy who owns and operates that company, what I’m really saying here is that I’m going to manage the suite of websites myself). Having all of my websites managed under my own banner and operated by me and me alone should make the entire management process flow much easier.

That’s your quick update on Usable Web Solutions, LLC. It was my first small business and the first major success that I had as a business owner. Here’s hoping for many more similar successes in my future!

Anyway, the link series is back. Enjoy the links below and get your weekend started right!

Again, if you don’t already have one, then I recommend opening a free Feedly account. You can follow JerseySmarts.com on Feedly or you can add us to your existing RSS aggregator. Enjoy!

FYE.com Has Horrible Customer Service

Now remember, I hadn’t regularly watched NBA games since I was in grade school and at the time I was a huge Chicago Bulls fan. Of course, I was probably a Bulls fan because when I was in grade school, Michael Jordan was destroying his competition. These days, I didn’t really feel a connection to that team so I turned to the Nets. The first thing I learned about the Nets was that they’re probably leaving New Jersey. Great. I’m not rooting for a team that is leaving the state. And what does that leave me with? Either the New York Knicks or the Philadelphia 76’ers. No thanks. I thought to myself that maybe I could find a team to root for if I had more time around the NBA and started looking into which basketball video games were popular. Not that I have time to play video games, but I thought it was a decent idea.

I did a little bit of research and it turns out that this NBA 2k11 game is supposed to be the best thing to ever grace a video game console since anything ever in the world. Or something like that… anyway, I pre-ordered the game for Nintendo Wii way back on August 31, 2010. Seems like a long time ago, right? Well, that’s the background that you need to know for my story. Oh, and you should know that the game was released for the Wii at some point last week and thus I should have had it in my hot little hands at this point.

As you might imagine, I didn’t get the game delivered to me. So, I sent the following message to FYE.com:

I’m sending this message to inquire about my order #XXXXXX. The online system shows it still listed as a pre-order and “in process.” Could you let me know when I should expect this game to be delivered to my home?

FYE.com sent me the following response which, I have to admit, reads like it was written by a robot. Take a look at this:

We appreciate your recent order.

Unfortunately, the item ordered is currently out of stock. We have placed this item on back order and expect it to become available for shipment within 30 days.

We will ship the item when it becomes available.

If you wish to cancel your order, please see the cancelation instructions below.

We sincerely apologize for the delay in processing this request.

And yes, they did provide extensive cancellation instructions below this note. Well, I thought that this didn’t sound right. How could a video game that I ordered months ago not be in stock when I was a pre-order? In my mind I started thinking, “Ugh. This is going to be one of those customer service experiences that you read about on Consumerist.com and, frankly, I’m really not in the mood for this type of crap. I’m going to cancel this thing and move on with my life.” With that in mind, I wrote the following message to the folks at FYE.com:

Thank you for the update. I just have an additional question. Since I pre-ordered this item back in August, how could it possibly be out of stock for a pre-order? Isn’t that the purpose of a pre-order – to have the item in stock so that the person that placed the pre-order doesn’t have to wait for an additional 30 days?

I’m going to cancel my order, but this is pretty ridiculous in terms of serving a pre-ordering customer. Unreal.

Look, I have no reason to bow down or cow-tow to a company that clearly doesn’t give a shit about me as a customer (just wait until you read the tirade I’m getting ready to unleash on Honda in the next few days). I normally wouldn’t write that last sentence and the “Unreal” comment, but FYE.com really had it coming to them with their robotic response and completely unacceptable additional 30 day delay. To their credit, I guess, they responded within 24 hours with this message:

Thank you for contacting the fye.com Customer Assistance Center

Please log into your account online or contact us at 800-818-1941, option 7, to submit a cancellation request.

That was it. Nothing else. No direct answer to any of my questions or an explanation of what was going on. By the time I received this absolute joke of a customer service response, I had already canceled my order. But this was pretty damn insulting and it led me to share my experiences with you fine folks. The lesson that I learned here is three-fold. First, FYE.com’s customer service absolutely sucks. They either have you talking to robots or people who act like robots. Listen up, FYE.com: when a customer asks a question – no matter how rude you think that question may be – you respond to that question. Second, FYE.com clearly doesn’t care about my business and thus, I’m not giving it to them. I happen to have a small credit over at GameStop and I’ll be going to their website to spend my money now. And third, FYE.com sucks when compared to the folks in their brick and mortar store.

What a shame. I wanted to like shopping at FYE.com but, instead, found it to be an annoying, aggravating experience. For shame, FYE.com. For shame.

Box art for Crystalis

If you have the Nintendo Wii and you’ve played around with their Wii Shop channel, then you know they have something called the Virtual Console (and chances are that if you don’t have a Wii, you’ve at least heard of this feature). The Virtual Console brings games from yesterday to the Wii and makes them available for purchase by gamers. As a guy who really enjoyed Crystalis, I thought that I’d send a message to the people over at Nintendo asking them if they could get this game listed on the Virtual Console. Here is the response that they sent me:

To tell you the truth, I don’t know if Crystalis will ever become a Virtual Console game. However, it is great to hear from the many fans excited about the Virtual Console! So many of you have contacted Nintendo regarding the games you would love to see added. While we appreciate your excitement and support, decisions regarding which games will be made available come from several different companies and are influenced by a variety of factors apart from consumer suggestions.

For more details about the Virtual Console, including an updated list of available software titles, check out the following web page:

http://www.nintendo.com/wii/virtualconsole

New Virtual Console titles should continue to be released weekly across all systems, so there’s hope that the title you’re looking for will eventually appear. Keep checking our website (www.nintendo.com) for updates!

As you can tell, most of the response seems to be cut and paste from a generic “answer” database, but at least the person who responded had the good will to write an original sentence or two in the beginning of the e-mail. As a consumer, I appreciate that extra effort when it is so easy to just send a form response these days. I did some digging online and I read somewhere that Nintendo actually owns the rights to this old SNK title; I guess somewhere along the line they purchased the game (I may have that portion incorrect, I’m not sure). If that is true then it might be very easy for Nintendo to make this game available on the Virtual Console.

For those of you interested in watching a few minutes of this game, including the opening sequence which explains what is happening, feel free to watch the video below. You’ll be able to see the first few minutes of the game in all of its 8-bit glory!

Please note that I’m not looking at the top five most popular search terms – that would be a different entry altogether. I’m looking at the last five search phrases that landed someone on JerseySmarts.com. It should also be noted that the last five search phrases brought readers here from a Google search engine.

Searched Phrase: terry weldon new jersey 2009
Ah. Nice one. For those of you that don’t know, Terry Weldon is the former (scumbag) Mayor of Ocean Township in Monmouth County. He was also a public employee of the City of Asbury Park. This man is as corrupt as the day is long. The JerseySmarts.com page that this searcher landed on talked about how Terry Weldon was the epitome of a scumbag.

Searched Phrase: comcast customer care number
Over the summer I had some issues with Comcast’s customer care. Something wasn’t quite right when I was looking for FOX News HD on my cable box. You can read what this particular searcher found on JerseySmarts.com by clicking here.

Searched Phrase: diet books for men
It was only a few days ago that I posted my review of The Eat-Clean Diet for Men. In case you missed it (or in case you can’t scroll down the screen here…), feel free to head on over via this link. I’m probably the happiest about this particular search phrase because it shows that the content that is placed on JerseySmarts.com quickly rises up the ranks in the search engine world. You listening to that, advertisers?

Searched Phrase: guys trip to nashville
Every once in a while one of my entries has something to do with an event that someone else is planning. Clearly, this searcher was looking for ideas for a trip to Nashville for he and his buddies. Well, when he Google’d this phrase he landed on JerseySmarts.com and an entry that I uploaded over the summer reviewing my most recent trip to Nashville.

Searched Phrase: roxbury high school football
Go Gaels! A few days ago I made it very clear that, as a member of the 1998 State Championship football team from Roxbury High School, I am completely behind the current team as they prepare to play against East Orange Campus High School this weekend at Giants Stadium. I know that I speak for the entire 1998 team when I say good luck! Many of the guys will be in the stands and we want to see that state title come back home. The guys on the current team have made all of Roxbury Township proud with their excellent performance this season. We’re all pulling for them to win the big one this weekend and they can definitely do it!

Whoever searched for that term found my congratulatory post to the current team (as well as some pictures of me from when we won the state championship 11 years ago) when they landed on the page linked here.

And there you have it – the last five searched phrases that brought some of YOU to JerseySmarts.com. If you happen to be someone who landed on this page thanks to Google or another search engine, please feel free to leave a comment telling us what you were looking for and if the search engine that you used gave you the right answers.

My promotional rate for the bundled Comcast services that I am subscribed to (cable, internet, and phone) was expiring at the end of June. On a separate, unrelated call (one of the cable boxes in the house went down), Comcast advised me to contact them to get a new promotional rate for the coming year. I thought that was nice of them to give me a head’s up, so I made the call.

I must have called two or three weeks ago and they verified that my promotional rate was expiring and that I was eligible for a new promotional rate that would actually lower my total bill by $15 each month. That’s not bad! However, this made my the synapses in my mind start to go off because we’ve all dealt with this problem: you change your service in the middle of the month and the service provider winds up double and sometimes triple charging you which launches your next bill into the stratosphere. Nobody wants to deal with that for two reasons. First, it’s extremely annoying and everyone hates getting annoyed. Second, when you contact the actual service provider, 99% of the time you’re stuck on the phone with a person who has a script and is required to stick to it. Talk about doing anything but providing service!

Yet, to Comcast’s great credit, the woman on the phone must have anticipated this problem and suggested that she was going to make the changes effective for the next billing cycle. SWEET! There goes that headache and now all was in place for the next bill to come in. Or so I thought…

The woman on the phone told me the new monthly charge (something like $157 per month) and I thank her for her time. It really was a pleasant ohone call and a pleasant process. Until I received my next bill.

Ugh…

Not only are none of the changes that the woman talked to me about reflected on the bill (as they should have been), but the total monthly bill is $210. TWO HUNDRED AND TEN DOLLARS?! That’s $38 MORE than what I was originally paying!

I took a look at the bill and nothing that I talked to the woman about was reflected. Not a thing. Do you know how frustrating that is for a consumer? I spent half an hour of my time on the phone with that woman and NOTHING that we talked about was processed. Come on! I mean what? Is my time worth nothing?!

At this point, I did what any consumer would do – I picked up the phone and made a call to 1-800-COMCAST. This was a useless move. After 10 minutes of not getting anybody on the phone, playing the “Press X for…” game, and listening to crappy music while I was on hold, I hung up and went to Comcast.com to use their live chat. Now, to prove that I can say “good job” when it is well-deserved, let me say that Comcast.com’s live chat is excellent.

After signing on, a very nice live chat woman named Siena Rose answered my request in a matter of seconds. She was extremely pleasant and, if you want, you can read our entire conversation by clicking here. The end of this part of the story is that I had to call the local office in order to get the changes made on my account that I was told were made weeks ago. If you click on the transcript of the discussion above, you’ll note that as pleasant as Siena Rose was on the live chat, I did get very offended when she went to an obvious “copy and paste” tactic at the end of the chat. In short, she suggested that I can now consider my issue resolved when it was clearly not resolved. I didn’t like that. Read the transcript – you’ll see.

Oh joy, I get to call the local office. More of my time spent on something that should have been done weeks ago.

The next day rolls around and I call the local office. After playing the ridiculous “Press # for…” game and sitting on hold for 12 minutes, I hang up. Great, now I have to call the NEXT day. In other words, I have to take time out of MY WORK DAY to tell the local office that they made a mistake and that they need to fix it. At this point, I’m beginning to get enraged because I know exactly what’s going to happen – I’m going to request a new bill be generated erasing the false $210 bill and the local office isn’t going to do it. However, I learned once that you shouldn’t get mad at things before they happen, so I choose to simmer down before I make the call on Monday (during my work day).

Up until this point, I’ve spent almost an hour of my time trying to fix a mistake made and admitted to by Comcast. What do I get for this? If I made a mistake with my payments (which would never happen), Comcast would get a late fee. Where is my equivalent of a late fee for the mistakes that Comcast made and the loss of an hour of my personal time?

Instead of waiting to call the next day – during my work day – I decide to call 1-800-COMCAST to see what they can do. After about a minute on hold, some guy answers and asks me how he can help. I tell him my problem and he says that he can put me through to the local billing department, before I get a chance to say that I’ve been waiting on hold with them for 12 minutes already today – he puts me through. The same familiar, aggravating elevator music pops onto my phone…

Now I want to put my fist through someone’s face, but I’ve decided instead to calm down the rage and wait on hold (again). As I wait on hold, I begin writing this post so I don’t forget any of the absolute ridiculousness of this situation. After another 12 minutes on hold, I give up and realize that I’m going to have to make this phone call the following day from my office. That’s completely unfair, but what choice do I have?

Monday morning rolls around and after waiting on hold for a few minutes, I’m on the line with a customer service representative at Comcast. Here comes another dreadful moment – having to re-explain everything all over again (which I do as pleasantly as possible). The woman on the phone (didn’t catch her name) has no idea what I’m talking about and tells me that the reason why I have the wrong charges reflected on my bill is because I made the changes on June 27th and my billing dates run from the 20th of each month to the following 20th.

Ugh…

I explain to the woman that I called on June 15th to make the changes (she gets more confused) and that my billing period is the actual month itself. In this case, we’re talking about July 2nd through August 1st. This is met with a, “Wuhhh…uhhh…” Super! I tell the woman on the phone that the live chat specialist told me she made extensive notes in my account and that she should take a look at them. The woman on the phone, again, says that this is all confusing.

Great.

She asks if she can put me on hold, to which I say yes. After six minutes on hold, she comes back on and tells me that no changes have been made to my account…newsflash! She also said that she was going to transfer me to an account manager (how do you get the phone number to talk to an account manager directly?). An account manager named Marissa gets on the phone and goes over all of the issues with my account. She immediately sees all of the issues and I’m telling you – within a matter of two minutes she had everything fixed. She put me on hold for a few minutes and when she came back on, she reviewed my bill with me and I left a happy customer.

Before the end of the call, Marissa told me what the new amount was for the bill. I asked her again, “If I pay this amount, there won’t be a notice that I haven’t paid the entire bill or anything, right?” And she said, “No, like I just told you – this is how much you have to pay.” So I reminded her that I was told one thing on June 15th and something completely different on June 27th. She understood, apologized again for the oversight, and commented that I only had to pay the amount that she quoted me. In fact, she gave me her name, service number, and told me her location in case I ever had another problem. I thought that was a nice touch.

Whoever Marissa is in the Comcast organization, she should be given a raise. Every other step in this process was miserable except dealing with her. The most annoying part of the entire process (besides losing a few hours of my time and getting aggravated) was that I had to keep repeating myself and repeating the story.

Now let’s see if what Marissa says holds true when I go to pay my bill. I will be sure to let you all know the outcome!

I logged online to access their e-mail support (because there’s no way that I was going to sit on hold to call someone to ask about the channel). After having to enter every single bit of information that they could possibly ask me outside of my social security number, I submitted the following question to Comcast:

When are we going to get the FOX News Channel in High Definition? All of the satellite companies, FiOS, and Cablevision offer it in this area – when are we getting it on Comcast?

Short, sweet, and to the point – you know? Comcast generally gets back to their customers within 24 hours – this is the response that I received (name changed to protect the helpless):

Dear Joe,

Thank you for contacting Comcast.

I understand you would like further information regarding the addition
of Fox News HD to your Comcast channel lineup.

Our goal is to provide a wide choice of quality cable networks and local
broadcast channels reflecting the diverse programming interests of our
customers. In addition to requests from customers, the following
factors play a part in our decision making process:

· FCC regulations, such as requirements to carry all local broadcast
channels
· Requirement by local broadcasters to carry their affiliated cable
networks
· The number of access channels required by local government
· Customer satisfaction with networks carried in other systems
· Customer satisfaction with similar networks
· Importance of the network to our diverse community
· Level of interest across a percentage of our customer base
· Per-subscriber programming fees charged by the network versus the
value added to the line-up

What this all means is that we take all requests for new networks very
seriously, and that we carefully consider the overall impact of adding
each network. While we cannot honor every request, we do take each
request into consideration in planning future changes to the line-up.

Sincerely,

Bob
Comcast Customer Care Specialist

If you managed to suffer through reading that ridiculously “customer-friendly” response, you’ll notice that it says absolutely nothing. But not to fear – before I received this response (which was sent a few hours after I sent my initial inquiry), I found FOX News HD on channel 277.

Ahem, Comcast already offers the channel, but I still received a form mail response anyway! In other words, the robotic people who prepare these automated responses don’t even know the services that they offer! So I responded to Comcast – again, short and sweet:

Actually, I found the station on channel 277.

That’s all I needed.

I figured that with such a direct response, a human would reply back with something like, “Oh, great. We have to send out those automated responses, but I’m glad that you found what you were looking for. Enjoy!”

No.

Instead, I received this:

We have received your e mail and thank you for using Comcast’s online
email support. One of our Comcast customer support representatives will
get back to you, likely within just a few hours. In the meantime, you
may find our FAQs helpful to resolve your inquiry so we invite you to
visit http://help.comcast.net. Or, for more immediate attention to your
situation, try “Ask Comcast”, a real time chat service, available by
visiting http://www.comcast.net and clicking on the AskComcast link at
the top of the page. We look forward to working with you.

Sincerely, Your Comcast Support Team

Followed by this:

Dear [My Full Name],

Thank you for contacting us regarding your Comcast cable service.
I’m glad that you were able to find the channel that your were looking
for. If you need further assistance, please feel free to respond
directly to this email. We appreciate you taking the time to contact us.

Thank you for choosing Comcast.

Sincerely,

Jimmy R
Comcast Customer Care Specialist

First of all, I didn’t need the automated “we received your e-mail response,” but I appreciate the sentiment. Second, Jimmy R (name changed) shouldn’t be thanking me for choosing Comcast because I live in New Jersey – which means I can’t choose another cable company even if I wanted to! Sure, there’s Verizon FiOS and satellite, but home rule dominates this state.

And third, shouldn’t Jimmy R – a real human – have answered my first question to begin with? Wouldn’t that have saved Comcast from looking inept in terms of what they offer their customers?

Ah, cable companies. Gotta love ’em…at least if you live in New Jersey.

Palisades Car Insurance is starting their search for the nicest drives in New Jersey. We are asking New Jersey-ians to submit their nicest drives in text, photo, or video so that everyone can enjoy the best NJ has to offer. The best part is that everyone submitting a nice drive will be entered to win one of twenty-five $50 gas cards!

Submissions will last until June 22. At the end of June, Palisades will share its top 10 drives (as selected by an expert panel of Palisades Crashbusters ® – people who drive over 300,000 miles a year) on its website.

For submissions please visit Palisades.com/nicedrives and fill out the form.

Why the nicest drives? Well, Palisades is the nice New Jersey car insurance company. So nice, that its service is ranked as one of the highest in the state — better than Allstate, GEICO, State Farm, Progressive, and others. (Source: Palisades was ranked far superior to many national insurance brands – including Progressive, GEICO and State Farm – on how well its policies and practices supported quality and speed of repairs, as well as the overall customer experience according to a recent independent survey of NJ body shops conducted by USA/Direct, Inc.)

There you have it – looks like some of you could have the opportunity to win a free gas card. Not a bad deal for entering some information on a website.

I’m not sure about the rest of you, but there are two Circuit City stores that I used to frequent and another few stores that I’ve been in and out of from time to time. The main store that I went to was in West Long Branch and while I knew some of the people who worked there a few years ago, I have no issues with saying that the customer service at the local store was horrendous. I’m not necessarily saying that the people who worked at the store were rude, but the local store never had the cash register open. In order to pay for your items, you actually had to stand next to the register in a line waiting to go to customer service to pay! What sense does that make?!

And almost without fail you’d reach the front of the line and the person in front of you would have an issue with the item that they were buying or you’d be caught behind a person who was returning an item in an overly involved transaction. I don’t fault the customers in these situations, but you have to wonder about the quality of the store when these types of things pop up during each trip to the place…

And it would appear that many consumers did begin to question the quality of Circuit City and instead started to spend their ever-scarcer dollars at the bigger box stores like Target and Wal-Mart. But there is another reason why my local Circuit City quickly fell out of favor with consumers…

The prices!

Circuit City was notorious for charging 15% – 25% higher for DVDs and CDs than what you could buy them for at Wal-Mart or Target! And to show you how out of touch the Circuit City people are with both the market and what their consumers want, I went to big liquidation sale at the local store over the weekend and I saw that DVDs were marked down 20%. Are you kidding me? Even after the 20% discount you still wind up paying more than you would by just going to Wal-Mart in the first place!

It’s incredible, really.

And to add an insult to the bargain shoppers, the local store had no price cuts on video games, computer hardware and software, or car radios and speakers. Amazing.

So while I do feel extraordinarily bad for the 30,000 employees who will now need to find a new job, I can’t say that Circuit City closing down is a surprise. They didn’t care about basic customer service, charged way too much for their products, and didn’t stay competitive with the times. What else could you expect from such a company?