#parislasvegas sucks

Tags

hotels, Las Vegas, Paris Las Vegas, review, service, Strip, trip advisor, TripAdvisor

Someone told me that my posts are mostly negative… I don’t necessarily agree, but this one will definitely be negative.

Recently I had this misfortune to stay at Paris Las Vegas. Here is my feedback from it which I posted on TripAdvisor:

“Stayed there for business (convention) and unfortunately whole experience was beyond disappointing:
1. Two days I had no hot water at all. When I called them about it, I was told that the hotel has no water problem. Well, they did. See images – those letters came later.
2. Some rooms were renovated and noise woke me up already shortly after 6 am, although we were told that work will not start sooner than 10 am.
I of course – as hotel themselves asked – contacted manager on duty to complain. well, I tried to complain, as he was not available. Only thing he could do is call my room when I was not there.
when booking that hotel, no one of course mentioned anything about renovation work or lack of hot water. You are being presented with those nuisances when you are already there and cannot or don’t want to do something about it, where actually the best would be to move out. Second is their handling of complaints – kiss my behind attitude towards customers is not something I react very well to. I will definitely never stay at Paris again.
It is obvious that rooms need to be renovated from time to time. But doing it at the cost of paying guests and having arrogant attitude about it is not normal. I don’t really care if they want to make it better for future guests, I wanted to have normal stay myself.
To people from the hotel who will want to eventually reply to this: spare yourself your usual scripts. I am not interested.”

Reply I got from Paris management:

“Thank you for providing essential details about your stay at Paris. We regret the issue with construction noise and lack of hot water. Providing the quality accommodation our valued customers expect and deserve is our primary goal. We look forward to having another opportunity to show you how much we enjoy having you as our guest.”

I gave them one star… and just out of curiosity, I checked other recent one star reviews and replies. 4 days ago some other traveler complained about lack of hot water, 5 days ago it was bad service. Collin C (also 5 days ago) complained about bad service too. Reply he got? This one:

“Thank you for the comments regarding your recent stay at Paris. We regret to hear of your disappointment in our customer service. Providing the quality accommodation our valued customers expect and deserve is our primary goal. We look forward to having another opportunity to show you how much we enjoy having you as our guest.”

Other “management replies” are version of this or other script. Proof enough that they don’t really give a shit.

I will never stay at Paris again, but that hotel and bad service they provide is just a sign of what is going on in Vegas (Strip area) right now. I go there very often and change is for the worst. Exorbitant prices disconnected from any value, homeless people on the streets, dirt, plastic and false promises. It seems that this place runs an experiment – how much stupid visitors are willing to pay for poorly packaged shit until they will say enough. And you know what? Stupid visitors keep on paying. The only voting power we have over places like Paris Las Vegas and bad service they provide is to vote with our feet and wallet. Don’t go there, don’t eat there, don’t spend your money there. I know I will not.

Internet Of (Many) Things

Tags

errors, Internet of thins, sensors, service, software, wireless

Times where we will be surrounded by Internet Of Things are approaching very quickly. Major companies (such as Google for example) are already investing some time in new technologies, many companies are already making money with or through use of sensors communicating with each other and the host. All seems fine and we get to hear only success stories so far. But I am interested in what will happen if firmware (or software) controlling those sensors will have some bug? How will I prove to its owner that I didn’t – for example – use as much electricity as those sensors show? I am not even talking about deliberate action of the sort we hear about lately in terms of cheating when testing car emissions. I am more about accidental errors, which will happen – there is no doubt about that. Software today is so complicated that it is almost impossible to give 100% warranty that it is error free. When I look at the quality of today’s customer support (based on my experience with such companies as Garmin or Apple and others) I am worried that soon I will have to prove to some big company that their stuff is plainly wrong… I don’t want to imagine that fight. We all have to use some level of trust, after all, we do it now with old fashioned metering we have at our houses. But even if we will still use them and allow for wireless transfer of their readouts, how safe that network is going to be? Will it be possible to break into it and alter the readings, adding more to it or removing from it?

I am sure of one thing – we cannot stop the technology from moving forward and sooner or later, what now is still in its baby phase will be our every day reality. The question is, how ready we are to accept hiccups on the side of providers, how vigilant we are going to be in controlling them in order to make sure that they really do all they can to be accurate and safe. It all depends on us, consumers. If majority of users are now used to errors in software thanks to Windows and other applications which not function as they supposed to (my bank took more than a year to sort out their web services), this attitude will continue to grow. Maybe even allowing for various companies to exploit it in terms of lackluster approach to fixing bugs and issuing updates, not talking about giving you your money back. I also understand Steve Jobs better now in his fanatic drive to control his software – he wanted to make sure that Apple products work as error free as possible. He had some success in that. I just wish that more people responsible for stuff we use every day had similar attitude.

Update on the 24th of January: this is what I found while browsing:

http://www.collective-evolution.com/2016/01/20/ontario-pulls-plug-on-36000-rural-smart-meters-is-big-energy-imploding/

 

Garmin… Don’t Buy It.

Tags

forum, Garmin, service, vivosmart, wearable

I have recently (last year, about end of October) bought through Amazon a fitness band from Garmin called vivosmart. About 6 weeks later, it broke. From start it was charging all right but then the charge lasted less and less, and eventually it stopped charging at all. I needed to send this unit for repair – paying for it myself – and after couple of weeks of waiting I have received a replacement unit in return.

Before it stopped working unit was showing difficulties in syncing with its own application, I will not bother with listing the whole list of errors here, as you can check them yourself in Garmin forum here. Garmin issues some updates, but those don’t solve all the issues, sometimes creating new ones. Before update calendar was not syncing properly, after update to the newest firmware the sync problem still persists, but now of different kind. This is just one of the examples – some people went through as many as 4 units when they finally gave up.

Up to my problems with vivosmart I associated Garmin with quality, but now I associate it with a company which does not care about their own products, worse of all, they don’t care about their customers. I regret not checking that forum before I made purchase decision… but you are now warned. And what is pissing me off the most is the fact that Garmin – through the same forum – is informed. They know. And do very little about it.

Well, the market for all sorts of wearables is big. If you want to buy one, pick something else. Or at least read that forum and then make a decision.

 

British Airways Service… What Service??

Tags

British Airways, customer service, service

I have a business class ticket with British Airways for flight to the US tomorrow and my assistant tried to check me in, as we are travelling together with another person, we wanted to sit across aisle for long distance flight. She tried three times entering my passport number and because BA system had some other number saved it blocked further entries for the next 24 hours. That part I can (force myself to) understand – computer does not know if someone is trying to enter some passport number and blocks the system for security reasons, whatever those are (like checking someone in without him knowing about it??? After all, booking number and name must match). In any case OK, web page is blocked for 24 hours. Full of hope I called Vienna BA number and spoke to living person there and guess what? She could not do anything.

My question to BA is – what here in that process is something you could call customer support? In what way BA supported me, paying passenger? In none. Zero. Human could not override system decision. Person at BA office did check my identity – what for? To waste my time additionally? BA, your service sucks… because it is not there. I (passenger) save you time and money (because none of your workers has to do it) by checking in online and you even will not allow it or support me when needed??? This is bollocks.

Service, Creativity and Job Market

Tags

creativity, customer service, job market, Rifkin, service, service technician, The Zero Marginal Cost Society

Recently I have witnessed again how our service (especially after-sales service or repair services) don’t work. In one case installing cooling capabilities to already existing heating system was beyond technician’s knowledge or possibilities. In another, broken circuit board costing in Radio Shack in range of 10 dollars was not possible to replace in one of the house-hold appliances, customer was advised to buy new device.

This happens now everywhere. Harvard Business Review had a cartoon depicting technical support technician giving the following advice to some customer calling him: “If it is broken, buy new one”. This is not a joke. It is reality.

I have already written about Apple practices of simply replacing its broken devices either free of charge when those are under warranty or for a fee if those are not. Old, broken devices are then what? Thrown away? Recycled? (whatever that means).

Why is that? I think that great part of explanation of this “throw away” phenomenon (or charging for parts and repair sums close to the value of a new appliance) is in the book I have read recently: “The Zero Marginal Cost Society” by J. Rifkin. In it Mr. Rifkin stipulates that cost of manufacturing nears zero. More and more of stuff we use is made by companies which have managed to (one of the principles of capitalism) drive their costs down as much as possible through cheaper labour, better processes, use of robotics, etc. Capitalism in itself (a paradox) drives costs of goods down. Workers – representing still the biggest chunk of the cost – are being laid off and replaced with automation wherever possible or cheaper workers. The truth is that those savings on the side of manufacture of goods is not being passed on to customers, especially in case of products with fashion or social status attached to them. The prices are left the same or are relatively higher. On the other end in developed countries technicians and other skilled workers are more and more expensive due to social and worker laws. It does not take a genius to see that it makes much more sense to force people to buy more instead of employing someone with enough knowledge to actually repair that thing.

Where in all this comes creativity? On one side creative service technician should be able to suggest ways to repair a device, even using parts offered by other vendors. That cannot be done by someone employed by single specific vendor, obviously. Those vendors limit such creativeness with their procedures – technicians have clear rules what can be done and what not. Mostly ensuing discussions end with “buy a new one”. Or other one. From us, of course. On the other hand, creativity may cause others to make products replacing those with obvious problems. Or someone may figure out how to make spare parts cheaper – that happens slowly already in 3D printing or in household or car industries. Much too slowly, if you ask me.

I think that you already figured out how all this influences job market. Since machines (or automation) replace people, goods are cheap to make, and no one wants to repair them, who needs people? Not everyone can be super-creative, intelligent, expensively educated… Group of people without hopes for any job grows and it will grow even more.

Do I have a solution? No. In competitive – not collaborative – society there is no such solution. You care only for yourself and your family. If you are lucky enough to have a job and belong to group of people with jobs which are still too expensive (or not possible) to be replaced by machines, then you are OK for a time. But if not, you have almost no chance of getting out. Unless you get together and create. Rifkin states in his book that many observe rise of collaborative commons – people pull together and work together to sustain their own group, but that requires cultural change from competition to collaboration on our side, from our own initiative. Interesting where this all will take us… Why? Think – if cost of goods (at least making them) will near zero and people are the biggest cost factor, then people will go. Who will then buy those goods and for what?