Zappos: Great service

If you haven't heard of Zappos.com, they're one of the largest online shoe sellers around. Probably their largest claim to fame is that they have free overnight shipping and free returns - effectively eliminating one of the big concerns with buying shoes online: What if they don't fit?

Anyhow, I recently ordered a pair of shoes and they were a bit too big, so I'll be returning them (free of charge). I wanted to then order a smaller size, but they were out of stock. However, their Web site did not indicate when they'd be in stock. I chatted live online with a customer rep to see if I could find out. She told me that it wasn't looking likely, which was good information to know.

The main reason I'm posting though is that at the end of the chat, she suggested I take a look at some other (competitor) Web sites. I think that is very commendable when a company is confident enough in their offering to suggest competitor Web sites, to ultimately keep their customers happy (in this case, to get them the shoes they need as soon as possible).

A step in the right direction for electric cars/plug-in hybrids

A plug-in hybrid is a car which runs on 100% electric power for a period of time (i.e., a certain number of miles), then switches to a hybrid electric/gas model similar to the current production Toyota Prius.



Volvo has unveiled a plug-in hybrid at the Frankfurt auto show. Details and more photos here

On a related note, if you haven't seen the documentary, Who Killed the Electric Car, I recommend it. It's quite disturbing...

Why Net Neutrality is Important...

(Click for larger view)

One Word for IBM's Tech Support: Wow!

About nine months ago, I purchased a new laptop to use while I was away from home. I ended up looking mainly at laptop options from Toshiba, Dell, and IBM/Lenovo. I am an IBM shareholder, so I was able to get a shareholder discount from IBM/Lenovo. Since they are typically a bit more expensive, that definitely helped my decision. Dell was still price-competitive but I ended up going with the IBM Thinkpad Z61t for a few reasons:

1. I have owned an older Thinkpad 600E for a few years, which I bought used, and it is a rock solid machine. It's old and pretty slow by today's standards, but still works great. The only things I've had to do are replace the CMOS as well as the main battery -- both things that are common replacements on a laptop of it's age
2. The new Thinkpad I purchased has all of the fun bells and whistles I thought I might need in the immediate future: bluetooth, fingerprint reader, integrated memory card reader, firewire - and of course wifi and other things that are standard on nearly all laptops. The Dell models had most of these things as options, but it was tough to find one that had them all in a single laptop like the Z61t
3. The Thinkpad lines have a "toughness" about them -- things like shock mounted hard drives with auto-parking (so if you were to drop your laptop, your hard drive would be protected from data loss). If I shake my laptop in my hands a bit, the sensor picks up on it.
   

Anyhow, let me get to the purpose of my post -- IBM's tech support. I have been having a problem with 2 intermittent pixels being out on my screen -- they're not always out, just sometimes (hence the intermittent). The problem is not major, just very slightly annoying at times when I happen to be looking at something dark on the screen.

I went online to IBM's site to submit a support ticket. The form they have was pretty techy -- not very user friendly. It asked some pretty technical questions and some of the fields (like the address line) only allowed a limited number of characters (my address line is not that long, yet I couldn't even get my whole street name in there). The form was just sort of annoying and lame in general.

Now here's where the "Wow!" part comes in. Literally within about 3 minutes, I got a call on my cell phone from IBM. They got some additional info about my problem and then asked if I wanted to talk to tech support or wait until later.

Perhaps you're thinking, "I guess that's cool, they called really quick." -- but the kicker is that I filled out and submitted that online form at about 11:50pm on a Friday night... good job IBM. I have no desire to purchase a laptop other that IBM for the forseeable future.

PS -- unlike some other laptop manufacturers, when you get a extended warranty, EVERYTHING (except the battery) is warrantied for 3 years. Sometimes, you have to be careful because the screen is exempt or is only warrantied for a shorter period of time. I ended up not getting it fixed because the problem is not too bad -- and if it gets worse, I can still get it fixed within the next 2 years or so...