Goodbye Geeks.com

A quick update on the Geeks.com saga, once again, I called Geeks.com this morning to see if their systems might be up after all this time. Of course they weren’t, but I was given a small ray of hope that the company would maybe, possibly, perhaps have the systems up and running around noon Pacific time and that I should — of course — call back then.

Any suggestions for sites similar to Geeks.com that are actually reliable? I don’t fancy doing business with them again anytime soon.

No command line, eh?

One of the things I hear most often as an objection to Linux can be boiled down to “fear of the command line.”

Even though modern Linux distros like Ubuntu only occasionally require a trip to the bash prompt, I hear this over and over again as a reason to use Windows or (more often, these days) Mac OS X.

Imagine my amusement this morning when I had to boot to an open firmware prompt on an iBook this morning, in order to eject a CD that wouldn’t eject using the normal methods. It wasn’t a big deal — 60 seconds of googling turned up the necessary key sequence (Command-Option while holding “o” and “f” — almost like using Emacs!) and then typing “eject cd” — not hard, not scary, worked like a charm. But, also, proof that using a Mac isn’t a guarantee you won’t need to type commands occasionally.

I’ll leave the snarky comments about Apple’s slot-loading optical media drives to another post…

Two strikes against Geeks.com

I’ve ordered from Geeks.com for years — usually with good results, but my last order from Geeks.com may be my last order from the company, period.

I ordered several items, including a cheapie Polaroid digital camera. I didn’t expect a lot from this item, it’s not a high-dollar camera — but I did expect that it would actually be in the box, which it wasn’t.

OK, no big deal — I’ve had to do a few returns/exchanges with Geeks.com and they’ve usually been OK to deal with. However, I called on Monday and was told “call back later, our systems are down.”

So, I called back later — and, guess what? Their systems were still down.

So I called back on Tuesday. Systems, still down.

Called back today, and (surprise!) systems, still down. This time, I pushed and was passed on to a customer service “manager” who told me that I needed to talk to inventory, and he transferred me — to another CSR who informed me (rudely) that (like I didn’t know this already) their systems were down and there was nothing that they can do, and also refused to transfer my call to a manager but said she’d take my number and ask them to call me back.

Not quite satisfied with that, I looked up the number for inventory and called that directly. The lady I spoke with was very helpful, but also told me that because the systems are down, there’s nothing they can do and they could just take my name and number and that’s it.

However, she also noted that they’ve been accepting orders that they can’t ship due to the system problems since Monday — and that the customers have already been charged for! There’s no notice whatsoever on the Geeks.com Web site, which means that people have been placing orders — including orders with expedited shipping — that aren’t being processed.

This totally erodes my faith in the company. I understand that companies can have system problems, but three freaking days?! That’s unacceptable. Allowing customers to place orders without any notice that they won’t be processed in a timely fashion is also unacceptable. (Geeks.com has been, as far as I can tell, pretty good in the past about notifying customers of delays in processing orders due to holidays or whatnot. I’ve seen several notices on the site over the years that warn customers that orders will be delayed due to holidays or whatever.)

I’ve spent more time than it’s worth chasing this order down already. I really don’t know that I will do business with Geeks.com again given the way that this has been handled, and the fact that I have a serious lack of faith in any ecommerce company that can’t get its order processing system restored in less than three days (and counting).

Thursday Update: Naturally, I didn’t get a call Wednesday afternoon or evening from anyone at Geeks.com. Called this afternoon (morning, their time) and (surprise!) the systems are still down. At this point, I have to wonder what the heck Geeks.com is using for its backend. Four days of downtime? That’s bleeping insane. At this point I can’t see ordering from the company again. Damn shame — I’ve bought a lot of stuff off of Geeks.com for reasonable prices, but I can’t see ordering from them again when I have no idea whether 1) I’ll actually get what I ordered, and 2) I’d be able to return an item without spending a week following up with the company in order to reach them when their systems are actually working.

I also consider it deceptive that the company has no notice on its Web site about the system outage, so people are happily placing orders through the Web site expecting that they’ll actually be processed in something like a reasonable time frame.

Wait, I just got here!

Look, up in the sky! It’s a bird, it’s a plane… well, yeah. It’s a plane. More specifically, it’s a plane leaving Sunday night with me on it, heading from Florida to San Francisco to go to LinuxWorld Expo.

Yes, yes, I just got home from OSCON, but I don’t schedule the shows. I just go to them and write about them.

So — if you’re going to be around LinuxWorld, drop me a note. Always enjoy meeting folks I’ve spoken to online and putting a face with an email address. :-)

Discussing books you haven’t read

For the bookish in the audience, I’d recommend reading “Books we have never read,” over on the Times Online site, a review of Pierre Bayard’s essay “How to discuss books that one hasn’t read.”

Too much to blog about right now, but this touches on a few themes of interest to me — namely, that the world is filled with literary works of value that many people will never, ever read. I’d love to have conversations about John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany, for instance — but not to quiz someone on the minutiae of the novel, but the grand themes of the novel. Sure, it’d be better to have read the novel (it’s a wonderful book) but couldn’t a person have an intelligent discussion having read (say) the Cliff Notes?

More on this topic later, I hope…