Monday, July 21, 2008

GE's Customer Care Doesn't

I'm about to arrange to take my third Monday afternoon in a row off from work so I can be here for GE’s service technician. He's repairing my microwave, which is less than 6 weeks old.

Here's what happened.

Week 1, I call the service center, describe the problem I'm having (power cuts off after a few seconds) and the rep says "it's probably an inverter board," and schedules a repair call.

Week 2, The technician arrives, diagnoses the problem and says it's an inverter board. He orders the part.

Week 3,.The part has arrived, the repair guy comes to install it, but it's the wrong part. He has to order the right part, I have to take a third day off from work to be available, and we have to go another week without a microwave.

Wouldn't the RIGHT thing for GE to have done is replace the microwave? Just ship us a new one, and have us ship the old one back? Or have the repair guy make the swap?

That would be showing GE cares about their customer's time, they’re concerned if they waste time because of their error, and keeping customers satisfied is its top priority. Instead, GE parrots back the warranty and disregards what this experience has meant to its customer and his perception of their company.

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

It's Time to Take Another Look at eBay

The Nortica 500 ranks eBay sellers according to feedback, so it's a pretty good measure of which sellers are successful.

I've been following top eBay sellers for about 5 years now for the books we've written. So on a lark, I checked the Nortica list from February 2006, which I reprinted in eBay PowerSeller Million Dollar Ideas. The surprising news? All of the top 10 sellers from then remain in the top 20 today. And all but one is ACTIVELY selling on eBay. Some have tens of thousands of listings.

So what happened to all the sellers who jumped ship to Amazon?

Well some did, but as it turns out many of eBay's most successful sellers, who've been on selling there for years, remain on eBay.

This isn't to say there are not a lot of disenchanted sellers out there. What with the changes in feedback rules, fees, searching, etc. But to dismiss eBay has a "has been Web 1.0 company that's irrelevant" would be wrong.

Let's all take another look at eBay!