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My Day of Poor Customer Experiences
I just came back from a short trip to Washington on business, and it was awful. I kept running into poor customer experiences. A few specific culprits:
Amtrak is obviously having serious problems today. I travel Amtrak pretty regularly... in fact, last week I got a call asking me to participate in a focus group for them. So, imagine my surprise when booking my ticket yesterday I learn my Student Advantage discount now requires a three day prior purchase. They made no effort to communicate this to me. The only e-mail I get from Amtrak is trying to convince me to sign up for a credit card.
Today, Amtrak scored low points too. Fridays are peak travel times, especially on the Northeast Corridor. Apparently their fancy Acela service trains have cracks in the brakes and has been shut down "indefinitely," so everyone in the world tried to jam on an unreserved train.
For the record, I don't find Acela Express to be worth the almost double the cost. I've tried it a few times, and the trains have always left late and mysteriously crawled at some points. When you see cars getting there faster than the train, it's disappointing.
It was as crowded as a New York Subway -- I've never seen anything like it.
RadioShack was also disappointing. Minutes before I had to leave yesterday, I discovered my Dell Power Adapter had somehow frayed, rendering it useless. I had to use my laptop to make a presentation this morning.
My first thought when I arrived last night was to head to RadioShack -- surely they must have some kind of replacement power adapter. Well, they did, but it was out of stock at that store and every other store in the region. Yet OfficeDepot, right next door, had plenty in stock.
I ended up purchasing a Targus adapter. While it does power my laptop, my battery refuses to charge. Hopefully I can convince the $70 adapter to charge my laptop's poor battery. Otherwise, my laptop has turned into a paperweight.
How frustrating!
Posted in on April 15, 2005, 07:08 PM | Permalink
