It's YOUR fault!

[Talonetc]

I'm really racking up some posts today. I haven't posted in months and months, so I thought I'd share now that I had some free time.

There is a classic breed of people that pass blame for anything bad that happens to them. Customers of mine are no exception. Take this one from several weeks ago that I almost forgot to post.

Background: Customer comes storming through the door doing the super-fast walk that I've never really been able to replicate. He comes in and decides to get huffy from the word "GO".

CS = "Passing the buck" Customer
Me = Me

Me: What can I do for you today?
CS: Your piece of [] phone died when I was on an important business call. I'm loosing so much business because of the battery life on this thing.
Me: I'm going to ask you once to watch your language or I can't help you. So about your battery, what kind of performance do you get?
CS: Well I use this phone a lot so I really need it to last. It only lasts until about 6PM at night then its completely dead!
Me: And you use it all day?
CS: Yes, I just said that.
Me: For phone, e-mail, messaging, web... stuff like that?
CS: Yes, all that. It's a business phone.
Me: Frankly it sounds like you're getting the performance you can expect. If you're a heavy user it's not out of the ordinary to drain a battery over a full day's use.
CS: Look I can't have it die in the middle of important business calls. That's a failure to do what I need it to do.
Me: I'd recommend an extra charger for your office and a car charger for your vehicle.
CS: You want me [ing] to spend money on your piece of [] accessories? I spend $100 a month with you. [Carrier] should be giving me money back for making me loose all that [] business.
Me: I told you to watch your language and you seem to have ignored me. I don't think there's anything I can do for you, have a nice day.
CS: [] you, what is [carrier] going to do for me for loosing all that business?
Me: If your car ran out of gas on the way to a meeting, would that be Chevy's fault?
CS: [] this. [Storms out]
Me:

[LingualMonkey]

Me: If your car ran out of gas on the way to a meeting, would that be Chevy's fault?

Thank you! Good night! CS audiences are the greatest audiences in the world!

[Amina516]

Me: If your car ran out of gas on the way to a meeting, would that be Chevy's fault?

BRAVO!!

and last but not least

I couldnt have said it better myself.

[underemployeed]

Me: If your car ran out of gas on the way to a meeting, would that be Chevy's fault?

SC: Actually yes it is! Do you have their number you useless excuse of a human? Oh, wait my phone doesn't work and you REFUSE to fix it.

--------------------
Remember the customer is always right, it reminds of the time at walmart I didn't know where something was when asked and told the guy calm down kiss my ass. He was gonna get a manager, really would have liked him too.... i don't even work there I was just in a blue shirt.

[mikoyan29]

Geeze. What an ass.

Seriously, what would be wrong with a person getting an extra charger or something? I mean if he uses his phone that much, there aren't too many batteries that will get you a day's use.

[Talonetc]

People refuse to take responsibility for their own problems. Plain and simple.

[RecoveringKinkoid]

Geeze, the first time my phone battery failed me in a bad way, I'd go out and buy a couple extra batteries.

In fact, that is exactly what I did. End of problem.

[Krivak]

Geeze, the first time my phone battery failed me in a bad way, I'd go out and buy a couple extra batteries.

In fact, that is exactly what I did. End of problem.

My battery died real quick the other day, so instead of charging it for 4 hours, i left it on the charger overnight. Its still showing as fully charged in the battery indicator

Arent the batteries expensive though?

[Shalom]

Me: If your car ran out of gas on the way to a meeting, would that be Chevy's fault?
CS: this. [Storms out]

Perfect analogy. You think on your feet. That's an admirable trait; I wish I could do it more consistently.

I'd probably have said something like, "That's about the right amount of charge to get out of that battery, according to the specifications, but for $PRICE I can sell you a second battery, so you can keep one charged for a spare ... No, I will not give it to you for free!"

My wife's ancient Nokia 6015i finally died, so I went on ebuy and got a phone that was actually made in this millennium (2366i, nice basic phone that does what she needs with no extraneous bells & whistles). The vendor sent it with a home charger and two batteries. I thought, hey that's great, double the talk time. Problem is, there's no other way to charge the battery except in the phone (cos the didn't send me a desktop charger). Which means that yeah, you have a spare for when the battery dies on you, but then later you still have to plug in the phone for twice as long to charge the two batteries. If I could charge one while using the other, now that would be useful.

[underemployeed]

Shalom,
If you want horrible planning I would have to contact this girl I knew 5 years ago in college to ask if she remembers what phone she had. The genius who designed her phone made it unable to charge if you were talking on it.

[Shalom]

You know that actually sounds familiar; I think I came across that once in an older cellphone. I think the deal was that the phone in transmit mode drew more power than the wall wart was capable of supplying, so the battery wouldn't charge while you were "off hook", it would just run down more slowly. This probably was back in the AMPS (analog) days, where 3 watts of power output and 15 minutes of battery life weren't uncommon...

[RecoveringKinkoid]

Arent the batteries expensive though?

Well, they are a bit expensive, but you can get them cheaper if you buy them online. We're probably gonna jettison our land line, so we really need at least one backup battery for each phone.

Plus, I travel a lot and sometimes am places I can't charge my phone. I really do not like the idea of my family being unable to reach me in an emergency, so that was the original reason I got an extra battery.

Also, if you get in the habit of relying on your car charger, you will really shorten the life of your battery. So it's better to pick up an extra battery and then really take good care of both batteries so they last a long time.

And while I'm on the subject, batteries burn up a lot of juice if they are in an area with poor service. If I left my phone on at home, it would deplete in a heartbeat. So we got this new device that is out now that basically gives you your own cell phone tower. We got this because like I said, we wanted to get rid of our land line and the cell service in our area was extremely sketchy. I don't remember how much this thing cost, but I don't think it was too outrageous, especially considering it will save us close to eight hundred bucks a year. And now that we have it, my battery lasts forever. You spend a little money to save a lot of money down the road.

Here, I found it online: Verizon Network Extender

QUESTION: I never really thought about this (and I suppose I should have), but can you (or should you) use the phone while it's plugged into the wall charger? That would certainly solve a lot of problems, too.

[Shalom]

OK, now that's a really interesting device. The only drawback that I can see is that you still need an internet connection for the machine to use to communicate with VZW, so you still need to have your house wired... and this being the case, couldn't you get land line phone service from whoever your internet provider is? Or just do VOIP or something?

(One of the commenters on that article points out that it really is a mini cell tower, and that any cell phone within its range will work on it, not just yours. I don't see that this makes any practical difference, so long as you don't have to pay for their service, and that it has enough channels that you will get a connection even if your whole apartment building is yapping away on it at the same time; it may not have as many as a full-size tower would.)

Hmmm. Now I have to wonder. Are there any geographic limitations as to where you can use it? What happens if I take that thing and go out in the wilds of Ulster County, NY, which is nominally VZW territory but in practice is a huge hole in their coverage, and plug it into an ethernet port somewhere? What about if I take it to somewhere that VZW doesn't even advertise coverage? Say Chicago, or Hawaii? Or Israel? (In which country, so far as I know, all CDMA phones are useless.) I can just see them putting restrictions on either the machine, or whatever router it talks to, that won't let it work if it detects that it's plugged into an IP range that is outside of their service area; it's the sort of thing they would do.

As to your question, I don't see why using the phone while on the house charger should pose a problem, but just to make sure I'd unplug it once it was charged, not leave it plugged in 24/7. You might post this question on http://www.howardforums.com/ in the section for your phone's manufacturer, or it might even be a FAQ there.

(ETA: Landline Replacement/VOIP Forum is a forum on that board for people who dumped their landlines like you did/will do; you might find it of interest.)

(Older phones with NiCd batteries had a "memory effect", wherein if you only let the battery discharge halfway before recharging it, eventually "halfway" was all you got out of that battery before it would run out, so leaving it constantly charging was a bad idea. Newer phones are smart enough to shut down the charging when it's not needed, even if it's plugged in (when my Nok is charged, if you plug it back in you get a stop sign and the words "Battery Full"), plus they also don't use NiCd technology anymore. I don't think NiMH or Li Ion batteries have the memory effect either.)

[RecoveringKinkoid]

Yeah, actually, I think it does need an internet connection to work, but that is not a problem for us. We do have the land line through the internet service provider...in fact, it's a Time Warner Cable digital phone, which we like. However, they raised their rates to something like sixty bucks a month for the phone. That's crapola.

I don't know how the thing would work out in the middle of nowhere. I guess it would not work if there was no internet out there. Not sure I understand entirely what the details on it are. Alls I know is that the husband set it up, and now we have good cell coverage at home when before, we didn.t.

As for the whole neighborhood using it, that is not a problem. It only recognizes the two phones owned by the husband and myself. So other phones don't tap into it at all, unless we set them up to use it.

I'll show your post to the husband when he gets home. He would know.

[Andara Bledin]

I'm keeping my land-line until cell/internet 911 service is more reliable.

^-.-^