In "Quote of the day - Ease of use"
I berated Steve Jobs and Apple about his quote "Everything syncs without us having to think about it" because calendars in Microsoft Outlook, Apple's iCal, and my iPod were not synching properly.
Well, the problem was far worse than a few duplicated events. I had dozens and dozens that were duplicated over 100 times and one possibly over 500 times. That's a lot of shift-clicks followed by a delete. I've spent over a week now cleaning up at least three months a day.
Why delete duplicates from nine years ago? Because each item takes up space. For every three months cleaned up, I would back up the calendar. For 2004 it could take well over five minutes to backup. When I cleaned up into 2010, it started backing up in a minute. When I cleaned up into 2011, it backed up in less than a minute.
I also spent lots and lots of time looking at Microsoft's support pages. Hoo, boy! There ain't much praise there! Message after message complains about this and similar problems. The only posted responses are from MVPs (whatever that stands for), volunteers who try to direct users to relevant support pages.
Microsoft put out an update last week that I downloaded and installed. However, despite people complaining about sync problems since April 6, there was no mention of them in the notes for the update.
I wonder how much Microsoft is even screening any of these comments. I posted two comments on June 13, and they are still marked "Your comment is awaiting moderation."
This whole situation has the earmarks of upper management declaring something should be done by such and such date, middle management trying to figure out how to assign the work to too few people, and the programmers trying valiantly to put round pegs in square holes.
Shades of Dilbert!
Shades of the bad old days of mainframes! We felt lucky to get out a new system that crashed a few minutes less frequently than the previous version.
Showing posts with label customer relations. Show all posts
Showing posts with label customer relations. Show all posts
Monday, June 20, 2011
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Look who's outsourcing!
It is tax time and time to figure out all the labyrinthian details that Congress has charged the IRS with implementing. I must say that the IRS had done a lot of work to make our work easier - PDF savable files for forms, online calculators to determine if you need a particular form, and many other features that often make it easier than wading through all the paper instructions. Oh yes, no more trips to the library to get forms that weren't included in your personal mailing.
I used one of those calculators yesterday. It's fields were to small to enter in the number of digits that I should enter. I found a contact link and filled out a web mail about the problem.
Within a few hours, maybe less, I had a response from IRS Help Desk asking what operating system and browser I was using. I sent all the requested information back this afternoon and within an hour or so I had a response that my info would be forwarded to the appropriate department for review.
Hey, that is speedy government service. Wait a minute! The email address is not irs.gov but speedymail.com. Hm! Who's speedymail.com?
It is AFFINA, a "one-stop-shop solution for customer relationship management." The story doesn't stop there. In 2006 AFFINA joined Hinduja Global Solutions Limited http://www.hindujagsl.com Hm! One guess in what country that company is located.
Some may complain that the U.S. Government should not be exporting jobs. But I can't say that it is. I don't know where the work of AFFINA is conducted. Besides, the idea of where jobs for a government are done often gets down to we can export our stuff but you can't export yours to us.
When I worked in Europe, for an American company, I was called in for software assistance to the French Army, the Swedish Police (Rikspolisen), the Swedish Auto Registry (Bilregistret), and a few other government agencies. They all had bought American-made Univac computers.
And even more crazy, many European customers thought the American programmers knew more than the local programmers. On some things this was true and on others just the opposite.
Back to speedymail.com, the writing of the messages was straightforward. None of the elaborate "It is my pleasure to serve you today" or turns of phrase that almost shout "Non-native speaker".
I used one of those calculators yesterday. It's fields were to small to enter in the number of digits that I should enter. I found a contact link and filled out a web mail about the problem.
Within a few hours, maybe less, I had a response from IRS Help Desk
Hey, that is speedy government service. Wait a minute! The email address is not irs.gov but speedymail.com. Hm! Who's speedymail.com?
It is AFFINA, a "one-stop-shop solution for customer relationship management." The story doesn't stop there. In 2006 AFFINA joined Hinduja Global Solutions Limited http://www.hindujagsl.com Hm! One guess in what country that company is located.
Some may complain that the U.S. Government should not be exporting jobs. But I can't say that it is. I don't know where the work of AFFINA is conducted. Besides, the idea of where jobs for a government are done often gets down to we can export our stuff but you can't export yours to us.
When I worked in Europe, for an American company, I was called in for software assistance to the French Army, the Swedish Police (Rikspolisen), the Swedish Auto Registry (Bilregistret), and a few other government agencies. They all had bought American-made Univac computers.
And even more crazy, many European customers thought the American programmers knew more than the local programmers. On some things this was true and on others just the opposite.
Back to speedymail.com, the writing of the messages was straightforward. None of the elaborate "It is my pleasure to serve you today" or turns of phrase that almost shout "Non-native speaker".
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)