Monday 9 July 2012

good customer service does exist: it's named Amazon.it

Yesterday my brand new Kindle Touch Wifi froze! The screen was stuck on a page and it did not respond to any screen touch or button press any more. In the Amazon Kindle Touch FAQ I was instructed to press the ON/OFF switch for 20 seconds where after the screen would flash and the Kindle would reboot. Unfortunately not mine! In which case I was invited to contact the Amazon Support desk. Since it was Sunday and I was in NL about to leave for the airport to return home I send an email to Amazon's Italian support desk, hoping to get an answer on Monday morning.

When I arrived at the airport I noticed someone tried to call me 4 times but since it was from a private number I didn't know whom to call.



After check-in and security control we sat down, enjoying a cup of coffee and the FREE Wifi on CGN (Cologne-Bonn) Airport. *blieb* you've got mail. A mail from Amazon, first apologizing for the inconvenience with the Kindle Touch and noticing that she (Giovanna from Amazon Support) tried to contact me via phone a couple of times and if I could please verify the number since she did not reach me... the four missed calls obviously. I responded by mail that I was travelling at the moment and she could reach me after I landed or the next day (today). I don't know why but I missed another (private) call around 21:00 yesterday evening, I probably need a louder ringtone.

So nevertheless being Sunday and Sunday evening even. Amazon's customer service employees tried to contact me to solve my issue. That is great, it even makes me forget the problems I had with their device!

Had? Yes, I HAD problems, because this morning I tried the reset once more, without any luck, the screen was still the same, but when I looked after half an hour again, the Kindle was functioning normal again... the battery ran empty though (from 90% to 10% in less then a day judging by the battery indicator). So I send and email to Amazon saying the Kindle was back alive and thanked them for their efforts, even got a friendly email back again.

This was my second experience with Amazon.it's support (also the other one was very positive despite the problem) and I must admit that although you might sell the best or cheapest products online, there's always something that can go wrong. How you counter and handle these issues makes the difference!

Monday 2 July 2012

the Jelly Bean experience

I have used Jelly Bean (Android OS 4.1) on my Galaxy Nexus for a couple of days now and I can only say it offers a great experience! 
  • Google managed to get the interface more fluid and have it respond faster (Project Butter is a succes)
  • The new notifications (with previews) are beautiful and much more useful then the old ones
  • The improvements on how App-icons and Widgets are placed was not more then necessary, even Apple managed to do that smoother ;-) (only with App-icons of course, iOS still lacks Widgets)
  • Google Voice Search works great and I think I even might start using voice commands for the first time. I still have to see if it works via my bluetooth carkit. I just ran outside and tested it via my Parrot carkit and that works too. I've seen some comparisons on YouTube on how much faster and better Google Voice is compared to Apple's Siri (in the case of the 1600 questions you really see how bad or useless Siri really is).
  • I haven't had a change yet to really experience Google Now yet, but like Google explains it has to learn to know the user to predict what he/she might need (travelling directions, etc). But I really like how it already relevant information like your current or next appointment, last searches, etc.
side note:
I've never been a fanboy of either Apple nor Android, in fact I still use my iPad2 a lot and prefer certain Apps on iOS over those on Android (TweetBot for example), too n00bs I still recommend the iPhone in stead of an Android. But with the way Apple tries to force us to use all of their products versus the liberty that Google offers me (f.e. iCloud vs Google Apps) I'm becoming more and more anti-Apple!