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I am Green Lantern.
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Hot-headed. You have strong will power and a good imagination.  |
Worst. Service. Ever: Home Depot & HOMExperts
I’ve written about great customer service in the past, and what it can mean to companies that pay attention. But today, I’m going to write about the worst customer service I’ve ever received. I’m hoping the power of the blogosphere can help The Home Depot and Owens Corning HOMExperts to sit up, take notice, and maybe even finish my kitchen. Please, please help by blogging about this story and digging it.
It was the summer of 2005, the end of August to be exact. My wife was pregnant with our twins, we’d just moved into a new house, and we desperately needed to get our kitchen remodeled. We headed over to the Home Depot Expo Design Center, met with a designer, and went to town. Everything sounded great – depending on materials, it would take roughly 6 months, they had a great selection of appliances and materials, and best of all, they held all of our money in escrow until milestones were reached with the contractors.
You see, we’d heard all sorts of horror stories about kitchen remodels from our friends. The contractors would often take the money in advance, and then had no incentive to finish their jobs. (I know all contractors aren’t like this, and it paints the good ones in a bad light, but unfortunately, it happens far too often). Home Depot’s approach sounded much better – they’d keep all of our money in escrow, trickling it out to the contractors as they finished parts of the job. They assured me, being a large corporation, they would have lots of control and organization around the project, and the contractors would be incentivized to finish the job quickly and thoroughly, lest they lose Expo’s business in the future.
How wrong that all was! I’m sitting here, December 5th, 2006 – a full 15 months after we began this 6-month project – in an unfinished $130,000 kitchen. Yes, you read that right. $130,000, 9 months overdue, and I can’t even get anyone on the phone to help us out. About once a month, if I’m very lucky, some contractor from Owens Corning HOMExperts comes over for an hour or two and screws a few things together. They came yesterday, for example, and tried to finish a few projects. Of course, what they ended up accomplishing was zero, and actually managed to damage some stuff, so we’re less finished today than we were two days ago. Lucky me.
The kicker? I paid for most of the kitchen on a 12-month, no-interest Expo credit card. You know the ones – they drool in anticipation of you defaulting and this mountain of interest landing on your account in a blink of an eye. Never in a million years did I dream I’d have paid the entire thing off (no interest!) before the kitchen was actually finished. But that’s exactly what happened.
The whole project is like something out of a Hollywood comedy, full of tragic moments. My twins were born seriously pre-mature, but of course our house was unlivable for far longer than the projected timeframe. We scrambled to find a place to live until June 2006, raising pre-mature infants outside of our own home, before finally moving in after the worst of the construction was finished. People left the company, like our project manager, and Expo didn’t feel compelled to replace them. Parts of the kitchen started breaking weeks after they were installed, and had to be replaced. The list goes on and on … many of the lights still don’t work.
As the CEO of a company that strives to provide top-notch customer service, this has been incredible to watch. At no time during the process, other than the design and purchasing phase, have we felt taken care of, or even like our satisfaction was even a consideration. I wish I could say that the experience has been highly educational, like my visit to the Ritz-Carlton, but I have to imagine that any human being would realize that this is ludicrously bad customer service. The two companies involved, The Home Depot and their contractors, HOMExperts, must have some serious problems internally. Steer clear of both of them, whether you’re an investor or a consumer. If they can’t take care of me, how many other homes are they destroying?
Please, help me spread the word and make some noise at Home Depot HQ. I’ve opened a BBB case, but I think the blogosphere is far more powerful. Help me get my kitchen finished!
UPDATE: Looks like Joel Grover at NBC4 in LA has done a report on Home Depot. Guess I’m not the only one.
UPDATE: We made the digg homepage in less than two hours. Awesome! Then someone buried us as ‘lame’ and we disappeared forever. D’oh! Guess I’d better call the lawyers and see if they can help, because I think the blogosphere failed. 😦
Duke Nukem's fate in question? 'Come get some.'
In a former life, I was lucky enough to make video games (actually, SmugMug is a happy accident based on what was a video game company – but that’s another story for another time). And the way I got into making video games was by hosting Duke Nukem 3D’s internet launch on my servers. It went so well, I did the same thing for Quake a few months later. The rest, as they say, is history.
Now, my old friends at 3DRealms are under fire. Duke Nukem Forever has taken an awfully long time to make (9 years at least), and Shacknews has a rather breathless article on the loss of some talent on the game. Now, Shacknews is my absolute favorite gaming site, and I love the addition of Chris Remo to the staff there – but come on people!
Every game developer I know loses people constantly – and on much shorter titles than Duke Nukem. We lost plenty of people making SiN, and that was a 2 year project, not 9. Losing people from time to time on a project this long is going to happen – people get bored, burnt out, want to do something new, etc. Big deal – it wasn’t the entire team that left.
I’m sure 3DRealms misses some of these people. Knowing some of the ones who left personally, they certainly lost some very talented people – but Duke’s fate isn’t in question. Even mentioning a phrase like that is ridiculous and silly. They’ll continue with the rest of the team (a game like Duke doesn’t get made with 7 people) and hire replacements as necessary. My understanding is that they didn’t all leave en-masse anyway.
Anyone can see that 3DRealms is doing fine financially (look at all the console Duke titles over the years, the Max Payne franchise, and now Prey) and they’re gonna take their time. Remember all the whining and moaning about Half-Life 2? How’d that turn out?
One of my biggest regrets (and I know I speak for lots of the other SiN team members here, too, some of whom are on the list of those who left 3DRealms) is that we didn’t have the money and time to make SiN truly great. We were forced by market pressures to ship the game before it was done – and as a result, we had an average title that had clear glimpses of greatness. Imagining what life would have been like if we could have polished it like Valve and 3DRealms get to do is a fantasy – but a beautiful one.
True game fans should stop whining about Duke and instead laud developers like id, Blizzard, Valve, and 3DRealms for taking the time to do their games right and ship them when they’re done. The wait can be worth it – just look at HL2 and WoW.
Best. Commercials. Ever.
Volkswagen recently released a series of commercials called “Un-Pimp Your Ride”. Check them out:
Part I:
Part II:
Part III:
I was afraid they might be internet-only, but I’ve heard from people that they’re showing on TV. Way to go Volkswagen – if more companies would make commecials like this (or the FedEx SuperBowl one, for that matter), maybe people wouldn’t always fast-forward on their TiVos.
SiN Episodes – your questions answered
UPDATE 5:20pm: Turns out Ritual has a survey up. Go let them know if you’d like Co-Op or any other form of multiplayer!
Got a bunch of questions via email, comments, and forum posts after my last blog entry about SiN Episodes, Emergence. Here’s your answers, right from the source:
- Middle of March is the estimated ship date. But I’m pushing them hard (and sounds like they’re pushing themselves hard) to not ship before it’s polished. So if it slips, don’t kill me.
- The original SiN will come, free of charge, with a purchase of SiN Episodes. You can play it immediately, no waiting period.
- SiN-on-Steam will work for multiplayer (including the awesome SiN-CTF!) via Steam and Steam’s browsers
- SiN-on-Steam *is not* the Source re-make of SiN. Ritual’s working on it, but it’s a low priority right now.
- The “shaky cam” video from a tradeshow (CES?) isn’t very indicative of the current game. In that video, it looked sorta like a HL2 mod. The game itself doesn’t look or feel that way at all. I guess I played with a newer version, but the art and design didn’t feel like HL2 at all. There were one or two placeholder textures, but most of it looked like new art and definitely a new feel.
- Wages of SiN – Ritual wants to include this in the SiN-on-Steam package, but don’t know if they can yet. They’re looking into who has the rights, and whether they can get them if they can’t. They’re hopeful.
- Multiplayer in SiN Episodes – it’s coming, but not in Episode 1. Hopefully in Episode 2.
- Co-Op in SiN Episodes – A couple of people at Ritual would like to do this, but they’re not sure if lots of their fans really want it. Let them know if you do!
- There will be a mod SDK for SiN Episodes shortly after release.
- There’s *lots* of interactivity. I thought I made that clear in my first post, but I got questions about it. Lots!
- Elexis’ “assets” have more animation “bones” in them than the rest of her model total. Think DOA4 level reality on the animation of those puppies.
- ADV has a new SiN anime in the works. The first one was a blockbuster, so this should come as no surprise.
I’ll update again if there are more questions. Keep em coming!
The newest smugmugs!
I’m now a dad not once, but twice over. I’m not sure it’s totally sunk in yet. In the space of less than an hour we went from being pregnant (and expecting to stay that way for at least a little longer) to being parents. Crazy!
My wife is doing a much better job at blogging this than I am, so go read hers for the regular, frequent, detailed updates. But I do have one story to tell that she can’t: The C-Section. If you’re squeamish (like I am), you may not want to continue reading…. or click any of the links below. 🙂
Those who know me well know that things like needles, blood, cutting flesh, and the like make me go woozy. I get faint enough to pass out most of the time. For the entire 7 months of the pregancy (our twins were born early at 31.5 weeks), everyone had been telling me not to watch the C-Section.
I watched.
And boy, was it cool! No sign of wooziness here, I can tell you. And yes, as a good smugmugger, I had a camera with me the whole time (Baldy’s Canon 20D for those of you keeping score at home). And I got some great shots!. Almost as soon as I got in there, I peeked over the curtain as a trial run to see if I could handle it.
What I saw on the other side didn’t really resemble my wife, or any human for that matter. The surgeons had covered her entire abdomen with a plastic sheet which adhered to her skin, and then began cutting through it. It was too surreal to be gross, and things only got more surreal as the operation progressed. It only lasted maybe 10 minutes, but it was crazy.
Perhaps the strangest thing for me was that they seemed to be treating my wife more like a slab of meat than a person. They were so anxious to get the babies out that they were exerting *lots* of force on her, pulling her every which way. I couldn’t believe she wasn’t feeling anything, but she wasn’t -she felt human on one side of the curtain, but looked like a side of beef on the other.
Then, after they’d cut through her skin, fat, and muscle, I saw something white poking out of the new hole in my wife. Thinking it was some organ, I almost turned back to my wife to chit-chat a little when I realized that wasn’t an organ – it was a tiny foot! Fascinated, I watched as the surgeons tried to grab said foot, only to fail. Leia, my little girl, was busily kicking them off of her as soon as they tried to grab it!
Finally they got a good grip and *yanked* her out. I don’t mean gently eased her out – they *hauled* her out and tossed her down on my wife’s stomach for a few seconds. (Yes, tossed. Again, like a side of beef). She looked more like a baby-shaped sausage than an actual baby – all white skin and wrinkles. Certainly not the pink baby I expected, and the doctors weren’t treating her much like one either. Leia lay there for a few seconds, obviously alive but helpless. She slumped down and patiently waited to see what came next – and I was in love. As soon as they snipped her umbilical cord, though, the nurses whisked her away and began to clean her up. Almost instantly her skin got all pink and she began to cry. Elizabeth and I beamed.
Looking back, there was now a surgeon with half his arm buried in my wife’s stomach. Basically up to the elbow, obviously trying to grab another slippery, squirmy, kicking baby. Finally they manged to get Logan cornered in there (poor guy had no-where to hide!) and hauled him out too. Again, sausage which looked remarkably similar in shape and size to a baby. Again, love. This time I had the presence of mind to get more than one photo, so we’ve got a little more photo evidence of his resemblence to a sausage.
The fascinating (non-squeamish!) surgery part over, I ambled over to the two infant beds they had set up for the cleaning procedure. They were nice enough to let me cut Logan’s umbilical cord (again, no wooziness!) which was probably the first instant I really started thinking dad-like thoughts. The surgery was so surreal it hadn’t even begun to hit me that I was now a daddy. Beaming, I rushed over and told my lovely wife that I’d cut his cord, and watched her kiss her babies as they left for their reservations at Hotel NICU.
Now, a week later, I’ve gotten to talk to them (even sing a little, and I can’t sing!), touch them, change them, hold them, and (my favorite so far) read to them!
Thanks especially go out to the wonderful surgeons who delivered our beautiful babies, the nursing staff and doctors who were with us throughout the entire ordeal (short version: 2 years of infertility followed by miracle pregnancy and then 7.5 weeks of pre-term labor, with 5 trips to the hospital and my poor wife stuck in bed the entire time), and our family and friends whom we love so much. We couldn’t have done it without any of you.
I’m a dad – and my life has changed forever.
Dig deep, give generously
So we experimented a little bit with matching charity gift-giving earlier this year with Hurricane Katrina. And our customers came through -in a big way! We ended up donating $14,000, matching the $14,000 donated by our customers. What a great feeling.
It’s my pleasure to announce that we’ll be doing something similar for one of my favorite charities, Child’s Play. It’s put on by the funniest web comic around, Penny Arcade, who also happen to be two of the most generous guys around. Child’s Play is done 100% fee-free, so these guys aren’t collecting anything in return for all their hard work. In all, almost a million dollars worth of toys have been donated, thanks to their efforts and everyone’s generosity. (In the small world department, their very first comic strip was about a video game I helped make).
As a passionate, life-long video game addict, I’m thrilled that the video game community comes together and helps sick kids all over the world. In past years, smugmug has hosted the photos for the charity. I’m hoping we will again this year. Last year, we offered to donate $10 cash for every smugmug subscriber who signed up with the code ‘childsplay’.
This year, we can do even better. We’ll match every cash and gift donation from a smugmug customer with the same amount of cash ourselves, up to $10,000. I’d be thrilled if we can meet that goal – and given our customers’ past histories, I’m sure we can. We’re hoping to go to Oakland (the local hospital to us) and take some great photos of the toys being delivered, too.
If you participate, drop us a note with the subject ‘Child’s Play Donation’ and the body of your message telling us what your smugmug URL is and what you donated. We’ll handle the rest. We’ll answer questions and post status updates on digital grin.
So dig deep and give generously. The kids need us.
Video via iTunes – almost a hit!
Apple announced some neat things this morning, but the thing that really got me excited was the opportunity to buy TV shows right from iTunes. $1.99 per episode? Sign me up! Bye bye TiVo, hello iTunes! Thank you Apple!
Oh, wait, this is the real world, and companies rarely deliver what consumers really want. Even Apple. The stupid shows are in 320×240! Not 480×720 (SDTV & DVD) or 1280×720 (HDTV 720p) or 1920×1080 (HDTV 1080i). In other words, nothing anyone actually watches. Yes, ok, so the Video iPod only has a 320×240 screen – but some of us would actually like to watch things we buy on our TVs, PCs, projectors, whatever.
So, let me get this straight. The new Macs come with a spiffy remote so you can watch movies and stuff on your Mac from your sofa. They also come with big, gorgeous high-res displays. But you can’t buy and watch the videos and TV shows from Apple on them, because they’d be postage stamp sized.
Does the hardware team not talk to the iTunes team or something? Get with the program, Apple. You’re almost there – everyone wants to be able to buy [TV shows | Movies | Music Videos] on a case-by-case basis right from their home. But they’d like to watch it on all the devices they own, including shiny new Video iPods.
OSCON 2005: OSCON vs LinuxWorld
So last year I opted to go to LinuxWorld, which was in my backyard, instead of OSCON. This year I was lucky enough to attend OSCON. Disclaimer: We were an OSCON sponsor, but I don’t think it impaired my judgement. 🙂
The two shows are very different, but the short summary is that OSCON was better. The long summary is as follows:
Sessions: The sessions, in general, at OSCON seemed to be more authoritative and deep on their given subject matter. With a few notable exceptions (Brian Aker’s MySQL session comes to mind), LinuxWorld’s sessions just weren’t geeky enough for my tastes. I felt like I knew considerably more about the subjects than the presenters did. Equivalent subjects at OSCON, however, left me feeling like I’d just watched a presentation by someone more knowledgeable, or at the very least, one of my peers.
Keynotes: Perhaps the most interesting difference between the two were the keynotes. At LinuxWorld, they had a lot of business heavyweights from various companies involved or just getting involved with linux. Generally, I’m not a fan of the ‘vendor keynote’ as they often end up being a lot of horn-tooting, and not much else. LinuxWorld did an admirable job, though, of having the vendor keynotes still be fairly useful and interesting. From patent indemnification to laptops shipping with Linux, some meat came out in addition to corporate posturing. At OSCON, there was a mix of geek keynotes and vendor keynotes. I massively prefer geek keynotes when I can get them, and OSCON didn’t disappoint – they were mostly great (especially on Friday!). But the vendor keynotes were definitely a low note. From SpikeSource to Computer Associates, they lacked meat and substance. I think I’ll call this one a tie.
Exhibits: I would say they were roughly on par. LinuxWorld was larger, but OSCON was more focused. Neither offered me much in the way of new products or information that I didn’t already have, so I didn’t spend much time in either hall other than searching for friends. OSCON did have goodies in the hall during breaks, so slight bonus points are awarded for that.
In-the-halls: For lack of a better term, we’ll just call it “in-the-halls”. This is really where a lot of the meat of a conference gets done, if you ask me. Meeting new people, seeing old friends, and generally geeking out. Between sessions, keynotes, and the like, discussions even more interesting than the talks occured on-the-spot. My list of valuable contacts grew, and we even managed to invent something neat with regards to feeds, I think. More on that in another post. OSCON dominated in this regard LinuxWorld was nearly useless, at least to me, in comparison.
Social: While you might argue that the after-show parties and dinners aren’t part of the show, or aren’t influenced by the show organizers, I think you’d be wrong. The caliber of speakers and show quality directly relates to how much fun and how useful the after parties are. (Parties? Useful? Definitely.) OSCON wins here, too, though maybe I’m just too sucky to go to the good stuff at LinuxWorld. 🙂 (And did OSCON have Casey West’s powerful green laser popping balloons and freaking cops out?)
Location: I’ve never been to Portland so I was excited to visit someplace new. Portland turned out to be a beautiful city with fantastic public transportation. While I ate at some nice places in Portland (especially Good Dog/Bad Dog and Queen of Sheba!), I think I have to give San Francisco the edge in food. Both have gorgeous Japanese Gardens (which seemed overrun by OSCON geeks, which was cool) and bridges. I think this one is a tie.
Verdict: OSCON by a large margin. Kudos to O’Reilly for putting on another great con.
OSCON 2005: Google & Open Source
As an interesting follow-up to my post about giving back to the open-source community, the same subject came up during Chris’ session about Google and their approach to open-source software.
As you may know, Google’s got a great track record with open-source, particularly with their current Summer of Code program. Normally, I’m glad we’re not huge like Google – I like being small. But I have to admit that they have a wonderful opportunity to help the open-source community in many ways, not just financially. Looks like they’re doing well with it, too.
Interesting to hear, though, that they have some of the same thoughts and qualms about so-called “bounty” programs for open-source that I have. I’ve worried that, should we make cash contributions to certain projects, it might backfire on us. It’s pretty easy to imagine some sort of fight or, at the very least, feelings being hurt among developers as they figure out how to use the contribution. I think their approach is a sound one with Summer of Code and all of their other open-source participation, but similar things would be very hard for a tiny operation like us.
Anyway, Chris’ session was both informative and warm-and-fuzzy: Google’s doing well contributing their own code, enhancing and using existing projects, and in general, supporting open-source.
SmugMug's Don MacAskill 