Re: Color solid ink printer eating up ink!

In the message "Re: [MAGNet] Color solid ink printer eating up ink!",
dated 2006-04-21, Mike Hunter wrote:

>On Apr 21 at 11:07, "Richard DeShong" wrote:
>
>> > Carolyn Sell wrote...
>> > ...I will never buy another Xerox product for my department.
>>
>> Your experience with this one product sounds frustrating. But throwing out
>> the above statement on a listserve feels to me the equivelant of saying "I
>> will never buy a GM car again". My reaction is... so many products,
> > dealerships, service centers.
>
>... Are you saying she shouldn't hold that against
>Xerox in future purchasing decisions? Dealing with any vendor for any
>product will cause some amount of slime to rub off on you, but IMO it's
>the right thing to do to remember (for some finite period of time) when a
>vendor back-stabs you, spread the word to your colleagues, and abstain
>from doing business with them.

   As Richard DeShong suggested in his response, we humans seem
intrinsically prone to over-generalization from bitter experiences -
perhaps a survival-oriented trait? - and that propensity can
sometimes lead us astray:

   'Mark Twain' once wrote <http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Twain>:

>We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom
>that is in it-and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down
>on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid
>again-and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold
>one any more.

   If I'm bitterly unhappy with an expensive failure and/or bad
service experience with an iPod, for example, is it reasonable that I
should work to ensure that no one in our department *ever* buys
another Apple product - desktop computer, laptop, server, software,
or whatever? (Substitute "Xerox," "Dell" or another vendor's name
here and the example is still equally valid.)

> Without any such feedback, vendor underhandedness would be even
>worse than it is currently.

   That type of indirect feedback can be a useful last resort, and in
some circumstances does have an impact on vendor behavior.

   However, direct feedback to the vendor, such as the type that
Marilyn Saarni suggested - and escalating that feedback well beyond
that point, if that becomes necessary - is often a far more
constructive first course, and can often have far more impact on a
company's behavior than the indirect "I won't buy their products ever
again and will tell others about my unhappy experience" route. If a
company's products are generally becoming more popular in the
marketplace, for example, indirect protest on the part of a modest
number of unhappy customers may simply be invisible to the company.

My two cents ...

Aron Roberts
Workstation Software Support Group

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Received on Fri Apr 21 12:12:27 2006