Hard times have fallen upon many in the computer industry. As a result, companies are having to be a lot more aggressive and informed in selling their product. . .or are they?
I’m afraid that my experience has been less than impressive in trying to deal with many computer hardware and software companies. If it wasn’t for the fact that I normally have no trouble being wunderstood or otherwise interfacing with the rest of the world, I would think that I had a problem. Let me give some examples of recent episodes.
I am helping a friend put together a computer system which is’ to include a dot Matrix printer with “near letter quality” output for casual word processing uses. I visited the leading computer dealer in town and asked about the new Epson FX 85. First, the salesman told me that model was no longer being made (it was introduced in July!). After correcting him, he then went to ask the sales manager if one was available in stock or on display. No one knew! A search was imade of the stock room to no avail. They had no literature available either, so the salesman actually had to call Epson to confirm the machine’s existence and features. I finally left the store as the salesman had abandoned me to help another salesman again search their stockroom for Macintosh diskettes (they were out of them also!) He never asked if I wanted one, could I come back, what my name was, or anything. Would you buy a printer from this man? With but one exception, this has been my uniform experience with this particular company.
A few months ago I entered the local Computerland to ask about a very popular word processor program which they stocked. No one knew how to use it, could not find their “demo” disk, and could not even get past the opening screen of the main program. However, they could not understand why I was not falling all over myself trying to give them $150 for the program!
I have a rather popular brand of dot matrix printer which offers an 8K print buffer as an option and the ability to define and print out your own character sets — if you can figure out the manual translated straight from the Japanese language. Several calls to the customer service and technical service numbers yielded these results: “Do it like on Epson.” “Move the little switches on the back, but I don’t know what the settings are supposed to be.” “We’ll call you back” (they never did). As a result I still am using only part of the capabilities of my printer, and have no one to turn to.
Now let’s talk about doing it right! My experience with the current group of dealers and suppliers of Timex/Sinclair products in the U.S. has been almost all positive. The English Micro Connection and Zebra have always been willing to talk at length about their products and be helpful in any way. Others who have also been nice to deal with are Damco, Curry, TS Horizons and Time Designs. And it doesn’t stop with these. Overall, I believe the level of Support and interest in us, the customers, is higher for Timex/Sinclair owners than for IBM and Apple owners. This makes me want to keep supporting these computers and not switch to IBM or Apple as my primary system (though I have both). When computer dealers and companies will give enough attention to training and screening and supervising their personnel that I am not treated like an idiot (just an uninformed consumer) or know more than the person trying to sell me the product, then they will gain my respect. Until then I salute our Timex and Sinclair suppliers!