Rocket Science

So, I just finished uploading the photos I plan on using on my Holiday Cards to Shutterfly.

And it’s probably just life coming around and smacking me upside the head, but for the images I’ve uploaded, I’ve added metadata (title and description) four times now.

The first two times were my fault — in adding the metadata, I accidentally reduced their image quality. The first set, I uploaded here because I only intended to display them at a 1024 x 768 resolution.

But for Shutterfly, I wanted the higher quality images since I planned to print them out. So, I did the reasonable thing and recreated the metadata.

But…

Shutterfly doesn’t import the EXIF/IPTC standard metadata from images. What??? Why not?

Sheesh.

So I entered the title/description a third time.

The fourth time was for the photo books I’ve been creating that include all of the images I use on the cards in one place.

*sigh*

I’m kinda tired of entering metadata now.

In Facebook’s latest round of “improvements” they decided that having all of my friends spam me with the people they become friends with is somehow a good idea.

Give me a way of excluding those notifications from my wall, don’t require each and every person I’m friends with to have to individually exclude their own notifications. Fail, Facebook.

So I’ve been in communication with the local Office Depot reps for MIT.

Here’s a snippet of an email conversation:

Photo Credit: Brandon

Fail

I cannot apologize enough for this whole mess. I never found out the exact reason why the driver could not locate your ship to and there are no excuse that are [acceptable] for why he didn’t [call] or reach out for extra help. I want you to know that I think your [email] helped the situation, because it makes my transportation department reprimand our drivers a little more. So thank you for taking the time to respond. Because if our drivers are not performing to Office Depot standards, I think its important for our transportation department to be aware. And when this information comes straight from a customer, instead of an employee, I think the message comes off a little stronger.

–Name Withheld

Um, isn’t it a problem that, as an internal Office Depot staffer, the person I was working with said, “I never found out the exact reason why the driver could not locate your ship to [address]…”

I’m just saying.

Ok, fail Microsoft.

I’m trying to participate in a LiveMeeting — but Microsoft doesn’t think my modern web browsers on a Mac are worthy. Namely Safari 4.0 and Firefox 3.5 are not on the supported platforms.

The relevant list of LiveMeeting supported platforms are:
Firefox 2.0 Windows XP SP2 Sun® 1.5.11, 1.6.x
Safari 2.0™ MAC OS® X V10.4 Apple® Java™ 1.4.2
Safari 1.3™ MAC OS® X V10.3 Apple® Java™ 1.4.2

Huh? Welcome to 2005?

Ok, I’m pronouncing it official. Office Depot fails.

So, of course, I didn’t receive a phone call back on Friday after speaking with Kim at National Accounts who said she’d, “Get to the bottom of my problem.” Mind you, I did specifically ask her to call back whether or not she made any progress and she agreed to do so.

I called Office Depot this morning to learn that a credit had been issued to my account and that I’d have to re-order the item. I responded, “Why the hell would I do that since you don’t seem to be able to deliver the product to me?” About two minutes after getting of the phone, I got a call from probably a dispatcher at Office Depot who was surprised that my order was “canceled”, she was calling to arrange for a delivery. She was also surprised that a credit had been issued. She said that yes two delivery attempts had been made and that usually throws something akin to an exception.

Hrm. Well, I think three delivery attempts were made, and the customer service person at the national accounts phone number that I called should have been able to see that. You see, they’re using computers, computers are good at transmitting information. Office Depot staff are bad at interpreting information.

To be completely fair, Office Depot clearly has some problems integrating their website, regular customer service staff, national accounts staff and so on. And they clearly have communication issues. But probably the real culprit here is probably the third-party delivery service it sounds like are the Office Depot hired to delivery the product to me delivery drivers. The drivers appear to by lying to Office Depot (based on the notes that Office Depot has read/paraphrased over the phone). I’ve never received a phone call from a driver, and certainly no driver left a message. Hello. Not Rocket Science. Having problems? Contact the customer. Customer not there? Leave a message. Or call dispatch and have them follow up. Don’t lie. Sheesh.

So the operative question is, why would I order from Office Depot again, even if I get a discount? Good question. I’m sorely tempted to order a single pen and have them go through this rigamarole till they get it right.