Kyle Eslick

Ghetto Reporter Video

Kyle Eslick — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 00:54:51 +0000

There are a ton of great YouTube videos out there, but after a few years of browsing YouTube I’ve found a few favorites. One of these is the ghetto reporter video. Enjoy!

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Amazon Gets It

Kyle Eslick — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 20:32:54 +0000

Just wanted to write a quick post and give props to Amazon. I’ve been a long time customer of theirs (probably since the late 1990’s) and order at least two packages a month. I am also a very active Amazon Associates affiliate. Over the past decade I’ve always been pleased with their products and haven’t really had any problems along the way.

Anyway, I digress. About 3 weeks ago I ordered a new video game for the boys (ah, who am I kidding. It is for me as well!). As usual everything went flawlessly and I didn’t think anything of it. Today I received an email from Amazon letting me know that the price of the video game I bought went down since I last bought it, so they were crediting me with the difference ($2.50 back on a $45.00 purchase). At first it took me by surprise, but the more I thought about it, it really doesn’t surprise me. After all, Amazon just gets it and they always have. That is why they are so successful.

Make shopping easy, allow for your users to review products, and now they refund you if the price changes (I assume this is a limited window after you buy the product – maybe just price changes within a month of purchase?). Now those people that are worried about a price drop no longer have to worry and can go purchase the product they want without waiting.

Great job Amazon! For your reference, here is the letter I received:

Greetings from Amazon.com.

During a recent review of your order, we noticed that we now offer a
lower price on “XXXXXXXXXX” than at the time you
placed your order.

We value your business and have requested a refund of XXXXX to your
credit card. This amount reflects the difference between the price
you were charged and the current, lower price. The refund should be
processed in the next few days and should appear as a credit on your
next billing statement.

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Hate Digging Through Help Manuals? Google it!

Kyle Eslick — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 23:53:23 +0000

This post is just a quick story I wanted to share. Earlier this week while getting ready to travel to my bi-weekly Poker game I noticed a warning light on in my almost brand new car. If you own a newer vehicle you may be familiar with the “Your Gas Cap Is Off” warning light. Well, for some reason that is the warning light I was getting despite having a gas cap that is attached making it almost impossible to be missing. I pulled over to check my gas cap, but everything was fine. Just to be sure, I undid it and tightened it again until I heard the click that signifies it being sealed. Once done, I decided to hit the road.

Much to my surprise, the warning light stayed on, leading me to dread my arrival, which would involve me flipping through a 200 page car manual to see what else the problem could be, or at a minimum, how to turn the light off. While deep in thought, I had an epiphany when I remembered that Google has indexed about everything else, so why not my car’s manual?

To make the long story short, when I arrived at the Poker game, instead of grabbing my car manual, I grabbed my BlackBerry and did a quick search for the warning name and car’s make and model via Google. The first five results all had the answer to my problem and it only took a minute or so to find the answer I was looking for!

With the success I found with Googling my car manual, I’ve been contemplating all the other ways Google can save me time with my offline life. Thank you Google! My hope is that this post will ultimately help someone else by saving them time as well if they find they are a similar situation. Had a similar experience where Google saved you time in your offline life? Leave it in the comments!

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What Would Google Do? Book by Jeff Jarvis

Kyle Eslick — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 20:48:36 +0000

I’m generally a big reader, but lately my online activities have prevented me from doing a whole lot of reading. A couple of weeks ago my father surprised me with a audio book copy of Jeff Jarvis’ new book, What Would Google Do? This proved very thoughtful as I spend a lot of time commuting to work and back each day.

I’m ashamed to admit that I thought the name was familiar, but I couldn’t place how I knew the name. Well, halfway through the first disc (first chapter?) I quickly figured out where I know him from. Jeff is the blogger who inspired Dell’s idea storm with this post written to Michaell Dell, the CEO of Dell computers. Ironically enough, I was going through my own troubles with Dell at the time (which didn’t end so well), so it made this particular chapter all the more interesting for me.

Though Jeff touches on a large variety of topics, they are all cleverly tied to Google and the idea of figuring out “What Would Google Do?” Jeff uses this to examine the future of the internet as well as looking at how Google can or will influence many offline companies (restaurants, medical issues, insurance companies, etc.) and cut out the middle man as we know it today.

Though I admit I enjoyed the book for the most part from cover to cover, I really liked how Jeff references his personal blog and really shows the power of blogging to his readers. Whether you are internet savvy or just someone who wants to learn how to grow their business, I recommend reading What Would Google Do? by Jeff Jarvis. You can find it in your local book store, or purchase it via Amazon.com (audio CD can be found here).

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Dell Computers: A Customer Service Nightmare

Kyle Eslick — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 21:22:29 +0000

A few days ago, I published a blog post titled Fuck Dell, where I chronicled the beginning of what has been probably the worst experience I’ve EVER had dealing with a company. Since that post was published, I’ve continued my quest for customer satisfaction without any success, so I wanted to take a moment and chronicle the rest of my experience with Dell, in the hopes that someone who is planning to buy from Dell will first hear about my experiences.

After my initial problems with Dell’s customer service, the next day I decided to both try their online customer service, as well as to phone them and speak to a supervisor. My phone call required 2 transfers, one hangup and call back, then 20 minutes of the representative trying to talk me out of talking to a supervisor, but I was finally able to be transferred to a supervisor. In addition to the problems I referenced in my last post, I also was having troubles getting the dual monitors to be extended to both screens. He was eventually able to help me fix this problem, but then transferred me to someone else to discuss returning the defective mouse, the incorrect monitor, etc.

The next representative I was transferred to was trying to sell me a new monitor instead of just letting me exchange the incorrect one for the one I needed. To make it worse, he kept suggesting monitors that weren’t compatible with the setup they built for me!! Finally I decided I would just return the monitor for a refund along with the defective mouse and be done with it. He instructed me that he would need to transfer me to ANOTHER person to handle the return. I ended up “conveniently” being disconnected during this transfer, so I gave up for the day.

That night I began installing software on the new PC (now that the dual monitors were functioning I was planning on at least keeping the hard drive and one monitor) and Vista kept freezing on me. When I rebooted the PC, I could no longer even get logged into the computer! I just kept getting a blank screen each time I rebooted the computer. The only way I could access it was via safe mode. At this point, I decided I was out too much time and wanted to cut my losses, so I decided to just be done with it and return everything for a refund.

The next day, after 3 transfers and a 30 minute hold time, I was finally able to speak to their return department. The representative then informed me that I would be charged a 15% restocking fee for my return despite the defective merchandise and the 21 day return policy which I was supposed to be given with my purchase. They wanted me to go back through their technical support again instead of accepting my return, but the thought of doing that made my head spin, so I declined.

After another 20 minutes I was finally able to get the return authorization information, the merchandise was packaged as best I could, and it was returned for what will hopefully be a full refund. If not, I will have to initiate a chargeback with our credit card company. (I will update this post with these results).

My Final Thoughts on Dell

For the past several years, I’ve been buying both desktop and laptop computers from Dell (2-3 annually as my wife and I wear out and upgrade computers quickly). Now, it will NEVER happen again. In fact, I wouldn’t wish the experience I’ve had with Dell on my worst enemy, which is why I’m publishing these two posts in the hope that someone will read this and know what they are getting into before they buy a Dell computer or other product.

I feel that I’ve been the victim of a bait and switch. When I called to place my order initially, I spoke to someone who was VERY helpful and worked hard to find me a computer to meet my needs at the price I wanted to pay. Once I crossed over from being a potential customer to being an existing customer, things changed quickly.

Their sales team all seems to be very friendly and spoke excellent English, but once I became an existing customer, everyone I spoke with (including supervisors) all spoke very broken English, which I think contributed heavily to my frustrations. In addition to the possible language barrier, over the course of 3 days and numerous calls, I had been transferred a total of 23 times, hung up on 3 times (”inadvertently” of course), and lost an entire weekend that could have been spent working or spending time with my wife and kids (I would estimate about 19 hours has been put into setup, tech support, and return). To make it worse, I was also forced to use a paid day off work to take care of packaging and returning the defective products.

From now on, I think I’m going to mostly be buying Apple products. After all, Apple’s products are so good that their customers advertise and promote their products for FREE because they enjoy them so much. I also like the idea of having an Apple store here locally where I can get face-to-face customer support. For my wife, she is a creature of habit and will be sticking with personal computers; however, these will all be purchased locally with local support. Right now, we are planning to go with DIT computers and I expect we will have a great experience.

Have a Dell customer service nightmare you’d like to share? Leave it in the comments below! My hope is that working together, we can educate as many potential Dell customers as possible about what they are getting into!

My Frustrations with Dell’s Customer Service

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My Frustrations with Dell’s Customer Service

Kyle Eslick — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 22:05:09 +0000

Let me apologize in advance for the title of this post, as I don’t normally use that type of language, so that should give you an idea of what I’m going through right now. As I write this post, I’m forced to resist the urge to go to the doctor and get my blood pressure checked. See, I just got off the phone with Dell. Or should I say I was just disconnected from the phone by Dell?

It all started a few months ago when my wife decided she needed a new desktop computer for her business. After looking at her computer, I realized she was still using an old Gateway we bought 6-7 years ago! She has always used PC’s in the past and is comfortable using them, so naturally we began looking for a good deal on a brand new personal computer. Over Memorial Day weekend we received an email with some specials from Dell which were pretty good deals, and I’ve read a lot about how Dell has improved their customer service from Jeff Jarvis, so I decided we would give Dell our business. I gave Dell a call and spoke to a friendly sales woman who worked with me to find the best PC for our needs. I stressed several times throughout the call the only real need we had was for a dual monitor setup (needed two identical monitors and a card that supports dual monitors). I also am a proactive person, so I decided to have them build a wireless modem into the desktop computer as well since they were custom building it anyway. After we got everything figured out at a price I was happy with, I placed the order and all was good.

Fast forward a couple of weeks and my wife is excited the computer and monitors has finally arrived. I unpack it and begin getting things setup only to discover to my horror that they shipped me two DIFFERENT monitors. Not only are they different, but one is a 20 inch monitor and the other is a 22 inch widescreen which operates on a different resolution. When I open up the box to the computer, I also discovered they simply threw in an external wireless antenna instead of building it into the computer (like they’ve done on our other Dell computers in the past). In other words, I’m stuck with a worthless piece of hardware.

Of course from what I’ve heard about Dell’s new and improved customer service, all is good, right? I’ll call up, they’ll correct their error and all will be good….or so I hoped. Unfortunately within 5 minutes of making my call, I had been transfered a total of 6 times to different people, most of which were difficult to understand. I finally landed with someone who I thought could help me, but after 5 minutes of explaining the details and providing the order number for the 6th time, I was informed that I had again been transferred to the wrong department and they would be transfering me again. After being sent to representative number 7, he took the information, then informed me I would need to speak to their returns department to return my monitor, then once that was done, I’d need to speak to the technical support team (who’d I’d already been transferred to in the past). After I politely complained about the customer service I was getting, the gentleman (I use this term loosely) placed me on hold and I was introduced to the dial tone. Thats right, apparently I had been hung up on.

So, now I’m out countless hours that I’ve invested into researching, purchasing, setting up, and now dealing with these problems, and I’m no better off. My wife has two different size monitors that don’t even operate on the same resolution, and I’m out a significant amount of money. To make it worse, my wife is the one who will suffer because I convinced her to go with Dell. I’m at a loss as to what to do now, as I can’t seem to find anyone within the company that can help me. Anyone have any ideas?

Dell Computers: A Customer Service Nightmare

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My MyBlogLog Profile Was Stolen

Kyle Eslick — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 18:06:48 +0000

More than a year ago, when I first joined MyBlogLog, I had set up communities for both Kyle’s Cove, and my personal domain, Kyle Eslick dot Com. At some point in the following months, I had temporarily pulled down this website because it really wasn’t being used much.

A couple of days ago, I went to re-claim my website and found that someone named Vidztime has someone stolen the page for this website, which prevents me from claiming my own site. You can see from the screenshot used on the profile page that it is a REALLY old design (mid-2006).

After trying a few different avenues to get some answers and get this resolved using the MyBlogLog help form, I decided to instead report copyright infringement in the hopes of actually getting a response. Yahoo! responded fairly timely telling me to write this post, so I have. Hopefully this gets resolved soon.

Has anyone else had this problem? I can’t imagine MyBlogLog lets anyone claim any website they want to without some sort of verification.

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Black Friday – WTF Is Wrong With People?

Kyle Eslick — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 23:14:00 +0000

I think of myself as a fairly intelligent human being, but there are some parts of human behavior that I fail to understand. I mean seriously, what is wrong with people? These Black Friday sales have gotten out of hand, and shoppers behavior is even worse.

Here is a video of a bunch of losers outside Best Buy trying to save $10.00 on a few $500.00+ items:

[youtube HZJVZ2p223o]

And here is the view from the Best Buy employees perspective:

[youtube r0HhwoxK6uw]

If there is such a thing as a sign of the apocalypse, I think I’ve just seen it….

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WordPress Hacks

Kyle Eslick — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 01:00:53 +0000

WordPress Hacks is a popular niche site that focuses solely on the popular open source software, WordPress. This site is a multi-author blog that spends a lot of time reviewing both free and premium WordPress themes, provides reviews of WordPress plugins, and provides resources for hacking your WordPress themes to function the way you want it to.

Visit WordPress Hacks »

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Slick Affiliate

Kyle Eslick — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 04:00:50 +0000

SlickAffiliate is a weblog dedicated to writing about a variety of topics, but the primary focus is on affiliate marketing and making money online. We examine affiliate trends, offer marketing strategies, review affiliate programs, and more!

Visit Slick Affiliate »

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