Customer Service

I actually received good customer service this week. Kudos to the tech support folks at HP who helped me out.

Back in December I discovered that my HP OfficeJet All-in-One printer wasn't working. Not only wouldn't it print, it appeared to be dead. As in a giant paperweight sitting on my desk, performing no function whatsoever aside from collecting dust. Things at the inn were slow that month, so the printer might have been dead for a day or two (or three) before I even noticed.

I popped over to HP's tech support page and selected live chat, since that is free. I'm pretty sure the guy at the other end of the line is in a country on the other side of the world and has a pretty specific script from which he has difficulty deviating, because the first thing he suggested I do made it clear that he hadn't really been paying attention when I said the printer had no power. Once I repeated that for him, he suggested I check to see if the power supply (external on this printer, thankfully) was warm to the touch. Bingo! It was not, and a properly functioning power supply should be. I thanked him, ended the chat session and popped over to parts & supplies where I ordered a new power supply. It was around $40 plus shipping, but that's a lot cheaper than a new printer. Since the printer was 2 years old, I figured it was a good investment - I'm not ready to replace it. The power supply arrived about three days later, I plugged it in and the problem was resolved. Because things were so slow that month, I really didn't suffer from having no printer for nearly a week and I was pleased that the solution had turned out to be a simple one.

All was well in printer-land until this past Tuesday night. It was late and I was about to head up to bed when I noticed that the power light on my printer was off. "Uh-oh" was my first thought, as I hopefully pressed the "on" button and waited, in vain, for it to light up. Damn. Checked the power supply immediately. Room temperature. Double-damn. Looked in my credit card bills to confirm December order date. It's too late at night for me to be able to do much else, but I know I've got to get a new power supply ASAP because I have guests checking in the next day, the day after and then a full house checking in on Friday. I use the printer to print out my check-in sheets, invoices if necessary, notes for late-arriving guests, etc. This is NOT the same situation as December, when I didn't really need the printer.

Before even having coffee the next morning (Wednesday) I called HP tech support. We went over the problem and the history. The tech looked up my order and sent me over to the parts department. The person in the parts department who took my call quoted me a price on the part. I remained calm and told him that since I was replacing a power supply that was 3 months old, I expected them to send me a new one for free. I also made it clear I expected nothing less than free shipping, next day if possible. It took a little time, but I eventually got approval for a free replacement and shipping, although I was given a Monday delivery date - best he could do, he said. Okay, I figured that was as good as I was going to get and I'd figure something out for the weekend's printing needs. My phone time invested: 48 minutes (by the timer on my handset).

Later that day, after an unsuccessful attempt to hook up a fairly old printer and an equally unsuccessful attempt to access my husband's printer off our home network, I got a shipping notification email from HP. When I looked at it I discovered that the part had, in fact, been shipped FedEx next-day. It arrived and it solved the problem. I was pleased enough to email HP and thank them for the help.

Now let's keep our fingers crossed that this power supply doesn't quit on me after another three months, because that will put me smack in the middle of my busy season.

Refrigerator update

My appliance guy came by this afternoon, disguised as a fire chief (he IS the chief in a nearby town - almost everyone out here has two jobs). The problem turned out to be a fan blade that had detached itself from its mount. Simple fix, no moving of the refrigerator required. I am SO relieved. He is concerned that the blade will come off again, so he will bring a new one by in the next day or two. Meanwhile we can reload the refrigerator. Since the fan is in the freezer behind the rear panel, I'm leaving that empty for him until he installs the new blade.

Who knew such a thing could happen? We are so lucky to have a great repair guy nearby. He sells new appliances as well, but I'd much rather repair than replace as long as the economics of doing so make sense.

What's up with this?

I've never had such a difficult year for appliances. Usually we'll have a problem with one appliance over the course of a season, but this year it's been ridiculous. First it was the washing machine which was working but was clearly not happy and turned out to be a fairly easy fix of a broken spring. Then the dishwasher bit the dust. A few weeks ago we had to have a repair call for the refrigerator in the kitchen to fix one of the doors. Then the washing machine DIED right in the middle of the first wash cycle this past Sunday, a day when every room in the house had checked out. Thankfully I'm on good terms with my next-door neighbors who have a 26 room guest house and three washing machines. I was able to get enough stuff washed to get me through the next couple of days and my appliance repair guy sent his crew to me on Monday. The problem turned out to be the transmission and they either fixed or replaced it - I wasn't home to see.

You'd think that would be enough appliance trouble for one season, but this morning when I was making breakfast I discovered that my 2nd refrigerator - the one we store most of the B&B supplies in - was not all that cold. A thermometer showed temps in the 50's. I put a call into my repair guy around 8:15 but they weren't able to get to us today. We got the thing emptied out and all the important stuff is chilling away in the refrigerator in the cottage, but the unit in question is going to be a bear to move because it's really wedged into a spot in my office/laundry room. So on the one hand I'm really hoping the repair crew can get here tomorrow, but on the other hand it's going to be ugly when they do. Wish me luck.

Another First

In eight years we've never had a guest smoke in one of our rooms. It happened last night. She didn't read the sign stating "we are a no-smoking establishment". She told me she assumed it was alright because of the ashtray in the room. It's not an ashtray, it's a candy dish. And it had candy in it. I guess people see what they want to see.

I had two big fans running in there all day and I sprayed the curtains with fabric freshener. When they check out in a few days I'll strip out all the linens and change the pillows. I think I can borrow an ozone machine from one of the motels. She's agreed to smoke outside for the rest of her stay, so with luck I'll be able to clear the smell out of there.

Surprisingly few of our guests have been smokers. Usually I can smell it when they are and am able to mention our policy when I check them in. In this case, I wasn't here when she arrived. She's from a southern state, where smoking is still permitted in a lot of public places. Guests from New York and most of New England pretty much assume smoking isn't permitted indoors. I'm sure it wasn't malicious, it's just aggravating.

It's just a little thing...

A few days ago I managed to make a woman angry. No, it was not a guest and yes, perhaps I could have handled the situation a little better, but perhaps she also over-reacted a bit.

Here's how it happened:
There's a knock at the door and I go to answer it. Two women are standing in the vestibule. I said "I see you missed the doorbell" and proceeded to point it out to them. A lot of people miss it, which is why we installed a knocker. With guests it's actually important that they know where it is, it's one of the ways to get a hold of us if they need us. We can't hear the knocker from the third floor where we live but there is a chime for the doorbell up there. Since I had never seen these ladies before I guess I could have skipped the doorbell lecture, but I actually thought at the time one of them might be checking in that day.

Anyway, one of the two ladies informs me that friends of hers will be staying with us beginning in two days and she has something she wants to drop off for us to put in the room for them. She then pulls a wrapped package out of her bag. I told her that I really didn't have any place to store it and could she please come back on the morning of the friends' arrival to drop it off. I thought I was fairly polite, but it's possible I was a bit short with her. She was clearly not happy at my lack of cooperation. She grumbled something about being on her way to the market to buy lettuce and not wanting to put wet lettuce in a bag with the wrapped gift. I got her a plastic bag in which to place the gift so it would stay dry and sent her on her way. I could see she wasn't happy when she left.

When she returned on the appointed day my husband answered the bell. I happened to walk by as she told him she was quite angry at the way she'd been treated by me and I did apologize to her, although I was in a hurry at that moment so I really don't know how well my apology was received.

After she left it was clear that my husband was furious with me. He saw no reason why I couldn't have taken the package and since we're in the "hospitality" business it is our job to go out of our way to be nice to people. He's not entirely wrong, but to what extent do we have to accommodate requests from non-guests? We really do bend over backwards to honor special requests from our guests; reheating leftovers for them, loaning a jacket for a whale-watch, providing a cutting board & knife to dress a fish they caught - all sorts of things that are unusual and out of our routine. But this woman was not our guest, nor were her friends currently staying with us.

My husband's point was that this lady is a local and she will probably not refer her friends to us in the future because I had refused her request and she had thought me rude.

Unfortunately, this lady was largely a victim of circumstance:
- I had no help on the day she dropped by, so I was busy;
- I was/am hot and overtired;
- I really did not want the responsibility for this package;
- I was concerned that I'd forget to put it in the room;
- the previous week we had received three fairly large boxes in advance of a guest's arrival and had stored those. In that case, the guest had contacted me in advance to ask if it was okay to have something shipped to her at our address and I had told her it was but please try to have the delivery timed for as close to her arrival as possible. The box arrived two days before she did, which isn't bad. I was, however, somewhat irked when the second two boxes showed up - from another store and via a different delivery method - later that day. I felt somewhat taken advantage of and clearly that was part of my reaction to this new request.

In my own defense, I typically do not allow the drop-off of items days before a guest arrives. We frequently have guests who are coming for weddings and often the bride drops by with bags of goodies for them; a few times they've tried to do so a day or two before arrival. I have always requested that they return on the day of arrival. We really do have very limited storage space. I made the exception for the above guest because she was arriving from Canada and wanted to have a birthday gift for her niece, who is living in town, delivered.

I could and should have handled this differently, but in what other business do people just assume you'll do this sort of thing? For example, if her friends had made a restaurant reservation for one night of their stay, do you suppose she would have thought it was okay to bring a package to the restaurant two days before the reservation and ask them to present it to the couple when they arrived for dinner? I doubt it.

I Love My Dishwasher

I didn't realize how much I loved it until it died on me last Friday. We purchased it in 2004 and bought the extended service contract, but since we live at the end of the universe Sears only has service out here on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I called a local repair person, he told me he couldn't get there any sooner than Tuesday, either, so we might as well wait and get the service we didn't have to pay for. So for five days we washed all the dishes by hand. Granted, I grew up in a house where we had no dishwasher, so washing dishes is not a foreign concept to me, but there were only four of us!

The good news is that the service tech did come on Tuesday, the culprit was the motor. If we hadn't purchased the extended service the repair would have cost nearly $400. We're now back up and running and life is good.