Service with a sneer (or, how to drive away customers so you have more time for golf)

11/13, 9:26am: Email our sales rep from vendor "M", asking for a price quote and delivery dates on five items from manufacturer "E". We need it for the rollout of Rochester's high-definition CW station. Let's call our sales rep Mr. T.

11/13, 12:27pm: Mr. T returns a price quote but no dates -- says he's out of the office but will let me know.

11/13, 2:49pm: Emailed the purchase order to Mr. T, reminding him that we are still concerned about the delivery dates.

11/13, 2:57pm: Mr. T replies -- just got back in the office -- and says he will check, and thanks me for the order. (As well he might... this was a $12,750 sale for which his total effort was answering an email with a price!)

Several weeks elapses with no contact and no equipment arriving. This isn't unexpected, since manufacturer "E" typically has a three-week lead time between order and shipment. On the other hand, we are still waiting for equipment from manufacturer "L" (now a division of "H") to make an appearance. We ordered it in September and are now hoping for early December. We have plenty of other work to keep us busy, so the non-arrival of the "E" order isn't a big deal.

11/28, 4:00pm: I finish building the control system to enable the Hi-def CW station to actually transmit high definition CW programming, rather than upconverted standard definition. The equipment is programmed, and the thing will make its debut this evening. Should be uneventful, since we're just passing through the signal from a satellite receiver. Hope everything works OK -- without the equipment from "E", we can't see or hear the signal.

11/28, 8:19pm: Cell phone rings while I'm in a meeting at church. The system switched properly and the video looks great... but Rochester says the audio is just a nasty buzz. They've switched back to the upconverter. Rats.

11/29, 8:35am: Called Mr. T's office. No answer. Called the sales rep's phone number. No answer. Left a voice message asking about the status of our "E" equipment.

11/29, 8:40am: Answered an email from Rochester's general manager about the status of the system. He understands the challenges and is being quite patient about things.

11/29, 9:30am: Still no reply from Mr. T. Hey... why not just call the manufacturer? Speak with Judy, who can't find the order in their system just then, but promises to research it and call me back in half an hour.

11/29, 9:50am: Judy calls back -- they haven't received any orders for the particular equipment in question in the last few weeks. She's quite sympathetic and offers to check with their manufacturing department to see how quickly they can get me the stuff... but we still need to deal with our sales rep to straigten things out at that end.

11/29, 9:55am: Mr. T still has not returned my voice mail, so I dig through old emails and find a phone number for J, who sold us our original DTV equipment and who is now the vice-president of vendor "M" and is Mr. T's boss. Guess what... voice mail. Left a message describing the situation and asking for help.

11/29, 9:57am: Back in the control room to work on equipment and various other tasks.

11/29, 10:56am: Returned to office, where the red message light on my phone is glowing. It's a reply from Mr. T, who takes me to task for checking up on my order, observing that only my boss and I do that to him. (Must be his other customers don't care whether they actually receive what they order...) My dots are well and truly agitated.

11/29, 1:29pm: Judy from "E" emails, saying they can rush our equipment out the door in one week, on receipt of the order. Hurray, Judy!

11/29, 5:00pm: An email from Mr. T arrives: the scheduled ship date is 12/7. That would be... one week from tomorrow. What an amazing coincidence!

I think this will be my last order from Mr. T.