Counterfeit Monster Cables on Trade Me

Monster produces high-end audio cable. In the HDMI range even their basic cables run to hundreds of dollars, so I was taken aback to see the top of the range Monster M2000 for sale on Trade Me at $50.

A bit of digging turned up Monster Cable’s Counterfeit Site.

Here's one of the cables for sale by PGX on Trade Me (who seems to be making a business of this):

And here's a sample of the fake goods from Monster:

Looks identical (except the recycling logo). A look at Monster’s black list of sites caught selling counterfeit cable reveals Trade Me in the listing.

I reported this to Trade Me who replied that ‘appropriate action’ has been taken, though the listing remains along with 15 others.

Update: after more prodding Trade Me has removed all 15 listings from heng12, pgx, and smithjim.

Philosophical Problems with Facebook

Facebook is a useful site: it’s easy to connect with friends and family and keep abreast of their lives. It’s an easy place to make a home page. But it could be so much more, and I can’t get past some of their deep-seated issues. I haven’t quit but I have curtailed my usage (though I was only logging in every few days anyway).

There’s room for improvement on the site experience itself but the main issues to me are more cultural:

You don’t control your account and support is almost non-existent: if something goes wrong with your account or it’s automatically disabled in error it may be impossible to resolve. One day you may have lost everything…

The Internet is built around the idea of sharing information and linking from one site to the next, yet Facebook is designed to be your one-stop site, and only minimal Facebook information is available outside of Facebook without registering and logging in.

Many many privacy issues, e.g. Criticism of Facebook

The CEO is one of the most arrogant men I’ve ever seen. But what can you expect from someone whose business card read ‘I’m CEO… Bitch’.

I Wouldn't Steal a Car, Now FOAD

A number of the rental DVDs we’re taking home are now coming with that obnoxious ‘You wouldn’t steal a car’ ad which can’t be skipped.

It’s infuriating to have some movie company override my ability to control a disc I have bought or rented. It’s offensive to have an ad before the menu accusing me of piracy.

If I download a movie from a file-sharing network (I don’t usually) there’s no copy protection and no ads.

Interesting choice: legit & annoying or illegal & convenient. I find myself buying and renting DVDs despite what the distributors are doing—my sense of right wins out over their annoying tactics.

Movie companies are pissing off their remaining legitimate customers in their war against pirates. They really don’t have a clue.

Other irritating ‘features’ on many DVDs:

Any ad (e.g. company logos, trailers, FBI warnings) preceding the menu: most of the time I just want to pop in a DVD and start watching. Include trailers and small print as a menu item.

Any menu which takes more than a couple of seconds to run through before I can push ‘play’—again, I usually just want to start watching.

Yellow Triangle

Robert Schofield of Wellington was recently convicted of importing DVDs involving urophilia into New Zealand (seemingly for his own use).

11 DVDs seems like a lot, and the guy seems to have exacerbated his fine (and maybe the new’s interest) by fighting the court and censorship office, but…

1. Likes and dislikes aside, why is the state involved in what consenting adults do in the bedroom? Why does Judge Harrop think it necessary Robert’s clients know his sexual predilections?

2. Why is the act itself legal, but depiction of it isn’t?

(Title being a play on the colour of urine and the song by Christy Moore on speaking up for your rights.)

‘Talking’ to a Computerised Help Desk: Technology Looking for a Purpose

I was on the phone this morning to my ISP trying to find out why the cable modem wasn’t responding (turned out there was a major outage).

I was able to reflect, once again, how much I hate speech recognition Interactive Voice Response compared to button pushing.

Comparison

Standard ‘button pushing’ IVR	Voice recognition IVR
Welcome to…	Welcome to… I can help you… It’s a computer. It’s not that smart. Let’s not try to pretend it is.
Press 1 for technical assistance, … A quick button press. Can already be pressing the button while further options are being read out.	Would you like ‘technical assistance’, … Forced to parrot back the required phrase. Have to wait until all options have been read out.
n/a — a button press can’t be mistaken	I’m sorry, I didn’t understand that. Please state if you would like ‘technical assistance’, … Again, wait until all the options have been read out. Took three goes for the system to recognise this simple phrase.

Disadvantages

• Slower having to wait for all the options to be announced, slower to speak than hit a button, slower for the computer to inteprept speech than a button press.
• Significantly more prone to input being un-interpretable
• I don’t like having to parrot back phrases
• It feels like an unnatural interaction. You push buttons on machines and talk to humans.
• Can’t use automatic dialling to go through options
• Can’t use while SO is still asleep!

Advantages? None!

Customer Service: Shoe Clinic vs. Radfords

Another example of great vs. shocking customer service:

Today my partner bought a new pair of walking shoes from the Shoe Clinic (Willis Street, Wellington, New Zealand).

The sales person was obviously knowledgeable, and spent an hour measuring her foot, finding the right pair of shoes, and even cutting insoles to match her orthotics.

All just part of the service.

On the contrary, we have Radfords (also Wellington based). This has been a long drawn out saga, but basically they mis-measured some curtains we asked to have installed (I mean obviously mis-measured: when they came to install them they extended halfway over a bookshelf!)

We’ve received the absolute worst customer service from them: they wouldn’t return messages, tried to pass-the-buck, and even ignored a letter to the manager—while still sending us bills.

My partner finally got hold of the CEO after they sent another bill. For the first 5 minutes he tried to fob her off, first suggesting we’d changed our minds about the width; then saying the person who installed the curtains was a contractor, and we’d have to take it up with him (not the case under NZ law). After much arguing he finally relented, and took $200 off the $600 bill—only a small amount more than the extra material they’d mistakenly cut and billed us for.

Guess where we will and won’t be shopping in the future.

Here’s some interesting statistics from a Unisys Best Practice Study Tour (1999):

• Only 1% of customers who complain are systematically trying to cheat an organisation.
• Only 1 in 10 dissatisfied customer actually complains to the organisation.
• Dissatisfied customers tell twice as many of their friends, family and associates about a bad service experience when compared with satisfied customers.
• A complaint well handled can increase brand loyalty by 5–10%.

Customer Service: CD Baby vs. Psyshop

I’ve made about 5 orders with CD Baby and received excellent service every time. I love their confirmation e-mail which (in part) reads:

A team of 50 employees inspected your CDs and polished them to make sure they were in the best possible condition before mailing.

Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over the crowd as he put your CDs into the finest gold-lined box that money can buy.

(I won’t spoil it by listing the whole receipt, but it continues in the same tone.)


Compare this to Psyshop. After placing an order I received this cryptic e-mail:

Dear Customer!
Sorry, but we were not able to process your order.

Reason: Invalid address or payment data.

Yeah, that really narrows it down! And what happened to live checking?

I e-mailed Rolf, and after a bit of back-and-forth due to the guy obviously having English as a second language, I heard no more from them.

I have no problem with English as a second language, but sometimes both sides need to work to understand each other. This guy just got short with me and wouldn’t answer any more e-mails. So much for customer service.

Pity, because I can’t find the CD anywhere else.

Apostrophes

Oxymoron from a woman seen on a dating site advert: Im smart.

Copy-Protected CDs

Have finally obtained non-copy protected CDs of Annie Lennox’s Bare and Bonnie Tyler’s Heart Strings (aka Heart & Soul).

I originally ordered these two items from New Zealand’s Real Groovy’s online store and was most disappointed when I read the ‘copy enhancement’ notices on the cases.

I have no interest in pirating music. My major gripe with copy-protected CDs is the format has been butchered to accommodate the copy-protection—officially they don’t even qualify as a ‘CD’. This hacked format destroys most of the built-in error correction on a CD, and hence makes the disc extremely susceptible to any dust or scratches. Questions have also been raised about the music quality. Other gripes include not being able to load the disc into my computer to extract a track listing, and inability to play on other equipment (portable players, computer, car players, etc.)

Real Groovy was friendly and helpful in returning the CDs, but I was left without copies of the music.

So I downloaded the albums from all the usual p2p networks. Now I had poor quality copies of the songs (I don’t like MP3s), but had made my stance against copy protection.

Interestingly a number of the Bare tracks I downloaded were rubbish—some kind of short mix repeated over and over. Makes me think somebody from the record company had seeded them.

End of story until last month, when I read about some successes from Amazon.

I couldn’t find Amazon’s copy-protection policy on their site so I e-mailed my question and was answered:

At this time, we list only a small number of copy-protected CDs on our web site, and they are clearly marked as such.

My unprotected copies of Bare and Heart Strings arrived last week (the latter with a ‘Made in England’ sticker). There’s no warning labels and the two tracks I tried ripping worked flawlessly.

Happy camper.