From: Mark Crispin <mrc@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU>
Subject: why NeXT is still having credibility problems
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Organization: University of Washington
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Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1992 04:40:25 GMT

NeXT still has a long way to go before it can claim credibility as a
reliable vendor.  They aren't flakes like Neuron, but they still have
a tendency to promise what they aren't in a position to deliver.

The key to success is customer service.  Until ordering products --
and receiving them in a timely fashion -- is a no-brainer, a fair
amount of the potential customer base is going to be scared away.

One nice thing about a Macintosh is that you can walk in to any number
of stores and walk out with a machine.  If you can't find what you
want at the store, there are 800 numbers you can call and you'll have
it on your porch the next day.  This is, unfortunately, not the case
with NeXT.  NeXT cannot claim to be an industry leader while it still
has the customer service and ordering mechanism of a garage operation.


Story 1:

I ordered a NeXT printer from NeXT during the promotion last winter.
This should have been a slap-the-label-on-and-ship order.  Need I say
that it was nearly three months before the printer was in my hands?


Story 2:

I bought the CD-ROM/3.0 package in late spring.  I have the CD-ROM
drive -- a good two months after I ordered it -- but no 3.0 CD-ROM
yet.  Today, I received a flier from NeXT promising me same-day
shipping on 3.0 if I order today.  The flier is dated August 31.

It isn't very tactful to send a customer an advertisement for same-day
shipping of a product when that product is back-ordered for that
customer.


Story 3:

It also isn't very tactful to lower the price on the CD-ROM late in
the summer by another $150 before the suckers who paid the higher
price received theirs.


Story 4:

I though that ordering some additional DSP memory might help some
problems I had been having with music.  I called up NeXT to order it.

NeXT wouldn't take a phone order; it had to be by mail or FAX.  The
order form offered overnight shipping or 5 day shipping.  I chose
5-day shipping, with a charge to my credit card, and FAXed the order
on September 3.

On September 14, I called to find out about the status of the order.
I learned that the *acknowledgement* of the order had just been mailed
that same day, and there was no way to check up on the order until I
got the acknowledgement with the magic number.  He only knew about the
acknowledgement because my name sounded familiar.

NeXT's order management system (running on a NeXT, perchance?) does
not have the capability to look up an user by the customer's name.
The person I talked to at NeXT said as much.  Now, any vendor in the
Mac world would be laughed out of the market if they couldn't look up
a customer's order by his name.  This is something that should be a
no-brainer to fix.

I would have been seriously pissed if I had picked overnight shipping!
But, I am more than a little bit disturbed that a FAXed customer
order, with credit card information, lay unprocessed at NeXT for ten
days.

I also found out from the fellow at NeXT that DSP memory is `not
listed as a product available to ship.'  Great.  Now they tell me.  I
ordered vaporware.

Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.misc