Friday, June 01, 2007
Canon ships printers without USB Cables?
I wrote the other day about my trials and tribulations with my HP G85 Office Jet printer -- they no longer support updating their drivers to enable elegant MacBook support, so I went out and bought a Canon MP530 replacement. They had a chance to wow me and win over an HP customer. They did a great job with nice packaging, ink cartridges and fairly good documentation.
Then, I got to the point where you hook it up to your computer, and I read "USB Cable not supplied -- purchase that at your retailer at length not to exceed 10 feet". Excuse me -- how could they not supply the USB cable?!?
That's like selling you a TV and omitting the power cord (please purchase separately) or the remote control (we recommend that you purchase an all-in-one remote at your local retailer)! Instead, they lowered their product cost, and then put the onus on the customer to know that the cable was needed, at which point most people had to make another frustration-laden drive to the electronics retailer. They took a potential wow moment and came up with a fat zero. I assumed other customers were probably irate too.
I then went back to Amazon's website to see if I was the only one complaining -- in the first 30 reviews, only one person mentioned that it really irritated them too. So, that just goes to show that our collective expectations have lowered just one more notch.
Good news is that it opens the door for the above average experience -- heck, the new guy doesn't even have to be super -- just back to delivering "what would be expected" ;-)
Of course, this opens the door for Amazon to add a new customer-ecstasy feature -- collect the solvable gripes from purchasers and provide a "warning" to buyers that they should strongly consider purchasing the cable, because the manufacturer doesn't supply it... probably able to do that in a scalable way using collective feedback.
Then, I got to the point where you hook it up to your computer, and I read "USB Cable not supplied -- purchase that at your retailer at length not to exceed 10 feet". Excuse me -- how could they not supply the USB cable?!?
That's like selling you a TV and omitting the power cord (please purchase separately) or the remote control (we recommend that you purchase an all-in-one remote at your local retailer)! Instead, they lowered their product cost, and then put the onus on the customer to know that the cable was needed, at which point most people had to make another frustration-laden drive to the electronics retailer. They took a potential wow moment and came up with a fat zero. I assumed other customers were probably irate too.
I then went back to Amazon's website to see if I was the only one complaining -- in the first 30 reviews, only one person mentioned that it really irritated them too. So, that just goes to show that our collective expectations have lowered just one more notch.
Good news is that it opens the door for the above average experience -- heck, the new guy doesn't even have to be super -- just back to delivering "what would be expected" ;-)
Of course, this opens the door for Amazon to add a new customer-ecstasy feature -- collect the solvable gripes from purchasers and provide a "warning" to buyers that they should strongly consider purchasing the cable, because the manufacturer doesn't supply it... probably able to do that in a scalable way using collective feedback.
Labels: cable missing, canon pixma mp530
