Mark Richards

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Friday, May 26, 2006

Mad Props to Evite

A couple of days ago I was having an annoying issue with Evite. I don't ever recall having a problem with the site and I've always viewed it favorably. This problem angered me greatly though. Luckily, the people at Evite were able to quell my ill feelings rather quickly with excellent customer service.

Sarah and I decided to have a Memorial Day pool party and, as always, we created an Evite. We used her account to generate the invitation. I like to be added as a guest to my own parties so I can see who's coming and make a witty response. Sarah and I tried and tried to add me, but the system just would not have it. No matter what we did, or how many times we tried it, nothing worked.

After a day of dealing with this crap, I became so frustrated and wanted to pull my hair out. Instead of hurting my wonderful head or hair, I thought I'd try emailing Evite customer support. I sent them a message explaining the situation. The email was sent at 8:45pm. At 8:49pm the same night, I received a response saying that my issued had been resolved. Sure enough, I went to check my account and there it was: the Memorial Day pool party invitation.

Normally I would get on here and tell everybody why the site sucked, but I cannot do that in this case. 4 minutes to fix my problem?! Are you freakin' kidding me?! How can I possibly say anything bad about Evite, their system, or their services? If I could, I'd buy stock in them at this point.

Let me throw out this scenario. Imagine a world in which all customer service departments responded one-tenth as quickly and as accurately as Evite. Do you know how delighted the entire population would be? Or how much productivity would be gained by users? Or how much better your company would be viewed? In striking contrast, when my printer broke and I had to contact Epson customer service, they were slow, unhelpful, and wanted to charge me for phone support. Needless to say, I dumped Epson for HP.

Mad props to Evite.

Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Home Sweet Home

Kevin: "So are you a homeowner, Greg?"
Greg: "No, no. I rent."

It appears that Sarah and I are no longer in the same position as Mr. Gaylord Focker. As of the beginning of July we will no longer be renters because, today, we came to an agreement to purchase our first house. Woohoo!

After many months of stressing over the purchasing process, we finally decided on a 2 bedroom, 2.5 bathroom townhouse with a finished basement, two story deck, and a 1-car garage. If you are familiar with the city at all, it's in the Morningside area of town. The location is perfect for us as we are in between all sections of the city, a short cab ride away from great bars and clubs, less than a mile from Piedmont Park, not too far from work, and close to all necessities like grocery stores and pharmacies.

This surely has brightened my day considerably.

More details to come once we have signed on the dotted line.

You might be having a bad day when...

you have over 22,000 emails in your inbox saying that your site is broken. 22,000?! That has to be some sort of record. I should have taken a screen grab of it because I can't imagine having that many unread emails is a common occurrence. Lucky for me, the site being down for 3 hours had absolutely nothing to do with me or my team.

Tuesday, May 02, 2006

A Couple of Sites I Enjoy

www.lookatmebeingserious.com
"On Sunday, April 2, 2006, USC Vice-President Ryan Holt traveled to Washington, D.C. to voice students' concerns to members of Congress. On Monday, April 3, 2006, members of the Student Senate purchased $80 worth of balloons. What you are about to see may be disturbing to people without a sense of humor."

www.hotchickswithdouchebags.com
"I'm the biggest douchebag you ever met. The problem is I don't get the hot chicks so maybe I'm like the anti-douchebag douchebag. They need a new term for my sorry ass. This site is all about poking fun at scuzzbuckets and the women who love them."