RE: Tech writers still necessary, but performing poorly

["Lauren" <lt34 -at- csus -dot- edu>]

> From: Chris Borokowski

> My experience is completely in line with this article's observation.
> People buy stuff because their neighbors do, which is some kind of
> caveman-level competitive impulse, and then haul it home and can't get
> it to work. Much of the time it's because the manual is wrong, or more
> commonly, the gadget doesn't quite work as advertised or is defective.
> As a result, they get frustrated, and instead of admit to 
> others that a
> problem exists, they put the technological object on a shelf 
> and ignore
> it until enough time has gone by that they feel justified in throwing
> it out.

"Put it on a shelf"?  Oh no, not me.  I bought a shredder on sale for $20
with a warranty and never opened the box.  Two days before the one year
warranty expired, I took it back.  

"Why are you returning it?"  
"I can't open the box and I have this warranty."  
"We can't accept returns after 90 days."  
"But I have a warranty."  
"We can give you store credit."  
"But my warranty says you can give me cash if you don't have the product."  
"Let's look on the computer. ... We don't have the product."  

The sales rep probably noticed that this was formerly a $75 shredder that
was marked down to $5 because after he saw that price, he gave me my money.
I should have probably kept the shredder, but I didn't even try to open the
box for a year.

Lauren

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