Tag: patience

Newark / @element14 and my @Raspberry_Pi

Newark / element14 Customer Service SUCK!

Interesting challgneing I have getting my Raspberry Pi which I ordered from +Newark / element14 on March 12th, 2012.

I received an email update in April advising me that they had remove the promised ship date of May and that I find out more at their web site.

I read that and I noted that while no firm ship dates were promised (my order is still listed as back ordered) they did make this one statement.

By early next week, all 110,000 customers who have ordered with element14 - wherever you are in the world - will receive a confirmed delivery date. As previously communicated, this will be no later than the end of June for those who ordered before April 18th.

So it’s June and I still have no confirmed ship date so I contacted customer service via the web site and a rep responded that he would contact me via email.

This morning I received an email from customer service with one line:

You should expect your Raspberry PI early July.

Looking at a Gregorian calendar it occurs to me that July is definitely the month after June.

So I call customer service for a little chat. I wanted to understand why the posting from April 27th - which has never been updated - promises a June delivery but the email suggests otherwise.

After about fifteen minutes both the customer service rep and I have concluded that Newark / element14 has no idea when I might receive product. The rep was quite flippant about the whole affair but I maintained my patience. I quietly ended the call with the agreement that I would be publicly stating what occurred on Facebook, on Google+ and on Twitter.

Believe it or not, for me, being told that they have no firm ship date is better than being promised one and having the promise broken.

If you ordered a Raspberry Pi from Newark / element14 don’t expect one anytime soon. In fact, I predict I won’t get one at all. I plan on forgetting it even exists. Perhaps I’ll get it in time for my birthday in November.

September 22nd, 2011 - Waiting

It's incredible how impatient we humans are compared to other living creatures. Wait too long at a green light and horns are honked. Slight delay in getting your food and the restaurant gets a negative review. But this spider is willing to wait as long as it takes — steadily and quietly — until food shows up. I envy its patience.

Commitment is Like Watching Grass Grow

A few months ago, I started taking a leadership course. Inside that course, I took on a project, "You're Not Alone!", to build an online community for people with fibromyalgia.

Fibromyalgia is characterised by muscle, joint, or bone pain, fatigue, and a wide range of other symptoms.

Bhavna has suffered from it for a few years. I have watched her struggle, unable to help her other than by saying a few words of encouragement. The inspiration for my project is my wife and Manuel Hernandez, founder of TuDiabetes, a community for people touched by diabetes. I was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes in 2006 and found the TuDiabetes site through the blogging community. I reached out and asked Manny for help in creating a similar community for fibromyalgia. He warned me that it would seem like nothing was happening in the beginning, but he gave me many ideas on how to get things going. The article below is about blogging grass and patience. It is about commitment versus attachment to the outcome.

Sometimes Blogging is Like Watching Grass Grow

Similarly – a blog needs to put its roots down in its first few months and can take a lot of work – for seemingly few results. However there’s more going on under the surface than you might think. While reader numbers might not be great those first few readers can spread the word of your blog far and wide, the decisions you make about design, SEO, topic, voice etc all can have a lasting impact upon your blog.