"Hi Justin:So, there is the first message from Liz who works for Corel. Notice what I put in bold and underlined. This will be important to note for what goes on a little later.
Thanks for sharing the feedback on this customer’s situation. We would be happy to exchange their copy of Corel Home Suite for the more advanced feature set found in WordPerfect Office. We’ve taken your feedback re: Corel Home Suite’s ability to open WPD files together with the points you made on the product description. While the products are designed and priced to reflect the different needs of different types of users, we can appreciate how some of the product messaging on Corel Home Suite could be confusing. We will work to make that clearer in future.
Please let us know how we can connect to help this customer.
Regards,
Liz"
Here was my response to the above message:
-----Original Message-----
From: Justin Rocque [mailto:Justin@dragonpctraining.com]
Sent: July-21-11 8:29 PM
To:Liz
Subject: Re: Blog post regarding Corel
Hi Liz,Notice I said "excellent customer service." The quick response to this matter was excellent, no doubt. But... was the rest of the customer service excellent? We're about to find out in a bit!
Thank you for reading my blog post and for replying VERY quickly! I told my customers about the email I received from you and they are pretty shocked at the fast response as am I. I was going to try to exchange the product at Staples where they got it but, because it has been opened already, I don't think they will let me. My customers are leaving next Wednesday (the 27th) to go back to NY where they live. How do we go about the exchange in a timely manner so I can uninstall and install the other version on their new PC before they leave? Do I need to send you the Home Suite in the mail or would you just like the product key and copy of receipt or all of the above? Can I download the trial version of the WordPerfect Office and you send me or them the product key through email? I told them about the Home and Student Edition which is about $30 more than the one they had already purchased. How do they make the $30 payment difference? Over the phone or online?
Thanks again for the fast response in this manner. My next blog update will reflect the excellent customer service!
-- Justin Rocque Dragon PC Training& Repair "Quality Service From A Man Who Cares!" http://www.dragonpctraining.com
Another message from Liz:
"On 7/22/2011 12:00 PM, Liz wrote:My response:
Hi Justin,
Thanks again for your reply. We would really like to give your customers a call so we can provide the software and resolve this today.
Do you mind providing me with the contact information for your customers so our customer support team can reach out to them?
Best,
Liz"
"Hi Liz,
It's my pleasure. Their name is Ed & Ingrid C. Their number is. [undisclosed]. I have the Corel box and receipt and am going to send it to them (pictures of product keys and receipt) as an attachment in case they need it for customer support. I told them about the customer support call and they are looking forward to it.
Thanks again for your help,
-- Justin Rocque "
Liz's response on 7/22/11:
"Hi Justin,Here is a message I sent on Monday late afternoon because I have not heard back from Liz:
Thanks again for bringing your customer's situation to our attention. We're glad we could help. I'll check back in with you on Monday to ensure that everything has been resolved and that your customers are happy before they head back to NY.
Please let me know if there's anything else I can do.
Best,
Liz"
"Sent: July-25-11 3:11 PMThe response from Liz:
To: Liz Subject: As of yet, no call to my customers
Hi Liz,
It's Monday. My customers called me yesterday saying they received NO call and I followed up just now with another call and.... they still have NOT received a call from anyone from Corel. Like I said, they are heading back Wednesday so that leaves the rest of today and tomorrow to take care of this situation. Their number, again, is [undisclosed] and name Ed and Ingrid C.
I am going to head back to Staples and speak to them about the situation to see if they will show some recourse in this matter and go beyond normal customer service and accept an exchange of an opened software product for a similar "premium" version of the product.
I'm looking forward to hearing back from you again soon for a final resolution,
-- Justin Rocque"
"Hi Justin,I have received a phone call from a Corel representative later on that day which was good. My customer also received a phone call that same day. I then sent him an email which was as follows:
I sincerely apologize. I understood this had been taken care of, but I have escalated it and am working to have our customer support team call them as soon as possible.
My apologies.
Best,
Liz"
"Good morning Austin,Notice I said "Student & Teacher Edition" and "exchange" here.
You should have already received an email from Ed & Ingrid C. with the information you requested. I have a couple requests for you, if it's possible, to make things easier for them. First, I noticed on the Corel site, there is an option to download a trial of the standard edition of WordPerfect Office but not the Student and Teacher Edition they are purchasing with the exchange of the other product they had mistakenly purchased. What I would like for you to do is have them agree to the download version and forward me the link to download the software with product key. The only place they have internet at is the club house where they live and I don't know how fast it is and how reliable it is for downloading one large file. I'd rather download it onto a disc from my PC at my location and install it on theirs so they don't run into any complications. They may want you to send them the boxed disc as well for back up purposes but if you can't do both, tell them I'll put the Corel download on disc for them and print out the product key for them in case they need it again in the future.
Thanks very much for your prompt assistance in this matter! By the way, you have a pretty familiar last name.
Have a great day,
-- Justin Rocque"
Here is Austin's response on 7/25/11:
"Hi Justin--
I realize they want the H&S version of the program, but to make things easy, I planned on over-nighting the installation discs to them. Plus, I need a little more information before they commit to the H&S edition. Rest assured, they will be well taken care of. Like you, I have been in the business for 15-18 years and pride myself on ensure my customers are overly taken care of. "
A couple days after this message, I went out do dinner with my customers before they headed back to NY and found out what went down when they spoke to Austin again over the phone. To cut a long story short about what went down, Austin ended up selling them the standard version which was a whopping $179 and, as you can see in the next message below, they did not want the one my customers mistakenly purchased back. I found that odd because, as you can see with the first message all the way up top, they "would be happy to exchange..."
Even though I was pretty upset about how the situation ended and wanted to do more, I have agreed to put a cap on the situation because what was done was done and I didn't want to make matters more confusing than it already was. I was going to wait until they got home and see how everything went with the installation of the program with the help of Austin on the phone before I updated this blog.
On 8/5/11 I have gotten this message from my customer, Ed:
So, as you can see, they got the program installed and everything is working. Right before Ed sent me that message, I got this message from Liz:
"Dragon,Mr Corel called this AM - we are installed! He walked us through it, although, I think we could have done it orselves. Yipee! They do not want the first one back....Ed"
Here is my response to Ed's message first:
"Hi Justin, I just wanted to check in with you to ensure your customers received their discs and that they were able to install the program smoothly? Please let me know if anything comes up in the future. All the best, Liz"
"Date: Friday, August 5, 2011, 4:35 PM
Ed,
I'm happy to hear that. I was almost ready to publish an update on the Corel situation on my blog but received a follow up email from Liz to make sure everything went through ok. Of course, I told her what went down and another thing I noticed about the whole "Corel" thing and told her what was on my mind like I've been doing these days because holding back these days in my life, as you know, get's one nowhere. So, I just sent that off to her and will give you one more status update either through here or through my blog and..... the "Corel Case Files" will be closed. ;-)
I'll get back to you soon,
Dragon
PS> You saying "they do not want the first one back" just took the cake and gave me more of a reason to respond to her message! Thanks!! ;-)"
Of course, Ed insisted I not go any further and put the blame on themselves but were happy campers now..
Even though they were happy campers, I, the Dragon, felt Corel could have done more. If I didn't think they could have done anything to resolve this, I wouldn't have went through this whole mess. My customers could have just gotten the CHEAPER home and student version for $99 instead of having to shell out another $179 through Corel themselves. So... Liz wanted an update so an update she shall (and did) receive...
"Dragon,Don't make any waves on our behalf - we made a mistake in buying (the first one) AND we knew they mostl likely would NOT take it back . . . we accept that - we are happy campers now.Ed"
So, as you can see with that long explanation above, especially in that last big paragraph I made in bold, this whole Corel situation DID NOT pan out the way I wanted to by any stretch of the imagination. And, what makes it worse, here is the final message from Liz:Sent: August-05-11 4:30 PM
To: Liz
Subject: Re: Corel checking inHi Liz,
You just caught me at the right moment because I was about to finish up and post an update to the Corel issue. Here is where it boils down to now. You have nothing to be blamed for because you did a great job with everything and I appreciated it very much. I sent an email to Austin a couple weeks ago and said the following:"Good morning Austin,
You should have already received an email from Ed & Ingrid C. with the information you requested. I have a couple requests for you, if it's possible, to make things easier for them. First, I noticed on the Corel site, there is an option to download a trial of the standard edition of WordPerfect Office but not the Student and Teacher Edition they are purchasing with the exchange of the other product they had mistakenly purchased. What I would like for you to do is have them agree to the download version and forward me the link to download the software with product key. The only place they have internet at is the club house where they live and I don't know how fast it is and how reliable it is for downloading one large file. I'd rather download it onto a disc from my PC at my location and install it on theirs so they don't run into any complications. They may want you to send them the boxed disc as well for back up purposes but if you can't do both, tell them I'll put the Corel download on disc for them and print out the product key for them in case they need it again in the future. "As you can see, I mentioned the one I told them to get and the one for him to sell to them which was $99, $30 more than the one they had already mistakenly purchased. So, when they exchange the other one (which you agreed to do in the first email you sent to me), it will only cost them $30 more.
He responded back saying the following:"Hi Justin--
I realize they want the H&S version of the program, but to make things easy, I planned on over-nighting the installation discs to them. Plus, I need a little more information before they commit to the H&S edition. Rest assured, they will be well taken care of. Like you, I have been in the business for 15-18 years and pride myself on ensure my customers are overly taken care of. "This response was OK but... a couple days later, after the transaction had been taken place on the phone with him and our customers Ed & Ingrid, I met them for dinner to see them one last time before they left and they told me..... The guy Austin sold them the "Standard" version which was $179, not the "Home & Student" one for $99 I specifically told him to sell them because of what I said to you already and said to him in the email above. I also told him the situation on the phone as well right after he left me a voicemail. Maybe there was some confusion on the phone during the transaction but there is still no reason why he could not have sold them the one I already mentioned. The whole purpose of the email I took time to send him was to prevent anymore confusion and more "unnecessary expenses" imposed on our customers.
At 11:00AM this morning, my customers sent me this message:"Dragon,Mr Corel (Austin) called this AM - we are installed! He walked us through it, although, I think we could have done it orselves. Yipee! They do not want the first one back....Ed"So, they do not want the first one back. This means an "exchange" of the other product is not going to happen, meaning our customers are going to have to eat the $70 they already spent on the first one they bought by mistake. Correct? So, $180+70= $250 without tax they spent on two Corel programs. Do you want to know what else is pretty upsetting about this whole thing too? I went to Staples yesterday to do my usual business shopping and noticed on the shelf... Corel WordPerfect Office X5 Home & Student selling for $49.99!! http://www.staples.com/Corel-Wordperfect-Office-X5-Home-Student/product_863355 If they had gotten the Home & Student one as I insisted, it would have been only $30 more directly from Corel (with the exchange) which is the main purpose of going through your company (and spending time on writing emails back and forth, of which I didn't mind as long as there was a positive outcome) (and because Staples obviously does not allow exchanges of any opened software unless defective and swapped for the same one). If we did not bother to do that and just buy the H&S at Staples for $99, it would have been $170 total (+ tax), still cheaper than going through Corel directly. Staples also has a 30 day price match. I would have noticed the H&S go down in price especially by 1/2 and would have told them to go to the Staples in NY with their receipt to get $50 back, which will make the total of both programs $120.... $130 less than going through Corel directly.
Like I said, this is not your fault. You did more than what I expected you to do. But, in the end.... did "our" customers receive the satisfaction they wanted and am I satisfied with the results?I do not think so. People would ask me why I would care about the money other people spent and how I went above and beyond and did what I could do. When I have customers who are still customers for over eight years... they are more than customers and transition into close friends.
So, I guess what's done is done now and the case is now closed. My updated blog post will still reflect your positive customer service though but the ending result, unfortunately, will not be very positive.
Thanks for your kind follow up and have a great weekend,
--Justin RocqueDragon PC Training & Repair“Quality Service From A Man Who Cares!”http://www.dragonpctraining.com
Well, that message was sent on August 5th. All of the Monday's in August have passed and half of the Monday's in September have passed as well. I haven not bothered to look into it any further because, as you can see above, it's just not worth it anymore."Hi Justin,Thanks for providing me with this detailed update. I have reached out to Austin and our refund department to understand what happened. The last I heard, they were to process a refund for Corel Home Suite. I am not happy to hear that this issue has not been completely resolved yet. I hope to have some more clarification and answers for you on Monday.Best,Liz"
So, here are my final thoughts on Corel and their customers service:
If you have been using Corel's office suites for quite some time and find them to suit your needs and are comfortable using them then, by all means, keep using them and don't switch to anything else on my behalf.
However if you are still using an older PC with Windows Xp and an older Corel program, be prepared to purchase the specific Corel program which matches the older one when you get a new PC because the older version will not work on the newer Windows.
As you can see from the image above, the "Corel Home Suite" will NOT be able to open the .WPD files created from the programs above it (well, you can't see this by the image above but I explained it in my first Corel post). However, Microsoft Word can open those files quite well. A bit odd, don't you think? I ranted about this "odd" thing in my previous Corel post here: http://dragonpctraining.blogspot.com/2011/07/corel-is-crapel-to-me-now.html
My advice is to purchase the WordPerfect Office X5 - Home & Student for about $100. Sometimes, you can find it for half off at a retail store. But, to tell you the truth, my firm advice is to just skip WordPerfect Office all together and just go with the industry standard, Microsoft Office Home & Student for about $119, less if you purchase it with a new PC.
Now, for the Dragon's score on Corel's customer service based on a 1-10 scale, 10 being best:
Response time to problem: 10 - because Liz was super fast at responding to the blog post.
Steps taken to resolve problem: 9 - because Liz did her best at resolving the problem.
Tech Support & Sales: 6 - although this should really be a separate score for each, only one person took care of this so, even though he did great at the tech support part, he failed to sell the right product to the customer, even with the assistance of myself who knew what the customer needed.
Follow-up on problem status: 4 - although Liz did great with asking about the status updates to the problem, she failed to give me that last update as to why everything went the way it did at the end. I'm not one who likes to be left "hanging" and I'm sure nobody else out there likes to be left "hanging" as well so that's a big no no in my book.
Final resolution to problem: 2 - I'm sure I don't have to explain myself here!
So, there is the final unfortunate result of the Corel situation. The good thing is my customers got taken care of and are happily using their Corel software the way they used to back then. The bad thing is... it wasn't worth the expense and Corel failed at the promise they made with the FIRST email.
If you run into any problems with a software, hardware, or any technology-related company in general, let the Dragon know so he can help you get the issue resolved. The status and outcome will be posted on here for everyone else to see so they too can be helped if they run into a similar issue as well.
There will be more posts on more technology subjects coming soon! If you have a tech question you would like answered and think other people will benefit from it by having it posted on here, send it to the Dragon for consideration in a future blog post!
Until next time,
Dragon
longest blog post... EVER!
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