Corel is CRAPel to me now!

Approximately since my business opened over eight years ago or so, I've been helping out these wonderful customers of mine who moved to NY a few years ago. They always used and still, to this day, use the Corel WordPerfect Suite. They use it because it is easy for them to use and they don't want to change to another program, such as Office, to relearn another program if this one suites them well. I have no problem with that and I'm the same way when it comes to software of anything else for that matter.

However, here is where problems arose. The customer's hard drive on her desktop went bad so instead of getting a new hard drive, ordering the recovery media, and reinstalling Vista as well as software and updates, I said it's cheaper and more feasible to get a new desktop, considering the prices are much lower than when she purchased this desktop four or so years ago.  They both agreed and I showed them the HP Slimline model Staples had for sale in the paper. It's more than enough for her needs. I told them all they need is that and I'll take care of the rest. I told them to get the Corel program again so I can install it no the new one and because the old one won't work with Windows 7 64 bit.

They got the HP Slimline and the Corel software. I took everything back to my SOHO and started working on it. I did the normal routine on the PC I always do such as, uninstalling the bloatware crap, installing all available updates, antivirus, and installing the Corel software she purchased.

After installing the Corel software and transferring the data from the old drive to the new PC, I double-clicked on a .wpd file to make sure it opened properly in this Corel Home Suite she had purchased. To my surprise, it did not. I was like, WTF?

I went online and did some research on the .wpd extension and realized it was a format for Corel WordPerfect. She had purchased the Corel Home Suite which are two different programs all together. The home suite is more of a lower-priced package for families who want to do office stuff (letters, resumes, etc) as well as spreadsheets and pictures with the "Photo Album" and "Paint it!" software. The Corel WordPerfect Office Suite has more advanced office tools such as PDF creation, working with MS Office files, and more. There is a Home and Student version for $99.99 for up to three PCs. That's $50 less than MS Office Home and Student.

So, the question is, for people who only purchased one Corel Suite in the years of using PCs, how would they know which one is the right one? People see Corel on the box and it mentions the software to write, do spreadsheets, and more, for about $70, why would they get the more expensive one with most of the features they would never use? The Corel Home Suite should honestly be able to open the .wpd files. I find it stupid and foolish on Corel's part they do not allow that. MS Office can open the files which is great. It's a good thing the newer PCs come with Office Starter to be able to open Word and other types of files. It would be foolish to have to spend more money to do that.

So, now the question is going to be, would she want to get the Corel WordPerfect Office for $99, which is about $30 more than the one she had already purchased and be able to use it on this and the husband's laptop or would she rather stick with this one? I don't use Corel for obvious reasons I'm not going to get into here but I'm sure this software suite is going to be way more different than the WordPerfect Office she is used to. Another question is... will Staples let her exchange the opened Corel software in exchange for the other one. Because it costs a bit more, they might but that always depends on how customer friendly the manager is. She can still open the files within Word and then save them as a Word file but, with so many of those files, I don't think she'll want to do that. Plus, if the Corel Home Suite isn't like the other one she is used to, why keep this one?

So, that's the conundrum this time! I'll post an update on the situation.

Another important post will be coming soon so stay tuned!

- Dragon

Why doesn't Dial-up just GO AWAY already?!

Towards the end of April, a customer, Burt, who I help out many times in Fort Pierce, told me about a friend he knows, Ralph, who was having computer problems. Burt told me Ralph's computer was about as old as Burt's old one before I helped him upgrade to a newer Win7 machine. Burt's previous computer was an HP running Windows Me. If you are unaware of Windows Me, it was basically more of an "upgrade" operating system from Windows 98 SE. You can find out more about this short-lived OS (Operating System) here: Windows Me From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Burt then said Ralph was still using Dial-Up and it wasn't letting him get online to check his email anymore because of some error. After an aloud "Ugh!" from me, I said I'll still help Ralph out because that's the kind of guy I am. Burt then gave me Ralph's contact information and address.

A couple of days later, I gave Ralph a call to see what the situation was and set up an appointment. I arrived at Ralph's house on the 21st of April, headed into his office and this is what I found...

It was an HP Pavilion 6746C. The full specs can be found on HP's website. Don't get  me wrong; I have nothing against that computer. Heck, my first PC I actually bought was an HP Pavilion 6835. But that was over eleven years ago!! I have upgraded many times since then and had recently purchased a newer HP Slimline model. One big difference between myself and the man I was helping out is; he is in his eighties and never really used or had a need for a PC (his wife always used it) and I started out with PCs as a hobby, used them for college, and now, obviously, for my computer business and everything else. The main reason why he wants to use the computer now is so he can email his daughter back and forth who lives out of state. That's it but I think that's great.

Now, on to the problem at hand and conclusion. I had Ralph show me what was going on with his dial-up.  Basically, the Walmart dial-up software (yes, Walmart had an internet service!) he was using was corrupted and needed to be reinstalled; something about the registry settings in the program or something to that affect. I asked Ralph if he had the Walmart disc (or disk) laying around so I can reinstall the program. He gave me a CD-R with "Netscape" written on it. I had a puzzled look on my face as to why he gave me this disc of which he said he used to try to reinstall too but to no avail. After trying to install the program using this disc, multiple times, I realized it was a Netscape.ca disc..... a Canadian version! Trying to explain this to him after showing him it was asking for a "province" to choose for access number retrieval was a BIG chore. So, I said I'll see if I can find the Walmart disc and get it all taken care of.

After doing some research online about this situation in my SOHO (Small Office/Home Office), I found out Walmart merged with Netscape's internet service and there was no way to reinstall the older Walmart program. The download links were redirecting to Walmart's main site so I downloaded the Netscape ISP software and installed it. 

After trying to log onto the Netscape service using the Walmart log in information, it denied it, saying it needed to be an "@netscape.com" username. I then decided to give the Netscape company a call and tell them the situation. The guy pretty much said I could not redownload the older Walmart program and would have to create a new Netscape account for the customer. The billing information would still be the same. I said, thank you, and hung up the phone. 

There I sat, at around 2AM or so in the morning wondering what the best route was to go about this screwed up situation. Here is a man who just wants to use cheap dial-up, which was working fine all these years until recently, to talk to his daughter who lives out of state. But, of course, the service merged with another service (happens too much in the computer industry: Compuserve-AOL, Skype-Microsoft, need I say more?) and that requires a new email address. So, I thought about just doing away with this Netscape crap all together and decided to go for Netzero, considering we had to change the email address and this ISP is newer and more popular than Netscape, which is, surprisingly, still around. 

I went to the Netzero site to download the software to install on the PC I was setting up for the customer. After many attempts at trying to find a link to DOWNLOAD the software to set it up, I ended up chatting with customer service online. The transscript is as follows with no edits:

You are now connected with : Diana
Diana:	My name is Diana, how may I help you?
Diana:	Hi Justin, how may I help you?
You:	Hi, Diana.
You:	I have a situation....
You:	I am trying to help out an old customer of mine who has been using walmart connect (now netscape connect) for a long while until it stopped working on his 12 year old Me PC.
You:	I'd like to try to get him away from that crap ISP and set him up with a netzero dialup account but, of course, there are no more netzero cd's around for obvious reasons.
You:	I went to the site to see if I can download it to install on his PC without having to sign up for an account first.
You:	I need to have some game plan by 10:30a tomorrow. It's now close to 5am where I am.
Diana:	Hi Justin, please be informed that in order to download the NetZero CD Rom first you need to sign up for an account.
Diana:	Please visit our Web site at http://www.netzero.net/support/start/cd.html for information about ordering a NetZero CD, installing and creating an account.
You:	I understand but that is quite a challenge when the customer's house has no internet access at all and uses dial-up of which I am trying to fix.
Diana:	Hi Justin you may also call us at our sales number at 1-800-638-9876 and a Customer Service representative will be happy to assist you. Representatives are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
You:	Thank you very much for your time.
Diana:	It has been my pleasure serving you today.
Diana:	Do you have any other concerns or questions that I can assist you with?
You:	Other than wishing dial-up access in the US would not exist anymore, no, but thank you. No offense to Netzero though, of course. I started out with Juno a long time ago.

So, there you have it. As you can see above, the ONLY way to download the Netzero software is to sign up for an account FIRST or possibly have them send a disc by calling the customer service number, which will take a week or so to get. Is it me or do you also find not being able to download the software to set up on a PC in a location with NO internet access kind of RETARDED?!  Here it is, 5AM and I've been up since 8AM or so the previous morning with no solution so I had a thought...

I went to Att.com to see if they had any specials because I know the DSL lite is $19.95 a month or something close to there. I went to the site and, sure enough, they had this deal where if you sign up for the faster service (Xtreme or whatever it's called now), you get the modem for free instead having to pay $75 for the damn thing. I printed out the pages with this information and, finally, headed to bed and worked on a game plan to try to convince this man, who just wants dial up and nothing fancy, to sign up and use DSL.

I  gave him a call and went back to his house the following day (or the day after that), told him about the situation, told him about AT&T's current offer and he agreed to it. I called up AT&T for him and got him all set up with the service. The DSL kit came later that week. He gave me a call, I showed up again, hooked it all up and he was good to go. I had to train him a bit on the new "simpler" set-up and, after a few tries, he managed to do it on his own.

So, the moral of this story and adventure is... never try to fix anyone's dial up issues anymore. It's not worth my trouble and their disgust when I tell them why it can't be fixed. For about $20 a month, which is only $10 more than dial up, why hang on to dial up? I know there are some reasons where one has no choice but if it is your area and you can get it, go for it!!! You'll thank me later!

And like I said in the title, why doesn't dial-up just GO AWAY already... in the US?!! To me, it isn't worth the trouble anymore... especially when NEW PCs DO NOT come with a DIAL UP MODEM!! Another customer I helped out had to spend an additional $60 with her new PC to get a USB dial-up modem. After a few months of trouble with that and her Gmail account.... I had her switch to DSL too. So, there you go, AT&T, I added those two, plus another two (one being Burt who I mentioned above and a friend of mine who lives in the same community) to your service. Where is my reward? ;-) I should contact them about being an affiliate.

Until next time....

Dragon

My next trip at Staples made me a happy camper because I was satisfied and so was my Stuart customer

On March 30, 2011 at 2:00PM, I had an appointment to meet another customer in Fort Pierce to purchase the same HP desktop noted in the previous post. He had an old Gateway with Xp so I told him it was time for a new one and he agreed.

He went to the Staples in Fort Pierce a day prior to see what they had available. He decided on the Slimline or the other HP a step up from that model. He called me that day asking if he can keep his current monitor or purchase a new one. I said he would be better off getting a new one because his computer and monitor were over six years old and his monitor has been doing odd things. We made an appointment the next day to get a new PC at the Staples in Fort Pierce.

After taking care of some personal things that morning and before I headed to Fort Pierce to meet him, I decided to give the Fort Pierce Staples a call to make sure they had the PC in stock because of the reasons already stated in the previous post. It was a Wednesday so I already had a big assumption and gut feeling they were sold out; they were.

Being near the PSL Staples store, I asked the man on the phone if any other stores had them in stock. He said the ones in St. Lucie were showing some in stock. I then said this is for a customer of mine I was going to meet in Fort Pierce and wanted to know if there was going to be an issue if I were to purchase the PC in the PSL store and return it in the Fort Pierce store and have my customer repurchase it there with a monitor and everything else he wanted. He said that wouldn't be a problem. I thanked him and hung up the phone.

I drove into the PSL Staples store parking lot and went inside to check if they had any in stock. I didn't see it on the shelf but saw a tag for it and nothing else (no "Sorry this item is out of stock" sign). I asked the EasyTech guy to check for me. He said inventory showed some in stock. He looked at the top stock above the displayed PCs and found one. After asking him to hold onto it for me for a minute, I walked outside to give my customer a call.

While talking to my customer outside, I told him what was going  on and he agreed with what I was doing for him. I told him I'll still meet him at his house in about thirty minutes.

I went back in the store and told the EasyTech man I'll get the PC and nothing else. I then told him about my incident which occurred about two weeks ago (noted in the previous post) because he sees me in the store a lot and remembers me as does the other EasyTech man who used to work at the store I used to work for over a year ago. The man I was talking to then pulled out this sheet:

I honestly couldn't believe my eyes! It was a sheet with the website and password for the online training my customer wanted a couple weeks ago, yet the manager didn't let her have it!! I thanked the man and told him how much I appreciated it and quickly stuck it in my pocket so he didn't get in trouble for going above and beyond to help me out. After he rung me up for the HP, I thanked him again and headed out and to Fort Pierce to meet my customer at his house.

After a nice thirty minute drive, I was at my customers house in Fort Pierce. I went inside for a bit and talked to him and his wife about what was going on. I suggested and then they agreed we use my car to drive to Staples. I don't mind driving my customers to the store and I've done this a few times before.

We arrived at the Staples store, I brought the PC I bought from the PSL store inside and we started looking at the ones on display. He decided on the one I already purchased at the other store and also picked out a 21.5" Samsung monitor. We were all set and they both started to look for the EasyTech man who helped him out before. I saw the man I usually see when I shop there and put my hand up with my finger pointing upwards. I don't yell across the room for them, do a big annoying wave, or even snap my fingers. I find that to be VERY rude and, after having it done to me back then, it pisses the associate off to no end! Being in retail for many years, I respect the people who work in retail. I know how the job is and how people treat them and I do my best to make sure I'm not one of those customers.

The EasyTech noticed me and, after he was finished with his current customer, headed over and greeted me and "our" customers who he helped the previous day and who we were both helping that day. After talking about the computer and about the one I brought in, we headed to the EasyTech bench so I can do my return and they can repurchase it. My customer mentioned the protection plan and I told him what it was about and had the EasyTech man tell them more about it. I said to the customer it was their call. They both agreed on the two year. So, they got the HP Slimline, 21.5" Samsung monitor, and two year protection plan. That made us all happy; the customer because he got what he wanted to get, the EasyTech man because he got a good sale with the protection plan, and myself because everything the customer wanted was in stock and I'll be able to go back to his place and set everything up for him and train him a bit on how to use it. Also... it's another Xp machine replaced with a new Windows 7 machine which, for some odd reason, makes me happy because I love helping people with brand new technology.

We were all set and headed out of the store and, like they say, the rest... is history! ;-)

One thing I would just like to note on the online training I mentioned above: it is stated on the sheet the online training is a $230 value. The training covers Windows 7 and Office 2010. This is just a site where you click "play" and go through some videos. There is no interaction nor is there any documentation the person can print out. So, in my opinion, I don't believe this is really worth $230. Back when I worked in Best Buy when Vista was out, we had a disc for sale for $20 which covered about the same things this site covers.

But don't take my word for it, check it out for yourself. Click here for the link to the Windows 7 training. Click here for the Office 2010 training Leave me a comment and let me know what you think!

You may, of course, leave a comment about anything else I post or even send me an email.

That's it for now! Until next time,

- Dragon

Staples didn't go the extra mile to make my customer a happy camper

On March 6, 2011, I met one of my customers, whom I've been taking care of for over 8 years since I opened the business, at the Staples in Port St. Lucie Florida to help with a new PC purchase. She lives in Stuart and I was going to have her pick the PC up there but, like a lot of times when it comes to Staples, they were sold out in that store. In case you didn't note above, this was a Sunday, the day stores have the new ads out and the day people go shopping for the things in the ad which are currently on sale that week. Having something not in stock in a store the day the ad starts is just foolish and is bad for business. Also (and most notably), it upsets customers AND business customers who shop there for THEIR customers to satisfy their technology needs. I know this because I've been in retail for eight years and I know how the "system" works.

The PC in question I recommended for her and the one she eventually purchased (after some persuasion since she was still using an 8+ year old HP desktop running Xp but she trusted my judgement and knew I'll take care of her) was the HP Pavillion Slimline s5710f. At the time it was selling for $349.99. You can click on that link above for the specifications of the desktop. As you can see, it's not the top of the line, but for basic computer tasks she uses a PC for, it's more than enough for her needs.

During that sale week and a few weeks prior, Staples was (and still is to this day this post goes out) offering a few free things:

If you have trouble seeing the above ad snip, it says: FREE PC Setup | FREE data transfer | FREE Microsoft online training. I obviously was going to do the setup and data transfer for my customer so she just wanted the training. I mentioned this to her as well and said this would have been a nice thing to get because it was free and whatever questions she had after the training, I could have helped her with. She mentioned this to the Easytech associate who was ringing her out. He was putting it in for her but the register required him to fill out a work order sheet. Basically, this sheet requires them to fill out information about services being performed on the PC, which entails them to keep the PC in the store until the work has been completed. He did not know why it was doing this and neither did I because it was just a website to go to and it does not require any setup. He brought the manager over and she said the training needed to be entered along with the setup and data transfer. Basically, it was a package deal. I asked if they can add that stuff to it and I just take the PC to work on but they enter it in the system  stating they would be working on it. This will be a win-win I thought; they get to ring that package out so it will look good for their store numbers and the customer is happy because she got what she wanted. Of course, she did not allow this to be done. So my customer got the PC, Office 2010, and left the store a little upset.

Here is what I  didn't understand:

• No where in the ad did it say this was a "package" deal. It just said it was a $300 value. 
• Since it was a "package" deal, where everything had to be rung up as a package, why couldn't everything be rung up and just have the PC services being performed say "completed" just to make the customer happy so she gets the online training she wanted and I can continue to work on her PC? If that was not possible, why not just give the customer the website and password needed so she can go to the site? 
• Also, and here is what really concerned me, this package deal was for any new PC a customer purchased in the store. What if the new PC the customer purchased was the FIRST PC they ever purchased. They obviously would have wanted the "FREE setup" and the "FREE Microsoft online training"  so they could learn how to use their FIRST PC they ever bought. They did not need the data transfer. Now, because it was a package deal, they probably could not have gotten two out of three and that would have upset that customer as well. I'm sure they wouldn't have rung that package up and done the two out of three services because they couldn't even do the simpler one out of three listed in that package. I honestly think the customer should have a choice in what FREE thing they want to have done on their PC. Having it as a "package" which does not state it being a "package" is not good for the customer and not good for the store as well who is "required" to do all three services, which will take a few days to get done.

So, as you can see, my customer and I, being a small business owner who shops at Staples A LOT for my business needs and my customers personal needs, were not happy campers.

Introduction

Hello and welcome to the blog of Dragon PC Training & Repair. This blog will mainly focus on the Dragon's business and customer-related experiences when it comes to technology stores, sites, services, and anything else he comes across in his business. The purpose of this is to get the word out on companies and services who deserve compliments for their job well done or, unfortunately, legit and realistic complaints for something they could have done to satisfy the customer but have failed to do so.

In the future, there may also be technology tips and recommendations for everyone to learn from. For now, everyone can find out what the Dragon goes through with his computer business when dealing with the above so you can learn how to solve the issues the Dragon comes across in case it happens to you in the future.

If you have any questions, comments, or complaints about what the Dragon posts, feel feel to send an email to him or leave a comment.  He'll be more than glad to get back to you!

Have a great day and stay tuned for the first real post coming soon. You can also follow the Dragon on Twitter for updates @dpctraining.

- Dragon