From Paul Graham's essay The Hundred-Year Lanugage :
Object-oriented programming offers a sustainable way to write spaghetti code. It lets you accrete programs as a series of patches. Large organizations always tend to develop software this way, and I expect this to be as true in a hundred years as it is today.
The above quote succinctly describes my complaint about the pervasivness of side-effects in object-oriented programming.
Seth Godin's blog entry prompted me to post about a similar experience, also one famous for excellent customer service.
Last week I ordered a Dell Inspiron 700m. Yesterday I was browsing techbargains (looking for a good deal on a nice LCD) when I noticed a new coupon applicable for the unit. I priced it and with the new coupon, there was $180 difference. I first tried to chat with a customer service rep online. No luck. I then filled out a form explaining the issue (there was a problem with the system not recognizing my order number, but what web site is perfect, right? Oh yeah... Amazon.com). Anyway, I hear back with some nonsense about them seeing a pricing difference on the unit and offering me a $100 coupon good for a future order. I decide to just give them a call and explain the situation.
After much explanation of the issue, being offered the $100 coupon again and then a free printer (worth less than $100), I pointed out that I could - and was tempted to - refuse shipment of the first unit and place another order for the new price. I was eventually transferred to someone in the refunds department who after repeating the explanation to managed after further rigamarole to give me the refund.
I can't believe this is unusual for Dell. Their remarks about them only usually doing price adjustments when the product itself changes price, not on promotions strikes me as at best, an inefficient business practice. The first rep I spoke to in fact suggested I do as I had contemplated: place another order refuse the shipment of the first. What a waste? The fact that I had to be on the phone for an hour to save them money is ridiculous.
Does anyone with inside knowledge know: is this sort of thing really unusual for Dell? Do they send out many additional orders simply to adjust the price of an item after a promotion?
