So I Take My Toyota Matrix In To Get The Pedal Fixed…. [UPDATED x2]

… And I have to admit, I’m wondering if this fix that Toyota has come up with will do the job. I’ve got a picture of what Toyota is doing to modify the “sticky” gas pedals here.  I also found a video of the actual process here. I have to admit that it doesn’t inspire confidence as this seems sort of like “ghetto engineering” rather than something that a major car company should be doing. But in Toyota’s defense, there are people who report that the fix actually makes the cars perform better.  I’ll let you know what I think when I get the car back tonight.

As an aside, I was going over my series of posts about the problems I’ve had with my Matrix and I noted this sentence from this post:

“The car would now rev to 6000 RPM and surge forward randomly. My wife almost rear ended a E class Mercedes Benz the first time it happened.”

That makes me think that the core issue is electronics rather than mechanical. Given that the Toyota Matrix along with the other cars that were recalled use a “drive by wire” system, that wouldn’t be a shock if that were the case. So one has to wonder if this is the last of this issue.

Of course, after I drop off the car I get the news that Toyota has recalled 437,000 Prius and other hybrid cars because of issues with the brakes that appear to be software related. Lovely. This is just another hit to their image.

Toyota really has some explaining to do. The explaining starts with the US Congress this week when Yoshimi Inaba who runs Toyota North America is in the hot seat. One wonders how he can explain all of this to a bunch of bloodthirsty regulators who are out to score political points in an election year, and still sell cars in North America.

UPDATE: Just when you think it couldn’t get worse for Toyota, it got worse. The US is now investigating steering problems with the 2009/2010 Toyota Corolla. A Corolla driver going by the name of  “Will Austin” posted a comment about this issue last year. Another recall perhaps?

UPDATE #2: I got the car back a couple of hours ago and I’ve driven it in the city and on the highway. The spring tension on the pedal has increased for sure. The pedal feel is much more linear and smooth too. Perhaps this will do something, although I still have my concerns. As an aside, I found a Toyota grocery bag inside my car and I got a free lunch from the dealership I went to. I guess that’s Toyota’s way of saying sorry. They could have of course just said that a whole lot faster with a lot more meaning than they did. It might mean more to Toyota owners.

Symantec Sued Over Auto Renewals… After Promising Not To Auto Renew

A resident of New York State is suing Symantec for billing is credit card for a renewal of his Norton Anti-Virus without informing him first. The funny thing is, Symantec agreed that they would stop doing just that:

Many antivirus vendors enroll customers in automatic renewal programs when they purchase or activate the software, claiming that it’s the only way to guarantee that users stay protected against new threats. Symantec started doing so in 2005, while rival McAfee began four years earlier.

But last June, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced that his office had reached a settlement with Symantec and McAfee over consumer charges that the companies didn’t get users’ approval to automatically bill them, and had made it difficult for customers to opt out or obtain refunds. Symantec and McAfee paid $375,000 each in penalties, and said they would clarify subscription renewal costs, and refund fees to consumers who asked for them within 60 days of being charged.

Symantec and McAfee also agreed to “provide electronic notification to consumers before and after renewal of the subscription,” Cuomo’s office said at the time.

Expect this to play out in court for a bit before being settled.

As an aside, I’ve always wondered why people pay for anti-virus protection when there’s many good if not better products that are available for free. So rather than spring for an anti-virus package at your local Best Buy, try AVG which is on my list of free products that help to secure your PC. Or you can try Microsoft Security Essentials which I’ve written about in the past as that is free as well being good at what it does. In my mind, there’s really very little reason why anyone should have to pay for anti-virus protection.

Dell Warranty Class Action Lawsuit Allowed To Proceed In Ontario

If you’re in Ontario and you have a Dell computer, you may want to pay attention to this. Law professor Micheal Geist has been tracking the story of a young man who needed his computer fixed:

In 2004, Ian Andrews purchased a Dell laptop computer for $1,700. About 2 1/2 years later, the computer began to malfunction, periodically shutting down unexpectedly. Stuck with a problem computer that was past the standard warranty period, Andrews complained to Dell. The computer giant responded that the online contract governing the initial purchase required him to resolve the dispute by arbitration.

Andrews recognized this was not a realistic approach, later stating that, as a university student, he was not in a financial position to retain counsel to support an arbitration claim. Instead, he chose a different course of action, suing the company as part of a class-action lawsuit that brought together thousands of consumers experiencing similar problems.

Dell challenged the class-action suit, but last month the Ontario Court of Appeal sided with Andrews, ruling that it could proceed.

This sounds somewhat similar to a Dell lawsuit that I’ve written about in the past. Why is this decision important for people in Ontario? I’ll let Geist explain:

This latest case represents a major win for Canadian consumer groups, who have tangled with Dell before in a case that ultimately went to the Supreme Court of Canada. Businesses operating online may understandably prefer to limit their likely liability through arbitration, but the resounding response from the Ontario legislature and courts indicates that it should not be possible to force consumers to click away their class-action rights.

I’m all for having consumers protected, so as far as I’m concerned this is great for them. I do have one question though. Dell keeps getting hit with these types of lawsuits. I wonder what’s up with that? Perhaps it’s something that they need to look at so that they are still a viable choice for those who want to buy PCs.

BREAKING NEWS: Rogers Plans To Change The Quick Start Guide

I just got this in my inbox from “my best friends at Rogers” a little while ago:

“Based on customer feedback, Rogers will be implementing changes to the new Quick Start menu.

A new configuration option will be implemented to allow customers to re-order the Guide button launch sequence. Customers will be able to choose between Quick Start menu or the Interactive Program Guide (IPG) as the default launch on the first press of the Guide button on their remote. This new option will be available in the Quick Start menu during the first week of March 2010.

Rogers is also planning further enhancements throughout the year to improve the overall user experience, as well as several technology upgrades over the calendar year.”

So it seems that Rogers has listened to the hordes of angry customers who were not happy about the Quick Start guide. So Rogers customers, how does this news make you feel? Please post a comment and share your thoughts.

Rogers Improves Their “Who Called” Feature…. Put Away The Pitchforks, Please….

My “Best friends at Rogers” e-mailed me yesterday to say that their Who Called feature that is part of their wireless packages has been improved:

Here’s a summary of the changes:

WhoCalled Improvements:

1. Reduced notifications
The customer will receive a notification if no other notification is provided (i.e., missed call log or message waiting indicator). In most instances, that means, the customer is notified only if the phone is off or out of coverage.

2. Clearer Message
In the past, some handsets added the phone number with the date and presented it as one long line. This has been corrected and the customer will now see the phone number line as:

01:416444-5555 @ 9:21 AM 2009/11/11

3. Easy Call Back
Customers are able to easily click on the phone number (or use the menu/option key) to return a call directly from the WhoCalled(tm) message. The line has also been simplified to tell customers how many calls they have missed.

Now that sounds like an improvement that won’t start a firestorm of anger like some other improvements that they’ve made lately. So Rogers Wireless customers, please take a deep breath and be calm. If you subscribe to Who Called, you’ll like this.

Palm Canada Support…. Arrgh!!!!!

I must be living in the Twilight Zone of customer service or something as this stuff just keeps happening to me.

Today I had the “pleasure” of calling Palm Canada technical support as my wife’s Centro lost all the data while on a run (but she backs it up daily so it’s not a big deal) and would no longer connect to the Internet over GPRS nor would it Hotsync properly. I got the Hotsync issues sorted, but couldn’t get it to connect to the Internet. Thus the call to support, and the start of my “fun.” After navigating through their “press 1 for English, press 2 for whatever” menu, I got a woman who while looking up my info hung up on me.

Charming.

I called back and got a different woman who asked for the same info, then put me on hold for almost five minutes (4:20 to be exact… I timed it). She then said that she couldn’t find the serial number of the device and I would have to provide proof of purchase before she could talk to me via fax (she wouldn’t accept a PDF via e-mail). That wasn’t exactly a welcome answer, but I needed this fixed so I offered to whip out my credit card and pay for support (as I’d sort it out after the fact). She refused saying that I would have to fax in my proof of purchase and someone will call me back in a day or two.

So let’s get this straight. I am offering her money to assist me with an issue with one of their products which the recordings on the support line said that I had the option of doing, and she refused my money? WTF?

I admit that I got a bit frustrated (which by the way I tell customers not to do and I should really follow my own advice) at this point and told her that this is really lame and that I was tempted to replace the Centro (which I got my wife for Christmas) with a Blackberry (even though she despises them). The woman told me flat out that “that is your choice.” No apology, no trying to placate me, nothing.

Even Bell Canada is better than that.

One of the things that she did do is point me to a web based chat support system. So I gave that a try. The tech on the other end got right down to work and solved my issue in 10 minutes flat.

So from where I sit, two parts of the same organization have two completely different responses to customers. That is bizarre.

Now I’ve set up call centers and coached people in customer service. In fact I’ve done this for a significant portion of my life. If I were the person at the other end of the phone, here’s how I would have dealt with the situation:

• Gather the information about the customer and the issue.
• Confirm the information if possible. If you can’t do that, offer the customer options that allows the customer to solve the issue on the spot and not in a day or two (by offering me the online chat based support, she at least did that part right). Or simply solve the issue and deal with the back end stuff after the fact.
• If the customer becomes difficult, show some empathy and try to go out of your way to assist them. In no way, shape or form should you have the customer leave the call without their issue being resolved.

Clearly that’s not how things work at Palm Canada. That’s not going to help them sell Pre or Pixie smartphones as customer service is not only what keeps customers coming back to you, but it helps you to sell products as well. So Palm Canada may want to look at their customer service processes and make whatever adjustments needed to have happy customers. Otherwise they will start losing customers. After all, they made life difficult enough for me that I am unlikely to buy one of their products in the future or recommend them to friends and customers.

See how it works Palm?

So IT Nerd… What Do You Think Of The Toyota Pedal Recall?

I have to admit that I’ve been trying to avoid this topic even though I’m currently a not so happy Toyota owner as I’ve documented to a great degree previously. But given the fact that I’ve received several e-mails asking for my thoughts on this topic, I’ll give you my $0.02 worth.

First of all, the pedal recall that is making news right now is the second of two recalls, both to deal with “unintended acceleration.” With the first recall, the issue was supposed to be the floor mats. Now the issue is the pedals. Now it is entirely possible that Toyota is right on both counts. But the story keeps changing, so who knows what the truth is. And if customers don’t know what the truth is, then it makes it difficult for customers to trust you.

Second, when Toyota found a fix for the issue on Friday, they shipped parts to their factories first rather than shipping them to dealers to fix cars that were already in the hands of customers. The net result that dealers and customers were not happy to say the least. The reason given at the time was that it was the way that parts are distributed. That may be true, but the optics suck. Toyota should have either shipped the parts to the dealers (which I think would have made fore better optics), or better explained why parts were going to factories first.

Third, Toyota’s public response has been craptastic. First they were silent which didn’t go over well with Toyota owners. Then when they had a fix, they sent out their top guys in the US and Canada on a media blitz to explain things. The bad part about the latter is that they didn’t come across that well. Nobody I’ve spoken to has been impressed with the performance of Toyota execs thus far as their public statements seem to be “lawyer driven” rather than “customer driven.” But at least in their public statements like this one, they did take responsibility which is good. However it could have come faster and been packaged better.

Right now given my previous experience with Toyota, combined with the above, I don’t exactly get the warm fuzzies from them. Does that mean I’m going to dump my Matrix? No. But will it affect my purchasing decision in terms of what car I get next? Yes. Will it affect what I say about Toyota to friends who ask me about Toyota? Yes.

The thing is that it’s not too late for Toyota. I think they really need to step up their PR efforts and not only accept responsibility to a much greater degree (which will surely make their lawyers cringe). They need to sound human and not reading from a script prepared by a lawyer. They also need to “make good” with their customers. Perhaps they can toss in a few oil changes or extend the warranty for six months or a year or something? Whatever they decide, I think they need to do something to make up for the anxiety that this situation has caused.

If they don’t I suspect that someone else will be the number one car maker in the world.

Is The Rogers Quick Start Guide Being Yanked? [UPDATED]

I’ve got two reports that the Rogers Quick Start Guide that has received almost universal scorn from Rogers customers (along with a not too positive review from yours truly) may be on the way out the door. Here are the reports that I received:

“They got rid of it in my area, Bowmanville, which is right outside Oshawa, which is an hour from Toronto.”

“Well, it is gone for me. Here is a video I made as fast as I could. No editing, just filmed and straight upload to YouTube:”

I am in the midst of getting a comment from Rogers on this to see if it’s true or not. But in the meantime if you’ve seen your Quick Start Guide yanked from your Rogers terminal, please leave me a comment and let me know.

UPDATE: Rogers left a comment. It appears to be some sort of bug.

Bell Canada Rolls Out “Fibe”….. Which Is A Total Shell Game With Consumers Getting The Shaft [UPDATED]

I noticed something new on Bell Canada’s website today. They have something called “Fibe”. Now this makes you think that it’s like Verizon FiOS where they are running fiber to the home. It’s not. It’s fiber to the node, meaning the fiber is terminated in a street cabinet up to several kilometers away from the your home, with the final connection being copper. Which means that this is really VDSL 2+. But it’s actually worse than that. The speeds are 6/1Mbps, 12/1Mbps, 18/1 Mbps and 25/7 Mbps depending on where you live. But the caps are abysmal at 25, 50, 75 and 75 GB for each tier.

Here’s the bottom line. It’s a game of semantics. They want to get the brownie points of having fiber without actually having fiber to the home. They’re at best trying to muddy the waters so that customers will get their Internet services from them. As a result consumers end up losing. What I hope happens is that cable companies show consumers how disingenuous this is and put Bell Canada in it’s place.

Rogers, are you paying attention?

UPDATE: Someone from Bell is paying attention. Besides logging a bunch of BCE IP addresses (nothing new there, Bell has been looking at this blog but not saying anything for as long as this blog has been around) that looked at this story, someone from Bell actually phoned my office number and didn’t leave a message. But since I have call display, I was able to trace the number back to a Bell office. Google suggests that it’s the one at the DVP and Wynford Drive in Toronto. Hmmm…. Perhaps I hit too close to home with this post? Oh yeah, calling the number back was a useless exercise as there was no voice mail (or more likely it is a line assigned to a PBX). Perhaps whomever was calling would drop me an e-mail and tell me why they’re calling me (though I won’t be surprised if they don’t).

Windows 7 RC To Start Shutting Down Real Soon Now

For those of you who are too cheap to buy a copy still running of the release candidate Windows 7, the end is near. Don’t believe me? You might want to pay a visit to the Windows Team Blog:

“For the RC, bi-hourly shutdowns will begin on March 1st, 2010. You will be alerted to install a released version of Windows and your PC will shut down automatically every 2 hours. On June 1st, 2010 if you are still on the Windows 7 RC your license for the Windows 7 RC will expire and the non-genuine experience is triggered where your wallpaper is removed and ‘This copy of Windows is not genuine’ will be displayed in the lower right corner above the taskbar.”

That would be one month from now. So it’s time to pay up for your copy of Windows 7. After all, you wouldn’t want to starve Microsoft of its well deserved cash now would you?