Hasta La Gadget!

Amazon lockers have been popping up at 7-eleven stores and UK retailers, but now they’re arriving at what seems like a conflicted destination: bricks and mortar (and online) arch-competitor, Staples. The service allows shoppers who missed a delivery to head over to a locker and nab their packages using a 72-hour code, with the host retailer keeping a small fee in return. But there aren’t too many items at Staples that you can’t also find at Amazon, so we hope the office supply giant got a sweetheart deal.

[Image credit: Wikimedia Commons]

Filed under: Misc, Amazon

Order your office supplies from Amazon, pick them up at Staples with upcoming lockers originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 06 Nov 2012 07:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Prone to bouts of buyer’s remorse? Well if you were planning an AT&T flavored purchase, you might want to start the car. A tipster has sent in what appears to be a notice to staff advising that the returns period for equipment and service cancellations will be shrinking from 30 to 14-days — effective tomorrow. Purchases made today would benefit from the longer period, and our tipster claims that there may be a grace period until November where returns could be processed as if still under the original scheme (what sounds, to us, like a courtesy for those who didn’t read the fine print). We don’t have all the fine print, but head past the break for a little more on the specifics.

[Thanks, Anonymous]

Update: AT&T has confirmed the policy change to us, noting that it’ll indeed go into effect tomorrow, but won’t affect certain business customers. You’ll find the full response after the break, while we’re getting word on how this will work in California, where 30 return periods are required by law.

Continue reading AT&T cutting returns and service cancelation period from 30 to 14 days, starting tomorrow? (update: confirmed)

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, AT&T

AT&T cutting returns and service cancelation period from 30 to 14 days, starting tomorrow? (update: confirmed) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 06 Oct 2012 12:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Allow me to explain how two discussions started off in very similar ways, and ended… shall we say, differently. This is me, attempting to muster any sort of pleasantness in my voice at some ungodly hour of the morning on a Google Voice connection from Dubai back to the US:

“Hey! I’m having to cut a trip short due to an emergency back home. I actually purchased a trip protection plan when I checked out online — would it be possible to provide a refund for this flight now that I need to cancel it?”

From here, I was told that this was too vague. That I would need medical proof of an injury or illness, and that if it were a pre-existing condition — something like reoccurring cancer — that simply wouldn’t do. Oh, and if it’s a home emergency, you’ll need proof from your home insurance company that your abode is “uninhabitable.”

“So… I’m basically hosed here? This trip protection plan doesn’t really protect very much, does it?”

“… Do you want to file the claim?”

“No. That’s okay. Thanks for your time.”

It doesn’t have to be this way.

Continue reading The extremes of technology customer service: how common sense and empathy create unmatched loyalty

Filed under: Misc

The extremes of technology customer service: how common sense and empathy create unmatched loyalty originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 24 Sep 2012 12:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google Talk and Twitter had their moments last week, and now it’s Yahoo’s turn. As noted by a flood of readers — and confirmed by the company itself — the exclamation marked mail service is currently experiencing some issues. Yahoo Mail is prompting users to accept its terms and then just sort of conking out. We reached out to Yahoo for comment and received the following response:

Yahoo! Mail, Messenger and other areas of Yahoo! may currently be inaccessible or slow to respond to some users in certain locations. We are working to correct the issue and restore all functionality immediately. We know that this may have caused some inconvenience and we apologize to our users who might be affected.

We’ll update you when things are back to normal.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Update: Phew, everything seems to be back in working order.

Filed under: Internet, Software

Yahoo confirms Mail / Messenger outage, working on a fix originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 31 Jul 2012 13:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s a rough day for internet communication. First Google Talk, now Twitter. The microblogging service confirmed that it’s currently having some issues — a fact independently verified by our frustrated staff — adding that “Our engineers are currently working to resolve the issue.” We’ll let you know when you can safely return to your regularly scheduled tweeting.

Update: Everything seems to be back to normal. You know what to do.

Update 2: Twitter just posted an apology and explanation for the outage on its blog. Turns out, tweets weren’t making their way to the web because both a primary and back-up system in Twitter’s data centers failed simultaneously, leaving us bereft of 140-character nuggets of wisdom for about two hours. Rest assured, VP of Engineering Mazen Rawashdeh and his team have apologized for the inconvenience and are working to prevent the problem in the future.

Filed under: Internet, Software

Twitter confirms site issues, working to resolve things (update: Twitter apologizes and explains) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 26 Jul 2012 11:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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