Phone Upgrade Nightmare

I had such a wonderful experience trying to upgrade my phone from the Blackberry Tour to the new 4G Samsung Epic. First, I would just like to say that I loved the phone features, the applications and the look and feel of the Samsung Epic. However, it's hardly worth having a phone packed with so much punch when you can't keep a battery life of more than a quarter of a day.

Smartphones, learn a lesson here. Stop cutting corners and selling the new features and the great looks through marketing gimmicks. You're going to have returns (a bunch of them too) because people are not going to keep these phones, at least not the people who value the dollars that they earn. I'm not going to pay for a phone and a plan when I have to see my battery life tick away right before my eyes. It's not normal to watch a battery drain a quarter of the way by 9:30 in the morning!

Either redesign your software and processors or provide a bigger battery to deal with the ill-designed, inefficient Operating Systems. I would suggest the involved companies hire more experienced developers and engineers, but that would just cost too much of THEIR time and money. And why did they charge me a re-stocking fee when I returned a phone that was obviously defective? Yes, I consider a poorly functioning phone to be defective, so sorry if every single one of them functions the same. It just means that every single one of them is defective.

Consider this:

For every 100 customers, say 25 make a return at $35.00 for a re-stocking fee. That's $850.00.

If you charge $10.00 per each new phone (call it a new phone service fee and deduct it out of the rebate scam already in place) you can do away with the $35.00 re-stocking fee (we'll get into why a re-stocking fee is bad business later on).

If you have 10,000 customers who bought new phones and 2,500 made a return in the old system,you made $87,500.

However...

If you have 10,000 customers who bought new phones and 2,500 made a return in the new improved Diane Carlisle system, you made $100,000.

$100,000 new system
-$87,500 old system

This way of doing business would yield $12,500 more per 10,000 customers. You do the math, I've been drinking beer.

You would make a profit of $1,250,000 per million customers over the old way of doing business, and you won't piss off your customers by charging them a re-stocking fee after they're already pissed off and disappointed.

Charging re-stocking fees is bad customer service. Why do you think someone would change their mind about wanting one of your phones? Maybe because it's a crappy phone? If you put out a product that some people don't like, isn't it pretty shitty to then charge them $35.00 for the inconvenience of YOUR selling them a crappy product? STOP SELLING CRAPPY PRODUCTS! Then you won't have to worry about a re-stocking fee.

Customers are almost always happy to pay a lesser fee up front as a "just in case I want to return it later" security blanket. It's much better business than the "you didn't read the fine print you dumbass" knife in the back.