The Haggler: A Customer Who’s Always Satisfied

 

WHO is Lucas Fayne?

A very happy customer of Kent Elliott Roofing in Burleson, Tex. — that is certainly one answer.

“We were very satisfied with the service and efficiency of your company,” Mr. Fayne wrote on Kent Elliott Roofing’s Web site, in the testimonial section. “Getting the quote was quick and easy, and your staff started on time each day and worked hard. We are very confident with the job you did and have been recommending you to all of our neighbors.”

But let’s not diminish Lucas Fayne by describing him as merely a man who is delighted with his new roof and is living, according to the site, in Irving, Tex.. Because he is much more than that. Mr. Fayne is also a gentleman flat-out tickled by the work done by Pro West Remodeling, a construction company in Stow, Ohio.

“We were very satisfied with the service and efficiency of your company,” Mr. Fayne wrote on the testimonials section of Pro West’s site. “Getting the quote was quick and easy, and your staff started on time each day and worked hard. We are very confident with the job you did and have been recommending you to all our neighbors.”

That compliment was paid when Mr. Fayne lived in Akron, Ohio. At some point — it is not clear when — Mr. Fayne lived in Belmont, N.H., and invested in yet another home improvement project, this time with a company called American Exteriors in Manchester, N.H.

“We were very satisfied with the service and efficiency of your company,” he wrote.

Etc.

If you are like the Haggler, at this point you have questions. Like, why does Mr. Fayne move around so much? And why can’t he find novel language to rhapsodize about all these companies?

Before answering, let us take a moment to appreciate just how nomadic Mr. Faye is, and just how eager he is to share the good news about the contractors who have worked on his 50 homes.

That’s right — 50 homes. Just Google “Lucas Fayne” and you will find that the first five pages of results are nothing but huzzahs for the gifted men and women who have enhanced his houses in states across this nation. There is Mr. Fayne in Chesterfield, Mo., lavishing praise on Haddim Construction. There he is in Bethany, Okla., spreading the word about Metro Tech Maintenance and Home Improvement in Oklahoma City. And that’s him in Minneapolis, rejoicing about the fine efforts of Guarantee Exteriors of Denver.

By the time the Haggler was done browsing through all these testimonials — most of them word-for-word copies — he had begun to entertain some doubts about Lucas Fayne. And then the Haggler noticed that these sites had more in common than just one elated customer. All were created with software by Intuit, which offers services for building Web sites.

Time to call Intuit, the Haggler thought. A spokeswoman, Elisabeth Gettelman, said Lucas Fayne was indeed an invention of a software writer, one who worked at Homestead Technologies, which Intuit acquired in 2007. “Lucas Fayne” is part of a Web site template for small-business owners, one that has been bought by thousands of companies over the years. Obviously, companies are supposed to swap out the fake name and fake blurb with a real customer and a real blurb.

But many, as we have seen, do not.

So, what is with all the Lucas feigning?

The Haggler called around and discovered that many Fayne-endorsed companies prefer not to discuss the nation’s most omnipresent, fictional customer. Others, like William McVicker of Pro West Modeling, gave an answer that might be more appropriate for a phone solicitation:

“I’m really not interested but thanks anyway,” he said before hanging up.

Somebody who identified himself as Bona — just Bona — at AB Stone Innovation in Madison, Ala., said, “I do believe we have a customer named Lucas.”

Bona then checked with the people who run AB Stone’s Web site and called back to say that he was embarrassed to have a made-up person fawning over his company.

“It bothers me,” he said. “We’re going to change it.”

Well, that’s nice. The Haggler, meanwhile, has been trying to figure out if there is any deeper meaning to the ubiquity of Lucas Fayne. And a thought occurred while looking at the Web site of Diamond Roofing, which is based in Manhattan in New York and has been commended by you know who.

(Actually, “Michel Belair” was recently swapped for “Lucas Fayne” on the site, though oddly enough the full “We were very satisfied” quote stayed intact.)

As the Haggler talked to John Luciano, owner of Diamond Roofing,?he noticed that the company’s email address is weshowup@hotmail.com. It turns out that “we show up” has been a company motto of sorts, Mr. Luciano explained when asked about the phrase.?

The Haggler read that and thought: Oh, come on. Is customer service in this country so benighted that it’s enough to simply boast that you will “show up?” Not “show up on time,” “show up with the right tools” or “show up, do the work and charge you the amount we agreed on before we got there”?

This motto vowed only that someone from the company would be physically present, at some point.

“And you know what,” Mr. Luciano told the Haggler, “there is another company using that same slogan in Brooklyn,” adding that he was trying to stop that business from doing so.

Mr. Luciano would not elaborate in a terse follow-up phone call on Friday. To be fair, the Web site seems also to have long pushed a far more ambitious phrase, “We get the job done!” But ?can you imagine, dear reader, companies ?fighting over a motto that promised the?bare minimum?of customer service?

Only one man could hear about this tussle and find it anything but sad.

You already know his name.?

E-mail: haggler@nytimes.com. Keep it brief and family-friendly, and go easy on the caps-lock key. Letters may be edited for clarity and length.

 

Editorial: Dear RIM, I'm your customer and I don't wear a suit

TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因 Like Joanna shamelessly admitted in her editorial a few months back, I was a BlackBerry addict. I'm also a 20-year old college student / tech-head whose phone serves every purpose from communications device to music player to TV remote. I tried to switch cold turkey and bought an iPhone 4 in August, but somewhere around Thanksgiving I gave in and picked up a Verizon Bold. I've been double fisting ever since -- using the BB almost exclusively for BBM, and my iPhone for everything else.

Fast forward to late last week when I attended a meeting in New York with Tim Stevens and RIM CEO Mike Lazaridis to get the latest dish on the PlayBook. As Lazaridis demoed myriad features from HDMI presentation mode to the built-in music player on the company's hotly debated tablet, it hit me: the one question I've been pondering since getting a real look at the device. Who is it for? At that moment, I realized the problem that's been plaguing RIM as of late -- and not just in its tablet strategy, but its phone strategy as a whole: it doesn't know who its products are for and subsequently can't deliver. Am I crazy? Read on after the break and hear me out.

From where I stand, RIM's demographic is broken into two distinct consumer groups. On one end of the spectrum are the all-important business users. These are the folks who have aged with the company itself, shelling out for its BES services -- and who RIM expects to stay faithful through thick and thin. But, there's a whole other demographic the company seems to be ignoring at the other end: the younger crowd for whom the BlackBerry's messaging prowess has significantly altered the messaging -- and subsequently the social -- landscape. I have many friends who have proclaimed that they prefer the apps and features of other mobile platforms, but simply won't switch because they "can't live without BBM." The company's BBM-centric ad campaigns of late reveal that it isn't completely aloof to this, but RIM simply can't compete with the "cool" factor of other platforms like webOS, iOS, or Android... and it won't be able to evade this reality forever.

The PlayBook was RIM's last real chance to prove that it has a clue -- that it could still make something decidedly cool. I was skeptical of early previews and teasers, but was completely blown away when I got my hands on a demo unit at CES. Yet, three months later in that room with Mike and Tim, I couldn't help but wonder how that time was spent. As I heard about marginally useful features such as HDMI output and a complicated wireless file-sharing implementation, my worries that the company was headed down the wrong path were confirmed. Yes, the PlayBook has a special "Presentation Mode" useful for businessmen frequently giving PowerPoint presentations, but will the enterprise really allow extra software to be installed just for simple file transfers? Each PlayBook will ship with a couple of games from EA to appeal to consumers, but other options in App World seem to be lacking, especially compared to competitors. My point is this: half-pleasing everyone is not the same as fully pleasing some. In fact, it's probably worse.

Why does the company refuse to cater to people like me? The folks who simply must have the BlackBerry's messaging prowess, but also want the option to do more than just that. QNX is supposed to be the answer to all of these questions, but the platform is barely ripe enough for a tablet, and who knows what that means for phones. RIM has been completely silent on the matter save for Lazaridis' outbreak at D, and every leaked device simply points to more of the same. To make things even more confusing, the PlayBook's Android pseudo-support has us asking why the company didn't just take the Google-paved road from the start. There are a lot of people out there -- a couple of past and present Engadget editors included -- who would love a souped-up BlackBerry Torch running Android 2.3 with a BBM icon emblazoned on its high-resolution homescreen. Heck, if the PlayBook ran Honeycomb, you probably wouldn't be reading this here editorial. Let's face it: hardware has always been a strongsuit for the 'Berry maker, but aside from its messaging products, the company has stagnated on its core OS. (Perhaps this is why it's seen fit to acquire companies like Dataviz, QNX, and TAT.)

More and more companies are offering employees their choice of devices, and despite RIM's better-than-estimated latest financials, it'll eventually need to see the writing on the wall. The audience it has had since the beginning is in the very early stages of an exodus, and the one it happened to stumble upon will not stick around forever if it can't deliver products that can do more stuff. The company thought it would attract more development (and thus more apps) by offering so many different development options for QNX, but early indicators tell us that it's serving more to confuse devs and users alike. Not to mention the fact that Gartner doesn't have such high expectations for QNX's tablet market share, nor RIM's long-term smartphone position -- and IDC indicates much of the same.

The saddest part of the whole situation is that RIM seems to take it personally. Lazaridis' press demeanor of late does not project an image of a company fully in control of its vision -- something Don explored earlier. In interviews he's indicated that he feels singled out because of the company's success and that he must prove the RIM's virtue again and again. Sorry Mike, but you haven't been singled out because you're so successful and it isn't the media that's short-sighted. On the outside it looks like your company is sitting dormant while competitors have made strides to steal customers from right underneath you. It's time for an intervention, and for someone to formulate a plan to capitalize on current strengths -- BlackBerrys don't have thumbwheels any more.

Unlike some other less fortunate companies, RIM has a built-in group of core users for whom the BlackBerry is not only a phone, but a part of their lives. This is nearly unheard of in this industry -- and probably only rivaled by Apple -- so it's not something to be taken for granted. I'm still in college for a few more years, and I haven't found anything worthy of replacing my BBM list, so for now I'll keep double fisting. But look, I can only carry two phones for so long...