Yeah, it’s pretty darn obvious when you look at the Apple site that Tiger will not be available for sale until 6pm today. I’ve heard of launches at 12:01pmAM, but never a launch in the early evening. Is this the first ever wordwide launch at a specific time? Admittedly, I don’t follow the Apple stuff as closely as I follow the Windows and Linux-related stuff, but I am an Apple customer. I own the eMac.

Continuing the story …

So as I’m driving away, denied from buying Tiger, thinking: Hmm, what do I do next? The m0st logical thing seemed to be to contact Rob Greenlee to see if there was any way I could record the Webtalk Radio show after I stopped by InCompetenceUSA to hopefully be one of the lucky 24 people to get their hands on Tiger.

Rob was good-natured about the situation. The last time I was on their show, it was launch day for the PSP. Dana and he are aware of my passion for/on launch days. He said, no problem, come over after you get Tiger. Rob and Dana are nice people, that’s so cool that they didn’t mind being inconvenienced by me, Apple and InCompetenceUSA.

But there was still absolutely no guarantee that I’d actually be able to purchase Tiger at 6pm since the store had refused to set aside a copy with my name on it for me. Now what?

In my hand was the piece of paper that I had obtained from Nancy with Region #12 Regional Manager, Dick Winters office number on it. 1-800-865-4574. Call it yourself if you like and maybe Reggie will answer the phone. Tell him he’s starring on MakeYouGoHmm. I’m sure he will not be happy that I’m writing about this, but at least it gives him the chance to rebuke whether or not my description of the events that follows is accurate.

I asked to speak to Mr. Winters, the regional manager, and Reggie said that Mr. Winters was not available, but that he could get a message to him. And then Reggie asked what this was regarding and maybe he could help because he was Mr. Winter’s administrative assistant.

I started to explain the situation and Reggie cut me off about two minutes into my explanation:

“Oh, are you the guy who was just at the Tacoma store trying to buy Tiger before the launch time?” Reggie said, somewhat shortly.
“Yes, but I was told by your store manager yesterday that if I showed up before noon I’d be able to buy a copy.”
Reggie informed me that the store could not sell Tiger before 6pm. That was Apple’s policy and InCompetenceUSA would get in trouble if they violated that agreement. They could lose their contract with Apple.

“I understand that, Reggie.” I said, trying to remain patient, but definitely annoyed. “And at this point I’m not expecting your store to sell it to me early. I had plans this morning and I have plans this evening and I was concerned that when I am able to return to your store later tonight the supply will be gone.”

Reggie had a very unprofesssional attitude about the situation and at one point said: “hey, this is all over the place that it’s not available until six.”

Reggie is right that Apple was having a Worldwide Launch at 6pm tonight. See the text screenshot above. I had blogged about this launch yesterday, I already knew about what the Apple stores were doing. What I didn’t realize was that you couldn’t actually buy Tiger before 6pm from any store anywhere. I’ve never heard of such a time sensitive launch. Anybody else?

Apparently neither had the InCompetenceUSA store manager either. This might explain why he gave me the bogus info that as long as I stopped by before noon today I could purchase a copy.

Unfortunately, Reggie seemed totally disinterested in the fact that one of their store managers had given me misinformation. I wanted to know what Mr. Winters was going to do about it because I figured he was one of the few people up the corporate chain that make something happen.

“Reggie. Do you know how much gas costs right now? What about this and my time?” I asked.
“Yes,” He replied. “But we will not be reimbursing you for your gas or time. We do not do that.”
“Ok, so let me get this straight: you won’t let me talk to Mr. Winters.”
“Mr. Winters is a busy man. He has lots of trips and a busy schedule. He probably won’t be able to talk to you.”
“Then who is Mr. Winter’s boss? I’d like to speak to him. I’ll go as far up the chain as I need to, Reggie, to get somebody to talk to me about this situation.”
“I can’t give you that information.”
“You can’t tell me who Mr. Winter’s boss is?”
“I am not authorized to give you that information.”

Here I’m thinking: not a huge deal because when I get back to my office I’ll just go to their corporate website and get the information that Reggie refused to give me over the phone. The power of information on the internet! Thanks Reggie, your boss might be named Dick, but you actually are one.

It still miffed me that this guy was being so totally unhelpful and discourteous to a customer with a legitimate complaint. The store help was much more courteous but equally unhelpful. So, I repeated my request:

“I would like to speak Mr. Winters to discuss this situation, Reggie.”
“I told you that I would leave him a message, but he’s probably not going to have time to get back with you. He isn’t going to do anything for you.”
“Mr. Winters doesn’t have time to talk to a customer?”
“He is a busy man. I said that I would get him the message.”

Too busy to talk to a customer is all that I heard. Too busy. The conversation between Reggie and I escalated to the point to where I didn’t think anybody would believe that I was being treated so poorly. So I told Reggie that I was recording the conversation. This was my mistake because I wasn’t actually recording the conversation, but I had my Pocket PC nearby and thought that I could pull over to the side of the road, fire that up and record him telling me that Mr. Winters was too busy to talk to his customer. I figured Reggie would provide an excellent soundbite for his boss when he denied ever telling me that.

But Reggie lost it with me. He said I was breaking the law for recording a conversation without his permission and he had nothing further to say to me. He then hung up on me.

I waited a minute and then called Reggie back. He answered on the second ring and I repeated who I was and said to him: “Reggie, I was not actually recording any of our conversation, I was ABOUT TO record our conversation.”
“That’s not what you said! I don’t trust that you aren’t recording this conversation right now!”

Frankly, I wish I had recorded the conversation so that I could play it on my show, but Washington has two party consent recording laws and before the tape rolls you do need both parties permission. Breaking the law for a sound bite wasn’t worth it. I didn’t have Reggie’s permission and I obviously went about it all wrong attempting to get his permission. My bad there. Anyway, there’s no tape, sorry. No recording of our conversation to share. My description of the events will have to suffice.

Now before Reggie made me eat dialtone again, I said: “Reggie, Reggie, please, I’m not recording our conversation. I don’t think you understand what I’m asking for here. I would like to speak to Mr. Winters.”
“I already told you I will give him the message.”
“I don’t think you understand what my problem is with this situation, Reggie. All I hear from people at CompUSA this morning is how you can’t do this and can’t do that. I called you in advance yesterday, talked to your manager about purchasing a product today, found out what time your store opened, adjusted my schedule and was there shortly after the time you opened as I said I would be and my business was turned away.”

Then Reggie said something that totally blew me away.
“I am not sure you ever had that conversation, sir.” Reggie said.

Now I was starting to lose my temper. This administrative assistant of Dick’s was insinuating that I lied about the conversation? What’s up with that?

“Wait a minute, Reggie. If I didn’t call yesterday then please tell me how I know exactly how many copies of Tiger you have in the back of your store? The manager was very specific that there were two boxes with a total of 24 copies.”
“I don’t know for sure that this information is correct.”
“Reggie, I asked them if this was correct this morning when I was there and they said it was correct.”

Reggie still wasn’t buying it, but at last he agreed to do the one thing I wanted done from the beginning: “I will call the store and ask them to set aside a copy of Tiger with your name on it so that you can pick it up later.”
“Thank you, Reggie. Now can I get the information for Mr. Winter’s boss. I would still like to talk to somebody.”
“I can’t give that information to you.”

Through this heated exchange, Reggie never bothered to collect my phone number so that he could in fact call me back once he called the store. Instead, he kept insisting that “there was no way you will be compensated for your gas and time” and the strong likelihood that Mr. Winters would ever call me back.

The thing about this was if they had thrown me any kind of bone like: “Hey we’ll give you a coupon or discount for your time and trouble. It was our mistake.” I would have been happy with that, but when they call me a liar (not in so many words) then it’s time to take this all the way up the corporate ladder until I find somebody that does give a damn about the customer. But instead this administrative assistant, the gatekeeper, was treating me like I did something wrong. It was my ignorance that I didn’t know they couldn’t sell the product until 6pm and I should have known better even though the store sales manager told me otherwise!

I was upset that nobody seemed to be taking any responsibility for giving me bad information and that it took me basically insulting Reggie to get any sort of action. I’m not so certain that if I had spoken to Mr Winters that I wouldn’t have been given the runaround that his secretary was giving me.

Eventually the conversation descended into Reggie hanging up on me — a second time because he resented my one-time use of the word “secretary” to describe his position underneath Dick Winters.

It’s a cold winter at regional office #12. I couldn’t script the names of these characters any better. Too bad it’s real!

So Reggie hung up, refusing to give me the information for Dick Winters boss. No way was I going to let this go now.

I called back — a third time — five minutes later and Reggie didn’t answer. Perhaps he was call screening? I left a message on the machine with my name and business phone number so that Mr. Winters could call me back. This is one of the most ironic parts. Isn’t one of the functions of an adminstrative assistant supposed to be actually taking messages? I had to call three times to be able to leave my contact information — on a machine!

I sure hope that Reggie is better at taking messages from others than he was with me. That message was left several hours ago now and when I hadn’t heard back from Mr. Winters or anybody else from InCompetenceUSA, I decided to go find the corporate contact information.

Now as I write this my radio show starts — live — in less than 30 minutes. This could get real interesting as I don’t know how I’ll be able to take the call on the business line while I’m live on the air doing the show (we take callers and have guests on the radio show).

Yeah, this could get real interesting.

This story is far from over yet. I still don’t have Tiger of course — it’s not 6pm yet, nor do I have confirmation that InCompetenceUSA is holding a copy of it for me because of their sales manager’s mistake (that would be the right thing to do). Readers will be able to see a teaser of part three at Blog Event. Oh, yes, there’s more, because I did get in touch with somebody at the corporate office …

Did this post make you go hmm?

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