kuniform

I bought a Fujitsu Scan Snap scanner, and it rocks. It’s all duplex, full text indexing, faster than a speeding bullet, paperless office, blah blah blah. And with a $50 rebate, who could go wrong?

Well, the thumbs are pointing at ‘this guy.’ I sent Fujitsu exactly what they asked for in the rebate packet, and what did I get in my email today? This:

Unfortunately, we were unable to honor your request for the following reasons: We did not receive an original serial number label with your request; We did not receive a rebate certificate with your request; You must submit more than one UPC symbol or proof-of-purchase tab to qualify for the rebate.

You will receive an additional notification by mail. You may also access your submission by contacting us at:

Online: http://www.fujitsu-fcpa.rebatestatus.com/link.aspx?xxxxx-xxxxx

Customer Service: 877-247-2328

We appreciate your business. Thank you.

I did send it all in, exactly as they asked for. Ironically, I can’t find my copies of those forms. I think these rebate form companies get extra cash for denying legitimate requests, it’s all I can fathom. This is the second rebate I’ve sent out and had this happen with, even though in both cases I followed the letter of the law.

The disadvantage of outsourcing everything is that there is no legitimate way to register dissent. Fujitsu has their cash, the rebate company probably keeps a premium, and calling them doesn’t let Fujitsu know how badly they’ve screwed a customer. It’s a win-win-lose proposition. So, I’m done. Done with warranties, done with rebates, done with operating with corporations as though they actually meant to honor contracts. It’s not like this is new ground for me, but it certainly is painful to tread it each time I do. It’s a system designed to screw people over. Feel the karma of that, Fujitsu, you’ve earned it.

The boys at 37signals posted a really good “sunspots” today. The Elliot Noyes: father of corporate design, the Wall Street Journal article on social sites creating hidden influencers and the restaurant article from satisfaction are great takes on the importance of design and respecting the customer as an input to great design.

In particular, check out the getsatisfaction blog, as it’s chock-a-block full of good insights for customer service.

I’ve been busy lately, so I haven’t had as much time to post as I would like. I’ll make up for that with a post full o’ links today! A plethora. Plethora.

First off, in the spirit of the never-ending redesign, here’s a great 15 tips blog post on choosing a type face. I am a type amateur, but I love reading and learning about it. This Spiegel article is ancient in our 24/7 newscycle, but here’s a community that has done away with traffic signals. This is reflective of Christopher Alexander’s maxim to always design scaled to the user. It also shows how, though human-designed systems are good, human nodes in an amazing complex physical, emotional, and spiritual system called the world possess an innate ability to regulate themselves and their behaviors absent the enforcement of other humans. Libertarian moment over… now.

From a time slightly after the Spiegel article came out, i.e.—right after the dinosaurs started becoming oil—Tim O’Reilly felt compelled to redefine Web2.0 with a more compact definition. It’s a good read, but the Hype Curve has sailed on that one, Tim.

Some random accessibility stuff about video captioning, Dutch law and a new effort by Joe Clark to make media uniformly accessible.

Garrett Dimon has an interesting article about markup as craft. I’m pessimistic today, so all craft feels dead to me. Happy Valentine’s Day. However, Garrett’s 21 points are right on. They’re the implementation details of these 15 research article-derived design tips. What the heck is up with 15 being the magic number of tips? Who the heck knows?

Where did I get all this great stuff? Lots of it came from the Web Standards Group mailing list. This maxdesign guy put out the links for light reading weekly. Highly recommended.

In the file under random portion of our post, I’m beginning to research buying a hybrid, and this Jamis Buck article on concerns in activerecord in Rails hit the spot, oh, a month ago, when I began this post, back when my life was far less chaotic.

International and local randomness at its best. First, a great post by a Japanese web-mag on Iranian typography and using letterforms as art. Next, I saw my buddy the Benbot a few days ago for drinks. He told me about Fresh Picks, a local organic grocer delivery service I can’t wait to try out in the new year. I’m going to see Massive Change, an exhibit about environmentalism and architecture at the Museum of Contemporary Art, in a few days, as well. Rocking!

Finally, in the totally unrelated department, a friend sent me this link about a novel deliverable format developed by Todd Warfel. He calls it a task analysis grid. I’m not totally sold on the name, since this seems to compress the output of a task analysis (as a research activity) with a requirement document’s feature list. However, anything that displays what product features map to users and their goals in one page is definitely worth a look-see, even if its name were mud.

He’s a bit cheesy, but full of good tips on conversion (100 and 1 of them to be precise).