Book 5 of the fiftyfiftyme Challenge: Star Wars: The Old Republic
I read this on Dark Horse’s app. It was two stories that are preludes to the new MMO. Both were pretty good setup. Nothing mind blowing by any means. although it was kind of crazy to find out that one of the Jedi Masters on the council may be Darth Revan’s kid. You know the main Character from Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic. The first Bioware foray into Star Wars. I wonder if that will be addressed in the game…
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Books 3 & 4 of the fiftyfiftyme Challenge: Uncanny X-Force Apocalypse Solution and Deathlok Nation
Holy crap where has this book been my entire life?! Also if we’re going to have 300 different Deadpool titles why is Remender not writing one of them? After the way he’s used in this book, I would read the hell out of that. He manages to make Deadpool the joke that he is AND a real person at the same time.
Also thank you to my Parents and @WonderAli for getting these for me as Christmas Presents!
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Book 2 fiftyfiftyme Challenge - Green Lantern: Emerald Dawn
Some would be surprised to know that I have not read this before. I’ve looked through it at a friends house once, but haven’t had the chance to read it till now. I’m a big fan of Hal Jordan and this book does a great job showing reasons why he’s a great character. I especially loved that they did a good job of showing how the Guardians started to kind of fear Jordan early on.
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Book 1 of the fiftyfifty me Challenge: Green River Killer A True Detective Story
I snagged this during when Dark Horse sent out a 50% off coupon for their Digital App. I liked the story for the fact that it didn’t make anything glamorous. Sometimes when you read something like this you think “I can see where they may have changed this or that to make the story more appealing.” I didn’t get that feeling in Green River Killer. In fact the writer said the only things he really changed were names of some people or combined them because they wanted to either be left out or he didn’t want to confuse you with too many side characters. Overall if you like real life crime, give it a read. I think even without the coupon it’s like 9.99, which isn’t too shabby.
Customer Service Fail - Discount Comic Book Service
I’ve worked on and off in some sort of capacity in the Customer Service industry for most of my life. Whether it was in a call center or working on a grocery store floor, I’ve trudged my way through getting better at Customer Service.
The thing that blows my mind every time I have a terrible experience with Customer Service is how some companies blow it off or don’t take the extra step. CS is all about retaining, making a customer happy, and hopefully getting them to recommend your product to other people. I understand in some instances that’s impossible. I know, when you support accounting software and someone wants something to go against tax code or GAAP, you can’t help them. The best you can do is show them documentation on why they are doing it wrong and movie it from there. And in some rarer cases show them how to do what they want to inform them what they’re doing is wrong and let them reap what they sow.
Recently I had two instances of what I considered bad customer service.
The first was Discount Comic Book Service. I’m not sure if it’s up yet, but I raged about this on Comic Book Round Table recently. Now for me I spend a lot of money with them. I’ve been a customer for roughly a year and I think it’s safe to say my Total to Date for the last year is firmly over $1000. Does this make me a whale of a customer, probably not, but I’ve had no reason not to give them more of my business. My experiences with them in general have been nothing short of awesome.
Then I asked for my account to go on a shipping hold. I moved about a week later and sent them an email with my address. Normally I would get an email in 8-24 hours.
Almost a week goes by… nothing. Send them another email… A couple more days… Send them a tweet… Call multiple times the next day with no answer.
Finally after all of that correspondence I get, “I apologize for the delay in our response. Since your orders will be shipping to your work address, it will automatically be a signature required. UPS does not deliver on Saturdays so there should not be a problem.”
Now you may be thinking, “After all that, it’s a pretty good response.” Here’s where they fumbled. Great Customer Service takes it a step further. If this was one of my customers I would have immediately went to whomever I needed to and got a shipping label printed for their package. Especially considering this happened on a Wednesday, when they were shipping out a ton of packages. I also would have owned the mistake, whether it was mine or not. The rep apologized, but with no correspondence for such a long time you need to include a reason why.
Now they did respond to me on Twitter letting me know they had a high traffic through email. The reason I still find it inexcusable is that there is one thing they could have done to make things better. Here’s what should have happened the day I sent my first email:
Jon,
We’re sorry that we can’t answer your email at this time. We’re seeing unusually high traffic volume. We’ll process your request as soon as we can get to it. We hope that we can resolve your issue soon.
DCBS Customer Service
OR even better
Jon,
I’m really sorry to inform you that I can’t process your request at the moment. Customer Service has seen a really high traffic load and we’re taking the emails in order that we received them. I just wanted to let you know we have received your email and we’ll be taking care of it as soon as possible.
I hope you understand our situation.
Jon
The second is even better. Who cares if it was the same mass email that is sent to everyone. At least this way it makes me feel like a person has reached out to me and let me know they’ll be helping me out soon. When there is NO communication your giving the customer no fucking clue what you’re doing with their email. Communication is our job in Customer Service, when you don’t communicate, you’re not completing your function.
Now with DCBS it may be the fact that they truly got way more tickets than they can handle. If that’s the case I hope they have a system in the future to be able to handle this.
I can say if I’m no longer going to receive the Customer Service I’ve had with them in the last year, I’m shopping elsewhere. Hell if you guys happen to read this post, shoot me an email. I’d be more than happy to help you guys out in some way for free.
The funniest part about this entire experience is that before I started with DCBS I avoided them. Mostly because of my first experience with InStock Trades was less than stellar. Oddly I met the owners of both services last year at San Diego Comic Con and informed them of that. Both assured me that they had changed a lot to make their service much better.
Come back later for part 2, which shockingly also has to do with comic books.
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