[geeks] Good & Bad Customer Service (Tadpole etc, was Re: HP printer)

[Bill Bradford]

On Fri, Sep 22, 2006 at 05:23:41PM -0400, J. Alexander Jacocks wrote:
> A company I can recommend, for great tech support, that is somewhat 
> relevant to this list, is Tadpole/Cycle.  
> ...
> I figured that I'd never hear from them again, but I was wrong.  I got 
> a call, Monday afternoon, saying that they found a spare lying around, 
> and, if I wanted it, they'd send it to me, if I promised to send back my 
> old one.  I took them up on this, and they sent it FedEx overnight, for 
> no charge, whatsoever.  Tech support like that is amazing, and I try to 
> tell every geek I know about it, in hopes that it will pay off for 
> Tadpole/Cycle.

I had a similar experience in '98-99, when the first wave of SPARCBooks
started hitting the market when Herman Miller was dumping theirs.  I
needed one of the Ethernet dongle cables, and emailed Tadpole to find
out a price.

I got back a mail, saying "Come on down to the local offices".  So I did,
and one of the guys at the Austin tadpole office dug out the cable I 
needed, and gave it to me at no charge.  They were amazed that a "kid" (I
was in my mid-20s) was carrying around a multi-thousand-dollar SPARCBook
at the time.

Then, when the Herman Miller SPARCBooks hit the market, a couple of people
at Tadpole HQ organized an effort to sell spares and pieces/parts for them
for reasonable "hobbyist" prices.  That lasted a year or two.

Unfortunately, they closed down the Austin office and then went through a
series of acquisitions.

They're now Tadpole Computer, part of iTRONIX, a General Dynamics Company
(tm).  

All of the people whom I had as contacts at Tadpole (even in the past 
two years) are now gone, and they no longer advertise on SunHELP.

One of these days I'll tell you how I got ripped off on that deal, so 
they basically ended up getting banner advertising for free.

Yet another good company, down the tubes.  

Bill

(If anyone from Tadpole as it exists nowdays wants to contact me and prove
 me wrong, please feel free...)

-- 
Bill Bradford 
Houston, Texas