When all else fails, email the CEO

Through my years working in technology industries (mostly wireless-related), I have met companies or their local distributors and sales representatives that have shown from outright incompetence, to abuse of their position in the food chain, to slow response from support staff. In all cases, I ended up writing to the CEO, or the highest-ranking officer available, and got a positive outcome. Here are the most relevant cases:

1999 – Garmin GPS

In the late 90s, I was running a small startup that designed and manufactured vehicle tracking and wireless data systems. For one project, we chose a small OEM module manufactured by Garmin, the GPS 35, which integrated a GPS receiver and patch antenna in a waterproof enclosure, with a cable coming out that fed it power and output NMEA data.

The project required 400 of these, and after contacting Garmin Europe, I was directed to their only distributor in Spain for land GPS products. The project cost was based on Garmin’s list price for the module, and we expected to get a volume discount from the distributor. Instead, we got twice the list price, with no discount – this totally blew our project out of our costumer’s budget.

Discussions with the distributor led nowhere, and after some pushing and pulling, I wrote to the head of Garmin Europe, explaining the situation and how upset I was with their representatives and their attitude, which was basically an abuse of their dominant position. The next day a fax arrived from Garmin, stating that while the Spanish market was too small for them, and didn’t warrant more than one distributor, they had contacted the distributor about the matter. An hour later, a fax arrived from the distributor, with a new offer at the official list price minus a 10% volume discount!

Wwe didn’t want to work with the distributor or Garmin in this case as the discussions had gone over the cliff before they reacted, and ordered instead the first units out of Pharos‘ production line – and they were very happy to give us a really good price. While not as durable as the Garmin unit, the Pharos iGPS-180 worked really well.

2006 – Digi

Shortly after we started Whisher, we toyed with the idea of making a wireless device – cannot give more details as this may some day be made, as the idea is very cool. In order to make a proof-of-concept for an investor, we needed to get our hands on some OEM WiFi modules that could be controlled over a serial port by a microcontroller, and we chose Digi’s Connect Wi-SP. Again, we contacted the local distributor to order two units, this being a Tuesday, and since they had them in stock, we asked for the modules to be delivered no later than Thursday, so that I could assemble the prototype over the weekend in time for our meeting with the investor on Monday.

Alas, I called the distributor on Wednesday to ask if the units had been shipped – and they had not, for various obviously fake reasons (leaves on the track, UK readers!). The sales rep stopped responding to my calls, and I feared we wouldn’t get the modules on time. Looking around Digi’s management page, I found the name of the CEO, Joseph T. Dunsmore, and attempted to shoot a blind email to the most likely email – having an earlier email from someone in the tech support department, I guessed the address structure would be the same. And it worked! A couple of hours later, I received a reply, and first thing Friday morning, a call from the sales rep – saying he was bringing the modules into our office personally! Contrary to Garmin, who were very dismissive of our tiny little market, Digi was very helpful, responsive and caring about a small sale, which could or could not turn into something bigger. When you treat your smallest customer as if he was your biggest, your company is very likely to succeed.

2008 – iRobot

I have ordered a few Roomba and Scooba robots from iRobot, for our home and some friends & family – they are excellent cleaning robots, well worth the price in saved “home productivity”. The first two orders worked just fine, but the last one went down the drain when Google Checkout failed to authorize the charge, and triggered a cancellation on iRobot’s systems.

Now having $1000 in a limbo, unavailable and frozen by Google Checkout until August 30th, is very uncomfortable. iRobot support replied to my first email on the issue, stating the order had been cancelled and my card not charged – but the amount was still frozen in pre-authorization state by Google, and they have to tell Google to cancel for the amount to be released. My various follow-up emails on the subject went completely ignored. I even got a reply in the meantime to a different question regarding the shipment of an earlier order!

Finally, I decided to try the trick once more, and fired of an email to Colin Angle, explaining the problem. Within a few minutes, he has replied, assuring me they will find out what happened, and explaining that I won’t get an answer until Tuesday as it’s a long weekend and support will be on holiday – which I understand – “it’s physics!”. Let’s see what happens, but so far, the level of commitment Colin has shown to his company speaks for itself – kudos!.