UPDATE: Kensington just sent me a email asking me to take a survey regarding my customer service experience. Sweet. I gave them the link to this post. BTW – Targus has a fully stocked Canadian online store. Choke on that Kensington.
Hot on the heels of my good experience at Gateway comes a shitty experience at Kensington. I just bought the 120 Watt Kensington power adapter that works in planes, cars and regular wall sockets. I have a long flight to London this week and didn’t want to run out of juice in the middle of a movie or some work.
So this is nice replacement to carrying around all the chargers I normally have to carry. It has a bunch of swappable tips for all kinds of devices. Of course it only comes with laptop tips and a bonus iPod tip – cuz the whole damn world has an iPod right? WRONG! I have a Zen Video. So I figure I’ll just order up the tips I need and the dual charging cable and we’re off to the races.
Well, several phone calls later I wind up calling Kensington Canada directly because nobody carries any accessories for this piece of crap. I get a very nice girl on the phone that offers to look for the tips I need and send them out. Today I get an email from her that they don’t have the tips I need nor do they even sell the dual charger cable in Canada so I should call Kensington US and see if they can help. WTF?!
I just got off the phone with Kensington US and yeah they have what I want but won’t ship to Canada. I asked if I can use my credit card and just get them ship to somewhere in the US where I’ll be soon. No can do – only US credit cards.
Time to investigate the Targus power adapter and see if I have better luck with parts for that.
To be fair I can understand why American companies ignore Canada. We only have about 30,000,000 people up here – sheesh.
Jason Dunn
February 6th, 2007 at 1:44 pmI feel your pain man! It’s always frustrating trying to get stuff up here…
Matt Cutts
February 6th, 2007 at 9:15 pmHey, a while ago I heard you giving Google a hard time for something or two anti-Canadian–what were they? One was allowing Canadian companies to get Google AdWords Certified. Was there something else as well?
John
February 7th, 2007 at 1:44 amYou’re not alone … http://www.cre8asiteforums.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=45332
“Sorry, you’re from some foreign place like Nigeria (or Canada), we’re scared of your money.”
When will companies get a clue….
Brian Mark
February 7th, 2007 at 8:38 amWe don’t do anything outside the US right now because of credit card company policies. Besides, the VAT between our countries is really, really high in many cases.
John
February 7th, 2007 at 1:23 pmVAT between countries? (I thought they don’t do that unless both parties are in the EU? otherwise it’s just the normal import taxes, which the recipient pays)
It’s amazing how some companies work so hard on ignoring the largest group of potential customers (those who don’t live in the same country). That’s like saying “I’m sorry, we don’t do SEO for Google”.
oilman
February 8th, 2007 at 1:44 pmjeez Matt – don’t you forget anything?
I think the adwords bit was all. I don’t recall a second thing.
ROIGuy
February 14th, 2007 at 10:10 amTodd
I heard your plea for stumble upon votes on the Rockstar podcast, but I get an error message when I try to vote for you.
Meanwhile, what is the correct name/URL for Inquisit(?) that you and Greg were discussing?
PS, tell Darin the chatroom sucks for us time shifters
Enjoy London and see you in NYC