Chris.Derecola

Recovery from surgery is going well and without a job, I find myself with a bit of free time. There is only so much time one can spend looking for a job, but going from “OMG school and work!” to “OMG nothing at all!” has me in a place where I feel guilty if I’m not doing something. Part of the list of things I’d put on hold for awhile was my web design hobby. Now that I find myself with a bit of free time, I’ve been catching up on a lot of the things I’ve wanted to do.

• Derecola Archives – I redesigned away from that awful white on black scheme. It’s a simple webpage, so I embraced the simple design I’ve been a fan of lately. It now matches derecola.com and the gallery pages much better.
• The Lloyd Sisters – I created this for my sister and my nieces, in hopes of getting more about them in a place where we can read it. I’ve been bugging her to do it for years; now it seems like an interest in other Mommy Blogs may make it happen.
• 44 Cup Racing Series – I created the original site seven years ago and it really bugged me. It’s a complete redesign that incorporates all the chapters in one place and I also installed a hosted forum to save the Series $30/month.

I have since realized that I really like designing websites. I don’t have the super-skills to do it for a living, but I’m all about making personal/business sites with a dozen or so pages. Interestingly, all three pages above are created using a content management system (CMS) and each with a different one (WordPress, Blogger, Drupal, respectively). I wouldn’t mind turning it into a business, but gotta pay the bills first.

Since I’m rocking a projector, I needed an extension cable for my Wii sensor bar. The major retailers don’t sell one (I now know why) so I went to ebay based on a recommendation from a coworker. I found a seller with 40k (yes, thousand) positive feedback and purchased one for $10, including shipping. The following is our communication chain, which has taken place over the last 3.5 weeks. Note that I’ve condensed my emails for the sake of easy reading but can assure you the full versions are much more verbose and polite. His are nearly verbatim so suffice to say, all his responses have been two sentences… tops.

Me: The item is defective, please let me know how I can get a replacement.
Him: Please make sure the cable is fully inserted. Sometimes you have to push it in hard.
Me: I tried again, it didn’t work. When I attempted to disconnect it, the end of the cable broke off and stuck in my sensor bar cable.
Him: Sorry to hear that. We can ship a replacement out without you having to return the defective item if you provide your address. If you would like to return it in “brand new condition” we can refund the purchase price.

~At this point I had zero confidence the replacement would work, so I bought a wireless sensor bar from Best Buy.~

Me: I purchased a replacement because I didn’t want to wait another week to use my Wii. The item is not in new condition, because it’s defective, can I still get a refund?
Me: (3 days later) Please respond to my previous message, I would really appreciate a refund.
Him: Did you return the item to us yet?
Me: Am I required to pay return shipping on a defective item?
Him: The item must be return to us, yes.
Me: I have decided to request a replacement for the item. Please ship it to me at…
Me: (4 days later) Have you shipped the item?
Me: (1 day later) If I do not hear from you within 48 hours I will open a dispute with Paypal.
Him: Waiting on the defective item before the replacement gets shipped.
Me: Your original email stated I could get a replacement without returning the item. I am not paying to return a defective item if I’m not going to get reimbursed. It is the responsibility of the seller to make right without additional cost to the buyer..
Him: After rereading your email, you stated you wanted a refund. Let me know!
Me: I did, until I found out I’d have to pay to return the item. If that’s true, I just want the replacement item.
Him: If you would like to return the item in brand new, unused conditions, we can refund the purchase price.

It’s like talking to a brick wall. I eventually filed a Paypal complaint and was informed I would have to pay to send the item back. Rather than pay for return shipping, I asked the seller to refund me the difference so we could just part ways and they eventually did. In the end, I paid $6 for a broken item and I really have no recourse other than to leave negative feedback and poke a minuscule pinprick in his feedback rating. He would then retaliate, knocking my currently perfect feedback down to something like 95%.

Now I realize it’s not ebay’s fault this guy is a tool but I think it speaks to a larger problem. The site has become so infested with large scale vendors that the little guys get the screw job. With increasing regularity, transactions are not person to person and those who sell dozens of items a day don’t care to spend the effort on customer service. The site can still be a good source for those hard to find items but it’s definitely not as “garage sale” as it used to be and that’s a sad thing.

It looks like Netvibes has opened Ginger to add its users. It seems the largest change is the movement towards a more social aspect of homepages. Yes, we all know about Facebook and some people I know are downright addicted. Since setting up my Facebook, I don’t really go back unless someone I know adds me as a contact. I’ve written a brief “idiot’s assessment” to the features I’ve noticed, in case you’re wondering what it gets you.

• Personal Universes – You can design a customized public Netvibes page. I set one up to mess around with it, but I can’t see ever really changing what’s on here or looking at those of friends. This is probably useful if you’re constantly finding new widgets and feeds that you want to share with friends you believe are accessing your universe. I guess you could also share random feeds with people by adding them and linking them here. I don’t think there’s much value add for me here.
• Social Content – This is probably where Ginger is going to win me over. By adding people as friends and adding the activities module to your personal page, you can see what people find interesting. Now when Jeff clicks the little star next to a news story (or anything) he finds interesting, it will show up on my private Netvibes homepage. It’s kinda like a combination of Facebook’s activity monitor and del.icio.us social bookmarking, only I don’t have to go somewhere else to look at it. I think that’s pretty neat. Add me as a friend and start sharing!
• Timelines – Time counters on content? Yes, please. Knowing how long ago blog posts or Slickdeal deals were posted is pretty handy.
• Netvibes Platform – I actually haven’t tested this but I gotta think portability across platforms (iGoogle, Netvibes, etc) is a good thing.

One word of caution is that it adds a new toolbar of sorts to the top of your Netvibes. I’m all about maximizing content without scroll bars so I hide as much of the header and footer as possible. The best I can tell, there’s no way to integrate this with the settings/help header and you can’t get rid of it. The Netvibes Customize module will get rid of it but now doesn’t hide the settings header. :-\

While I’m sure it took a shit-ton of coding, I don’t think it’s a monumental update. As I’ve said, it’s probably a lot more valuable to those who are more “social” about their happenings. There are some clutch features that make it yet another step on the path of improving an already great product, though. Change is inevitable, at least with Netvibes it’s always in the right direction.