If you would have asked me a month ago about ThinkGeek.com, I probably would have told you that it’s one of the coolest sites out there for geek toys. But right now I’m no sure sure I’d give them a recommendation. Almost 4 weeks ago I ordered a couple of those Flickr enabled wifi photo frames called eStarling. Very nice, but ThinkGeek has been advertising these in their online catalog since early this year but never actually had them in stock. Finally, they announced that they would get a batch of them in early december so I ordered 3 of them for myself as well as for mine and Rachel’s parents. But over three weeks and 3 emails to ThinkGeek later, I’m still waiting and I have no idea when, or even if I’ll ever receive these frames. My first 2 emails to ThinkGeek were never answered, but I finally received an answer to my third email. Check it out, this is what I wrote them:
> hi there,
>
> what’s the status on the estarling photo frames? When I ordered them
> over three weeks ago it said that the frames would ship on or before
> december 13th, which is today. Please let me know what the estimated
> ship date is. If it is really going to be the 19th, please use 2 day
> shipping on my order. My oder number is 92a8e6b7
>
> I emailed you this same questions over a week ago but never heard back
> from you. I know you’re probably swamped with all the xmas orders but
> not responding to customer inquiries is not cool. Please respond!
>
> thanks
> Peter
and this was their response:
Thank you for bringing this issue to our attention. I have reset the password on your account to thinkgeek (all lower case, no quotes) and you should now be able to log in. Once you log in, you can change your password to whatever you like at the following link:
www.thinkgeek.com/brain/account/passwd.cgi
Please let us know if you have any further questions.
Mark Silverman
ThinkGeek Customer Service
888-433-5788 – phone
703-839-8611 – fax
8am – 6pm Eastern Mon-Fri
www.thinkgeek.com/about-us/mark.shtml
(and my original email was quoted immediately underneath). Nice job Mark, I appreciate your response that came within 30 hours this time, but yes, I have in fact a further question: why are you emailing me about resetting my password when I’m asking you about my $700+ dollar order for photo frames? In fact, you didn’t even reset my password at all, my existing password still worked just fine. My completed order information on your site says “You can still cancel this order”, and with every interaction or non-interaction with your customer service you’re making it more appealing to actually do so. ThinkGeek, get your stuff together or your ‘smart masses’ will actually get smart and go elsewhere for their toys.