CompUSA Auctions- redux It took some charm, some commonality from a management perspective on the corrective action and a willingness on their part to prove the point but CompUSA has convinced me to give their auction sites another whirl.

The original sequence of events seemed like a customer service nightmare. Subsequent contacts had only served to reinforce some of the negatives and I decided to walk away from it. A little while later I was contacted by Elizabeth Bauer from the corporate office. Bauer is the web merchant in charge of stocking the eBay store and CompUSA's own auction website. The CSR I originally dealt with was nice but Bauer was charming (in that down-home sort of way that I like) as all get-out. And she didn't talk about heads rolling, she talked about corrective measures with her team. It was her team; she was proud of it because she knew they could do better. We even discussed how something like my experience could happen when the eBay store has such high positives. She didn't succeed in changing my mind at that point but she planted a seed.

Her follow-up letter arrived this past Wednesday and I emailed her Thursday morning. I knew that confirming and communicating would take some time, so I pitched shipping a test unit by the end of Friday. The time constraints and my setting the choices (either of two Athlon 64 based computers that had been at auction) would serve to limit the special case measures they might take. I felt this was a good way of getting an accurate picture of buying at the auctions.

The computer is on the way so I'll be blogging about my experiences with it. Bauer had enough faith in her team to convince me to give them a fair chance.  ¶ 8/05/2005 04:06:00 PM