Kathleen McGivney

Why Circuit City sucks

And probably, why its business practices allowed it to go bankrupt.

Despite the fact that Circuit City filed for bankruptcy in November, I still chose to purchase some items from them when they had their Black Friday sale. I was out of the country at the time, so I made my purchases online. I ordered two 2GB SD cards at $4.99 each, a 4GB SD card at $9.99, and the Left 4 Dead Xbox 360 game that just came out for my husband. That wasn't on sale, but they had $8 flat shipping for most orders, and it seemed silly to spend $8 to ship less than $20 of products, so I added the game.

Two days later, on November 30, I received a shipping confirmation, telling me that my orders were in three separate shipments because they were coming from different warehouses. They shipped each 2 GB SD card in a separate shipment, and the third shipment contained the 4GB card and the game. Now, remember, they only charged $8 shipping, and they shipped three packages via FedEx to me. I think that might be a loss right there, unless they have extremely discounted shipping rates from FedEx. In any case, the first two packages showed up within a few days, but the third package never came. I checked its status via the provided tracking link and it indicated that the package data had been transmitted to FedEx but that the package had never been picked up. FedEx's fault? A sticky-fingered warehouse employee? Who knows.

I called the customer service number today and after asking me approximately one billion questions they told me that the only thing they could do is escalate it to an "investigator" who will follow up on the package and call me within three days. So now, Circuit City has my money (they charged me when they packed and "shipped" everything), I don't have my merchandise, and I'm told to just wait around for someone to call me back. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and let their investigator call me back, but if I don't get a call back in the next few days I'm filing a dispute with my credit card company. That'll add yet another debt and debtor to what I'm sure is a growing group in their bankruptcy proceedings.

Next time, I'll just buy my stuff at a local store. Lesson learned.

Into the belly of the beast

As you know, Thursday was my last day at IBM Lotus. I will be posting a bit more detail about my new company and the services we offer in a few days, but first, I have to tell you about what I did on Thursday night.

I was at dinner a few weeks ago with Mary Jo Foley and she mentioned that she was going to be a judge at a competition for technical speakers called "Speaker Idol". Due to my experience speaking at Lotusphere and attending similar speaking competitions, she thought I'd be a great addition to the judging panel, so I agreed to do it. The event in question? A Microsoft .Net Developers Group meeting. Inside a Microsoft building.

Eek!

I have to admit, I was a little nervous walking into a room full of .Net developers, but the organizers, attendees, speakers, and other judges couldn't have been more inviting and pleasant. The speakers were great and the judging was fun. Also, as it turns out, entering a Microsoft building as an ex-Lotus employee will not, in fact, cause one to burst into flames. Who knew?

Lest anyone think that I am running out Lotus/IBM's door straight into the open, willing arms of their main messaging and collaboration competitor, not to worry. I still plan on remaining independent for the foreseeable future. This being my own boss thing is pretty sweet.

Plus, I just officially migrated to a Mac. I'm pretty sure that's like Kryptonite to Microsoft people, right?

Photos of the new Mac after the jump.