[Olpc-sf] OLPC Crisis: Customer Data Lost

[Sarah Mei]

I ordered mine the first day, and it has not yet arrived.

I don't think, however, that their database is corrupt. I do think
that the database(s), and the various input methods to them, were
poorly designed. Data was lost in some cases. That's different than
corrupt.

When I called in early January, they had my name, city, state, and
zip, but no street address. Since I was having it shipped to work, I
needed them to put my name, my company's name, my company's street
address, and a box number. The poor guy on the phone could not find a
way to make everything fit (my company's name is quite long and hard
to abbreviate).

He seemed to make it work, eventually. Two weeks later I got an email
saying my shipping address was incomplete and could I please send it
again. Sounds like whatever input method my phone guy used dropped the
street address, just like the input method I used when I ordered
online.

I've written an end-to-end e-commerce system, so I know what a pain in
the ass it is to design it so that any address, worldwide, will fit
and still be intelligible to a shipping company. (This latter part is
why you can't just put one big ol' freeform textfield.) But really,
there is a fairly standard form (name, address1, address2, address3,
city, state, postal code, country) that they apparently didn't follow.

Sarah

On 24 Jan 2008 16:28:44 -0500, Blake Haggerty
<Blake.Haggerty at sapphire.com> wrote:
>
> I think it seems rather odd that everyone who ordered on the first day
> hasn't received theirs yet but I ordered mine 3 days after the first day and
> got mine a few weeks back.
>
>
>
>
>
>  Blake Haggerty
> Permanent Placement Specialist
>
>  Work: 415-788-8488 x6062
> Fax: 415-788-2592
>  Email: blake.haggerty at sapphire.com
>  http://www.linkedin.com/in/blakehaggerty
>  Sapphire Technologies
>
>
>  See who we know in common
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From:Sameer Verma sverma at sfsu.edu
> To: "olpc-sf at lists.laptop.org" ;
> Sent: Jan 24, 2008 01:25:06 PM
> Subject: Re: [Olpc-sf] OLPC Crisis: Customer Data Lost
> Kristian Erik Hermansen wrote:
> > I have posted some info about the situation to Linux Journal, where I
> > am on the advisory panel...
> > http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/olpc-crisis-customer-data-lost
> >
>
> How do you know that the first day customer database is corrupt? Mine
> isn't here yet, but every time I call (and get through) they seem to
> have all my information street address and all. I got an e-mail today
> that says the laptops aren't here yet (backordered?) and they'll keep me
> posted.
>
> Sameer
>
> --
> Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
> Associate Professor of Information Systems
> San Francisco State University
> San Francisco CA 94132 USA
> http://verma.sfsu.edu/
> http://opensource.sfsu.edu/
>
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