BELLAMYBUDIMAN

I just don’t know why this seems like a national-wide plague in automotive service centers, but it seems that everyone that is working there doesn’t seem to know what they’re doing. Back when I’m still using the Avanza, when I needed a new synchronizer ring replacement, the Auto 2000 spare parts officer doesn’t seem to know what a synchronizer ring is, and in fact, he asked me, “Itu di bagian mananya ya, Pak?” Awesome.

Today, my friend Taja and I met the same situation in Ford Jaksel with our Fiestas. The story goes like this, Taja’s Fiesta cannot connect to the iPhone and have songs playing in the car without connecting it with this cable:

It has to be connected to the car via USB and the AUX port at the same time, while mine works perfectly with a normal iPod USB cable. Coincidentally, I was there to claim a broken windshield seal rubber, and he was there to make them fix this annoying USB cable problem. On his first attempt, the tech said that every single Fiesta is like that, and people need to purchase this cable from them for 500k. Although it’s a fact that many of the first Fiestas in the country are experiencing this problem, this is just simply bull crap.

We then went comparing our cars side by side, and proved that the normal iPod USB cable connection worked flawlessly in my car. A truly on-your-face moment for the tech, and Mr. Schmuck seems to feel that he’s not the smartest guy anymore, beaten by a couple of customers, and proving that his “cable solution” is in fact, a dumb solution. He then went to ask me on what software did I install in my car. Software? It’s been like that since day one, and it is funny since Taja’s Fiesta is newer than mine, there’s no reason why it has an older firmware. However, even after “diagnosing” my car for “special settings”, the tech can’t seem to answer this.

After a few more minutes without answers from the tech, I decided to leave and told Taja to fix the car himself. I then told the tech to go to this site, download the firmware update, and then he can probably help other customers in the future. Basically a polite version of “You’re an idiot, you should know this. You’re the goddamned tech.” The Ford Mobile Connectivity website has been circulating around in various local and foreign forums and it fixes exactly that problem. The tech even tried applying the settings file he copied from my car to Taja’s. As predicted, it wasn’t really a spectacular result.

The fix is actually easy, and Taja can do this by himself for probably less than an hour (which he did at home and succeeded), but that is not the point. Authorized technicians should know better about the cars they sell, no? This proves that service providers in this country has very little knowledge in the products they sell. This is stupid. Imagine the cost that uninformed customers have to pay just to fix a minuscule problem like this, 500k for a stupid cable that doesn’t fix the actual problem? We can now conclude that if you want to have something fixed, then try fixing it yourself. It actually works better most of the time.

Since my PowerShot G10′s optical unit decided to bust itself out back in September, my camera has been in Datascrip Service Center since September 14. A couple days after that, they called me to inform that the parts needed for the job must be ordered directly from Japan. Right now it has been 43 days since the job order was issued and there are no signs of completion whatsoever.

On October 13, I received this text message stating that the parts needed will arrive on October 21:

It’s currently October 27, I called the service center back, and they said there was trouble with the parts expedition and they expect it to arrive on early November.

Seriously, Datascrip? How much longer should I wait for the parts to arrive? A month? A year? A decade? If you’re going to sell Canon products here, don’t you have the slightest idea that you HAVE TO HAVE SPARE PARTS READY FOR CUSTOMERS?! What kind of an idiot that sells common consumer products without the ability to service them accordingly and in a timely manner?

Update #2:
The manager called me yesterday and offered me an upgrade to a G12 for a million less than the listed price. That’s around 1.45 million, and around the same price I have to pay for the G10 spare parts. He said it is a compensation for the disappointment I have with their incompetence, and that he can’t make sure when the parts are coming in himself. However, today, this is what I got:

Now it stated that I have to pay 2.5 millions to trade to a G12. So this is apparently how Datascrip does their business? They promise you one thing, and then they screw you right on your face. What other dumbshit have you done today, Datascrip? I called this in and they said the price was already according to the memo FROM THE SAME MANAGER. I no longer know who’s the dumbass in Datascrip anymore at this point. Could be just the customer service officer (which is not really a surprise), or it could be everyone.

Update #3:
After another complaint, I got another phone call, confirming that I would only have to pay 1.458 million. According to the caller, the reason why nobody have a fucking clue on why I don’t have to pay for a full upgrade price is because they have not been informed yet by the manager. Nice, two different phone calls, two different reasons. If the decision is yet to be made, then why the hell did they texted me with the message above in the first place? This whole process is just purely idiotic.

Seriously, Datascript, you better get this thing right. Either your incompetent employees, or your workflow, whatever. This is seriously embarassing.

My close friends and perhaps several of my followers in Twitter would probably know by now that I loath Acer big time. Not because I’m a Apple fan boy (like they said, and believe me I’m not, but this is not what we’re discussing right now), but because of first hand experience that Acer products are simply shit.

Back in the days, my Dad used to have this small Acer Tablet PC. I completely forgot the name or model because Acer, just like most computer manufacturers love numbers and codes instead of product names. This tablet PC is so shit that it made Dad asked me each day “what the fuck is wrong with this thing that it hangs when doing anything?” and it is so shit that it cannot level itself perfectly on a table with the battery attached.

Over the years, I have yet to see that improvement from Acer, not in quality, not in durability. They are all, in my opinion, still plasticky, and shit.

Now, recently, Acer announced that they wanted to be more like Apple, and they restructured themselves to make that happen. And seriously, who would’ve thought that in the process of being more like Apple, they decided to ape the MacBook Air and came out with this:

So do you think Acer deserves my loathe? Yes, just because I hate plagiarists. What’s next on your to-do list, Acer? An Aspire that looks like a Mac Pro? A Z5 that looks like an iMac? Or maybe an Iconia that looks like an iPhone? Or maybe, just maybe, a CEO that looks like Steve Jobs?

So my reply has not been answered yet, and the question remains:

“APAKAH BAPAK GEORGE BAKER INI SEORANG PEMANGGANG ROTI?”

Such a bold statement coming from someone who lives and works in Indonesia. But hear me out, I don’t put up titles without a reason. For the past few years, I am often asked why do we have 85% overseas clients and 15% local clients. So here are the reasons for that, based on my experience:

Free Pitches
First and foremost, I hate free pitches, and some Indonesian clients think that this is part of a good corporate governance (yeah, good corporate governance my ass). Here’s my explanation on why free pitches are a disgrace to humanity. In the creative industry, our resources are our key assets to make our business work, and that includes time, money, manpower, and above all else, creativity itself. So if we waste these for something that we probably won’t get, I would prefer that we work on something else, and use our precious creativity there. And yes, stealing designs to be given to cheaper designers is a definite sign that you’re a colossal douche, and I’m pretty sure that they reserved a spot for you to rot in hell.

Window Shopping
This is also a bad habit. Not that this only happen with Indonesian clients, but to overseas clients as well, except that it is on a lower frequency. So when we already contributed a few hours of our time to research and make a comprehensive quote for a project but got ditched with no reason, I hate that too. The least you can do is to say that you’re not comfortable with the price we asked, and then fine, maybe you’re not a suitable client for us. Fair enough, not everybody is everyone’s client.

The Inability to Know What One Wants
This is a killer move. Most of Indonesian clients seem to revolve around the idea of a trend (or perhaps ego and pride as some people like to call it). One has a blog, everyone wants a blog. One has a social media manager, everyone wants it, too. One has an E-commerce website, everyone wants to make one without realizing that they don’t even have a freaking store to begin with. But almost none seem to understand if they need one in the first place, or if that is just the result of being a follower. And the second they see these array of zeroes in the quote, they bail out and said “I didn’t realize that building an online shopping website is such a huge investment.” Well, if you’re looking for a proper one, yes it is. Sorry, but that is a fact.

The Inability of Appreciating Creative Work
This is the ultimate thing of all the things that we hate in this nation’s creative industry, people who cannot justify that building a website, for example, is worth more than 500,000 rupiahs. I can’t say many things about these people except that if they value design and creative work like shit, then that is exactly the same value I’d give to their business.

In the end, I don’t mean that all Indonesian clients are bad. As I stated before, we do have local clients as well, and those we’ve worked with are not bad clients. They appreciate our work, they value the need of design in general, and most of all, they listen. They listen and they are willing to take our advice as design professionals instead of telling us that they-paid-so-they-get-to-order-us-things.

But there’s the other side of the coin as well. Some designers are also to blame because they value themselves so low, that inconsiderate clients think they own these people’s lives. So why don’t these designers value themselves higher? Why don’t they value their industry better to begin with? To this date, I simply don’t know how to answer this properly, or how to figure out how their minds work. I hope someone would really enlighten me on this one.

Again, those are my observations based on my experience. So depending on different circumstances, my writings here cannot be accounted for a factual reference to your particular cases. They are just my two cents.