On Feb 1, 12:11*pm, Edge wrote:
I used to work for a customer service company that took the complaints
of consumers through their 800 numbers. Each complaint was classified,
grouped and analyzed by the parent company. Any deviation from normal
stats were flagged. The defective products could be tracked by
production runs to the manufacturers country, factory, date, time,
shift. All products would have records of *the materials used as well
as the labor. I agree with Trader4. With the multi-national
manufacturers like Panasonic, nobody can just substitue inferior
material and get away with it for long. It is the parent company that
specifies a plastic cog or a metal one. Ryobi uses plastic parts in
their drills. DeWalt uses metal parts.

All that stuff about tracking complaints and tracing them back to the
shift sounds good on paper.

However, if you've ever heard the term "garbage in, garbage out" so
then you shouldn't put much faith in the process.

I recently called Panasonic about a bread machine I received as a
gift. I gave them the model number and asked a question about the
relationship between their loaf sizes of "Medium, Large and Extra-
Large" and some recipes I had that listed the size in weights (1.5 lb
and 2 lb).

The rep repeated the model number back to me and then looked something
up and said that "Medium, Large and Extra-Large" meant 1 lb, 1.5 lb
and 2 lb loafs.

Since I still had the box right in front of me I asked her: "So why
does the box says it makes "up to 2.5 lb loaves"?

She put me on hold and came back to tell me that she had looked up the
wrong model number and should have told me 1.5, 2 and 2.5.

The point here is that unless the reps really know what they are
doing, the data they enter will not be accurate and the trcking data
will not be accurate. We've all had situations where we knew more
about the product that we were calling about than the CSR at the 800
number, so I don't put much faith in the accuracy of their 'tracking"
systems.

Garbage In, Garbage Out, Garbage Tracking