If you’re a Verizon user that has found that you can’t send mail this weekend, like I found out, I have a fix for you.

Verizon has turned off the ability to send email through their servers. You now need to switch the SMTP server (Outgoing Mail Server) to smtp.frontier.com – the username you should be using is the same account name as the first part of your Verizon email address before the @ symbol – but, you need to add @frontier.com to it. The same password will work.

To recap, the username of youremail@verizon.net needs to be changed to youremail@frontier.com, with the same password and the above server name. After those updates, you’ll be able to send email.

Such a shame that Verizon and Frontier dropped the ball.

I regularly scan the isles of stores that I’m in for deals or to catch issues like I’m writing about today.

Scanning the shelves, while annoying to my wife, allows me to catch good deals that allows me to keep the prices down for our services. As much as I annoy my wife, I find some really good deals here and there, but I also find stores taking advantage of ignorance.

In certain industries, shop owners and salesmen have figured out that slapping a higher price onto something means it’s “better quality”. This happens a lot in the tourism and furniture industries, but can be seen many other places.

Well, the other day, I was at a major Office Supplies retailer and I was shocked at what they were doing. In this case, the store was selling a particularly nasty hard drive for well over what it was worth taking advantage of people. This is about as close to preying on ignorance as it comes.

In the industry, we call this specific hard drive the “Deathstar” – seriously. This glass platter, “should have been put out to pasture years ago”, drive sells for $53 to $75 online at the major technology retailer websites. This specific retailer took that price and knocked it all the way to $109.99 – $10 more expensive than a quality counterpart sitting right next to it. So, they doubled the price of a bad drive, put it next to a better brand and would bet money their staff would have recommended that drive to me.

I understand the need for making money, but this is far beyond that. On top of that, they were selling the drive for $10 MORE than online! What the heck….

Folks, please be careful who you buy your technology from. Just because things are more expensive doesn’t mean you get quality.

Sigh… Some businesses are out to make money, while others are in business to help others.
Justin

When Protocol16 was a smaller company, with no shop to drop stuff off at, none of the competitors paid attention to us. Oh how things have changed…

We’re well aware of two specific companies that like to randomly call up and give us a speil about all sorts of things. Mostly, I get annoyed or perhaps angry, depending on how my day is going – but I never let that come across on the phone as I really try to keep it professional. I’ve considered sending a strong message to both of these companies because I consider it a complete waste of time for everyone involved since our website lists pricing.

Unfortunately, this issue has gotten to the point where it’s laughable.

You see, we don’t cold call competitors (aka: Secret Shopping), whine about how our dog tripped over a laptop and popped keys off (you Sir, are obviously not a dog owner…), or argue about data recovery rates against Geek Squads (You mis-quoted the pricing anyway, and I don’t argue with customers), etc. We simply do standard research on all “ya’ll” and let our own customers speak volumes over the competition. We don’t feel the need to call a place, challenge their responses and test their knowledge to make ourselves feel better.

For instance, we know when someone’s shopping around on the phone, it’s obvious, and we welcome people to do so. When someone comes back to us and directly tells us who quoted her and how much, that’s great research. When we can do a virus removal for less than half of what one of our closer competitors do it for, that says something.

Since one of my postings about how cheap Protocol16 is, we’ve gotten phone calls from a few more places, but one in particular has decided to call a few times. The last phone call we got from them, they forgot to block their caller ID. Sorry, but even if I do figure out who you are and I do get upset, I maintain composure and act the part on the phone… They were shopping around for a particular fix and when we quoted them, they said “Well, X company can do it cheaper” – oddly, X company was them. Great – your website says otherwise, so keep telling yourself that while we take your customers. We’ve since had a few others forget that Caller ID exists.

For the competitor that emailed us and we replied “call us or we’ll call you” – it took me a while to decide on doing that instead of openly calling you out. I decided to maintain a professional attitude. Yes, we knew it was you. If you’re as smart as you think you are, you should be able to figure out how I knew it was you, even though you thought a throw-away address would be anonymous.

To our competitors: I will continue to treat you like a standard customer but lord help you if you show up in my shop and waste my time… I post a lot of information online for our own customers to do research on. That’s what you should be doing too. Stop worrying about the competition and focus on yourself and you’ll start to figure out what you’re doing wrong compared to us.

Now, to get some work done for actual customers.
Justin

PS – If you want to actually talk, just email me like a normal person, from your actual address. I’m much more open than you could possibly comprehend.

That’s right, our customer’s lives affect us too…

Today, I got a call from a very nice customer that I’ve helped a few times. Nothing major, but I’ve spent enough time around him that I know him decently well. He started off telling me that some things in his life had changed and he updated me on his situation then we discussed a new camera, new computer, etc. During that entire time, I couldn’t help but feel down due to his situation even though he kept a happy tone.

I won’t go into details, and I don’t know all of them, but his simple statement affected me more than it probably should have because we really do care about each customer… His life situation had changed, as had his technical requirements for a new computer.

When a customer asks what is best for them, we delve into their history, their attitude, their needs and FUTURE requirements. Knowing you, your family and a bit about how you use your computer allows us to tailor a solution for you, not the 200,000 people out there like Dell or HP.

In another situation, Protocol16 built a custom workstation for a very special customer. Knowing her needs and future requirements, we recommended a specific computer with multiple monitors. At first, she thought the extra monitor would be a waste, but if you’d try to take it away from her now, a week in, she’d probably end up chewing your arm off…

Give us a call and let us see what we can do for you. We’d love to get to know you before we start spouting off deals everywhere…
Justin

Upgrading to Outlook 2010 and your auto-complete isn’t working?

Have no fear, even though Microsoft changed some things around, there is a trick:

Launch Outlook with the following command: outlook.exe /importnk2 from the Run command, or Vista/Windows 7 “search bar”.

Outlook will launch and look like nothing happened, but check your auto-complete. It should be there, baring a profile alignment issue.
Justin

To the more technical crowd, the originating nk2 file needs to be named the same thing as the profile that Outlook is opening for this to work.

This is perhaps the second most asked question that my customers ask. I use to recommend Toshiba’s based on personal experience and quality. After spending a week fixing nothing but Toshiba’s, I now think that you really need to stay away from the low-end Toshiba’s, just like all the other manufacturers. Notice the hyphenated keywords: LOW-END.

But, so customers and others can do their own research, I present one of the papers that I regularly talk about in those one on one “What should I buy” situations.

eBay’ers will recognize SquareTrade. If you don’t know who they are, they’re a “middle man” company that settles a lot of high end transactions so no one gets the short end of the stick. They also provide warranties to some customers, which is where the data comes from.

Now, you will see a brand called ASUS listed in the study, which you’ll also see listed on our homepage (we’re a partner). I love this brand, they make decent electronics, servers, and they even started the NetBook craze. Historically, I wouldn’t recommend them since most people don’t know the brand name, which typically causes the “WHO?!” conversation, but that’s changed.

So, an introduction is due, in case you’ve never heard about them: ASUS has been around since 1990, but hasn’t really branched out until the last 3 to 4 years. As of now though, they handle about 29% of all motherboards in machines for Dell, Apple, Toshiba and others… Food for thought.

Again, this is a LAPTOP study, not a desktop study. There are certain laptops that I cringe at hearing about (HP DV series laptops are the top cringe-causing laptops), but I’ll recommend certain desktops on occasion as well. I need to find more comprehensive desktop study to publish before openly talking about them.
Justin

Part of any business owner’s job is to “shop” around. While we’re not like a lot of other companies that will call a list every month with some crazy story and request pricing, we will check websites and a few other odds and ends. On top of this, our customers report back all the time about what our competitors say, do and what they charge. That’s right, our own customers, through shopping for the right price, will tell us exactly what the competition is doing and charging.

I have two words that describe us: “WE’RE CHEAP!“. Several close competitors are charging nearly double what we would for simplistic jobs. On top of this, I have personally diagnosed customer problems right in front of them and sent them on their way, with no bill.

This happened most recently with a couple that had brought a desktop in that wasn’t connecting to the internet. I’ve worked around the internet since..lord knows when. I’ve supported it, worked on networks, etc. Unless something is really bad, those types of things can be fixed with just a few settings. Well, I plugged the computer in, fired it up and instantly got online with no problems. It turns out that the network cable they were using at home was bad. They said they had another and left quickly and happily knowing that they didn’t get charged for me to plug in a machine and do nothing. Other places may have taken this machine and charged money to “fix” it…

We charge $70 an hour for home users (including home based businesses) and $90 an hour for businesses (2 or more people). On top of that, we have several discount programs. Are you a Bethany Village Business Tenant? DISCOUNT! Repeat customer? DISCOUNT! We don’t play around… We gave over $1,000 in discounts during the first quarter of 2010… We’re serious when we say we want to save you money!
Justin

We just wanted to put the word out that we will be closed on July the 3rd and July the 4th – Saturday and Sunday.

We will be back in the office on July 5th.
Justin

My first thought when I saw the subject was “I didn’t order anything…”, then I opened in and went “HUH???” then I moved the mouse over the links thinking “Scam!” – yup.

These people are getting SNEAKY…

If you receive the following email (I’ve blacked out my personal address), just delete it. Don’t click any of the links – you DON’T want to do that…

Buy.com Email About Computer Purchase

Once again, those pesky malware creators are trying to cause problems. Here’s the original message:

Dear Microsoft Customer,

Starting 17/06/2010 the ‘Conficker’ worm began infecting Microsoft customers unusually rapidly. Microsoft has been advised by your Internet provider that your network is infected.

To counteract further spread we advise removing the infection using an antispyware program. We are supplying all effected Windows Users with a free system scan in order to clean any files infected by the virus.

Please install attached file to start the scan. The process takes under a minute and will prevent your files from being compromised. We appreciate your prompt cooperation.

Regards,
Microsoft Windows Agent #2 (Hollis)
Microsoft Windows Computer Safety Division

This message also comes with an attachment. Delete it. The attachment has a few nasty things in it, to include the Fake Antivirus software that’s been going around.

Again, just delete the message and move on.
Justin