Monday night, while I was working, I suddenly got a pop-up message saying my computer had disconnected from my network harddrive. My Western Digital MyBook World Edition network harddrive suddenly began having problems powering up. The lack of a harddrive not only limited my productivity and took my time, but also sent me on a roller coaster of customer service.
A couple weeks ago, I took my car to Sears Automotive for an oil change. As soon as I left Sears, the car began leaking, something it hadn’t been the night before. Through tribulations outlined previously, I just wanted to have a fully working car again, which itself became an extended process.
After the adventures of the Dude, My Car trilogy, I thought it might be a good idea to do some maintenance on it. An oil change and car wash seemed to be the order of the day. Unfortunately, it was my choice of vendors was not quite on the same par as the thought itself.
Last week, I chronicled my experience dealing with Sears Automotive over the course of the month of September. I decided to use this as an experiment in social media to see what kind of response I would get from Sears by writing the blog and then seeing what attention I could garner by promoting it online.
This past summer, the light on my dashboard came on letting me know that my brake pads needed to be replaced. Unfortunately, bringing the car in to Sears Automotive for repairs lead to far more problems than I ever expected to need to fix and cost me far more in money and time than I ever expected.
Your identity online is not dependent on your name. The name you choose to call yourself online is not as important as the value you give those people who choose to “follow” you and listen to what you have to say.