Bad customer support from Toyota

Don't you think that says a lot more about Canadian culture in general, than about a specific company?

 

You guys have Internet?

Tom

 

He said the site will not let Canadians log on. (Presumably a site can tell where you're logging on from.)

Toyota has never been great on customer support. They make reliable cars, but they're miles behind Honda on customer care.

When I bought my Honda Civic I was invited to a presentation where they explained everything about the car to us and we could ask any questions of people who actually knew about the car. Then I was treated like royalty, even though it was their cheapest car, or nearly so. They always offered me a loaner even just for an oil change.

When I bought my Prius, there was no hand-holding, nobody at the dealership knew the first thing about the car other than how to sell it, and at oil changes the best they offered was a "courtesy" ride with long waits. When the "courtesy car" driver ran a red light while looking at his list of addresses I quit using that service and took a cab instead.

The Prius is the best stinker on the road, but Toyota needs to take a lesson from Honda on how to treat customers.

 

I know you use Hulu sometimes. Canadians cannot access Hulu. There are quite a few American sites that are blocked from Canadian access

Canadians have nothing to be proud about in regards to Internet access or cellular access/price.

Canada trails in Internet broadband access: Harvard

I find this sort of information contradictory and embarrassing. Canada doesn't have a trillion dollar defense system, no nuclear powered aircraft carriers, nuclear powered Trident subs, no TACAMO planes, no E4, no ICBM's, yet can't seem to s*** or get off the pot

Nortel actually developed a lot of key Internet technology in the early to mid 1990's, especially with DBIC for teleco line drawers, BLSM/VTBM, enhanced VT mappers, etc

Then Nortel essentially pissed it all away, and imploded. The problem with Nortel was a lot of dead weight carryover from the monopolistic Bell Canada. Indeed, it was only Government protection of Bell that prevented it from also imploding

Research In Motion appears to be far different, it lives in the Academic culture of Waterloo University. But its no secret that the biggest market for BlackBerry is outside of Canada

 

It's not just Canada. Every time I go to the dealership for service it's like "give us your money or go away because we don't need you." And then it's like they go on to barely look at my car and appear to enjoy telling me anything I might have issues with is "the way it is" and they can't do anything about it (e.g. HID headlight aim).

 

Hahha about Nortel and then they went bankrupt. A friend of mine used to work there (in Santa Clara) well before the implosion. He said it was like working in communist China. He said there was no incentive for working hard/doing better.

What's are the jokes about the acronym NT? Nice Try? Not There? BNR == Brain Not Required? There have got to be other good ones.

I'm blown away by RIMM's success w/the Blackberry. I guess it's because they were amongst the first to have reasonably reliable small email devices? (that originally ran on paging networks) I guess they were shrewd to give the devices to free to CEOs to get their foot in the door. Perhaps it's because most of their devices have keyboards and they have such a brand that people think for email and SMS, they should get Blackberries? (A Taco Bell worker once even told me he got a Blackberry. I looked at it and it was actually a Samsung Windows Mobile device.)

I've borrowed a 1st gen Blackberry Bold (on AT&T) and Storm (on Verizon when they were on their 2nd major firmware release) and call me underwhelmed. The UI was an engineer's special, their email support (for consumer email like Gmail and Hotmail) was a joke and I hit numerous bugs on the Storm besides it having a tiring and lousy click screen.

 

Of course, I agree completely. Nortel richly deserved their implosion, along with the Canadian taxpayers who shoveled money into it

What you have described is how MOST Canadian companies operate. I honestly do believe that Nortel was dumbfounded they actually had a few success stories. Canadians are weird, they are self-deprecating and usually shun the spotlight, the last thing they want is a runaway hit on their hands - unless it involves curling or hockey

Those brain damaged ex- Bell Canada telephone technicians turned Board Of Directors were probably so shocked that the world jumped onto DMS-10, DMS-100, DMS-500 SuperNode, DBIC and Enhanced DBIC for Line Drawers, etc, they probably held an emergency meeting

"Who wasn't keeping an eye on those radical engineers? Who allowed them to come up with original, highly creative ideas the entire world wanted? For cripes sake we're Canadians! We can't allow THAT!! We therefore have no choice but to RUN THE COMPANY INTO THE GROUND!! Fire 95% of the engineers, and let them get snatched up by American and European companies!"

Reminds me of how Xerox gave away the kitchen sink at PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) in the mid 1970's. Ethernet? Check. Mouse? Check. GUI? Check. Laser printer with neat fonts? Check Check Check ...

Let's not even start on the Avro Arrow. Another Canadian innovation run into the ground

I've been to their campus a few times on business, have thought of getting RIM certified, but that just sounds wrong doesn't it? Imagine me at a convention somewhere and a lonely woman asks me ...

"Hi! What do you do?"

"I'm RIM certified!"

Budda-boom!

Agreed on all points. Back in Sept I ordered an Apple iPod Touch 32 GB, using my Airmiles (I never go anywhere that doesn't involve free business travel, so might as well get nice toys with the oodles of Airmiles I have banked). I then downloaded the DataViz app from the Apple Store

Seriously, my iPod Touch does a MUCH better job with viewing and editing Microsoft Office files, Adobe Acrobat files, than any co-workers CrackBerry does. Then when I'm bored, I can load up something like the new Star Trek movie (The BluRay version comes with a Digital version too, very smart of them) and entertain myself during boring meetings

Speaking of which, time to go to the next one .... yawn <snort>

 

I meant overall corporate culture in Canada. RIM is the exception, not the rule.

 

So, where's the block? Do sites like Hulu and that Toyota one the op mentioned block attempts originating in Canada to access them? Or do the Canadian ISPs block those sites? Or is there a technological incompatibility between the Canadian internet and the U.S. internet???

 

Great when you want employment at Research In Motion. You can go up to the lovely representative and be all like "I want a RIM-jo....wait"

 

I think it's on the server side and for copyright reasons. For Hulu, it's probably that also likely related to royalties.

 

First of all, the Internet is the Internet, period. There is NO technological gap, although back in the early 1990's Bell Canada certainly tried to make one

Otherwise, it's a very complicated issue of media rights, the CRTC protecting monopolistic, overpriced Canadian media corps, and just a general apathetic culture

Denied the right to watch TV online? You've been geo-blocked - thestar.com

Networks unprepared for digital TV shift: CRTC - The Globe and Mail

For example, Satellite tv in Canada is provided by either Bell ExpressVu, or by the company that used to be known as StarChoice, now part of Shaw Cable.

For a country of 30 million, having two satellite providers only makes sense if taxpayer dollars fund it. The CRTC kept out Directv and Dish due to many complicated reasons, such as "Canadian content."

So, what we have instead is far fewer channels, at twice the cost of comparable Directv or Dish

 

If you run into that kind of stuff a lot, it might be worthwhile to have a friend in the U.S. loan you his/her address, and then get a credit card or debit card at a U.S. bank.

So Canadians can watch hulu and others, they just have to go roundabout.

 

Heh, this probably why I've heard of Dish and DirecTV pirates in Canada. I'd guess that some of that "Canadian content" includes Quebecers wanting stuff in French.

 

Actually, almost ALL of that "Canadian Content" bulls*** is for the Other Official Language.

Yes, many Dish and Direct pirates up here. All while Canadian taxpayers cough up for Canadian satellites and "Canadian Content."

You can always tell if a show was produced in Canada. At the very end, will be a blurb along the lines of "Produced with BC Film and Video Tax Credit ... Produced with Ontario Film and Tax Credit .... Produced with Canadian Film and Tax Credit" etc

Canadian Taxpayers ante up BIG TIME for this crap. A surprising number of American TV shows are produced in Canada. By the time you factor in various Provincial and Federal incentives, they are practically FREE to make

 

Paying taxes for TV is incomprehensible to me. Do you have commercials or are they all government commercials, LOL.

I would like to add that I would not necessarily be putting American cable on a pedistal. Generally cable is expensive, you pay a premium for dull TV and should you need any customer service, you roll the dice and take your chances.

 

There are commercials, but obviously they are also "Canadian content" as well. Sometimes there is a slip up and we get to see a commercial for something only available in the US, such as DirecTV

 

Ok just have to clarify here... I am a Canadian, living in the states. In the states there are only 2 satellite tv companies as well, DirectTV and DishNetwork. Then there is cable which is almost all Comcast or some offerings by Verizon in major cities only. Exactly the same in Canada, 2 sat companies, 1 major cable company, and lots of others that use the same feed.

We subscribe to Dish Network $110USD/mo for our package with HD and the DVRs, and we ALSO subscribe to Bell ExpressVU for $99CAD/mo and pick it up on a 1.2m dish and a 30cm dish.

You seem to be covetting what you dont have. Having Dish Netork, yes I have more channels. However when was the last time anyone watched the home shopping channel? Well there are like 10-12 of them in a row, those count as "channels". Everything available on the american satellite is available on the canadian satellite. And usually live instead of a rebroadcast. Taking olympic coverage this year on CTV, it is a good 2-3 hours ahead of the american broadcast. Makes betting on the final score really easy!

As to commericals, no duh it is Canadian... Why advertise for a Brazilian sandwich shop in Ontario?! Commercials are always regional specific. Even on satellite channels you will see a completely different set of commercials for CBC in toronto vs. CBC in vancouver. Just like a different set for the WB in LA vs the WB in New York City. Same channel, same content (shifted by 3 hours, good for watching things you missed), very different commericials.

Also if you have ever watched american commericals you will notice how 90% of them are for either lawyers, drugs, or a combination "if you used this drug, then call this lawyer for money compensation". The rest are incoherent blabble about products. DVRs are a neccessity here. The quantity of commericals is always less on the canadian dish and there are more PSAs, more help-yourself and community type commercials which I find more refreshing. We still jump over them when we can though.

So speaking as someone with 3 satellite dishes strapped to our house, paying 2 subscriptions, with 4 DVRs and more regular standard receivers, "jayman" is blowing it waaaaay out of proportion.