Strongly considering this as an alternative...

Recently, my husband and I acquired a super cool Subaru wagon as a second vehicle and have been really loving it so far. Sure, it’s from the ’90s, has about 160k miles on it, but dangit, it’s in excellent condition and fun to drive! Plus, there’s tons of room inside which is really nice for a certain baby that’s coming this July (:))… Moving along, it has been fantastic not having an extra car payment, so I’m in heaven with this car (though it will never take the place in my heart reserved for my cute, little red Mazda).

However, I must say, I am DESPERATELY missing a simple feature that I never thought would be absent from any: CUP HOLDERS! Lord, how I miss the cup holders when I drive the Subaru. Apparently, there was such thing as a time when cars were meant for driving and not as miniature living environments. I really hadn’t a clue that this was the case is many (if not most) older vehicle models, so I’m obviously either sheltered or spoiled. However, now I am a little wiser and will keep this in mind when my husband asks to use my car!

Seriously, imagine your vehicle without cup holders. You might think, “Eh, no big deal,” but it’s a helpless feeling when you have a cup in need of a secure spot. Sure, you may not always use a cup holder for, well, cups, but it’s nice having a little extra space where you can put your iPhone or iPod in, or even store your spare change here and there.

If you’re like me at all, breakfast is somewhat of an afterthought. Meaning, I’m about to leave and realize I haven’t put anything in my stomach since the night before! This usually means that it’s a ‘cereal in a cup’ kind of morning. Ya know, grab some mini wheats, pour ‘em in a plastic cup, add milk, grab a spoon and go! I can be really innovative sometimes. To be fair, I only eat at stoplights, but that doesn’t mean it was a hassle driving with one hand while my delicious breakfast stared at me in the face.

The lesson of the day is:

Don’t take your cup holders for granted. You’ll miss them when they’re gone.

We have been using resellerratings.com for years now. Initially, it was because we had to, and now, it’s because we want to.

Now, I am a big believer that, if you have any issue with any aspect of my company, I want to know about it immediately so that we can make it right for you, and then implement changes that prevent it from happening again to someone else. In fact, no other iPod repair company that I am aware of encourages their customers to call the owner (me!) directly (210-787-9482) or via email if they have a problem or concern that is not being addressed by my stellar Customer Service Department.

I think that’s a much more effective way of getting an issue resolved, as opposed to filing a complaint with the Better Business Bureau or making a negative review on sites like ResellerRatings.com. Bottom line: give us a chance to fix the issue, and if we don’t, head to RR and fire away!

But the increased relevancy of ResellerRatings.com (RR) has caught my attention these past few months. And now, with their recent site re-design and increased exposure alongside Google search results, I felt RR warranted another Milliamp review.

In fact, the changes that RR have made further distances themselves from the more stodgy and less accurate BBB. The main difference between the BBB and RR is that a customer can only submit a complaint to the BBB, where on RR, a customer can submit a complaint or a compliment. This alone makes RR more favorable in the minds of merchants over the BBB. On top of that, merchants can respond to the review left on RR, whereas on the BBB, you can internally respond to the complaint, but all that relevant detail is never seen by the public. And RR recently expanded the review criteria from one overall ranking to several components of the transaction: overall satisfaction, cost, shipping process, and customer service, to name most. This may not seem like a big change, but the end result is likely a more accurate and fair review. Most reasonable people who will leave a review on RR will fairly rank a company on each of these criteria – but if they ding a merchant all across the board, it really makes the reviewer look catty, bent on destruction, with no reasonable consideration for the entire business exchange. While it is not clear how reviews made on RR in the past when there was just one criteria on which to rank factors in the overall score when mixed with these new, more comprehensive rankings, it is a welcome change for merchants.

With these new features, however, comes a price: most small companies will be asked to pay RR $99 per month to be able to see the order number of the person leaving the review and be able to respond to the review (perhaps the most controversial aspect of RR’s business model). If you are short on cash and don’t want to maintain an account with RR, you can usually figure out who left a review of your business by examining the username (which is typically similar to the customers’ email address) the customer used for their review, or from the details of the review itself, but again, you won’t be able to publicly respond to the reviewer for others to see.

The RR site has changed quite a bit, too. While not quite 100 percent complete (there are still a couple of broken links), the site is a major improvement of the first iteration that we have been familiar with.

Now, there seems to be a greater focus on reviews, and less focus on shopping. I have personally never started to look for a product by first going to RR – perhaps people actually do this, but it still seems like an unusual place to start for me yet. A great indicator of this change are reflected in the positioning of the two search boxes: the ‘Find a Store’ search box now appears before the ‘Find a Product’ search box:

milliamp-review-resellerratings_01

And you no longer have to hunt around to figure out how to leave a review; at the top-right side of the Home Page is a big button to start the review process:

milliamp-review-resellerratings_02

One of the most “entertaining” part of the RR site is their ‘Best and Worst List’, which is still present in the re-vamped website. Here you can read up on the most highly-ranked companies, and shake your head when reading about the worst on the list. I have to admit spending a lot of time reading the both, to try and gain insights on the best way to run my organization.

milliamp-review-resellerratings_05

RR also rolled out a new logo, which should become more and more of a common sight as more business start to display the logo on their websites:

reseller-ratings

I have a few suggestions for RR to consider to help make their business more useful to merchants:

1. Discounted pricing for merchants based on their overall rating. Merchants that have higher rankings should be rewarded for their “good behavior”.

2. Allow merchants to specify if they want a specific review to appear on search engine results pages. This could be configurable so one could say, for example, to allow any reviews between 7.5 and 10 to appear, while anything less would not be crawled.

3. Allow merchants to integrate reviews left on RR with their Twitter accounts. The tweet could include a tinyurl link back to the actual post. This too should be configurable so that a Tweet would only occur if a particular threshold was met.

In closing, I have been impressed with the growth and influence that ResellerRatings.com has acheived. On top of that, the few times that I have needed their assistance with account maintenance, they have been very responsive and helpful.

Best regards,

Anthony Magnabosco, Owner
Milliamp LTD
Cell: 210-787-9482
Email: owner@milliamp.com

Happy New Year, Milliamp-ers! Now that we’ve got Christmas underneath our belts, we’re so excited to keep knocking out repairs left and right  like nobody’s business. We have an excellent, streamlined process in place that really makes things easy for you, as the customer, to send in something for repairs. I love talking to new people on the phone, especially when they’ve just come across our website and see a toll-free number to call. Sure, they might have all of the information they need at their fingertips from our website, but they just want to TALK to someone about what’s funky with their iPod. We’re totally, 100% a-okay with that and encourage you all to do the same! Even if it’s a simple question, please call! In the off-chance we happen to miss your phone call, please leave a voicemail and we’ll get back to you promptly.

Okay, so I’m talking about streamlined process and people calling with questions, and I just have to divulge what the number one question is:

How does this process work?

Simple, right? Well, in the world of iPod, iPad and iPhone repairs, you’ve got a lot of options. Do you want to do it yourself or do you want a fleet of experts to do the fixin’ for you? Do you want to ship it off yourself, or do you want one of our lightning-fast emailed shipping labels to be sent to you? Lastly, do you want to save some cash and get free return shipping or spend extra and get it shipped overnight just in time for your nephew’s birthday? Either way, we’re standing by to help you with any help! We’re experts when it comes to shipping AND communication, so feel confident in knowing that we’ll be giving you the lowdown on what’s your best option if you have an important shipping deadline to meet.

Believe it or not, as much information as what we have on the website about how the process works, we still have a modest stack of orphaned devices that came in without any type of real identification or order confirmation number. Yes, it’s crazy, right?! We have people that send in their naked $300 iPod without any kind of contact information! Now, let me tell you that this isn’t being broadcasted to lure any shady people in so that they can claim, “oh, yes–that’s my iPod!” You’re going to have to provide a lot of identifying details so that we can be 1,000% we’ve got a match with its rightful owner. Mistakes happen, so we realize sometimes people forget to include their order numbers!

If you want to know the secret to getting a really smooth experience with us, submit your order online or with a Customer Service over the phone before you ship your device to us. We receive a ton of packages any given week, so if we didn’t have everyone do this, we’d be swimming in a sea of homeless iPhones and iPods!!! We absolutely need to who that cute little purple iPod nano belongs to (Dads, you SAY it’s your daughter’s…), what service you would like us to complete and where we  are going to ship it back. Communication is key, so if we get a package without any name on it, we have no way to contact you (and nobody wants that). Plus, we can’t work on it until you have an order with us!

Please, if there is anything that we can put on our site to make this a bit more clear, let us know! We absolutely love suggestions and observations to help streamline the process even more. For repairs, did you know that we email you every single step of the way while it’s here? That means that you’ll know when it has arrived, when it’s repaired (or evaluated), tested and ready to ship again.

Well, happy trails, all!

Contact us at service@milliamp.com or toll-free at 1-800-809-8133 with any questions!

'Doh!

We have helped literally thousands and thousands of customers, and have been thanked by many, many people. But for some reason, I think my staff and I seem to remember most vividly the times when things do not always work out the way we had intended.

To help illustrate this point, I want to tell you the (true) stories of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

The Good
A day or so before Thanksgiving, we had two customers in our lobby. The woman at the counter was checking in her son’s iPad, which got smashed up while he was away in Iraq. When the order taker at the front counter waived over a technician to inspect the device, it became apparent that the customer might also need a new backplate. The customer reluctantly agreed to also pay for a new backplate for her son’s iPad, and headed out the door. The other customer in the lobby had overheard the entire conversation, and told us that he wanted to cover the cost of the lady’s iPad backplate. Wow! He did and later, the woman was so pleased to have such a nice person sympathize with her situation.

The Bad
In this situation, we had a customer that had spilled water on her brand new 5th Generation iPod nano and the LCD went out. She sent the device to us, we replaced the LCD and the battery, and the device was working great. When she received it, however, it was dead. Not completely unusual with water-damaged devices, but we stepped up and had her ship it back to us on our dime and we ended up replacing another part in it, again, at our expense. The device sails through testing and works great. She gets it back, and it is dead. Definitely frustrating, but again, with water-damage of this magnitude, not entirely un-heard of. We get it sent back to us again, and we determine that the logic board on the device is toast – all the new parts we installed were working great, but the logic board finally succumbed to the initial water trauma. The customer contacted me and we discussed this most unusual situation, and I explained that we see odd things when it comes to water damaged devices. We agreed to credit her account in full for all of the parts she had paid for (even though they were still inside her device) and send the device back to her (which was actually working for us again as we packaged it up and sent it to her). Well, she received it back a third time and guess what? The device was not working again. Surprising to hear us since it was actually working for us here but again, not entirely unusual because of the unpredictability with water damaged devices. But the customer did not call me. She did not email me. But she did file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau. I was frankly dumbfounded, as it was my understanding that the customer fully understood that these things can happen with water damaged devices, knew that we had credited her account despite our parts still being inside, and surely must have known the tremendous amount of labor that went into not only working with her troubled little nano, but all the labor it took to communicate with her, receive her device in, ship her device out, etc. Why sumbit a milliamp BBB complaint when I am available to work something out!? Anyways, we finally ended up resolving the situation with this customer, and she is happy now and we are happy now, and we both have a new-found respect for the temperamental nature of water damaged iPods!

The Ugly
Nothing frustrates me more when we have someone that is rude to us after we have expended effort to answer persons’ questions to the best of our ability and in a timely manner. But that is what happened with this recent exchange between my Customer Service Representatives and person who was inquiring about a repair and apparently lost sight that there was another human being with feelings on the other side of their conversation:

~~
Matthew Robert Posted on: 27 Nov 2010 3:36 PM
From: ‘tarheelfan14@gmail.com’
Ok so my friend let me borrow his new iPod touch 4g and I broke the screen it fell face first on the pavement. But his iPod is jailbroken so i wsa wondering if you can fix jailbroken ipods

David C. Replied on: 29 Nov 2010 10:36 AM
Dear Matthew,
Thanks for contacting us. It really doesn’t affect us if the device is jail broken. We can replace the glass either way. If you have any other questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact us. Have a great day.
Here’s a link to our 4th Gen iPod Touch repair,

http://www.milliamp.com/4th-gen-ipod-touch-repair.html

Best regards,
David C.

Matthew B. Posted on: 01 Dec 2010 8:50 AM
From: ‘tarheelfan14@gmail.com’
Can you give me a lower price

David C. Posted on: 01 Dec 2010 9:54 AMMatthew,
Sorry, but we cannot offer this at a lower price. Have a great day.
Best regards,
David C.

Matthew B. Posted on: 01 Dec 2010 10:15 AM
From: ‘tarheelfan14@gmail.com’
Well you just lost buiessnes for me and 6 of my friends

Marian C. Posted on: 01 Dec 2010 10:52 AM
Well, we are sorry to hear that, Matthew. Your business would be very much appreciated. We truly wish our well-trained repair technicians would be able to get your iPod touch up and running again with our high-quality parts, but we hope that you’ll let us know in the future if you’d like to use us for any repairs.

P.S. To keep from getting burned by any other companies, please remember that the 4th Generation iPod touch is built in a way that the LCD and outer glass/digitizer are fused together as one piece and cannot be installed separately. Any company advertising otherwise is not selling a legitimate part. Also, the repair is $128 which is $109 for the part plus $19 for labor.

Best regards,

Marian C.

Matthew B. Posted on: 01 Dec 2010 11:00 AM
From: ‘tarheelfan14@gmail.com’
Well a companie that apple says has real parts does it for 84.99 so Hahahahah

David C. Posted on: 01 Dec 2010 12:19 PM

That’s great! We’re sorry we couldn’t have been a better help, but keep us in mind for any other future repairs you may need. Good luck!
Best regards,
David C.

Matthew B. Posted on: 01 Dec 2010 2:25 PM
From: ‘tarheelfan14@gmail.com’

O just suck a Wang

From: Anthony Magnabosco
Sent: Thursday, December 02, 2010 9:23 AM
To: ‘tarheelfan14@gmail.com’

Matthew,

If the maturity of your responses below to my Customer Service Agents (who were only trying to assist you with your questions) is any indication of what kind of friends you may be hanging around with, we do not want your referrals. Besides, we owe our competitors a Christmas present anyways, so please head elsewhere. Good day, sir.

Best regards,

Anthony Magnabosco, Owner

Milliamp LTD | Repairs for Apple’s iPod, iPhone, and iPad
5890 De Zavala Road Suite 107
San Antonio, TX 78249
Cell Phone: 210-787-9482

To which this most eloquent individual replied:

From: Matthew B. [mailto:tarheelfan14@gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, December 02, 2010 4:55 PM
To: Anthony Magnabosco

Hey my friends are fine but u rme sonny boy speak English need
~

Huh?!

Now, let me ask you. You just read about three different scenarios that occurred this week – which one sticks out in your mind? The good, the bad, or the ugly?

Have a great weekend, y’all.

Anthony Magnabosco, Owner

Hello Milliampers!! How the heck have you been?! Can you believe that tomorrow is thanksgiving? This year has gone by way too fast. 

So, im in a band. I think I may have mentioned that before. We’re called THE SKY DIVIDED. In October of 2009, we started working on our first record. We tracked 2 songs and were extremely impressed with the studio quality. So much in fact that we decided we were not ready for the studio. We decided to slow everything down and re-evaluate who we were as a band. We started to look at the songs we had and what we could do to make them better. For the past year we’ve had between 20 to 30 songs to work with, some finished and some just small parts. We picked out 10 songs that we really really liked and started developing them. We even changed the way we played shows. How? Instead of playing 3 to 4 times a month, we cut it down to 1 or 2 a month. We would play new songs at shows to see how they would fit and how people would react to them. Back in March we tracked another 2 songs. Thats 4 songs done. Great! We thought we would we would have the record done in no time after that. Wrong. We got offered some pretty good shows between April and July, so we spent the summer playing shows. August is where things picked up. I spent a little time doing scratch tracks and writing even more new songs. lol Since September we’ve been in the studio trying to finish up the record. We FINALLY picked the 12 songs that would go on the record. More importantly, these are songs that we are excited to be playing live for the next year or so. As of right now, there is only 3 songs left that need to be tracked. The finish line is not too far ahead friends. Im so excited that we’re so close to being done. We should start mixing the record late December and have it available late January. Maybe you’ll find some of our songs on your iPod after you get it back repaired!

We’ll thats it for me friends. Have a great holiday and be safe. Until next time, stay classy….

paul-fairchild-ipod-art

Being in the business, we have seen a lot of smashed iPods, iPads, and iPhones.

iPods run over by a tank, iPads run over by a car, iPod touch with dumbbells dropped on them, and the way-too-common iPhone-dropped-in-a-toilet.

But the devices you see here, captured by Michael Tompert and photographer Paul Fairchild were intentionally destroyed.

Now, we are good, but this looks like damage that would be a bit beyond our repair skils!

More of these stunning images here.

Have a great weekend!

Anthony Magnabosco, Owner
Milliamp LTD

one-million-views

The total amount of video views on our various YouTube accounts just surpassed the 1 million mark.

It’s a testament to how long we have been around, how many people are interested in what we do, and the massive effort we have put into the iPad, iPhone, and iPod repair business.

Sure, ‘Double Rainbow’ blows us away in this area, but give us time!

Have a great weekend, y’all.

Best regards,

Anthony Magnabosco, Owner
Milliamp LTD

As you may have read in an earlier post, we have recently implemented a new device management system called ‘millihub’, and the results of all our hard work are starting to pay off. Providing timely updates via email has never been so automate for our employees, and it has never been so good for our customers.

Customers appreciate the notification when their device arrives, when it gets evaluated and we have determined what parts are needed, when we repair the device, when the device passes testing, and when the iPhone or iPod or iPad ships out, as evidenced by this recent review we received of milliamp.com:

milliamp.com_Reviews_01

And then a few days later, this one:

milliamp.com_Reviews_02

And a few days after that one, this one:

milliamp.com-reviews_3

Like anything we do, we know there is always room for improvement. Customers may want to have these updates texted to them instead of emailed, or maybe even tweeted to them. Other customers may want pictures or perhaps even video of their in-progress repair as it happens. iPhone app, anyone? All doable, for sure, with millihub.

Anthony Magnabosco, Owner
milliamp.com

We get lots of email each day, and you would not believe some of the stories we hear from our customers about exactly how their precious iPhone or iPod or iPad became damaged.

Well, we received an email from the curator of The CPU Shack Museum the other day, and he was looking to increase his collection of processors, specifically, iPhone processors. We were happy to oblige, and combed our shop for a few spare, broken iPhone motherboards. Shipped ‘em off today, in fact, just to help this worthy cause.

So if you want to learn more about microchips and the central processing unit of your favorite computer, pda, or other electronic gizmo, you need to head to one of the most comprehensive, if not quirky, sites, The CPU Shack Museum.

This website has gobs of information and interesting pictures of chips and sexy silicon, and even some pretty gutsy claims ([and I am paraphrasing:] “8-bit microcontrollers will not be replaced with their newer 16 and 32-bit bretheren for decades.” – the nerve! )

This pictures shows you some of the packages that rolled into the museum while its’ curator was out for a few days:

the-cpu-shack

Have a great weekend, everybody. I am off to Canun, Mexico with my family this coming week, but will still be checking email if you need to reach me. And of course, my crack staff is at the ready (210-568-7473) to help you out.

Will most definately try to get a blog post or two posted up here about our trip during that time.

Regards,

Anthony Magnabosco, Owner
milliamp.com

Thinking back to my childhood, several things pop into my head. Basically, it revolves around school, field trips, snacks, nap time and the library. I realize I went to the library quite often with my mom when I was a kiddo, but unfortunately, that habit didn’t exactly carry over when I blossomed into–eek–an adult! Recently, it dawned on me that I was missing out on a great local library system in San Antonio which offered copious amounts of books for my leisurely reading at no cost made me feel terrible because I could have saved so much much from not having to buy something I was going to read once.

Since that revelation, I’ve since requested a library card, so all I need to do is drop by my local library (one street away from my house) and finish up that process. Then, it’s a long future of checking out books for me! Is it nerdy of me to be excited for this? Nah, I didn’t think so.

By the way, apparently the San Antonio Public Library has started gettin’ with the times and has now started offering free e-book, audiobook, music and video downloads…all without having to leave your house. Whoa. Meaning, I can download them onto my iPod or new, snazzy iPhone 4 and get my read on. Oh yeahhhh.

Alas, my new adventures to come are contingent upon whether or not I pick up that library card, so I’ve got to hop over there pretty soon. Man, how could I have possibly almost forgotten about one of my favorite places in the world?

If you have kids and have never really taken them to the library, I really recommend doing that. I especially recommend taking them to one of those huge gigantor libraries like the Central Library here in San Antonio. Memories of being completely mystified by this are still fresh and lingering to this day…