The short version: It took exactly 30 minutes and I had my money back. As I couldn’t believe that I hadalready spent so much time on my little “keyboard and power-cord” project , today I exactly tracked the time in the store. I went in at 13:32 and stepped out at 14:02.

The long version of the story is no fun to tell, so just notice that in the end 4 Gravis coworkers were involved in the process.

As consolation they gave me a little aluminium box of with about 15 Tic-Tacs inside (see picture on the left). Thanks for this.

The lucky part of my visit there was, that I had the opportunity to take a look at the new ‘iPod touch‘. This device has the same user-interface as the iPhone and I was curious to see it at work. It took me a few seconds to get familiar with the screen keyboard, but the overall impression was: WOW I’m impressed. Most surprisingly I noticed that the speed of the UI is really as fast as in the demos in the commercials.

The rest of the time I wasted to bring up my Gravis story up to the various demo computers in the store. Just to keep potential customers informed about the superior service of the store they are in

After waiting 4 weeks for the power-cord I decided, that I won’t continue to crawl under my desk every morning to plug in my power-adapter, so I had the bright idea to try if another non mac power-cord fits in my power-adapter, and it does!

Happy me, I don’t need the new 12 EUR power-cord any more. So I phoned Gravis to reject my order after 4 weeks of waiting for a simple power-cord. On the other side of the phone someone told me, that it was not possible to reject personalised orders. After a short introduction into the German law about buying and rejecting the guy was happy to tell me that in my special case they could make an exception, cause the cord was not even delivered yet.

Happily, cause I thought that the call is over in half a minute, I requested that they just send the money back to my bank account. But than I was told that they could only give me back the money cash. I should come over, show the bill of the advance fee and than they rollback the order.

Really confused (remember the cash stories of the first part) I complained that I wanted to cancel the order right now, cause I can’t come over right now and it might take a few days till I find the time to fetch my money there. And if the cord arrives in between they won’t accept the rejection.

The man told me, that he doesn’t think that this is possible, but after I expressed my impatience with their store a bit harsh he gave me the opportunity to listen to their ‘hold the line’ music.

A few minutes later he picked up the call again and told me that in my special case he can for sure guarantee, that the cord won’t arrive before I came over and reject my order. A bit curious I asked:

“Oh how are you so sure if we don’t cancel the order right now?”

“Well Mr. Weiss, we made a little mistake. Somehow we missed to order this single power-cord. You have to understand that we normally only sell the whole power-adapter and not single cables”

Oh yes, I understood that life is hard inside of Gravis stores! I’ll try to go to Gravis next week. Let’s see what happens.

For me it’s more than sure, that I will never ever go into a Gravis store after this last visit. And personally I won’t go in any other store managed by these clowns any more.

As I needed to by a new keyboard and a power-cord for my macbook, I thought let’s try a Gravis store, as this way I don’t have to make an account for my company in the apple online store and just get a bill for my company there.

So i went to the next Gravis and the story started. In the base floor a very friendly salesman came to me and asked if he could help me. Wow, I was impressed I didn’t have to search or to pardon myself to ask somebody. This guy told me that I needed to go upstairs and there I could find the keyboards and ask for the power-cord.

Once upstairs, I found the pile of keyboards and searched the international version, as I prefer this layout over the German one. Unfortunately no international keyboard layout was in the pile. So I started to search for the power-cord (the cord from the power-plug to the external power-supply). Unfortunately I also couldn’t find such a cord.

So the situation changed: I needed to ask some of those friendly Gravis guys. There were 4 of them on this floor, 3 had to deal with other customers. Instinctively I went to the fourth which was standing in front of a iMac(r). Unfortunately this guy had no interest to start a conversion with me and continued staring into his iMac. Well, I thought, let’s wait till some of the other 3 gets free. After 10 minutes of waiting (its really funny to see how these guys sell computers to upper-class customers with very limited it knowledge) I decided that I had waited long enough and went a second time to the fourth guy in front of his iMac. After staring about 1 minute concentrated at him while getting more and more narrow, this guy decided that he cold not longer ignore me and did like surprised “oh, may I help you?”

“Yes! Please help me. I like to order an international keyboard and a power cord!”
After about 5 minutes of searching in his iMac, where a virtualized windows ERP application was running on, he said, that these two items need to be ordered and that I need to pay in advance, cause for ordered stuff it’s not possible to return.

Very interesting I thought to myself. A college of mine who was with me already rolled with his eyes. To start the order, I gave the gravis guy my vcard and told him that I want to order this for my company. The guy needed another 5 minutes with his windows ERP app running on his iMac and than he said, you can now go to our cashier to pay the advance.

Downstairs again I went to the cashier’s desk where the cashier queried the bill out of his iMac and printed it, while I payed the stuff by card. Surprisingly I saw, that the advance fee was 100% of the price. My college continued to roll his eyes.

After I had payed the cashier gave me the bill, guess which name was on the top? Only my name, not the company’s name. So I complained, cause I really needed a bill for my company. But now the situation turned out to be very complicated. They told me, that they are not able to rewrite the bill. They need to reject this bill, add a new customer, sell again the stuff and this time to the new customer. But I had payed by card, they could not give me cash back…

To solve this complicated situation the cashier ordered a second guy and they both disappeared . It took about 10 minutes till they came back and gave me a new bill with the right contact information. Yippee! About half an hour to get things ordered. Is this the spirit of mac?

About one week later they gave me a phone-call that my keyboard was now there, but not my power-cord. But if I liked I could fetch my keyboard.

Yippee! I directly went to the store and said ‘I like to fetch my ordered keyboard, you just called me, my name is “Weiss”‘. A friendly guy wrote my name on a card and went upstairs. Two minutes later he came and said: “Sorry Mr. Weiss, you’re keyboard is not delivered yet. Maybe you want to try it tomorrow”

“Puh, you just gave me a phone-call, just 30 minutes ago that my keyboard is here.”

“Really?”

“Yes!”

“But it is not. Sorry.”

“Maybe you find it under my companies name?”

“Ah, let’s try this!”

2 minutes later: “Here is your keyboard!”

Ok, I learned another interesting story about the Gravis internals. They cant find my record by my name, if there is a company name present…

Than we went to the cashiers table and he asked me to pay the full price!

Really confused I complained that I had already paid the full price a week ago. It took him another minute to verify this. Then the next complicated situation occurred. I had already paid for two items, and now I only fetched one. The guy did’t know how to handle this situation. ‘Maybe I need to give you the money for the second item back and then we reorder this item… but oh wait you have payed by card, I can’t give you the money back…’. So he phoned another guy and they needed about 10 minutes to solve the situation. I needed to wait the whole time before they let me go.

You find this hard to surpass? wait for the power-cord story…