Listen--in the silence you can hear OfficeMax going "splat" as they fall down on their face. Nothing gets my blood flowing like piss-poor customer service, and OfficeMax pulled off several splats this week. I ordered a hard drive on Monday. It was in stock according to the web site when I ordered it. The whole point of me checking stock is to see if I can get it---Hellllloooo OfficeMax?. In a world of excellent service from places like Amazon.com and Newegg, the bar has been raised. Anyhow, OfficeMax takes my order online, then sends me confirmation e-mails. All is well, expected delivery date was Wednesday. Nice. Wednesday comes, no delivery. So, I'm patient and wait a day. Thursday comes and no delivery. Well, maybe something is up. I wanted this thing by the weekend so let's give it until Friday. Nothing. I log onto my account and check--well well well, it's on backorder. How come nobody bothered to tell me? I got zero--no e-mail, no notification, just going on backorder in silence (insert crickets here). That's it, I'm voting with my dollars elsewhere, so I call OfficeCraps phone number--all customer agents are currently busy (presumably at the break room), and I wait in dead silence for 12 minutes. No funky elevator music, no "you're call is important to us once we finish our donuts," no nothing. I'm wondering if the phone just went dead or if someone is really going to answer my call. To their benefit, the customer service rep was nice enough to cancel the order, so I didn't unload on her. I had some problems a week ago with a missed order from Staples, and they took care of everything--they cross shipped out the correct item and even did a shipment pickup on what was goofed up. But OfficeCraps? Re-read what I said above, and OfficeCraps is a whole lot of "nothing."

Let's recap:

• OfficeCraps said it was online when I ordered but it wasn't. Vo slips on the gloves.
  
• OfficeCraps put the item on backorder and didn't alert me in the least bit. Vo starts his warmup swings.
  
• OfficeCraps puts me on hold for 12 minutes with no audible feedback whatsoever. Vo can contain himself no more and he swings for OfficeCrap's head, landing a solid cracking thunderous wave of smash after smash, rending OfficeCraps no longer recognizable and requiring dental records for proper identification.