this year.

I’ve been looking for a new slim wallet to replace my current mid-sized wallet from Danier Leather. A friend got a really nice slim wallet from Danier (one slot for all your cards, then a money clip for bills), but when I went by they no longer sold them, so I settled for the model with individual slits for your cards and a money clip in the middle. When I say money clip it is essentially a hook on the spine of the wallet that clasps the bills in. It’s pretty small footprint wise, but because of the slits it can get thick even with 4 cards in it. In searching for a slim wallet solution I looked at a bunch of options and decided to settle on the Koyono Slimmy minimal wallet because of it’s small footprint and thickness when full. I don’t carry a lot of cards as it is, so the minimal space works fine for me. (review)

This is where the problem begin.

Their website on August 11th indicated shipping times of 3-5 days, and made no mention of backorder delays. After waiting 13 days for my wallet to arrive I visited their contact page where an interesting notice had been posted:

A notice posted on August 21st, 10 days after my order was placed, now indicated that a backorder situation exists. Thanks guys, but it would have been nice if you had emailed me this information 6 days ago since you have my contact details. An email was also placed to their contact info, and they sent out a reply that read:

Dear Minimal Wallet Enthusiast,

We are sending you this e-mail just to let you know that we are experiencing a slight delay in getting some of you your Slimmy abecause (sic) of especially high demand. While our suppliers are doing their best to keep pace, we are experieicing (sic) slightly longer lead times to fill orders.

In order provide quality customer service as we grow, Koyono continues to add resources to prevent a similar recurrence.

We really apologize for this inconvenience and thank you in advance for your understanding. We have confirmed that we will be receiving shipments in before the end of the week, and will begin delivering all backorders orders as they arrive. You will receive an e-mail confirmation with tracking information when your order ships.

If there is anything further we can do for you, please do not hesitate to contact us. Thank you in advance for your understanding.

Sincerely,

Koyono Support Tank

My gripe isn’t that they have a backorder, my gripe is that they didn’t inform me about the backorder. What is even more concerning is that they make no mention of the backorder on their product pages or final ‘confirm your order’ page. The only indication of a backorder is tucked away on their contact page. While I’m on the topic of shipping I should point out that they charge $41 for the 3-5 day shipping option (to Canada). Is it just me or does that seem a little high for an item that measures 3.8″ x 2.9″ x .3″ and can’t weight more than a few hundred grams. What are these things shipped in? Gold lined crates? The wallet should easily fit in any standard size envelope. Even $9 for 1-3 day delivery in the US seems expensive compared to other much larger products I have purchased online.

Koyono, listen up. You appear to have a fantastic product, don’t ruin it by following it up with crummy customer service. If you are behind in shipping let the consumer know, they’ll appreciate it. Otherwise you will cause great frustration as they wait by the mailbox day after day for a package that will never arrive. That is just common sense, and marketing 101. I hate to say it, but I think you need to get your act together.

I read about Rogers hijacking search results a while ago and experienced its absolute useless absurdity but didn’t think much of it — or rather I thought enough people would complain that it would be discontinued pretty fast. The blog Useable Design does a pretty accurate job of capturing what makes Rogers new ‘feature’ so ridiculous (with screenshots).

I often type URL’s by hand into the address bar, and if I make a small mistake in typing I get a 404 error and I can look at the URL and see my mistake and correct it. No longer. Rogers jumps in and replaces my URL with one that points to their search results for my mistyped result. Thanks for nothing. They say I can turn the ‘feature’ off by letting it add a cookie, but as Usable Design points out that option just points you to a Rogers 404 page, so my mistyped URL is still no where is site. Turning the ‘feature’ off only stops the search results from showing, so in the end it’s actually a worse option than seeing the silly results in the first place. I guess I could mess around with changing my DNS settings, but that seems a bit much.

This is completely ridiculous and can only be seen as a cash grab for search result advertising. The funny part about this is that Rogers also hijacks any and all unregistered domain names, as well as any domains that, for instance Google, hasn’t activated. That just seems silly. Good on ya Rogers, and if you can’t tell that was meant facetiously. (FYI, facetiously is an example of a word in the English language that contains all five vowels — including the sometimes y — in alphabetical order.)

If I recall correctly I was getting drenched and swimming through puddles of mud while sampling various beverages at the Beer Festival at Historic Fort York in Toronto. It looks like the smart people were making there way up to Lake Huron to catch some waves. That’s right, the photo above is Lake Huron — don’t let the blue water and sizable waves deceive you. Check out the entire photo set at flickr and read about it at Origin Surf.

Photos by RTH001