Blog . Eli Duke . Com

despite all that i had already been through with QOOP, i decided that the only way to truly test their system once and for all (and prove that i was in the right), was to submit another order. i sent hugh the following response before i had completely made that decision:

From: eli
To: QOOP
Date: August 27

hugh,

thanks for the update! it’s good to hear that i actually do have options. i will definitely give that a try for my next order, but i’ll probably still keep my fingers crossed just in case.

i don’t really see how that will affect things, though. my prints were in order when i submitted the last batch (i triple checked them), so the problem had to have occurred sometime between me submitting the order and you all receiving the order. i guess we’ll just have to wing it and see.

i really do appreciate the time you have spent dealing with me on this.

eli

i was afraid that if i waited too long before printing my next batch (like when i get back from antarctica = 9 months) they might forget that i even exist. then, if the problem does repeat itself, everything would be less relevant and i probably wouldn’t get the attention that i would get now. i put in the order, making certain that the photos were chronological.

From: eli
To: QOOP
Date: August 27

Hugh,

i just submitted another order for about 650 prints, order #xxxx61482.

here is the set that i printed:

http://flickr.com/photos/elisfanclub/sets/72157601700659474/

is it possible to at least just look at the order that they arrived to you guys and see if that is the order that they are in in the set i linked to above?

thanks again for your help

eli

that was yesterday afternoon. i was expecting to get some sort of email response later that evening or early this morning. neither of those things happened and i was left waiting.

then, much to my surprise, an unfamiliar number appeared on my cell phone’s caller ID this afternoon: it was hugh from QOOP! he was calling to let me know that the exact same thing was happening with my new order that happened with the last. it hadn’t been printed yet, but hugh was able to verify that the arrangement that they received was certainly not the same as the set on flickr. i had been completely vindicated!

it was at this point that deja vu set in… hazy dissolve.

What if:

I submit a set for printing, but first you guys compare the order of the photos in your system against the order on Flickr. If they are the same, go ahead and print them. If not, refund my money.

Is something like that possible?

hazy transition

I’m sorry but we can not do the request that you asked us to do. I’m sorry about not being able to help.

wait… what? what happened? did i black out? that was weird…

anyway, hugh told me that he was going to check with the engineers and with flickr and really dig deep on this problem. he also said that when they do finally get this all sorted out that i will be getting this batch printed and shipped for FREE (that’s about $100 worth of prints)!

From: QOOP
To: eli
Date: August 28

Thanks, Eli:

As I mentioned on the phone, we’ll be checking your order for you. (Thanks for the link as a control)

I’ll get back to you with any feedback from our engineers.

Best,

Hugh

———————-

i wrote all of the above sometime on wednesday afternoon and i was waiting to see what would unfold before submitting this post. i wasn’t sure what exactly i was waiting for, but i had a feeling. boy, was i right.

at about 6pm on thursday evening i got a comment (on the first qoop post) from Bill Murray, the CEO of QOOP. say what? that’s right… this shit has gone all they way to the top. so, click that link right there and read that shit (and my response) because it’s starting to get really exciting!

a quick search through the elisfanclub archives will show that the very first time i mentioned xkcd.com was back on september 30th, 2006. 2006? that was like almost a year ago! wow.

anyhoo, the guy continues to keep me laughing. his most recent comic about shopping teams had me in stitches, absolute stitches!