Why Kinko's is lame

[eclectica]

http://www.kinkos.com/global_assets/images/hdr_kinkos_logo.gif

My letter to them sums it up:

Kinko's Customer Relations
P.O. Box 1935
Provo, UT 84603-9926

Thursday, 2003-09-25

Attention Kinko’s:

A couple of days ago I went to use the internet at the Kinko’s on 762 St. Charles Ave. in New Orleans. I tried to access a website and found it was blocked by a program called “SmartFilter” that you have installed on your computers there, made by securecomputing.com. The reason given was that the site has a content of “sex, extreme”.

You can’t call yourself “professional” if you tell your customers what to do and you censor them. This censoring of yours suggest arrogance. You think you know what is better for your customers than they do for themselves. Your attitude is more appropriate for the Chinese government or for a Disney movie, than for a company which is supposed to be supportive of the projects and ambitions of its customers. Your role is to deliver for the customer; not to be an obstacle.

In light of this management philosophy of yours, I do not trust your company for any of my projects. I will make sure never to do business with your company again. You can not be trusted to deliver a quality product that satisfies my needs, without personally meddling into my business.

[nicobie]

I guess U told them.

(any company that got it's start in Santa Barbara has to suck)

[Beejus]

the computers at school have the sort of same feature on their network, it's powered by BESS though and it blocks just about any site you come to....


the systems also use DeepFreeze which deletes everything you did on the computer once you restart the machine...

I guess since it's not my service and or machine, I can't complain, but it sure is annoying.

[napho]

This seems like a triumph of salesmanship. The guys who flog things like SmartFilter feed companies like Kinko's alot of nonsense about smut and their legal liability if a child visits porn sites and running a clean business and they fall for it.

[nicobie]

Originally posted by napho
This seems like a triumph of salesmanship. The guys who flog things like SmartFilter feed companies like Kinko's alot of nonsense about smut and their legal liability if a child visits porn sites and running a clean business and they fall for it.

??

Who made her kinko anyway?

[eclectica]

October 6th, 2003

Dear Customer:

Thank you for contacting us regarding your dissatisfaction with SmartFilter.

I apologize that you are unhappy with Kinko's decision to install SmartFilter on our Express Computers. The decision was made to ensure that customer's use of the computers is productive and non-offensive to both customers and team members.

If you feel that the website you are attempting to access was blocked in error, please go to the following site http://www.securecomputing.com/cgi-bin/filter_whereV3.cgi, and submit your request to have the site reviewed.

Thanks again for writing.

Sincerely,

Berlina Sika
Customer Relations Representative
Kinko's, Inc.
Phone: 1-800-2KINKOS
"The decision was made to ensure that customer's use of the computers is productive and non-offensive to both customers and team members."

It wasn't a productive experience for me because I was not able to access the web site I wanted to.

I went to the link provided and reported officedepot.com as being a "sex" site. Kinko's might as well block all access to officedepot.com sites, because it could offend some team members and customers, and lead to an unproductive web experience.