Dear mister Rahman,
first of all I want to thank you for the open and honest letter that ended up in my email box last week. I had the opportunity to be one of the first users in the world to own one of the Jawbone UP devices thanks to some of my friends who where in New York the weekend it got launched. When I had a first look at the package when it arrived to me in the Netherlands I was not only impressed by the beautiful packaging (and brilliant small things on there like the flap to measure your arm too see if you have the correct size) but I was also thinking to myself this device is the dawn of the quantified self. A relative cheap device which helps and keeps people motivated to take care of your physical health.
Over the first week of usage I noticed some simple ‘issues’, which in my believe, could enhance the device even further and I shared them with great joy towards your support team on their twitter account. (besides the calorie intake within the app it would also be nice to have GPS in the device itself for workouts, which off course can be enabled via the button to not permanently drain the battery).
Then the problems started to occur. First I lost my cap, like apparently some more users did, and after my first charge my device decided to not preform at all anymore. I must admit I was a bit disappointed, not so much by the fact that such a device breaks down on the first charge, my girlfriend even warned me: “that is what happens if you always want to be the first with some new tech”, but more by the way customer support took care of my problems.
By now I have learned that there are at least two customer support centers on the globe(US and Ireland), but it seems they do not really exchange information with each other and I had to explain my problem a couple of times. When sending back answers to questions asked by the support team I even had to resolve to some twitter stalking to get another response in my inbox. At one point my cellphone number was even asked promising, via DM, I would be called by a product manager within a couple of hours, up until today I never had a call.
But then last week all of a sudden everything became right again when the mailman showed up with a completely new and working device, this when I was not even expecting it anymore! A couple of days later I received your email..
My initial reaction was that you must be a very though guy, since it took some real balls to write an email like that and deal with all the potential losses for your company while everybody is asking their money back. Even if they have a working device and just want to get some extra cash for the upcoming holidays.
That is the reason for writing you this letter, I really love the way you as CEO are dealing with the situation, while most of them are looking for a mere short term cashing you look at the big picture and the future, the believability of the company. I still believe in the Jawbone UP as a device and a way of living and that is why I want to ask you for a small favor (I know I must be out of my mind after such huge display of generosity last week), but might it be possible to have my refund made out in Jawbone company shares? I think there is a bigger future for Jawbone as a company and I believe in the future of the UP as a device. Thus I would rather show my support and faith to the company which is going to make the quantified self a reality then have some more cash on my bank account right now.
Sincerely yours,
Hans van Gent
[email protected]
