Rocket Science

Update: It two minutes or so to solve via email after getting contacted by National Customer Care, and 28+ minutes in a chat. See below for the gory details.

Two Three Four great examples of Comcast’s brilliance…in one screenshot.

EcoBill is a great feature — if you can’t get your bill to download, you can’t print it out. A clear win for the “green” movement. (Of course you also don’t get a copy of your bill, even electronically.)

A chat window that requires you to scroll the text area to view the chat. Resize the window, nope doesn’t help.

A customer service rep that wants me to “go to my local office” (involving driving) to get a copy of the EcoBill I’m supposed to be able to download electronically.

And an email option that doesn’t work to get a copy of the transcript.

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Awhile back I posted a write up about a new “ancillary fee” at Southwest Airlines and included link to a story about the amount of money airlines were “making” from these fees.

I recently read a story the author had with an airline executive ranting about how the accountants are promoting the revenue from the “ancillary fees” for bag charges, on-board meals while at the same time hemorrhaging more and more money. The author draws a causal relationship between these fees and the losses (presumably due to lack of customers flying the airline). I’m not sure if I believe the causal relationship, but it’s an interesting read.

The faster airlines add fees for basic services like checked bags, the faster their total revenue declines. And as my airline-executive friend ranted a few weeks ago, it’s the forest that matters, not the trees or the fees.

Source: Brancatelli, J. (2009). The Forest, the Trees and the Bag Fees.
Retrieved October 9, 2009 from Joe Sent Me Web site http://joe.biztravelife.com/09/042309.html

(Here’s another related article at CNN.)

I got an email from a obnoxious domain cybersquatter recently. I released some of the domain names I’ve been holding for various projects and this enterprising fellow took a look at what I had registered and what was newly available and decided to offer to sell me the .com hostname related to the .org hostname I still own. Really nice of him. Except I released the .com names for a reason. And I don’t need to feed his obnoxious business by buying this hostname from him.

I really wish ICANN and domain registrars would stop this sort of obnoxious cybersquatting.

As part of our SpokenMedia project, I’ve been looking at quite a bit of online lecture video.

I need to make a request.

Please, please stop putting 5 second or longer bumpers at the start of online videos.

Really, 5 seconds is way too long to make me wait for a video. I’m ok with you putting some branding information at the start of the video, but anything beyond 2 seconds is just dead time. I am going to stop paying attention to your brand in that time period. You’ve gone from making me aware of your brand to ignoring it.

(The same can be said of the 20-30 second commercials at the start of a Hulu video. Really, I tune out completely. You’re not doing anyone any favors.)

Ok, I’m pronouncing it official. Office Depot fails.

So, of course, I didn’t receive a phone call back on Friday after speaking with Kim at National Accounts who said she’d, “Get to the bottom of my problem.” Mind you, I did specifically ask her to call back whether or not she made any progress and she agreed to do so.

I called Office Depot this morning to learn that a credit had been issued to my account and that I’d have to re-order the item. I responded, “Why the hell would I do that since you don’t seem to be able to deliver the product to me?” About two minutes after getting of the phone, I got a call from probably a dispatcher at Office Depot who was surprised that my order was “canceled”, she was calling to arrange for a delivery. She was also surprised that a credit had been issued. She said that yes two delivery attempts had been made and that usually throws something akin to an exception.

Hrm. Well, I think three delivery attempts were made, and the customer service person at the national accounts phone number that I called should have been able to see that. You see, they’re using computers, computers are good at transmitting information. Office Depot staff are bad at interpreting information.

To be completely fair, Office Depot clearly has some problems integrating their website, regular customer service staff, national accounts staff and so on. And they clearly have communication issues. But probably the real culprit here is probably the third-party delivery service it sounds like are the Office Depot hired to delivery the product to me delivery drivers. The drivers appear to by lying to Office Depot (based on the notes that Office Depot has read/paraphrased over the phone). I’ve never received a phone call from a driver, and certainly no driver left a message. Hello. Not Rocket Science. Having problems? Contact the customer. Customer not there? Leave a message. Or call dispatch and have them follow up. Don’t lie. Sheesh.

So the operative question is, why would I order from Office Depot again, even if I get a discount? Good question. I’m sorely tempted to order a single pen and have them go through this rigamarole till they get it right.