Thrice-weekly postal deliveries: Pound wise or pound foolish?

I was reading a fascinating article in The Economist about the U.S. Postal Service, and a few things came to mind:

• Hmm, the comments are delightfully civil and informative!
• Can I count on one hand the number of postal items I receive quarterly -- perhaps even yearly -- that I actually want?  Why, yes, I probably can!
• What would happen if the U.S. Postal Service delivered only three days per week (say, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday)?

This latter idea, then, prompted me to wonder the following:

1. Would this pose an actual hardship on people, and if so, would it (I assume) most likely hit the economically-disadvantaged more heavily?  And if so, in what ways?  Could other factors/proposals mitigate the potential hardship?
2. What if the U.S. Government got out of postal delivery altogether, perhaps in conjunction with some sort of requirement (stick) or deep incentives (carrot) prompting private delivery companies to continue delivering to loss-leaders (rural areas)?
3. Is the postal service largely public in most, or even all other industrialized nations?
4. What about a subsidy or other incentive for households or even apartment complexes which offered to accept minimized or even eliminated postal delivery services?

Keep in mind, I'm not necessarily proposing that pickup from centralized locations be reduced or eliminated.

Your thoughts?

My idea for saving the U.S. Postal Service: Address for life

As I've written previously, I'm in the process of moving from one townhome to another in the city of Mountain View, CA.  What a massive pain!  Transferring all utility bills to my soon-to-be-ex-roommate, starting or getting transferred utilities at my new place, and of course, all the physical moving!

But there's one other thing I'm majorly dreading:  change of address notifications!

Sure, you can do a Change of Address form online with the USPS for a $1 fee, delightfully ensuring that all your junk mail follows you to your new location.  But this doesn't relieve you of the oh-so-fun duty of notifying (online or otherwise) your banks, credit card companies, health/car/other insurance companies, student loan and other lenders, DMV, your work, magazines, e-commerce firms (amazon.com, ebay...) etc. etc. etc.  By my latest estimate, this means I have over 50 separate companies to notify, and I'm sure I'm missing some.  Assuming it takes about 5 minutes per address change (and that's probably conservative), that's over four wasted hours.

It's a lot easier in the online world (for geeks)

Those of us who are geeky enough to have our own domain name online can get addresses like [myfirstname]@[mylastname].net.  Not only do these look spiffy (and mean we can actually have our first name as our username -- a practically impossible feat in web mail!), but they also offer super-easy forwarding!

For instance, I currently have my domain address instantly forward mail to my @gmail address.  Then, if by chance a cooler webmail comes along, I can instantly redirect all my subsequent incoming mail to that new webmail service.  Or I can even have my mail forwarded to two different services at once, also with fewer than two minutes of work.

"Ultimate Rewards" by Chase = Insulting Rewards (marketing)

I've had Chase credit cards for probably over a decade.  One of them was just converted to an "Ultimate Rewards" card and today a huge glossy brochure arrived in my mailbox.

23 pages, bucketloads (technical term) of words, and one ridiculously obscured very-plain fact:  This card offers 1% cash back.

Now mind you, that's nothing to sneeze at... the 1% cash back part, I mean.  I currently have (and mostly love) my Schwab no-annual-fee 2% cash back card, but Schwab has ceased offering it to new customers and who knows how much longer the rest of us saps will be grandfathered in.  Discover Card offers a higher percentage cash back, but only once you've spent $x per year with $x being a very large number.  And how many places around the world -- especially outside the U.S. -- take the Discover card, anyway?


No, 1% cash back on a no-annual fee card isn't awful.  You know what's bad, though?  Insulting your customer's intelligence.  Let me explain.  Here are some of the zillions of offers breathlessly touted within the brochure:

• 2,000 points = $20 check
• 2,000 points = $20 statement credit
• 5,000 points = $50 gift card (lots of variety, but, yep, same ratio)
• 10,000 points + $191 = $291 airfare ($100 + $191 = $291, get it?  And whoa, "fly without restrictions"! Amazing!)
• 10,000 points = $100 Hyatt Check Certificate

Noticing a trend?  In fact, in every single listing I checked in this big conglomeration of dead trees, I see -- wait for it -- the equivalent of 1% cash back.

So yeah, maybe I'm being overly cranky about this, maybe this is just fancy marketing, but to me it says, "Hi consumer!  We know you're a moron that would be unimpressed or even confused by '1% cash back' so we're going to dress this up... page after page after page after page of oh-so-pretty-stock-photography-like photos."

I'd rather Chase, oh, I don't know, cut out the lame marketing... stop filling our landfills with stupidly wasteful mailings... and from this, perhaps, save enough money to offer its customers 1.x or even 2% cash back on every purchase.

Quickly figure out cost savings for a fuel-efficient car

I have a Prius and I like it a lot*.  It may not be universally seen as stylish, but I don't care :)  It's not only environmentally sound, it's roomy, comfortable, and -- with voice recognition and other geek pleasures -- it's fun, too.

But you, bottom-line reader, may be asking, "Okay, so what's in it for my pocketbook?"  Fair question.  So I jumped in my time machine, went a couple of years back, and found this handy Google Spreadsheet that I designed, just for future-you!


Please be nice and don't erase or otherwise harm this spreadsheet (though yeah, I certainly have a backup just in case :-)).  You can plug in numbers in the yellow "Edit below" fields to see just how much you might save in gas costs with a Prius.

Enjoy... and, as always, feedback's welcome!

P.S. -- Feel free to view and download your own copy of this fuel cost calculation spreadsheet.

*P.P.S. -- Quit yer snickerin' about "runaway" issues. IMHO, this was a tempest in a teapot, with congressmen unfairly vilifying a foreign brand using scant evidence and employing scaremongering techniques. Yeah, yeah, I'm biased, but still...

Amazon, inexplicably hampering its most loyal customers

[Note:  Links below are affiliate links, so if you click and buy, I make money.]

I have bought hundreds of items from Amazon  (yes, I’m an Amazon Prime member, surprise surprise :-P)

Some of them I’m particularly fond of and want to either repurchase or recommend to a friend… but I can’t do easily because Amazon won’t help me.  You see, I’ve not been able to figure out any way to search through my purchases; it seems I can only browse by year (and paginatedly browse at that… ack!). 

I bought an amazing compressible travel pillow (below) a while back that I absolutely love, and I wanted to encourage my parents to get it for their upcoming trip to New Zealand :

[oops, pillow seems to no longer be listed on Amazon, and graphic was just showing a generic Amazon ad.  Blech!]

...but couldn’t find any sane way to look up the product. 
- I tried doing an Amazon search for “travel pillow” but there are hundreds if not thousands of travel pillows in their store.
- I then tried searching through my gmail (where I get my Amazon order receipts) for “travel pillow” but that didn’t turn it up.
- Somewhat randomly, I then searched Amazon for “orange travel pillow” and that did the trick.

Amazon, why do you make this so difficult for your active customers?  Why not a simple search box in the My Orders screen?

Edited on November 8, 2009 to add:
Looks like Amazon no longer sells this pillow.  Bummer!

Knott's Berry Farm -- For shame!

Okay, this is not a rant on junk food.  I think when people eat Cheez-wiz, they aren’t misguided enough to assume they’re eating healthful real cheese.  When people eat a double fudge brownie, I doubt they’re confusing this with an apple.  And when people eat Cap’n Crunch cereal, there’s no way they’d assume they’re consuming real fruit.  Oh, um, wait a minute, someone did?  Er, well, anyway, you get my point :-D

But seriously… sometimes there’s an absolute nasty & unhealthy food paired with such obnoxiously, blatantly misleading marketing that I can’t help calling a spade a hyrogenated [sic] artificially flavored spade.

First, the marketing that, by all means, should condemn some marketer to eternal dietary hell:

“In 1920, Walter and Cordelia Knott began selling fresh produce, berries, and preserves from a roadside berry stand in Buena Park, California.  Their family business earned a place in history in 1932 when Walter Knott cultivated a lucious new fruit, the boysenberry.  The farm that started it all has also become a family amusement park that delights millions. 

The Knott family is pleased to extend their tradition of quality to include premium shortbread cookies.  Richly flavorful, these classic favorites are prepared using popular Knott’s Berry farm fruit fillings.”

Let’s dissect this, shall we?

> In 1920, Walter and Cordelia Knott began selling fresh produce, berries, and preserves from a roadside berry stand in Buena Park, California.
...and boy, would they be horrified to see how their heirs have sold them out!

> ...when Walter Knott cultivated a lucious new fruit, the boysenberry.
...which you’ll find all of likely one-tenth of a gram of in this plasticfood monstrosity.

> ... premium shortbread cookies
... where “premium” means “premium profits for us, utter crap for you.”

> ... Richly flavorful
... from lots of high fructose corn syrup

> ... these classic favorites
... if you call a frankenstein concoction of chemicals “classic.”  Maybe a classic case of deceit.

> ... using popular Knott’s Berry farm fruit fillings.
... oh, wait, we meant popular dental fillings!

*  *  *

But enough pre-commentary.  Without further ado, let’s take a look at these charming ingredients, shall we? (and out of kindness, I’ll substitute normal text for the ALL CAPS printed)

Enriched wheat flour [artificial vitamin enrichment crap omitted], margarine (liquid soybean oil, partially hyrogenated [sic] soybean oil, water, salt, whey, lecithin, mono and di-glycerides, sodium benzoate a preservative, artificial butter flavor, beta carotene and vitamin A palmitate), raspberry topping (high fructose corn syrup, red raspberries, apple powder, fruit pectin, citric acid, natural and artificial flavors, calcium chloride, FD&C red #40 and blue #1), sugar, eggs, baking soda, natural and artificial flavor, baking ammonium, and salt.

Mmmm… delicious, no?  Just like Grandma would have made it… if she had access to a chemistry lab *and* passionately hated your guts.

Oh, and lookie here, (unsurprisingly) almost no redeeming nutritive qualities at all… little fiber or protein, and a charming 3 grams of trans-fat (I didn’t even know there were many packaged goods that still had this stuff in ‘em nowadays!)

For comparison, let’s take a look at a typical recipe for berry shortbread cookies:

1 cup butter, softened
2/3 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/3 cup seedless raspberry jam
GLAZE:
1 cup confectioners’ sugar
2 teaspoons water
1/2 teaspoon almond extract

(from AllRecipes.com)

Notice a difference?  Yes!  You recognize and can likely pronounce the ingredients, and there are fewer than a dozen of them.

*  *  *

Look, as I said, I don’t have a problem with companies making utter junkfood.  I do, however, have a problem about them so blatantly misrepresenting their product.  Even an intelligent acquaintance of mine said (without any prompting from me) that she used to eat these cookies every day for lunch, figuring that they were relatively harmless.  Oops!

P.S.—Might think twice before buying any of Knott’s Berry Farm jams or other products, eh?

Pandora Mobile highlights awesomeness but also severe lame-itude

Do you know Pandora?  If you’re in the United States, where Pandora is legally available, you may have come to enjoy this awesome uber-customizable music radio over the past years.  If you’re not in the U.S., perhaps you’ve discovered the beauty of anonymous proxies :cough:, which I’m not going to mention here :p.

But perhaps you didn’t know that Pandora has become available on mobile phones!  More good news:  It’s available for free on phones that run the Windows Mobile operating system, free on Sprint phones, and free on (some versions of) BlackBerry phones.  Ironically, it’s also free on the iPhone, and I say ironically because AT&T apparently is charging—I swear I am not making this up—$8.95 per month to its other mobile customers for the privileges of using Pandora.  I mean, I love Pandora and all, but even if I were insane enough to be contributing to the income of the evilness that is AT&T, I sure as heck wouldn’t fork over that much dough for Pandora.  For an on-demand mobile music service?  Perhaps.  But for streaming radio?  You’ve got to be kidding.

One other note on the Pandora Mobile offerings:  Apparently, I’m not supposed to be able to access Pandora Mobile because T-Mobile phones are not supported.  Which is odd, because I’m enjoying streaming music via Pandora on my BlackBerry Curve (on T-Mobile) right now.  Go figure.  I also shouldn’t mention that I was also able to do this while in Ireland a couple of weeks ago (listening to, appropriately enough, The Corrs on St. Patricks day :-D ).

*  *  *

Anyway, if you’re an iPhone user or a non-AT&T subscriber, give Pandora Mobile a go!  If you’re an AT&T subscriber, well, heaven help you, and for reasons way beyond this Pandora issue.

[Gee, Adam, tell us what you really think about AT&T :D]

*  *  *

Okay, okay, I’m thinking I should flesh this entry out a little bit :-)

Some stuff I like in the mobile app:
- Seems to work internationally (though I can imagine this being “fixed” [sigh])
- Works as a true background app on my BlackBerry!
- Can play through my BB’s speaker (actually sounds decent!) or a headset
- Song-to-song time isn’t bad
- Nice graphics, simple, intuitive interface.
- Access to all my stations :-)
- Can even view “Why [did Pandora play] this song?”
- Thumbs up / thumbs down works.

Some stuff I don’t like:
- Takes a while to start up the app
- No way to see detailed info on artist or song

*  *  *

All in all, pretty damn cool! :-D

A music solution that's so brilliant, no wonder why the music industry has shunned it

The other day I got a (yet another) piece of inbox spam on the otherwise cool service last.fm.  And no good can come from spam, right?

Not sure what got into me, but I actually went to the site (which I’ll not name, so as to not potentially give them any customers).  And you know what?  They were doing something brilliant:  they were selling high-fi music tracks for 20 cents a piece.  No, that’s not in itself brilliant; Russian sites doing the same thing are and have been a dime a dozen.  What struck me as brilliant was their way of allowing music lovers to explore the *full length* of songs while still enticing them to buy the track.

How did they do this?  It’s ridiculously simple yet, IMHO, likely to be remarkably effective:  they overwrote parts of each track several times with a moderately annoying audio blip (sort of a “chirp”).  Only the truly desperate would possibly stream and copy and store such a track as an mp3, and, as we know, the truly desperate are not one’s potential customers.  Had this firm been even more enterprising, they would have instead added once after each minute of song: “Sample brought to you by [companyname]; uninterrupted tracks just 20 cents!”  If they wanted to be both enterprising AND deliciously devious, they’d have seeded a ton of torrent sites with those tracks :D).  Or, at minimum, made it crazy-easy for bloggers to embed any track or album AND receive a cut of all proceeds from people clicking through to the site.

Maybe I’m naive or missing something glaringly obvious, but it seems like everyone would stand to win with such a situation:
- Music lovers would get to sample full-length (albeit slightly interrupted) songs, instead of dealing with the 30 second samples found on iTunes and similar sites.
- Musicians would be happy to see samples of their work passed around in a way that wouldn’t damage their potential for earning revenue on the same tracks.
- Bloggers and others distributing the tracks (especially if done so out of real passion for specific artists or songs) would be delighted to get commissions (though it’d be hard to grant commissions on just the bare passed-around MP3s).
- The legit music sites hosting MP3s in this way would probably enjoy greater sales and profits.

Your thoughts?

Keypoint Credit Union and 24 Hour Fitness Customer Service FAILs

I was carelessly logging into my Keypoint Credit Union account online today, and messed up three times.  BAM—with no prior notice at all, I was locked out of my account.

What would most normal banks do under this circumstance?

• Require me to answer additional questions that ideally only I would know before allowing me to try logging in again.
  
• Or throw up a captcha.
  
• Or, at worst, make me wait [x] minutes before allowing me to log in.

Keypoint?  They make you call.  Here’s what I had to do when I phoned in:
- Listen to a welcome announcement
- Navigate through a phone tree
- Enter in lots of data (social security info, phone numbers, home address, etc.)
- Wait for an agent (thankfully not long).
- Wait for the agent—I kidd you not—to put me on hold while he updated my records to show there was no change in my info.

All in all, a bit over four minutes.  Hardly the end of the world, but a not-insignificant annoyance… particularly if I had been overseas, not near a phone, etc.

So, the $100,000 FDIC Insured Question:  Why couldn’t I have simply been asked to Prove I’m Me... online?  Sheesh.

*  *  *

And now for something even sillier.

I’ve been a member of 24 Hour Fitness for more nearly a decade.  I love my gym at work, but I enjoy being able to take fitness classes on the weekend and such.  So when I learned that 24 Hour Fitness was building a swankier gym literally around the corner from the existing somewhat-cramped gym, I was pretty excited.  Building, building… done!

This past Sunday I admirably dragged myself out of bed, gym bag in tow… and here’s the entertaining (and somewhat baffling) conversation I had with the front desk staffer and the (apparent) manager who walked on over.

ME:  Good morning [handed him my 24 Hour Fitness card]
STAFFER:  Hi.  [Scans card.  Pauses, with confused look…]  Hmm, are you a member?
ME:  Um, yes.  [pointed to card still in his hand, which also had my photo on the back of it].
STAFFER:  But… but… hmm… your membership isn’t good here.
ME:  Yeah, I have a Sport membership, not a Super Sport [rolling eyes invisibly], but I brought this 7 day trial pass. [I hand him the pass].  I’ve thought of upgrading.
STAFFER:  Er… erg… hmm. [looks at paper, turns it over to the blank side, then back over to the unblank side and literally scratches head]
MANAGER:  Hi, can I help you?  [Staffer mumbles confusedly, hands him paper; Manager looks at computer screen]
STAFFER:  Oh, you’re in luck! [Yes, he seriously opened with this line with a straight face] You have a Sport membership, and this is a Super Sport gym, so you’re not eligible to work out here.  But I can have someone walk you around the corner—we have a Sport gym there for you!
ME:  But I logged into my 24 Hour Fitness account online and printed out a trial pass for this gym.  Just wanted to try it out, maybe upgrade and…
STAFFER:  [shaking head] No, no… sorry, that was last week.  Um, we had the open house last week.  It ended.  But here, let me have someone show you the other gym…
ME:  Er, but what about the pass?
STAFFER:  You’re a member, right?
ME:  Yes [pointing to my membership card which was in the hand of a still-rather-confused staffer]
STAFFER:  That’s the thing.  That pass [pointing to tiny print] is only good for non-members.
ME:  So, for the past 4 months, you’ve had flyers up urging members to upgrade, but now we can’t check out the new…er, nevermind, I’ll just head over to the other gym.  Thanks!

*  *  *

I’m thinking about quitting my membership.  The classes aren’t even that great, and I’m embarrassed to be giving my money to a company that’s so consistently clueless.

Doing an expense report for work? Here are some tips

I recently traveled to Brazil and Mexico for work.  That’s damn cool, I admit.  I’m lucky to have that opportunity, grateful to meet so many wonderful people on my journeys and see so many awesome sights.

But, as with many things in life, there’s also a downside.  In this case, I am owed thousands of dollars in hotel, airfare, meal charges, etc., so—of course—I need to file an expense report.  And doing that in three different currencies is no fun, no fun at all.

Procrastinating this effort even further, I just wrote up a blog entry on my company’s internal blog system, but then I realized… heck, maybe others could benefit from my tips.  So without further ado, here they are :-D

• Sweat the small stuff.  “Oh, it’s just a $4 coffee and energy bar!” er, it all adds up, trust me!  Keep track of this.  Along these lines, don’t forget to take into account (and expense) ATM surcharges, reasonable tips (which may not show up on your receipt), etc.
  
• Put as much stuff as you can credit cards.  On the downside, this’ll likely result in an extra 1-3% fee when you are outside your home country, but… you’ll often get extra protections (such as lost luggage assistance, purchase protection, etc.) and as noted above you’ll have backup evidence of expenses in case any of your receipts are lost or stolen.  It also gives you an extra 30-6o days to cover the bills (and get your money back from your company!), which is especially important if you’re on a tight personal budget!
  
• Write down a quick note after every expense, e.g., “Sat Sep 20 dinner, incl 2 colleagues, 1 partner $R152, on Amex.” Note the pertinent details here: the when, what event, who, how $much, and on what card (or “cash”).  Add this to an “Expenses” note in your Blackberry or iPhone, or on a handy notecard in your wallet, etc.  I can’t tell you how much I’m frustrated with myself for overlooking this to-do this trip; now I’m having to piece together, er, which was the dinner where I treated a friend (my expense) or took along a colleague (Google’s expense), etc. I’ll get it right, but it’ll take a lot of extra time.
  
• File your expenses in a timely manner.  Wait too long and you might not even get your money! (there are actually tax laws about this!) But even waiting an “acceptable” amount of time… you forget stuff.  Some receipts may have gotten misplaced in the interim.  Don’t risk it.
  
• Be smart about currency values.  If you’ve been somewhere that has a rapidly fluctuating currency, use reasonable conversion rates from the days you converted your native currency, using your credit card and ATM charges as a guide. Don’t just go on xe.com (admittedly a very cool currency exchange site) and plug in the single conversion number you see today; you could be substantially cheating your company or cheating yourself :-(.

Hope these tips have been helpful :-D

A very quick found-money tip

Earlier this week I spent about 45 seconds and got $134 for my effort.

It went something like this:

1. Phone rang.  Didn’t recognize number, and was going to let it go to voicemail, but for some reason I answered it.
2. “Hi, may I speak with Adam?” [oh no… not a telemarketer!  I braced myself.]
3. “This is Angela from [dental group], and I wanted to let you know it’s time for your teeth cleaning…”
4. I explained that I had moved and was getting my teeth cleaned by another dentist.
5. “Oh!  Well, there’s a $134 credit on your account.  Would you like me to send it to you?”
6. Three days later, I found a check for $134 in my mailbox.

Why am I sharing this story with you?  Well, you see, this got me to thinking.  Maybe there are other people who have changed dentists or banks or optometrists, that sort of thing.  And maybe they’re owed money, too.

Perhaps it’s worth checking for a check, eh? :-D

- A public service message from your local BLADAM

Airlines charging by the pound (including your personal weight); good idea?

My friend Greg and I just had a fascinating and extensive discussion about the concept of airlines charging their customers by the weight of their bodies + luggage.

The way we envisioned it, all airlines tickets would be composed of exactly two fees: a seat fee (fixed) and a weight fee (variable).  This is hardly our original idea; I’ve seen similar suggestions pondered on the web before.  But nonetheless, I thought it’d be interesting to reflect upon some implementation ideas as well as pros and cons.

Implementation

• Get estimates up front.
  Ask for estimated weight in airfare comparison sites and airline sites to avoid shock and extra processing work at the airport.


• Get money up front.
  Collect money for seat fee plus weight fee upon booking.  Offer a refund for cases in which people overestimate their weight.  Levy strong surcharges (e.g., 25%) for those who significantly underestimate their weight.


• Be discreet about each individual’s weight.
  Present a total of person-weight + luggage-weight, or even just a surcharge total.


• Price the weight fee as a pound/kilogram per mile.
  This makes sense, since extra weight costs more on a long trip than a short trip.


• Incorporate increases and decreases in fuel costs into the $/weight charge.
  Instead of levying a separate fuel surcharge, airlines could simply increase the $/weight charge on all their flights (e.g., from $1.20 per pound-mile to $1.42 per pound mile).


• Avoid pissing off frequent flyers re: mileage points
  Grandfather in earlier ticket purchases, and for a limited time let people redeem the same number of points for the same class of flights as before.  After that, charge something like 15,000 miles for a round trip flight (instead of 25K) + weight fee, or 25,000 miles for a round trip flight inclusive of [x] pounds/kilograms.  Establish a ratio so that for the average or median flyer, they’ll get exactly the same $/point(mile) as before.

Benefits / pros

• Greater fairness in charges
  People who are light-weight (in body and/or luggage) will no longer subsidize those whose bulk costs the airlines appreciably more in fuel expenses.


• Greater incentive to pack light
  This in turn may reduce luggage handling costs (fewer people and machines and conveyor belts needed) and decrease luggage delivery delays.  It’s also likely to reduce the cramping of overhead space in planes.


• Possible extra push for people to lose weight
  Especially those folks who are both obese and frequent travelers will be incentivized to lose weight.  This will contribute to their health, and also the comfort of those flying next to them.


• Potential optimization in seating
  Particularly if airlines request both person-weight and luggage-weight estimates from passengers, they could theoretically optimize seating for safety, fuel efficiency, and comfort (e.g., not placing too large people next to each other).


• A potentially big revenue boost in Q4 for airlines
  Given the carriage of Thanksgiving food and Christmas gifts, airlines could see a nice bump in their income in November and December.

Disadvantages / cons

• A huge outcry from privacy advocates
  People might be loathe to tell airlines how much they weight, and would likely be equally horrified at having to step on scales in front of others at the airport.


• Uncertainty of final ticket price
  Many people—especially those barely scraping enough cash together for a family vacation—might be frustrated by the uncertainty of airfare prices and/or stunned and dismayed by weight overage fees levied at the airport.


• Greater inefficiencies at the airport
  The last thing we all want is MORE delays at the airport.  Imagine the extra time required to weight every single passenger and assess extra charges (or issue refunds)... particularly to those without credit cards (yes, I know it’s hard to imagine, but there are apparently people who pay cash or write checks even for things like airfare!).


• Claims of discrimination and unfairness
  I bet we all have at least one friend who is quite obese… perhaps even obese and financially challenged.  I can imagine that many of these folks would simply be unable to afford flying to visit family and friends with the imposition of weight fees.


• A potential mess online
  Ultimately, it doesn’t seem that it’d be so outlandish for airfare comparison sites and airline sites to ask for folks’ weight and—using airline-provided $/weight numbers—provide total estimated costs for each flight fare inquiry.  But at least initially, there’d likely be a lot of confusion and havoc.

*  *  *

Are weight-surcharges a good idea?  Do you think the airlines would be able to successfully implement them?  And have I forgotten any key pros or cons?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this :-D

Tipping online -- Stupid or brilliant or both?

Have you heard about TipJoy and the still-very-small phenomena of tipping (real money) on the web?

It’s quite fascinating, in my opinion, and I certainly have very mixed feelings on this issue.

PLUSES:

• I admire how the founder gets “out there” to talk about his service... but not only about his service. 
• I think there’s a true need to reward outstanding authors/contributors on the web with real money, and I think tipping is better than huge ad clutter / massively off-topic ads.
• In particular, I love the idea of tipping in the context of supporting artists and art online.  Give me great MP3s, and then give me a culture in which MANY of us offer tips… even $2-7/album, which’d be WAY more than the artist would normally get via CDs or iTunes, etc.
• TipJoy is pretty easy to use.
• The fees seem reasonable.

MINUSES:

• I hate tipping as an institution overall, at least in the “real” world.  Hate hate hate it!  Why shouldn’t people just be paid a decent living wage? By extension, then, one could argue… why shouldn’t bloggers and artists online just be able to charge an honest fee for their work?  The answer, of course, is that too many of us are freetards, if you’ll forgive the nickname I’ve stolen from Fake Steve Jobs.  We expect, no, we DEMAND content / entertainment / information for free.  Frankly, that in itself seems horribly messed up, but I digress.
• TipJoy, and indeed, tipping on the web on the whole hasn’t gotten anywhere near the—no pun intended—tipping point.  People aren’t gonna tip unless they see many other people tipping.  So it makes me feel, sheesh, does my 10cent tip mean anything at all?  The fact that TipJoy now offers tippers the option to broadcast their donations is a step in the right direction (Friendfeed does this as well), but it’s nonetheless a small step.
• It’s still not seamless.  With TipJoy—one of the more fluid / well-set-up services, IMHO—you still have to sign up for an account, fund the account… and to fund it, you still have to use (at least for now) the evil PayPal.  Blech :(

*  *  *

Don’t just read, do!  Give it a try :-D
Clicking the button at the bottom of this post will establish for you sort of an “IOU” of, well, 20 cents (TipJoy will, I believe, ask you to pay up via PayPal when you’ve tipped a total of $5 around the web).

What do you think?
Anyway, even more than your donations, I look forward to hearing your thoughts about not only TipJoy, but also the idea of tipping on the web.  Do you think it will ever become popular?  If so, what will need to happen in order to make it an oft-used part of the web economy?

Dear PayPal - Please shrivel up and die

I like paying for things with a credit card.  It’s typically pretty fast (especially with those merchants that don’t require a signature for
<$25 purchases). It's secure. And I earn travel rewards for every dollar I spend.

So when it comes to the occasional purchase online that I can only buy via PayPal I cringe. Why? Because PayPal really really really doesn't want me to pay with a credit card, and they'll harrass me about this during every checkout, creating a user-hostile experience each and every time I use their dog-forsaken service.

A friend recently lamented that it took eight clicks for them to buy something on PayPal.  That sounds about right.  You see, PayPal defaults users to paying from their bank account… so we have to search for a tiny “more funding options” link and then select the credit card, then be subjected to a long whiny please “Are you absolutely positively sure that you don’t want to pay from your bank account?  It’s really a better option yadda yadda yadda…” followed by a charmingly shifting yes/no set of buttons.

Look, PayPal, I want to pay by credit card.  I’ve told you this more than a dozen times.  I’ve also read/skimmed/ignored your stupid please-don’t-pay-by-credit-card notice more than a dozen times.  And, by the way, I’m well aware that you already pass on extra associated charges to your merchants when buyers pay by credit card.

So SOD OFF!  Either let me set “pay by credit card” in my preferences somewhere, or leave me the frack alone.

In the meantime, I’m hoping you go out of business, to be replaced by a company that doesn’t repeatedly spit on its users.

ADDENDUM / DISCLAIMERS:
- I work for Google, which offers a somewhat-competing service called Google Checkout. I use and like that service, but am not part of the Checkout team.
- My anger towards PayPal may seem heavy given the seemingly light-transgression described above.  But it’s just the last straw.  PayPal has a history of thumbing its corporate nose at its users, and I’ve had the displeasure of using PayPal for many years as a buyer and seller on ebay.

Paradox of choice

I’m not a crazy athlete, but I like working out at the gym and also dancing a few times a week.

Finding good dance shoes wasn’t so hard for me.  I got personal recommendations from some of my lindy hopping friends, and was also delighted that the friendly folks at dancestore.com were happy to offer personalized suggestions over the phone.  For the record (and now from personal experience), I recommend that all lindy hoppers get this dance sneaker; it makes turning and spinning a breeze.

But I’m having a much harder time finding good cross-training and running shoes.  I’ve had good luck with New Balance shoes in the past, but it’s hard to find a good selection of ‘em locally in my size, so I decided to go online.  Sure enough, via Amazon.com or Zappos and undoubtedly countless other sites, I have a choice of zillions of shoes.  And that would be okay if there was some help filtering… but there’s not! :o

Yes, you can do a search and narrow down by technology, but you end up having to do sets of half a dozen clicks repeatedly to decipher the meaning of brandspeak features (NBZip, Abzorb, etc.), and then lots of clicking back and so on.

I want one of the following:
- A nice wizard that asks me what I want to do with the shoes (running, walking, activities that require lateral stability like kickboxing, etc.), lets me specify a price range, style type, etc., and then recommends a set of shoes for me.
- A comprehensive table (in HTML, Flash, PDF, I don’t care) that shows a list of shoes, approximate street prices, features, target activity, etc.

Because right now, let me tell you, I’m tempted to say $#!* it and just stick with my current trusty shoes and go do something more fun like, oh, floss my teeth or relabel my matchbook collection or lock myself in a closet with Vanna White night after night after night.  In other words, New Balance, NO SALE FOR YOU.

Major brands, listen up.  In this world of an increasingly crazy amount of choices, you need to do the following if you want to remain competitive:
- Make your content FINDABLE by people and search engines.
- Make it ACCESSIBLE so, for instance, I can look up stats on your shoes on my phone when I’m at the local sports store with too-busy or ignorant salesfolks.
- Make the info DIGESTIBLE so I can learn what I need to know and make informed decisions
- Make the damn thing EASY TO BUY, but I’m guessing you’ve heard that enough times already from other frustrated bloggers.
- Offer outstanding SUPPORT post-sale.
- Give me ONGOING INFO but only when and how I want it (customized e-mail newsletters that I can easily unsubscribe from, RSS feeds, etc.)

*  *  *

In the meantime, if anyone knows of a good athletic shoe guide or chart and such, let me know :-D.

Oh, and watch this video on The Paradox of Choice.  I had the pleasure of hearing this fellow at a Google TechTalk; Professor Schwartz is an engaging speaker and absolutely spot-on in his commentary.



(it’s even close captioned!)

An example of (usually) effective communications

I recently joined an interesting little aggregator / life-streaming sort of service called FriendFeed.  I’m finding both the service and the customer service to be admirable.  Here’s a recent set of comments on their support list from one of the founders:

That is a very good point [...] this was unintended [...] This was a bad decision, and we will undo it promptly today.  Thanks for bringing this to our attention.


And then soon after:

This issue has been fixed and pushed [live to production]

This, typically along with other communications from the company, contains several core components of what I feel is (typically) effective customer service communications.  The note…

- Thanks the user for the feedback.
- Acknowledges the problem.
- Expresses regret.
- Specifies action that will be taken.
- Confirms the action, reiterates the appreciation, and closes the loop.

Or, more succinctly, here’s an often-good cycle for similar situations:  Thank, Acknowledge, Apologize, Promise, Provide closure.

So why don’t more companies communicate in this way?

• As companies grow, particularly into mass markets, their users may not be reasonable or respectful.  This makes it harder to diagnose and communicate.
• Also as companies grow, this type and tone of support becomes less doable.  Personal responses from those who are actually doing the coding certainly doesn’t scale, and responses from intermediaries may end up being little more than canned responses.
• Acknowledging a mistake can—especially in the charmingly litigious culture of America—lead to additional liability from shareholders, angry/greedy customers, etc.
• Sometimes the problem and/or the next steps are not inherently clear.  Saying, “We’re not yet sure if this is a problem, and are not sure if/when we can change the behavior” is likely not to play well in Peoria.

So given an “ideal” and the challenges listed above, what might be some good common ground for customer-service-oriented communications?

• Acknowledge receipt of the message.  
• Manage expectations (don’t promise a response if you can’t deliver).
• If you have automated, non-1:1 support offerings, make them effective and delighting rather than cold and cumbersome.
• Remember that, for a wide swath of your users, English is not their mother tongue.  
• In correspondence, use your name.  Even a first name is a start.  
• Empower your users to help each other.  Don’t just put a forum, cultivate a community.  And give love to your superusers!

What are your thoughts on customer-service communications?  What do you love?  What do you hate?  What are some companies that are doing it right?

P.S.—A little welcome-back note for myself.  I’ve been working on a really comprehensive and reasonably “deep” article to post here or on my upcoming wiki, but haven’t found the time to put it all together.  So I’ve kept putting off resurrecting my blog, hesitating to post something too fluffy or flippant or insufficiently deep, yadda yadda yadda.  That’s not very blogger like, is it?  Not everything can be a masterpiece.  And I’m sick of my micro-blogging efforts being used as a substitute for chatting with you loyal readers here, even if the conversation’s gonna be a bit more on the bite-sized level.

P.P.S.—You can find me as “ThatAdamGuy” on FriendFeed. :-D

Second Life doesn't want me as a member

A while back, I tried Second Life and wrote about it.

Many months went by, and—after getting a new graphics card—I figured, hey, why not try Second Life again?

I actually remembered my old SL name though wasn’t sure of the password.  Guessed a couple of times, wasn’t able to log in, so I clicked on the Forgot Password link.  Ah ha… I knew the answer to that secret question, got a link to reset my password, and figured I was all good to go.

Except that I still couldn’t log in.  I waited a few hours and tried again, but still no-go.

This, indeed, was just the beginning of my ridiculous adventure.

As any responsible consumer would do, I scoured the SL wiki and help docs.  Nothing pertaining to my situation.

Ah ha!  A forum!  I’ll go on there and look for info, perhaps even post a plea.  But, of course, I wasn’t allowed to even read the forum without logging in… and since I couldn’t log in (duh!), well, no forum for me.

So at this point, it was clear that I had done all I could on my end and it was time for me to e-mail support.  No e-mail address (understandable), but I saw there was a way to file a ticket for help.  Just sign in and… aaaaaaaaaagh!

Persistent bugger that I am, I actually registered a SECOND Second Life account (does that make it a Third Life?  Nevermind), just so I could file a ticket, asking for my first account to be unlocked or whatever.  It was a pain-in-the-ass process (no, I do NOT want to decorate another avatar!), but I finally managed to log in and fill out a help ticket.

Three days later (in fairness, it was over the long weekend), I got a response:

Greetings,

Thank you for contacting Second Life customer relations. In order to assist you with your request, I will need some more information about the [account-name] account.?

[secret question removed] (the security question you selected)

When you have verified this information, I will be able to reset your password so you can log in.

Regards,
Rowan Linden

*  *  *

YAY!  This was clearly the home stretch!  All I had to do was reply back with my answer and… oh, wait a minute: “THIS IS AN AUTOMATED RESPONSE, PLEASE DO NOT DIRECTLY REPLY TO THIS EMAIL.”  In all caps, no less. 

I clicked on the link to update the ticket, which—surprise surprise—brought me to a login screen.  Which, for whatever reason, I was not able to login with my Third Life credentials, so I had no way of replying to the customer service person.

But lo and behold, what’s this?  A 1-800 number on the login page!  Dog had mercy on my soul… and I dialed the digits eagerly.  Yep, “Welcome to Second Life…”

“...Please note that we have discontinued phone support.  Please go to http://www.secondlife.com…”

I give up.  I really don’t need any more distractions in my First Life anyway.

Would "Required Donation" work?

I am an avid fan—and financial supporter—of KQED, the Bay Area’s public radio station.  And once again, I’ve been massively annoyed by the most recent (and seemingly monthly) pledge drive.

A few thoughts have sprung up into my head:

• Damn, this sucks.
• I already donated; why do I have to continue to listen to this?!
• Wouldn’t it be awesome if somehow those people who donated got to hear actual programming, not the pledge drives?
• I hope those regular listeners who can afford to donate but haven’t end up with a flock of bloated pigeons presenting a large splattery “gift” on their cars.  Daily.

As I continued to think about this situation—independent of the actual technical constraints associated with limiting the broadcast to only paying members—I felt a bit guilty… recognizing that not everyone could afford to be a member at even the basic $40-a-year level.

But what if…

What if KQED—again, ignoring the technical constraints—could somehow be made to be broadcast only to members… but people could become members for as little as a penny a year.

That’s right.  In order to become a member and hear the broadcast, you’d have to do this every year:
- Fill out a form (online or on paper)
- Pay something.  Anything.  Even a penny.

Perhaps the station could propose membership tiers or a “suggested” donation; how about, for instance, 1/10th of 1% (1/1000th) of your household’s pre-tax annual income.  Single folks making $80,000 a year, for instance, would pay $80/year—or less than 22 cents a day.

Or maybe the station’d just leave payment completely up to each individual’s discretion, like this coffee shop in Seattle. (incidentally, I’m pretty sure I thought of this “required donation” idea before I read about Terra Bite, but no doubt it placed a reminder in my head :-P)

*  *  *

While this idea is technically infeasible for standard over-the-air broadcasts, I’m wondering if it has ever been tried for software or Web site tools or content libraries.  Oh, sure, I’ve seen lots of “donationware” (“Please… if you use this, consider donating something”).  But I have never seen any service or product require a payment but not require a specific amount.

My questions for you:

1. Have you ever seen this tried?  If so, did you actually pay for the service or product? 
2. Do you think the implementation of this idea by people or companies would result in them making more money or less… compared to either A) Giving away the product, but requesting a donation   and   B) Charging a fixed amount?
3. Think of your favorite content-based Web site (besides this one)... a blog, an online zine, etc.  If they required payment (with even a penny qualifying), would you become a member?  Why or why not?
4. Think of a favorite software program or online tool that you currently do not pay for.  Would you pay for it under this sort of “donation required” plan?  Why or why not?

Zap ridiculous disclaimers, reform CEO pay in one fell swoop

Stupid disclaimers.  You know ‘em, and you probably either ignore them or laugh at them.  Slightly enhanced samples that are either spoken at 420 words a minute or that take up a bazillion lines of tiny tiny text on the back of ads in news magazines.

• “Warning: Stunt driver on stunt track in stunt car.  Do not drive like this [except in Rome]”
• “Warning: Medication may cause sniffling, itching, numbness in extremities, permanent paralysis, or death. [+ 31415928 more lines that no one bothers to read]
• “Remember, drink responsibly!  [Also, be nice to your mom.  Put up the toilet seat.  Don’t be prejudiced.  Love a geek today.]
• “Results not typical.  Your results may vary. [Let’s face it… 99.9999% of people on this diet don’t lose an ounce.  We just managed to find the one freak who had liposuction after taking our product.]

Completely useless, aren’t they?  Somehow I don’t think we’re gonna hear stuff like this from beer-bongin’ frat boys:
“Hey Sarah, I’m concerned about you!  I mean, Mr. Jose Cuervo insists that we drink responsibly, and I just don’t think you are!  Can I get you an orange juice instead?”
“Whoa, dude!  Didn’t you listen to that ad?  It said DON’T drive like this!  Come on, pull it back to 55 man!”

*  *  *

And then there’s the seemingly unrelated issue of corporate compensation.
Forbes magazine lists some of the worst (most unproductive) CEOs and notes their compensation, including:
- Richard M Kovacevich, Wells Fargo, $72.04 million
- Edward E Whitacre Jr , AT&T, $49.01 million
and, brace yourself:
- Barry Diller, IAC/InterActiveCorp, $295.14 million (over half a BILLION dollars in the last 5 years, and ranked as one of the 15 most unproductive CEOs in the entire survey)

Which raises some questions:

1. If compensation is intended to reward good performance, why are so many outstanding leaders (in the public and private) sector making five figure salaries while many total losers and ruthless-jerk CEOs are making more than 100x their salary?
2. If we also assume that compensation is intended to incent good performance, shouldn’t we ask: do any humans really *need* $xx millions per year to get out of bed and work hard for the day?  Given that there are, absolutely without a doubt, an enormous number of extremely intelligent and hardworking and respectable folks who would do wonders for a company at $x milion or even $xxx thousand per year, well… WTF?!

Admittedly, I’ve kind of stacked the deck in my above examples a bit:  I mean, really, who loves their bank?  Or their phone company?  Personally, I find AT&T to be one of the most unpleasant, irresponsible, and customer-non-centric companies out there, but then hey, maybe that’s just me ;-).

*  *  *

Never fear, I have the answer to both problems… a way to get rid of moronic speed-read or 1pt font disclaimers while effectively shaming the grossly overpaid CEOs who perform worse than would Paris Hilton in a dramatic Shakespearean theatre role.

In another article, Forbes complains that trying to do anything about CEO compensation is likely to either be unsuccessful or backfire, perhaps resulting in a further crapification and obfuscation in shareholder reports.  But my idea wouldn’t have that problem.

Ready for it?  Replace the disclaimers with two required placements of Consumer and Stockholder Truth:

• On every TV, radio, and print advertisement, the following must be sanely presented: “Last year, the [company-name] CEO made $78 million, median [company-name] worker: $11,000.  Stock has decreased 17%.”
• On every stockholder quarterly / annual report, the company must present a “Compensation and Performance Summary” in one page, in normal font.  It’d include exactly what the CEO and other key executives took home, how the company did (particularly in its sector), and so on.  No forward-looking B.S., no big long charts.  Just a one page, ideally-bulleted summary.  I mean, hell, I don’t have time to read 50+ page shareholder reports, do you?  Didn’t think so.

Okay, so I’m kidding a bit with the first part of the idea.  But seriously… don’t you think that there’d be some hell to pay for CEOs who were (effectively) publicly outed as greedy and incompetent asses?  And, in an ideal world, also some come-uppance for the lazy or thoughtless jerks who approved their compensation structure?  My favorite is when *especially* bad CEOs are finally shown the door… and then they get a $100 million dollar severance package or the like.  Often times, this happens around the same time that free coffee is eliminated from break rooms and lots of minimum wage folks are let go with two weeks pay.

*  *  *

Having seen what I perceive to be more sane and more humane economic structures and practices in place in Europe and Australia, I admit that if I could wave a magic wand and force exec pay to be no more than 10x worker bee pay, I’d do it.  But yeah, that’s never going to happen here in America.  So instead, I’d love to see executive losers simply get tomato’d in the public eye and forced to resign in shame.  Can you imagine, for instance, an “American CEO Idol” combined with a “CEO Gong Show” and “CEO Survivor” where CEOs have to defend their performance and keep others happy or get voted out of the cushy work world?  Not quite sure how instructive it’d be, but it’d sure be entertaining :-D.

*  *  *

Related BLADAM entries:
- The Free (and Stupid) Market

How much would YOU pay not to be obligated to tip?

I’ve had it with tipping.  The more traveling I do—for business or pleasure—the more I despise the uncertainty, the uncomfortableness, the need to have petty cash on hand.  When will someone—an influential someone—say ENOUGH IS ENOUGH?!

Tip too little, and you risk imperiling the quality of service you receive in the future from that person… plus you may look like an idiot or a miser in front of friends and business acquaintances.

Tip too much, and you look like a chump… and your wallet is made thinner (sometimes much thinner).  And you feel like a moron for being taken advantage of.  Heck, in some countries, you risk really offending someone!

This is one of the many reasons why I love Europe: you typically round up to the nearest euro when you eat out, and that’s that.  Adding to the coolness… for takeout food and pretty much else, what you see on the billboard or pricetag is what you pay.  15EUR?  You pay 15EUR; taxes, fees, etc., all included.

Now, back to the insanity that we endure in the States… Here’s just a sampling of recommended tips from a recent AAA (Automobile Association of America) article:

$2-$3 to your shuttle driver, $2 per suitcase to the skycap, 15-20% for the taxi driver, $2-$3 for a shoeshine, up to $5/night to your hotel maid, $5/day to a pool attendant (?!), up to $3 per round to the bartender and $20 (!) to your sommelier.

Sick yet?  I am.  After all, where’s the $5 we should be giving to our professor after a fine lecture, the $3 to the garbage man when he picks up our smelly refuse, $5 to the guy who trims our garden, $4 to the busboy in your work cafeteria, and $10 for your colleague after he helps you draft a memo.

But that’s ridiculous, you note.  Isn’t the colleague already getting a salary?  Why should you be responsible for bribing him to do a job that he’s already supposed to be doing?

And you may further argue, hey, but the waiter is getting a crap salary… if it weren’t for our tips, he’d practically starve.  But, I’d retort, why the hell is it OUR (awkward) responsibility to make up for employers’ cheapness?  And who the hell picks 1) who gets tips and 2) how much a “proper” tip is by profession and location?

Don’t get me wrong:  I think that everyone deserves a living, decent wage.  And I’d be quite pleased to have 15% or whatever automatically tacked on to my restaurant bill… so that the cost of my meal actually covered an appropriate salary for all involved with the occasion.  What about crappy service?  I’d do what I do when I encounter crappy service or products anywhere else:
- Firmly yet politely complain to the right people.
- If the matter remained unresolved, simply refuse to patronize the establishment again and warn my friends.

...and, of course, the opposite for good service (yes, I *do* write “thank you for the outstanding service” letters, sometimes by hand… and I wish more people did this).

Frankly, I doubt most folks are primarily motivated by money in their jobs anyway.  Does giving the waitress an extra $1 cancel out the urgent and occasionally rude demands we sometimes inflict upon her?  Not to her, I’d bet.  In fact, I’m pretty sure she’d rather we stuffed the dollar back in our wallet and treated her with respect and patience.

By extension, one could even see tips as demeaning… suggesting that “those kind” of people are only apt to do a good job if they’re thrown fish (dollars) like trained seals.  You don’t see people giving tips to lawyers and doctors, and no, it’s not purely a pay thing.  Frankly, I’m betting my bartender friends make quite a bit more per hour than most of my lawyer friends… honestly.

Of course, with all this said, I’m not only angry, but also rather resigned and un-optimistic about the crappy tip-required culture of ours ever being reformed.  I mean, what would it take?  If Our Goddess Angelina stopped tipping tomorrow, she’d just be vilified in the Enquirer and nothing would change.  If Bush didn’t tip next week, people would just (probably correctly) assume that he was unable to compute the tip even using a calculator.  No, I think it’d take an act of God, or maybe a good-looking denizen from outer space.  Until then, I guess I better just remember to keep a lot of ones in my wallet and just grit my teeth when I say “thank you.”