Alsop's Small Thoughts

New Security "Feature"!

I got a letter from First Republic Bank today that was really disappointing. The letter is addressed to me personally by name and the very first line says: "We want to alert you to an important new security feature now being linked to your ATM/Debit card."

I like First Republic because they do things like sending you personally addressed letters. Their slogan is "It's a privilege to serve you," a sentiment I wish more businesses would practice. They pay you back for those stupid ATM fees that other banks charge. Recently, though, the bank must have been experiencing pressure to be more like other banks!

The new security feature on my ATM/Debit card? They will freeze the card from further use the instant they (or their software, more likely) decides that there is suspicious activity on the card. It will not be unfrozen until I personally talk to a representative of the bank and confirm that the activity is not suspicious. Chase and Citi and all the other banks that have owned my credit card(s) over the past few years have already been using this security feature and I have never been more incensed at customer service than when I find that the credit card that I maintain great credit on is refused because their {goddamn} computers decided that I was doing something unusual with my card.

My definition of unusual and their computer's definition of unusual is often quite different. For instance, their computer will decide that it's unusual if I travel to a different city and begin spending money. That sounds like taking a vacation to me! That has happened at least four times when I go to Santa Fe, where I happen to own a house.

This is not a new security feature designed to make the customer's life better. Instead, it is a cost saving action to get the bank off the hook for covering fraudulent charges by crooks who steal people's credit cards and get as much cash out of them as they can as quickly as possible. What's disappointing is that First Republic chose to introduce it to me as a benefit for me, rather than a major inconvenience that just makes their bank like every other bank in the world: Putting their profit margins at a higher priority than my convenience.

Cellular Perfection?

I am NOT paying Sheraton (Starwood) $9.95 a day for getting connected to the Internet right now. (Interestingly, they don't tell you how much you have to pay until you actually get to the page where you have to say you want to be connected. Perhaps they won't want to admit what it costs. More likely they don't want to print the cost or hardwire it anywhere, since they know the price ultimately won't hold.)

I am connected to the Internet through Sprint Mobile Broadband, colloquially known as EV-DO. Verizon also offers this service, but Cingular and T-Mobile can't because they have a different technology in their networks (a not-so-standard version of GSM, touted as a worldwide standard) that doesn't allow their cards to go fast enough to be called "broadband". I was also connected to the service in the backseat of my taxi from JFK airport into Manhattan, before arriving at the Sheraton New York. (The service wasn't great in the taxi since it doesn't work well in tunnels, in depressed roadways or when the taxi is going 80 miles an hour, which my driver was going when the traffic didn't slow him down.) I could go into Central Park and also be connected. (I might do that since the weather is a whole lot better here than in San Francisco.) As well as in any coffee store I choose, regardless of whether it is Starbucks (T-Mobile Hotspots), Peets (no WiFi of any kind), or any other coffee store (more likely Boingo). I can use the service in most major and a lot of minor cities.

I pay $60 a month to Sprint for the service attached to this card. And it has changed my use of my computer forever. It's not perfect as in the backseat of a New York taxi or in cities that don't have EV-DO infrastructure. But it provides the kind of ubiquity that might (almost) change your mind about the cellular network operators. And it makes you feel good to be an American cellular user, because GSM networks can't handle this kind of data speeds. So we've got something the French don't! N'est ce pas?

And the $60 a month doesn't seem so bad, if you really switch over from WiFi: If I stay five days a month in hotels that charge $10 a day, that's $50 a month. (Some hotels, ironically the less expensive hotels, give WiFi for free; some hotels, ironically the expensive luxury ones, charge more than $10 a day.) If I subscribe to one monthly subscription for WiFi access (T-Mobile, Wayport or Boingo are between $20-30 a month), that's another $25. And if I buy one-day access three times a month in places where I don't have a subscription and that aren't a hotel, that will be another $20-30 a month. So you can pay Sprint or Verizon $60 a month or you can pay $70-100 a month to somewhere between three and five vendors.

It's not the end of WiFi, but it is transformational.

Really, truly singular

I just posted about Cingular doing a unique head trip on me by sending me a "rebate card" instead of actual money. It turns out they didn't just send me one card, but two. Each card is worth $50. I vaguely remember getting a $150 rebate, so there's even odds that I'll eventually get a third card for another $50 "value", each card being uniquely challenging to activate. (You don't have to activate cash, by the way, or even a check.) This time I decided to "activate" my rebate on their web site, www.cingular.com/rebatecard. The first thing you have to do is to type the first 10 of 16 numbers on the front of the card. Then, once you've mastered figuring out which are the first 10, you have to type all 16 numbers (but the web site doesn't supply the first 10 that you just typed, so you have to retype them) and then the last 4 numbers of your cell phone number.

I did all that and successfully activated my card, but the account that I activated doesn't know about the other card that I already activated by telephone. And what really busts my balls? The very first time I tried to use that first card, to pay for $50 of a meal at a really nice restaurant here in San Francisco, the waiter refused to take the card: He said he had already seen one of these cards and they didn't work.

So how do I feel about Cingular after this experience of getting my $150 rebate? I haven't gotten the whole $150. I have had to work really hard to get two pieces of plastic that say that I have $100 of value, but the very first time I tried to use it, it didn't work. How do I feel: Manipulated. Angry. Disloyal. Everything that a company that really cares about its customers would likely be really unhappy about. But I'm pretty certain that Cingular could care less.

Hertz Oil Crisis

I turned in my Hertz rental in Santa Barbara this morning. The agent calculated as follows: $35.99 for the rental, but with a discount that came to $28 something. Plus something for state taxes (around $3, I think). And then $28 worth of gas, making the total $60 something. I noticed the gas total and asked how many miles I had driven: she told me a little less than 100. (I had the car for a day exactly and drove around a bit between Isla Vista where my son Stewart lives and Carpinteria when I attended a birthday party for a friend, maybe 30 miles apart.)

I was having trouble calculating how driving 100 miles turned into a $28 charge. I figured the car must have gotten 20 miles a gallon, so maybe I used five gallons, which would imply around $6 a gallon. But the other clerk behind the counter solved the mystery instantly by saying that Hertz charges $6.69 a gallon. Clearly Hertz has decided to do exactly what I believe our country should do, which is to make the cost of gasoline much higher so as to discourage the use of gasoline and contribute to reduced demand for something that's giving us serious problems in the Middle East. But he actually told me that Hertz intended to incent the customer to fill up the tank at "normal" gasoline prices so that Hertz didn't have to fill the tank itself. (I know that it's hard for Hertz to manage inventories of gasoline and that they don't like to manage the fluctuating price of gas, which is the real reason rental car companies started charging usurious prices for filling the tank for the customer.) I observed that I hadn't been so incented, that indeed I hadn't been informed that this was the deal when I picked up the car the previous day. So he relented and told the first clerk to pretend that the tank was 7/8 full so that I would pay less for the gas (still $14!).

Call me crazy, but I told the second clerk that I thought it might be considered a service for customers to fill their tanks at a small premium (not 250% of the price of premium fuel), particularly customers like myself that are labeled a #1 Gold Service Customer (i.e. one who spends a lot of money renting Hertz cars). He said that every other car company at the counter (Avis, National and one more) did exactly the same thing. I told him as politely as I could that that infuriated me even more (because it sounds like monopolistic, anti-competitive behavior). I told him that I was using Enterprise more and more because they don't maintain this silly policy. I told him that I was one of Hertz's best customers and I was providing him with customer feedback. He continued to believe that the customer-oriented behavior that he should engage in was to continue to argue with me. So I left to catch my flight.

I wish the main rental car companies weren't all identically customer hostile, so that I have a real choice. I have discovered that Enterprise is giving me a choice because they like their customers and treat them like valued, intelligent entities. I hope Enterprise opens up in Santa Barbara airport.

Singular Rebate

Cingular has a unique approach to rebates, at least in my experience: They sent me a Visa Cingular Reward debit card that has $50 of value programmed into it. The card says "Shop 'til you drop!". With $50? I won't drop after spending fifty bucks.

What really jerks me in this case is that Cingular never told me that they were NOT going to send me money. So the company has optimized the system for making it as hard as possible to get the promised rebate.

To "apply" for the promised rebate, you have mail (through the Post Office, of course) the receipt, rebate form and proof of purchase. Then you wait for at least a month (in my case). Then you get an envelope that has the card in it, which you have to authorize by calling in and remembering both the card number and the last four digits of your phone number. Then of course, you have to remember you have the card when you buy something. And if you don't buy something worth $50, you have to keep remembering to keep  using that card to get your full rebate.

This is an extraordinary amount of effort to go through for a lousy $50 rebate. I am absolutely certain that the system is designed to reduce the percentage of people who actually make it all the way through, thereby reducing Cingular's cost of providing the rebate in the first place. (This is called "breakage" in the trade, the percentage of people who never bother to claim a rebate.) When I was listening to a Cingular executive crow at a recent trade conference (CTIA) about their dedication to customer service, I was thinking what a Machiavellian attitude to take toward your customers. Instead of admiring Cingular's customer service, I feel loathing toward a company that treats me this way.