Alsop's Small Thoughts

Western Union Horror Story

The customer service part of this story is bad enough, but my experience with Western Union actually scared me -- and that's not easy to do.

I wanted to send $60 as a booking fee to an individual in Buenos Aires, where we are headed in a few weeks. She asked me to use the Money In Minutes feature on www.westerunion.com. Seemed innocuous, so I plunged in.

You have to identify from what state and to what country you are sending money. Fill in personal information, including date of birth, choose a particularly strong password, choose a security question and match the captcha. (I had to come up with yet-another new password because Western Union has a different requirement than every other vendor: "Passwords must be 7 to 16 characters long and include at least one capital letter, one lower case letter, and one number.") I filled out the form, provided my debit card information (only Visa and Master Charge; does American Express know something we don't about Western Union?) and was told to call a toll-free number to complete the transaction.  Remember that all I want to do is send $60. So far, Western Union had already exceeded everything that an average e-commerce vendor requires (credit card + security numbers) or that a bank requires (strong password and a security question).

Once I got an agent, she began what I can only call an interrogation process.

*She confirmed the information I had already entered manually (leading one to wonder what the point of doing an online form was).

*She asked me the last four digits of my Social Security number. I hadn't provided that number online so she must have looked it up. Is that legal? If so, who is providing my SS# online so freely?

*She asked the security question which I had provided online.

*Then she told me that she needed to ask me four additional questions, which she was clearly asking as the questions were composed on her computer in real time. The first question was "If you had a car loan in 2003, please identify the provider of that loan from the following list of four companies" and then proceeded to name four companies and gave me the option of saying "None of the above" as the fifth choice.

I didn't recognize any of the four companies and don't remember having a car loan in 2003. (It's my normal practice to either buy cars or lease them, not to borrow money to buy them. I might have been the cosigner on someone else's car, but I don't remember.) So I told the lady that I could not honestly answer the question she was asking, that I did not know the answer to the question. And I asked her what I should do. She told me was not allowed to give me guidance and only allowed the ask the question and record my answer and could not move on to the next question unless I answered the first one.

I then entered an Orwellian nightmare, where it was not possible to move forward or backward and my only option, if I wanted to remain an honest and upstanding citizen would have been to cancel the transaction -- after 15 minutes of trying to move "Money In Minutes". She eventually transferred me to a "supervisor", but he said exactly the same words as the first lady. (Think they might have been working off a script?) So I answered "None of the above/Does not apply". I had to answer the next question the same way, because it was about a mortgage in 2003 (we switched mortgages on my last house three times and I didn't recognize which of the vendors they listed as the correct one). I answered the last two questions, whereupon the "supervisor" told me that they could not complete the transaction. I hung up in disgust and was late to my next appointment.

This is bad enough as a customer service experience. How the heck does Western Union do any business if they treat their customers with this level of hostility and rigidity? But I keep wondering: How much does this company know about me now? How do they know in real time that I had car loans and mortgages five years ago and know enough to try to trap me into giving them the wrong answer? (I looked up their privacy policy after this experience and, guess what: "We may disclose Information about current and former consumers and customers to the following types of third parties:" everybody including financial service companies, retailers, and governments. So now, even though we did not do business, Western Union has the right to share the information it did get from me with other vendors at its will.)

My conclusion: Don't ever do business with Western Union. This company has the worst privacy and consumer service policies I have ever encountered. It needs to be put out of business. And I am fearful that a company that is this incompetent knows anything about me and has any right whatsoever to do anything with that information, much less do whatever it wants to do.

Dear Senator Obama

Please don't run for President! Most people who know me probably think that I say that because I worry that you can defeat any conservative candidate the Republicans can field. Actually, the reason I say that is because you have so much promise. And running now for President will only put that promise at risk.

The Republicans can't win anyway. Senator Clinton will be the Democratic nominee; she will be unbeatable by either you in the primaries or by the Republicans in the election. She will be a fine president, regardless of her gender or her husband's shenanigans and despite her liberal point of view. All you will do by putting your name in the hat for the Democratic nomination is to run against her to establish a visible power base in the Democratic party for the future. But the risks of running -- of making "boneheaded" mistakes -- is so great that you likely have equal chance of blowing it permanently and taking yourself out of the running for 2016, after two terms with President Clinton.

Just stick to being a Senator. Do two terms and learn how to develop policy and be an outstanding politician. Learn how to exercise leadership. It will be much better for us if the Democrats get that kind of leadership than if you blow your wad early, just because people like the way you look and talk!

Precise thinking

The CEO of Dow Chemical, who happens to be an Australian by birth, gave a speech (this is in PDF format and will download from the link) that reflects exactly my thinking about the state of the world. My friend, Dave Tommela, turned me on to the speech, so he's also a right thinking kind of guy.

Andrew Liveris's point of view is based on the idea that we are still the leading country in the world, still fundamentally interested in being the good guys, being productive, living a good life and being a member of the world community with a positive attitude. He defines our worst enemy as ourselves; our inability to get over ourselves and continue to move forward as we have in the past. I particularly love his one liner: "We seem to have a faith-based energy policy"

(The speech I've linked to is the actual transcript from the Detroit Economic Forum, posted at the web site for the California Manufacturers & Technology Association. The speech posted on the Dow Chemical web site is considerably watered down, an edited version of the speech published in something called "Michigan Forward", whatever that is. The actual speech is much more pointed and relevant than the edited version. Damned editors.)

He's my man

Big news: I'm a pretty conservative person.

For me, it's been fairly discouraging recently and not because the Republican party has been wobbling around. I don't really care much for political parties, either one. But it has become clear that Hillary Clinton is the most likely individual to become the next President of the United States. And I just plain don't believe that her election would be a good thing for the United States, even though it would be cool to have a woman get elected.

The problem is alternatives: Who else to be President? John McCain? Sorry. Don't trust the guy any more than I did John Dean. Rudy Guiliani? Nice job in New York after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and other places. But I don't think he can lead the country. And he's not likely to run anyway.

I got the chance to hang out a little with Mitt Romney, governor of Massachusetts, the other day. I paid for the opportunity, $2,000. (Another topic: Why is it that election reform means that actually seeing a presidential candidate in person is on the other side of a $1,000 or $2,000 check?) He's smart, articulate, good looking, accomplished. In other words, he seems very electable. He did manage to get elected as a Republication to be governor of Massachusetts, for gosh sake! Remember "Don't Blame Us"?

Most important of all, his positions seem to line up with mine. He's not like all these liberal (and conservative) wimps who seem to think that war is a political position that you can adopt or reject based on how likely it appears that we might win. He talks about how we might need to commit more resources to Iraq before we can even consider getting out. He talks about how the United States is a smaller country in a world where China and India are our economic competitors and we could lose if we don't show leadership. In other words, he's not afraid to think that we might need to project our power rather than trying to pretend otherwise.

The man speaks sense to my ears. It's early days yet, but Mitt Romney made me think, for the first time, that we could have a real race. An experienced, battle tested politician like Hillary Clinton versus an articulate, visionary executive like Mitt Romney.

Who got fired?

Normally, I don't stop to read advertising in a magazine but I couldn't help but notice this headline: "Everyone likes spinach in their omelettes, except people who don't." Of course, I instantly thought of the replacement, "Everyone likes spinach in their omelettes, except people who died."

It's on page 32 of the September 18 issue of Fortune. The Federal Drug Administration first issued a warning about e coli in spinach on September 14. So there's no way that you could blame anyone involved in the production of the ad for using spinach in an advertisement. But the interesting thing is try to relate the headline to a marketing message and figure out who the advertiser is. Commenters can reveal the answer to that question below if you want to, but feel free to guess if you don't go and figure it out first. I'll add the answer to this post in a few days. And then you'll see whether someone should have been fired for the entire ad campaign and it's complete irrelevance to the brand!

Strategy shift... or drift?

I just can't help wondering exactly how Microsoft decided that it's good strategy for a software company to get into hardware. Software is a different business than hardware. Microsoft used to be a company that insisted on doing software, that celebrated software, that focused on programmers and software users as its customers.

Xbox was born out of Microsoft's frustration with the existing console makers' inability to provide better platforms for software. Microsoft believed that it could make a better game machine -- better for programmers and better for game players. After two models of the Xbox have reached the market and the company has expended billions of dollars, the results are not conclusive: Microsoft certainly figured out that online play would be critical. But the fundamental playability of the Xbox isn't that distinct from the Playstation 3 (or even the Playstation Portable).

If Microsoft does plan to introduce a music playing device, what is it that the company brings to this party? Just being pissed off that Apple has a lock on the market? Or is it really about making a better platform for music consumers or programmers? The consistent report on Microsoft devices (ie smart phones) is that the user interface still carries a Windows mentality that requires more clicking and navigation than most consumers find comfortable. Can you believe, really believe, that Microsoft might actually make a more useable music player than Apple?

The question that keeps rolling around in my head is whether Microsoft is experiencing precisely the kind of strategy drift that IBM experienced in the early 1980s: Is it acting in the interests of its executives (drift) or the interest of its customers (shift)? Strategy drift kills companies, even ones that have a monopoly like business.

President Hillary Clinton

I went to a confab called "Dialog" last week, two days of a somewhat heterogenous crowd (meaning not just technology people, though mostly white and mostly middle-upper class professionals) talking about stuff that seems to matter. I figured that meant we should be arguing about interesting topics. (One problem I have with California, after 20+ years, is that people seem to take personally strongly delivered arguments.)

So I came prepared with a strong argument: 1) Hillary Clinton will be nominated as the next Democratic presidential candidate; 2) Hillary Clinton will defeat the Republican nominee, whoever it is, to be the first female president of the United States in 2009; and 3) she will make a great president.

Oh, boy, did I get a reaction. Most people who know me know that I'm pretty conservative politically (which might be why Californians generally take my arguments so personally). So the idea that I would think a Democratic president of any gender would be a great president seems surprising.

Here's what I learned:

*Virtually everybody thinks that Hillary is unelectable because she is so unlikeable. Democrats, particularly liberal Democrats, believe this most strongly and are worried that the party can't stand up to her to avoid nominating her and having her be beat by the Republicans, like Gore and Skerry.
*Nobody has strong feelings about any candidate that supercedes convenience. In other words, nobody seems really taken by any individual to the point where they garner support regardless of conditions. Everybody likes Barak Obama, except he's too young and inexperienced. A small group think Mark Warner is a hot property, except that he doesn't speak so good and is virtually unknown. Who's Bill Richardson, oh that guy who's governor of New Mexico. So on and so forth.
*The Republicans have just as big a problem finding a candidate as the Democrats. McCain is too old. Dean is already busted. Jeb is Jeb.

All of this supports my theory that Hillary will get the nomination (by default) and will win the election (also probably by default). But the part that really got people going is the idea that she will be a great president: after her Mrs. President proposal on health care? Hah!

But the one proposal (and I'm sorry I can't remember who said it me) is that Rudy Giuliani would be the one Republican candidate who could take on Hillary Clinton and win. People say he's too liberal and would never survive the Southern fundamentlists. Now that sounds like an interesting race and scenario.

Rule On, Congress!

I picked this up from New York Times tech columnist David Pogue's weekly email column, but I can't resist spreading it on: Cnet's Declan McCullagh reports that it is now officially illegal to flame anyone anonymously. What else can be said! :-)

More soldiers surviving or not?

Front page of the New York Times this morning: "...the survival rate of Americans hurt in Iraq is higher than in any previous war  - seven to eight survivors for every death, compared with just two per death in World War II." Here's the link (registration needed). The article is about soldiers recovering from grievous injuries, of which there is a higher incidence because the solders are both better protected and because medical technologies can save more soldiers from dying so that more are surviving worse wounds.

Go to the SundayBusiness section of the same edition of the same paper: "A Pentagon study, first reported by The  New York Times this month, said that 80 percent of the Marines who died in Iraq from upper-body wounds might have survived if they had had body armor covering more of their torsos." Here's the link (registration still needed). This article was about the small company that supplies body armor for soldiers in Iraq and their financial results, as well as the personal compensation of the primary owner of the parent company.

Which one is true: More soldiers are surviving in Iraq because of better armor and medicine or more soldiers are being unnecessarily killed because of bad design or construction of body armor?

My Big News Today

Thank you to Richard Stiennon for so gently reminding me that I should use my blog to make big announcements like this. That's Matt Marshall's summary of the news, which you don't need a subscription to get and supplemented by both me and my partner talking to him. If you do subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, here's the first story published this morning.

In any case, the news is simple. I'm joining with a guy whom I've known for 20 years to put together a very small venture fund (ironic that anybody can think of $75M as small) to help entrepreneurs form new companies. This is like heaven for me: I get to hang out with really smart, motivated people and make tons of money by helping them upset the apple cart by introducing new products and services that change the world. Now Gilman and I have to go out and raise the other $60M first.