Alsop's Small Thoughts

Free! Free at last!

See the picture? It's an amazing symbol of two huge changes in my life. First, I finally decided to put away the needle that frequent-flier miles have represented for me for the past, what?, 15 years? Second, because I swore off the United Mileage Plus Program, I could finally give the heave-ho to Chase credit cards! These two outcomes rank right up there with when I turned off DirecTV (after they shafted TiVo) and T-Mobile (after I got a Verizon EV-DO and was no longer tethered to Starbucks to get my wireless data. In fact, I've been enjoying coffee much more since I started going to Peets and, in Santa Fe, Holy Spirit Espresso!)

United Mileage Plus only has one credit card supplier and that supplier is Chase. It used to be some regional bank in Chicago, but that got bought by XYZ which got bought by ABC which got by Chase. I've had so many late charges from Chase, despite having a 30-day grace period; I've had my card turned off for shopping too much so many times; I've had such bad treatment from Chase customer service employees (from time to time), that I am just thrilled to cut up the card.

But I couldn't do that until I decided that I would forgo the miles that I got from this credit card. That was the lock that kept me tied to a company I really despised. I'm still mostly stuck with United Airlines since it flies more than 50% of the flights out of SFO. (Small changes lead to big ones, though: JetBlue, Southwest and Virgin America all started new, low-cost service out of SFO this year, giving us San Franciscans a whole lot more choice than we did just a few years ago. The only problem is they all fly to mostly the same places!) But at least now I fly on United when I want to (or don't have a choice) and not because I want to rack up free miles.

By cutting up my United Airlines Mileage Plus Visa card, I've now committed to not getting free miles for using my credit card. Here's the trick to consumer freedom: Pay money for service! My ATM card from First Republic (which I'm still liking even though Merrill Lynch bought the bank earlier this year) is free with my checking account and serves as my Visa card when I need it. But I'm now paying $400 a year for an platinum American Express card. I get concierge service, which is actually useful, and I am a much happier person, which is more than useful.

I love the free enterprise system!

Sprinting to the Finish Line?

Classic! I got a very nice card from Sprint that is (machine) hand written and says: "You're one of our most important customers, and we wanted to slow down for a minute and send a sincere 'thank you' your way. It's just a small sign of our gratitude and appreciation to you for choosing and sticking with Sprint."

The problem? I just cancelled my Sprint account and transferred my business to Verizon (while getting my new Blackberry 8830).

Oh, Don't Let Me Down, Mini!

Any regular reader knows how smitten I am with my Mini. I've even ordered a new one. But the post-ordering process has been a huge let-down, given the nearly iPhone-esque expectations I have for Mini. The Mini website (www.miniusa.com for prospective owners or ol.miniusa.com for owners; ol is short for Owners Lounge) is pure advertising agency, flashy and slow Internet 1.0 garbage.

You have to have an 8-character password, for instance, when the standard for non-financial sites is 6 characters. (Of course, my new standard password is 7 characters, so I'm constantly having to reset my OL password. And right now, I'm locked out because I made three attempts with the wrong password. Locked out?)

The log-in is at a special web page, rather than letting you sign in at the front door that's easy to remember. The whole site is designed around what were probably really "neat" animations four years ago. But they haven't been updated, even to reflect the new model cars.

Worse, what was a great idea when the car was introduced is now just embarrassing: You can track the car you order through production and delivery. Sort of. Actually, what you can do is watch an stored video of generic cars at different stages of production. So you're not actually looking at or seeing your car, just getting a kind of pseudo alert designed to make you think you're seeing you car go through production. No email alerts. You have to check in manually.

More telling, when I finally get to where I could check on the status of my car, I got the following message: "According to our system check, you currently have the Flash plugin version 2 installed. To properly view MINI Order Tracking, please click here to update your Flash plugin to the latest version. If you believe this message to be in error, please CLICK HERE to bypass the system check." It's bad enough that the system developers didn't know how to validate the Flash plugin; they tell the user to figure it out and bypass the error message manually. But I think that, since Mini implemented this site, Adobe Flash plug-in has gone from Version 2 to Version 8! The message isn't that I have wrong version; it's that the designers of the site were so clueless they didn't think that the version number would increase!

One thing non-technology companies miss about the Web is that they view as a one-time commitment. So Mini probably spent millions of dollars with their agency designing this web site when the car was introduced in 2002. But they didn't set up a system to update the site and deal with new technologies. Wouldn't it be cool, I think to myself, if there were web cameras set up so I could actually see my car being built? Maybe the next Mini I buy, in 2012?

PS: Turns out my Mini has already been built and is "en route". I wish they'd tell me where it is!

Music Labels Don't Deserve the Name

I just opened two new CDs. The thought occurred to me; the companies that package these things are referred to as "music labels". But their labels, the jewel cases in which they ship the actual CDs, are a testament to how poorly they think of their customers and a complete travesty in light of the declining sales of CDs. Why, please tell, would any company in the world make it harder to open their product, when it is clear that customers are choosing NOT to buy that product?

Attached is a photo of the main offending feature of the label's packaging. The glued on strip that can't be torn off in one piece that keeps the two pieces of the jewel case stuck to each other. It is designed that way to make it difficult for customers in store to remove the CD without buying it. It is one of many ways that the labels designed to reduce or eliminate theft in stores, essentially by making it harder for customers.

I've been thinking that Amazon.com could do us all a huge favor; make it a requirement of being distributed by Amazon that the labels ship CDs in open jewel cases. That way, the labels would probably respond to pressure and actually do something nice for their customers.

Credit Card Security BS

Have you ever had your credit card suspended because you went on vacation and started using it in a different place or because you decided to go shopping one day and made multiple purchases in a small area? It's happened to me at least five times over the past few years. In order to unlock my card, I have to call "Credit Card Security" at my issuing institution. They ask me to identify transactions in order to determine if I am actually the one using the credit card.

This is all couched in terms of security designed to protect me from fraud. But it's really loss-prevention for the credit card company or bank, since they by law and choice cover all the losses. What really infuriated me, though, is that it doesn't seem to work when you actually want it to!

I lost my ATM card last week, when I was staying in Santa Monica (to attend Star Wars Celebration IV in Los Angeles). I didn't realize that I had lost it until I checked my bank account online and discovered a bunch of random charges in and around Santa Monica. (The charges started three days after I lost the card.) I reported the card missingly immediately, but the charges didn't stop for another 24 hours.

But here's what really riles me: Whoever found my card used it in 20 separate credit card transactions in 48 hours and charged a total of $2,157.90. Four of those transactions were at a jewelry store and two at Banana Republic, all six for between $200 and $500. Of course, my bank  (or their insurance company) will cover the losses, so it doesn't cost me a dime. But this is precisely the kind of pattern that the "Credit Card Security" people say leads them to freeze my cards "protect me from crime". But the very first time I've ever lost a card, that vaunted security fails to spot the crime and the card remains unfrozen until I notice the problem and call in!

The good customer service is covering the losses and issuing a temporary replacement card in less than 24 hours. The bad customer service is lying to your customers about your reasons for wanting to minimize losses, which is a perfectly legitimate activity.

My Last Post About Prius

I like to call this photo "Mini Goes To Hell". Regular readers (those who regularly read what I irregularly write) know that I love my Mini. Recent readers also know that I am troubled by my Prius. Actually, I hate the Prius. And it's not really mine anymore; it's the company Prius, since the firm actually owns it. And I feel somewhat less dumb for buying it, since my partner is now using it while his regular car (which itself is not regular at all, but he'll have to post about that!) is being repaired from a little accident.

But, because he's using it and parking it next to my Mini and because the fellow who parks on the other side of my Mini also just happens to have a silver Prius, I was horrified to come out one day and find my poor little Mini surrounded by a flock of horrid, silver Priuses. Sort of like the movie "The Birds", an Alfred Hitchcock classic, brought up to date.

Here's why I hate the Prius:

1) The car treats me like an idiot. I already described this in a previous post. Bottom line: In order to get the benefits of the Prius, you have to drive it the way the engineers designed it to be driven. So the user interface of the car is designed to encourage and even require that behavior. Personally, I don't like being told how to drive by my car. (Fortunately my Mini also has a navigational system, so I also don't need to ask for directions!)

2) The marketing and management of Prius is so insecure about their product that they feel the need to overstate the truth and even, from my perspective, outright lie in order to sell the car. I've also already written about this, so suffice it to say that Prius advertises its car as saving 325 gallons a year (do the math to figure out how much you would have to drive to save that much in one year); getting 60 miles a gallon in the city (I get a little more than 40 in San Francisco so maybe Oklahoma City residents would get 45); and being zippy (yes, actually heard a radio station ad that claimed the car was zippy!).

3) The coup de grace, for me: Driving a Prius makes you personally invisible. I'm 55 and take great personal pleasure in the fact that the pretty young women walking along Chestnut Street in San Francisco's Marina district turn their heads when I drive by in my Liquid-Yellow Mini. It allows me the fantasy that they are amazed by the good looking, fit and youthful guy driving the car. When I drive the Prius down Chestnut Street, they appear to look right through the car and me.

So I hate the Prius: The car treats me like an idiot, the manufacturer treats me like a schmuck, and driving the car makes me feel old and invisible.

Best Order Confirmation!

I don't think I can say anything more than to just reproduce the order confirmation I got from CD Baby, after I ordered a CD I couldn't find anywhere else:

Your CD has been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow.

A team of 50 employees inspected your CD and polished it to make sure it was in the best possible condition before mailing.

Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over the crowd as he put your CD into the finest gold-lined box that money can buy.

We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of Portland waved "Bon Voyage!" to your package, on its way to you, in
our private CD Baby jet on this day, Saturday, April 28th.

I hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby.  We sure did. Your picture is on our wall as "Customer of the Year."  We're all exhausted but can't wait for you to come back to CDBABY.COM!!

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Sigh...

--
Derek Sivers, president, CD Baby
the little store with the best new independent music
http://cdbaby.com cdbaby@cdbaby.com (503)595-3000

Customer Service Kudos: Gold Stars!

In the past 24 hours, I've two amazing customer service experiences. I feel compelled to report on them, since I spend so much of this blog complaining about bad customer service.

We'll Buy Your Lunch: Robin and I went to Fish. for lunch around 1:30pm on Sunday. Fish. is a great fresh-fish place that I've been to at least a dozen times. Right on the water in Sausalito, so perfect for lazy weekend meals on warm, sunny days. Funky place, all cash, fairly expensive: Our tab was $75 for one entree, two sides, one glass of wine and one beer. The entree was a whole striper grilled. The server checked to make sure they still had a striper to cook for us and confirmed it. After we sat down outside and were enjoying the sun and drinks, the owner came out, apologized profusely, and said they had run out of the striper. (He confided that someone else had bought the last four out of his fish counter at the same time I was ordering.) He asked us to let him buy us lunch and asked what I would like instead. So I ordered the sea bass, which was excellent. But he came back later and gave us all $75 back. We were stunned; I had expected him to refund the cost of the striper, perhaps, but not the entire meal!

I'll Go Find Your Charger: I stayed overnight at the Best Western Seacliff in Aptos, California to attend a birthday party for a friend. I left my phone's charger plugged into the wall when I checked out and didn't realize it until last night when I went to plug the thing in. I've left things like this -- chargers, electric toothbrushes, umbrellas -- at hotels all over the world. Usually, I just write them off and get a new one. For some reason this time, I called the hotel on my way to work. Shannon answered. She asked me to describe the charger. She went and found it. Called me back. And is mailing it back to me. I don't know if I'm going back to Seacliff; and usually I stay in higher end places when I want to go hang out in a place (as opposed to getting a bed to sleep in for an event). But I feel so good about the Seacliff now that I might think of an excuse to go back!

I wish every business would have this attitude toward their customers.

Oh, Mini, What Did I Say?

Does Mini not know how I blog about my car? I'm distressed that I wasn't invited into one of the coolest beta tests around. Mini USA has started registering their owners' key fobs so that certain digital billboards (including one in San Francisco) will know when you drive and put up a message just for you: "Motor On, Stewart," or something like that. But I didn't get invited into the test.... (Where is Auren Hoffman's Silicon Valley 100 when you need it?!)

Anyway, I've decided not to get another Mini Cooper, so I took myself off the list for the 2007 model. It's not that I don't love my Mini, but it is kind of noisy. I haven't been able to find a Bluetooth headset that really works with my Treo 700p over the noise of the car. And driving a stick shift with a phone in the crook of your shoulder is painful. So I've garaged my 2002 Liquid Yellow Mini Cooper S in favor a really boring 2006 Toyota Prius.

(Have you heard about the South Park episode about the Prius?  The way I heard it, South Park renames the car the Toyota Pious. There are so many in San Francisco that it is creating a new form of polution: Smug.)

Isn't Reporting A Customer Service?

I ask the question because I was astonished by how insufficent a New York Times article was today. (Full credit to my girlfriend for noticing the article and bringing it to my attention!) Given its premise -- finding a really good meal while traveling (link works even though Snap Preview doesn't show it) -- I wondered why the paper even bothered to print it. I travel pretty regularly, so I read the article to see if it had any new ideas for me to use. The sources? There are two: 1) The founder of Chowhound.com who, it might surprise you, uses Chowhound.com a lot when he travels. (He even mentions that the site works with the Palm Pilot and neither the reporter nor editor took the time to report that nothing requiring an Internet connection would work on the Palm Pilot, which hasn't been sold in more than five years and never had a live network connection.) 2) The founders of roadfood.com who, it might surprise you (as even the article mentions), use roadfood.com a lot while traveling. The last third of the article lists resources such as Zagat, Fodors, Google Local, and even the Yellow Pages that hotels provide in their rooms. The two main sources I use when I travel? Yelp and Opentable, which are not mentioned. The only question I had when I finished the article was: How long did the reporter take to report this story and were the editors more worried about filling space or providing a real service to readers? This is, after all, supposed to be the pre-eminent news organization in our country.