Disorderly Content

With all the time and energy I've been throwing into photography lately, I decided it was time to get serious about lighting. To that end I ordered a second studio light. Like my first, the new light is an Alien Bees light from Paul C. Buff. Aside from wanting to Buy American^TM, I like the simplicity, the reliability, the performance and the price of their gear. So I put in my order the day before Christmas and sat down to wait.

I'd hoped against hope that the light would arrive before a shoot earlier this week, but weather and UPS conspired against me. (Didn't matter in the end, as other crises delayed that shoot. But that, as they say, is another story for another time.) First came a call from Buff (not himself, but one of his staff) to say that one of the boxes had been returned by UPS. Apparently they had damaged it in shipment, and returned it to the shipper. Except... what was in the box had nothing to do with my order! Some kind of helmets is what I was told. The upshot is that part of my order wouldn't be coming until we could figure out which part got transmogrified into those helmet-like things.

Anyway, the other box arrived last night, containing my new light. So first thing this morning I called Buff (not the guy...), reached the nice lady with the lovely Southern accent who'd talked to me before, and told her what I'd received. And the missing bits will go out today, to be delivered tomorrow. At UPS's expense, for screwing up in the first place, dammit!

Now if only I could get a refund for that 3 Day Shipping I paid for on a different photo-related order. Sorry, guys, but a 3 Day delivery is supposed to take 3 days, not ten. Even with the holidays, that's excessive...

It's a fact of life that business is business, and to expect better than to be treated with contempt is to ask to be disappointed. We're almost proud of the lack of respect we receive from the business community, each new tale of outrage reminding us that we deserve no better. My daily reading of The Consumerist blog is a reminder that someone's always getting screwed; just be glad it's not you!

So, being the anxious consumer I am when things go wrong, I faced a leaky tire on my not yet two year old Camry Hybrid with something less than sangfroid. I didn't notice the problem; the car did. But, being at least a little prepared for such things, I determined which tire was low with my trusty digital pressure gauge (it was the right rear) and then pulled out my electric pump to reinflate it. And monitored the situation for a while, until time and complacency took its toll.

A few weeks later the warning light went on again. Same tire of course, which I duly inflated. A few weeks after that I brought my car in for service, which includes a tire rotation. So I guess I was waiting for the day that warning was set off by my now right front tire. Which happened Sunday morning, and which finally forced me to deal with the problem.

The car came with Michelins, so I went Googling for a Michelin dealer in my area. Found one too, but kept looking after I read a review that had absolutely nothing positive to say about them. A second one in nearby Los Altos sounded promising, and so I took a drive over this morning. I gave them the short version of the story (lucky them, I'm sure you're thinking), and wondered how much effort they'd put into finding such a tiny and slow leak. I'd read a bunch of customer reports, you see, and knew if they didn't find it quickly, they'd be after me to replace the tire. Or maybe they wouldn't even try...

I guess these guys didn't read consumer complaints like I did, because they spent 15 or 20 minutes inspecting the tire and applying soapy water and listening carefully, at which point they found the leak. Took the tire off the rim, repaired it, reassembled it all and charged me nothing. Zero. Zip. Okay, they did ask for my business when I need new tires. Which, in response to my question about how soon that would be, will likely be another fifteen or twenty thousand miles.

I hardly know what to think. Don't these guys know about the lack of courtesy we expect? Don't they talk to the people at Sears and all the other repair hells who cheat their customers every chance they get?

What's right with this picture? And why am I so shocked?

(Oh, and if you need a good place in the Bay Area for Michelin or Goodyear, I think I can make a recommendation...)

...or at least, you hardly ever get more than you pay for. Case in point, the brown truck guys. After my recent experience with model photography, I went out and ordered a couple of radio transmitters for next time, the better to take advantage of the lighting setups provided by the other participants. Being naturally frugal (those who know me can stop laughing any time now), I opted for the cheapest shipping option, the UPS "we'll get it there in a week or so", if the slug doesn't get a hernia" option. The shipper is in New York, so I didn't think much of it. Until I remembered it was close to the delivery date and checked the package's status on the UPS site. Turns out my package arrived locally on the 23rd, where it stayed in their warehouse until being released late last night for delivery today. So they could have gotten it here days ago, but instead they let it occupy valuable warehouse space so people who bought the higher speed (and higher priced) option don't have to feel like such tools. As for me, I guess I'm grateful they don't have a "slower than slugs" option. I mean, there's a principle at stake...

I was saddened to hear that Tower Records was sold and liquidated; I've been buying music and then video there since I lived in L.A. And it was nice to have an alternative to Fry's and, more recently, Best Buy, both of which are unpleasant shopping experiences at best. Still, the shutdown might be an opportunity for a bargain or two. So it was that I stopped at my local Tower a couple of days ago to see what deals there were to be had.

The shelves were well stocked; they'd moved things around to make the empty places less obvious. And the 20% discount on merchandise sounded good, at least until I found a few things I might like to buy. $28 for a recent movie? Even at 20% off that's more than I'm used to paying. Did they raise the prices before they lowered them? Maybe I won't miss them so much after all.

I've been enjoying the hoohaw over the AOL customer who recorded his attempt to cancel the service and the service rep's increasing stonewalling thereof. Part of the pleasure in hearing about such an abuse of the customer/vendor relationship is our belief that we're all victims together against the corporate greed and blockheadism that we face every day. In the AOL case we're not at all surprised; we're just glad it happened to somebody else. Schadenfreude, thy name is customer service.

Which is why I wasn't at all pleased when I found myself at the beginning of a customer service screwup. I've mentioned before that I just purchased a new car. I financed said vehicle through my credit union, with which I've had a happy relationship coming up on twenty years. So I wasn't at all pleased when I checked their website this morning and saw that my loan had finally showed up. Not that I was unhappy about that; it was exactly why I'd been checking the site since I got the car two weeks ago. No, the problem was the loan rate, which was considerable higher than the one I'd been quoted.

So it was with a heavy heart that I called to find out what happened. First time I picked the wrong choice on their menu system, couldn't negotiate my way back out, and had to hang up and try again. Second time I got through to a service rep, who asked a couple of security questions to verify that I am indeed me. (Existential crisis, much?) Unfortunately, part of what she asked involved recent deposits. And, not having that information at hand, I had to get online to check the amounts. Which I guess is okay, assuming nobody has broken in to get my account name and password.

Anyway, I then explained the problem. That rate's too high; don't I get the direct deposit discount? And isn't there another discount for getting a hybrid? One moment, says she, and I'm listening to phone ads while I wait for her to come back on the line. A very few minutes later she's back. And the short answer is whoops!; I am indeed entitled to those discounts on my loan rate, she'll put the paperwork in to correct the account and call me when it's fixed.

Talk about your nonevents! Here I was, ready for some major hassles, multiple calls and potential raising of voices or even threatening to take my business elsewhere. But no, all I get is friendly and fast service. It's almost enough to make you lose faith in America.

It also reminds me of something I heard years ago: that people are more impressed with companies that handle their mistakes quickly and without grief than with companies that never screw up in the first place. And it's certainly true in this case. I generally don't give my credit union much thought. But on the rare occasion when they get it wrong, they suddenly have a chance to make a positive impression. Which they did.

Of course if they really want to impress me they could drop the rate to zero...

Update 06/30: Happy ending to the story, not that I expected anything else. Checking my accounts today revealed a new lower rate on my loan, accompanied by new lower payments. Much obliged.

Boing Boing points to a LiveJournal post about the economics of paperback book publishing. Part one of an alleged two parter covers the costs and revenues for an original novel published in paperback, one that doesn't succeed in the market. Part two is supposed to deal with a successful hardcover book that moves to mass market. Which is interesting and all. But what caught my attention is the realization that the author of the piece is a kindred spirit. I always enjoy finding those.

We're gonna party like it's 1999! Okay, maybe not. But I could only think of the great dotcom bubble when I read an email I received a few minutes ago, offering to buy my website. It all sounded nice; I could remain involved if I wished, letting them handle administration and marketing. Or, presumably, I could take the money and run.

It's not a hard choice, really. If I gave up this site, what would I waste all my spare time, energy and creativity on? And how much is a bunch of mostly decade-old content worth in today's market? Besides, I have a funny feeling it's all some sort of scam, with payment more likely in the form of equity than in cold, hard cash. A quick look at the sender's firm's website makes it sound nebulously new economy-ish. And, as a firm believer in the adage that you can't cheat an honest man, I'm happy to continue believing that I qualify.

A week ago Forbes Magazine wrote a polemic about the evil that is the blogosphere and what companies whose God-given right to spread the word about the wonderfulness of their products should do to undermine the menace that is the blogger. (If you missed it, you can read a precis at Google Blogoscoped or pretty much anywhere else in that selfsame evil blogosphere.) Anyway, now Michael Malone, who once hosted a news show for our local no-budget public broadcasting station before moving on to bigger and possibly better things at ABC News, weighs in on why nobody should take Forbes remotely seriously when the subject is technology. Or the technology business for that matter. As Malone points out, Forbes ignored the dotcom bubble as it grew, only getting on board right before it blew up in everybody's faces. They're just as wrong about bloggers, whether over the business potential that might be there or the rights of the people (said with Forbes' trademark derision) to question their betters online.

I've often wondered how a word like elitist got so completely divorced from the idea of being elite. Isn't there an implication of a meritocracy in declaring someone elite? I ask because the more we hear from the elite, the less elite they seem.

A post on Engadget talks about the Osborne Effect, where a company announces a new product before it's ready to ship, kills demand for the products it has and goes out of business. Problem is, they explain, that's not what did in Osborne the company. According to a piece at The Register, Osborne had already survived the drying up of its sales and was selling and shipping the new product in good numbers. And everything was going fine until a VP discovered some motherboards from the previous model and had the brilliant idea of turning them into completed systems. The value of those motherboards: $150k. The cost to turn them into products? $2m. As in million. As in enough to break the company.

There goes another object lesson. Osborne not destroyed by the Osborne Effect. Ben Franklin never flew the kite. What'll be the next story to bite the dust?

Engadget has a story today about how the trend to wireless-only households is slowing rapidly. Hardly a surprise to your humble blogger; living as I do in a cellular dead zone in the heart of Silicon Valley, and having absorbed the wisdom of a leader in wireless that to expect good service is to be a fool, I can't imagine anyone so brave as to cut the cord. Guess that'll have to remain a dream, like flying cars or honest politicians.

Engadget has a piece about T-Mobile's new street-level coverage maps, something they and I wish every wireless provider offered. That's the good news. The bad, at least for me, is that it provides graphic evidence that their service is just as awful where I live as the former PacBell Wireless, Sprint, AT&T Wireless and Cingular. According to their own map, I'm in the grey zone, just on the cusp of the slightly yellowish grey band. They call that fair. I'd call it being kind.

So they'd suck. But at least they're honest about sucking.

Thanks to Dan Gillmor for linking to an interview at the San Francisco Chronicle with Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg, who's rather more outspoken than is good for him or his company. Seidenberg opines that community-supported WiFi "could be one of the dumbest ideas I've ever heard" and that we shouldn't expect cell phone service to work where we need it:

"Why in the world would you think your (cell) phone would work in your house?" he said. "The customer has come to expect so much. They want it to work in the elevator; they want it to work in the basement."

And why, I ask, would we accept anything else? Does he really think giving out multiple phone numbers and letting the caller find one that works is an acceptable solution? Having used Pacific Bell Wireless (now owned by Verizon), Sprint, AT&T Wireless and now Cingular and not having good service at home from any of them, I'm particularly amused to discover that it's not their service that sucks; it's just my expectations that are unreasonable.

And who set those expectations? Oh yeah; cell phone guys like Seidenberg.