Category: Service

Whack A Time Share Peddler

I like Vegas.  My wife and I have a tendency to spend some time out there at least once a year and have become quite familiar with all of the sights and sounds that go along with a place labeled affectionately as Sin City.  Our recent visit was actually to go to a family wedding being held there, but for specific reasons I am going to hold off on commenting about that specific event (for now).  As a perk from visiting that city at a regular frequency, we tend to get fairly good rates on hotels.  Such good rates that we often end up going back to the same hotel(s) even after we have decided we wanted a change.  That is the situation we had on our recent trip.  Even though we have stayed at the Luxor like 6 or 7 times now, the $59/night room rates is hard to pass up especially since they usually end up comping them out at the end of stay anyway.  We could also use our offer to get a cheap room for others that were heading out there with us.  So, setting the tone for this post is we went to Vegas, stayed at a hotel even though we would prefer to go elsewhere and had brought a number of people with us.

Four things stick out about that visit that has significantly impacted my desire to ever go to that particular hotel again.  I will let you form your own opinion if I am simply overreacting.  The first of these issues is the room location we were given.  Having been to Vegas so many times, the room view is not an issue for us – to be honest, I really do not sleep much while I am out there and prefer to spend time out in the lights rather than just looking at them from a window.  What is critical is my ability to actually get some sleep when I decide to head there.  Keep in mind, this usually consists of me going to the room after 4am and getting up around 10am to sleep the rest off under the sun at the pool.  Note, the reason for the couple of hours in the sun is to detox from the smoke and fumes from the casino floors.  The first day plays out as expected, hit the room about 3am and hit the zzz’s.  At 8:30am I am awakened by extremely loud drilling from what appears to be the floor right below my room.  This I find extremely annoying and even try to drown it out with the pillow without success.  Frustrated, I decided to simply get up and head out to some places my wife wanted to visit.  Day plays out again exactly the same along with the same drilling which starts closer to 8am this time.  Furious, I call the front desk and ask them how long I am going to have to listen to them drilling every morning.  The response was “Oh, they are replacing windows below you, but we can move you to the other tower if you want to?”  No, really I enjoy the sound; I just wanted to know if you could add a jackhammer.  Idiot, of course I want moved or I would not have bothered to call you.  My take away from this was that they KNEW this was happening but put us there anyway.  The other issue is they had to move another party that was on the same floor (they needed to be close to us… no comment at this time).  I relayed that they needed to be moved as well and that was agreed to by the clerk.  So we packed up both rooms and headed out to the casino floor to kill sometime before the rooms were ready.  At 1:00pm we gathered up our luggage and headed to the registration desk to get the new room assignment.   Turns out they second room wasn’t done yet, but ours was.  We took the keys and I specifically asked the clerk what the second room number was and wrote it down on the key envelope as well.  We dropped all the stuff off at our room and headed out to the casino floor again.

Continue reading Whack A Time Share Peddler

The 3P Principle… or Gaming Gas Pricing — Now NOPE

Updated: Oct 31st, 2008 My brother has now provided further clarification of the principle and has given this m0vement the moniker NOPE for Not One PEnny.  Please see his comment below for more discussion and additional tie breaker rules.

I have to credit my brother Ron for the topic of this post.  The catalyst for this entry was that I actually acted upon his theory twice while traveling around Northern Illinois and Southern Wisconsin this weekend.  So about now, you are wondering what this theory is all about.  Ron and I have had numerous discussions regarding the price of gas.  During one of these discussions, he detailed out a plan to influence market pricing for gas.  It is actually fairly simple in understanding and execution, but the dilemma is that it has to be regionally followed or it will have little impact on the overall pricing.  If collectively executed, I think it may change the way the market looks at demand based pricing.  Ron never gave a clever title to his concept, so I am going to go ahead and label it for him…. he is definitely welcome to change it if he wants.  So here goes.. ready… The 3P Principle or expanded… the Perfect Petro Pricing Principle.  Unlike most economic principles these days, this one doesn’t take a thesis to explain.  In fact, it only takes a sentence.  If there are multiple gas stations in reasonable proximity, ALWAYS go to the station with the lowest displayed price even if it requires an inconvenience to get to the location or wait an additional amount of time waiting for a free pump.  Now that was not that difficult was it?  The heart of the theory is market based pricing.  There is absolutely no way an establishment can continue pricing different than a competitor who has the same customers.  Eventually, depending on his loss longevity, the price will have to come down to at least match the other businesses…. and ideally, from a capitalist point of view, he might re-price down below the competitors to win back some of the lost customers.  That sets up another round of discounts from the rest of the competitors.  There are some quirks to the principle due to some options like the level of octane that is provided, what detergent is included etc.  But apparently the gas stations don’t really think this is important to you or they would actually put it on their sign next to their displayed gas prices so you could decide how much YOU really care about it.  If you are not driving a high end vehicle, I doubt you care if it is 87 or 89 and in the Midwest just assume it has 10% Ethanol in it.  So instead of just complaining about the high prices or bandwagoning on the dependency of foreign oil so we must go green crap, do something about it and start following the 3P Principle (or whatever he decides to call it)

Doing my part this weekend, I had the chance to make this choice twice.  The first time was South of Rockford IL in a small town called Rochelle…. and as I say everytime I pass that city: “Rochelle Rochelle, a young girl’s erotic journey from Milan to Minsk”  If you are a Seinfeld fan, you should be laughing now.  Anyway, we had to fill up for gas and as usual on the interstate, there were three filling stations to choose from.  Two of them were at $2.99/gallon and the other one was at $2.84.  Even though we had to drive 500 feet extra and wait for a light, I made my wife go to the cheaper gas.  Of course, there were some customers at the other stations paying too much, but it will probably take a little while to get the word out on this genius plan.  We filled up and went on our merry way having lost only about 4 minutes extra due to seeking out the cheaper price.

The second time was up in Lake Geneva, but it slightly backfired on us but on reflection, the proximity parameter really wasn’t met.  We drove into Lake Geneva off of Rt 12 on the East side of the lake.  The gas price at that particular spot was $2.95.  We were still okay on the guage, so we completely traversed to the West side via the southern Lake Shore drive.  On that end, there was a gas station displaying $2.85.  Can someone please tell me why the gas is priced differently a mere 20-30 miles away?  We noticed the cheaper gas, but the guage was still in our favor so we started heading back to the East, but this time via the North side.  Unfortunately, I made my wife take a wrong turn which literally brought us back down to the exact same point we saw the $2.85 station.  Yes, I heard about that for at least 20 minutes straight.  At that point I decided it was an omen so I made her stop for gas.  Unfortunately, when we retraced our Northern route, we passed another gas station that had $2.84 displayed…. still better than $2.95 though.  So, we did our part this weekend.  A few more thousand regionally concerned citizens and we should start seeing a true impact.

All credit goes to my brother Ron!  now about that nomogracult thing…

How To Earn My [W]Rath

As we were heading back from our South Dakota trip, we came upon a pretty nasty storm in Western Iowa.  Generally this doesn’t bother me much, but as all to common on any road travel these days, we were reduced to a single lane due to road construction.  As a result, it was difficult to concentrate on the narrow lanes while focusing through the downpour.  After awhile we decided to go ahead and stop for the night in Council Bluffs.  The GPS indicated there were some casinos nearby so we opted to stay at one of their hotels…. actually that was the plan, but we ended up calling for rooms in advance only to find out they were ALL booked.  No problem, we’ll find something along the way.  Unfortunately, we didn’t find very many options and it was getting pretty late.  Eventually, we found an exit with three hotels on it – I think a Holiday Inn and possibly a Day’s Inn (can’t remember for sure).  We opted for the Holiday Inn only to find out they were booked and was given the recommendation to try the other hotel (Day’s Inn) across the street.  So… we went over there having to pass a Rath Inn on the way.  As you probably expected, that hotel was full – we finally figured out that the College World Series was going on which filled up all the rooms in the neighboring cities (I believe the games are held in Omaha Nebraska).  The hotel clerk wouldn’t even recommend another option which immediately stood out as interesting… two hotels in the area refused to refer anybody to the Rath Inn – either stiff competition in the area or something is up.

 We were tired, the rain wasn’t letting up so we went against our better judgement and headed to Rath Inn to take a chance they had a room left.  It was more of a motel (park next to door), but a bed was all I really needed (hasty assumption there!)  Turns out we were able to procure the last non-smoking room – we’re in luck.  We drove the car to the room, quickly opened the door to get feel the comfort of the bed to soothe the eyes.  The view didn’t leave much of reason to blog on it – basic room generic decor … should be okay.  And then my wife comes out the bathroom with complete disgust on her face and seriously agitated.  Turns out they didn’t even bother cleaning the bathroom from the previous occupants.  DISGUSTING – we were trapped – nowhere to go and in a room not fit to stay – the traveler’s dilemma.  Fatigue won out, we tore all the sheets of the bed, grabbed a blanket from the car to sleep ON TOP of and did our best to get some sleep.

I now have a benchmark for the bottom rung of roadside bedding – and a new level of fatigue I’m willing to endure to find another place to stay. 

More Crap Code

I am completely sick of paying money for software that is basically crap.  Freeware, Shareware I have no problem with and understand bugs may creep in and possible limited test time etc.  That naturally comes with that form of product development, but to be honest, I am seeing better code these days in that format that I am seeing off the shelf.  So case in point (and the reason for being so upset that an immediate post was needed to vent) – I had some free time tonight and decide to install and load up a gift my dogs got me for Father’s Day.  This gift was a digital photo ball from Senario and looked pretty cool – my wife was on me for not having enough photos on my work desk so this is going to come in handy.  So I finally make through the extremely annoying plastic mold packaging, find the directions and USB cable and figure I am good to go…. but no, it has software that has to be installed to manage the image download.  After literally looking for 10 minutes as to where I put the disk when I opened the package, I finally figured out it was in a mini-cd disk between the packaging cardboards.  I slap the disk in and the first thing the dialog asks is where I want to install it.  I NEVER install software in the Window’s defaults in order to keep my drives organized, so I changed locations with the browse button and complete the install.  As I would expect, an icon is placed on my desktop, but it had a default icon which I thought was odd.  I clicked the newly created icon… and I get the Windows Missing Shortcut Error Dialog.  Sure enough, they didn’t bother to set the Vue-Me software desktop shortcut to the LOCATION I SPECIFIED FOR INSTALL in the initial install.  This is absolutely pathetic and immediately tells me they did not once bother to test out the install to a non-default directory even though their software clearly provided that option.  If I provided this lack of quality to my end customers I would be laughed at (yes, I’m in the IT business which is why this bothers me so much).  If you are expecting me to actually pay for your software, then take the time to test it – I’ll keep this gift because it was the thought from my dogs (okay, my wife for the dogs), but don’t expect me to purchase anything else from Senario in the future. 

The News Not Worth Reporting

So yesterday I was getting ready to take on the day with hopes of getting a good 15K run in along with some badly needed yard work.  By basic routine these days, I flipped on the TV as some background noise and a final check of the weather.  To lazy to worry about changing the channel, I left it on CNN Headline news which I interpreted to be “headline news” or “news I should care about”.   Here are the first three stories I was subjected to:

  1.  101 year old is still driving around her Cadillac
  2.  A pressing concern because Scott McClellan will not say whether he is still a Republican or not.  … yeah, the guy who waits till election year to claim “it’s not my fault” and try to make a few bucks off an election year drama
  3. Wife of San Francisco guy who hired a naked maid off of Craig’s List (and surprisingly stole $40 grand or so) believes the trust is gone in their relationship – complete with shadowed room interview.

 That was three leading stories which means there were at least 6 commercials for tax resolution lawyers, 3 commercials for ambulance chasing lawyers, 4 commercials for how to get a free mobility chair from the MediCare, 2 head ache commercials and the garden cultivator which consists of sticking a paint mixing bit on a drill and then sticking it in pre-tilled potting soil.  All that for three stories… correction.. three HEADLINE stories.  … Find Remote, Click Remote…. I can get better written stories, more pertinent to the real issues I care about and not be inundated with stupid *ss commercials by simply logging into my computer and checking my RSS Feeds. 

I will not be wasting my time with Robin anymore I’m no longer buying their fabricated drama.  Ironically, I was reading the paper waiting for my dogs to take their agility runs today and there was the answer in black and white… Iraq violence is at a near low… they apparently have nothing to talk about since that is contrary to their drama, conflicting with their agenda.  So instead of reporting the successes, we get the naked maid and resulting infidelity concerns.

sad.

4 Months and Counting

Rarely do I get so torqued up that I actually convince myself that a personal boycott is in order…. okay, that may not be entirely true since I do have a number of bans in progress, but they are all for very good reasons!  This particular boycott is still in its infancy (compared to my Sprint BAN dating back to 1986) and was initiated on January 29th 2008 when I read about a particular bill being reviewed in the house.  Just in case the link goes dead, here is the paragraph that ruffled the fur (all rights to paragraph remains with the ArsTechnica author)

“Not content with the current (and already massive) statutory damages allowed under copyright law, the RIAA is pushing to expand the provision. The issue is compilations, which now are treated as a single work. In the RIAA’s perfect world, each copied track would count as a separate act of infringement, meaning that a copying a ten-song CD even one time could end up costing a defendant $1.5 million if done willfully. Sound fair? Proportional? Necessary? Not really, but that doesn’t mean it won’t become law. ”

Yes folks, that is $1.5M for copying a single compilation cd.  I will let that sink in just a minute… tick…tock….tick…tock.  I have had enough.  On the spot I committed myself to a minimum one year boycott of all big label music purchases or any artist that actually came out and supported their efforts.  It is now over 4 months and I have not even thought for one second about breaking the agreement.  Does this mean that I ended my music purchases, stopped filling my silent voids with raunchy guitars, thunderous drums and unique arrangements…. NOPE.  What the RIAA has failed to comprehend in their pursuit to litigate every single person in the world is that there are other outlets for music.  The stranglehold is gone.  Big labels are no longer needed – the Internet has essentially removed the unneeded middle men/women.  Instead of wasting my hard earned money on uncaring artists, I’ve turned to 100% Indie and at this point I see little reason to every go back.  Thanks to distribution houses like CD Baby , and the emergence of studios catering to the non-signed bands, there are plenty of bands out there who actually deserve our attention.  Oh and don’t forget the pod sector (Insomina Radio’s SoCal, Chicago and UK as examples) cranking out wonderful DRM free samples to help get the word out.  For the record, I have bought over 30 CDs as a result of these three podcasts and their sister feeds.  So if you are not put off by the RIAA tactics or enjoy seeing how the big label bands treat your money on shows like MTV Cribs, nor wonder how much investment there is in simply cranking out a greatest hits or compilation CD (yet priced at the same rate as a new cd with studio fees etc.) then please don’t click on any of the links in this post.  I on the other hand am getting ready to listen to my August House, Half the World and Band of Horses CDs.

As a side note, I did find something out while tracking down the Pro-IP link, I noticed that on March 6th, 2008, the compilation piece was pulled from the bill : In case the link goes dead, here is the statement that brought my smile (rights remain with ArsTechnica author) “Today, a House subcommittee removed the controversial provision from the Bill and passed it on to the full committee for further comment” Interesting enough, apparently they didn’t consider the magazine and newspaper impact.  This of course doesn’t change my boycott, but good to see there are some logical thinking people in congress.

An Extra Smile With Dessert

In honor of Good Friday, I thought I would comment on a good service experience I had the last time I went to Vegas.  After a long day of taking in the sites, sounds and odds, we decided to graze at a buffet and unwind.  The pick that night was the Rio’s international buffet (as in not the seafood buffet since I am not a big fan of creatures from the water – which is why I generally do not observe the in disguise fisherman lobby no meat obligations of my religion).  All in all, the main course food was pretty good, but the pleasant surprise came as I went for my dessert.  Arriving at the dessert area I noticed there was a counter with a rather unique form of ice cream that I believe was Italian, but it was not the Spumoni type that I have had before.  All of the choices in flavors caused me to hesitate a bit as I contemplated the perfect dessert.  Actually, I was so focused on the selection, I completely overlooked the fact that there was an individual in a chef hat manning the counter.  He was apparently a good read of people as well since he immediately asked me if he could answer any questions I might have or possibly offer some suggestions on tasty combinations. 

For the next 5 minutes he answered all of my dumb questions on what it was, how it was made, and interesting tidbits related to it.  He then provided a couple combinations of flavors that was his favorite and some others that some of his customers recommended.  All of this with what appeared to be a genuine interest in my happiness – I was stunned.  I thanked the man, eagerly took the little cup containing my tasty creation and headed back to my seat in happy anticipation.  Delicious!  While I cooled the tummy, I kept an eye on the dessert counter.  Sure enough, he was treating everyone that came up to him in the same manner, joking with them, commenting on something that might be unique to an individual (nice hat, unique purse, striking tie, how’s the casinos treating you).  In almost every case, the customer carried on a short conversation with a smile on their face.   On my way out, I actually looked for a tip jar out of curiousity but found none.  This man clearly enjoyed his job and had great personal skills – a rarity in todays service industry.

I left the Rio buffet with a smile and an experience that set a new standard for service in my book.  Probably more amazing is I had completely forgotten at the moment the complete lack of service we encountered when we arrived at the buffet.  Apparently the Rio (or should I refer to them as Harrah’s) is too cheap to invest in a personal experience at the order counter – instead of simply hiring one or two inviduals to man the credit cards and handling any questions, they installed a bunch of cold and uncaring computers so you can do all the busy work to actually pay them.   Numerous people in line were confused (generally the older crowd) and some even left in disgust. 

So on Good Friday, I give you an example of Good Service (minus the self-check in 8^)

How May I Inconvenience You

After two long months, I am happy to say I have successfully transferred all of my domains to GoDaddy.  Why exactly did I put myself through this… because of poor service at my previous provider UplinkEarth.  For over 5 years, I have had my domains with this provider and up to about 6 months ago fairly satisfied with them.  However, all of a sudden, I receive an email saying my websites had been hacked and the pages altered to download viruses when users accessed my sites – as a result, they reset my (likely all) FTP accounts because that is how the intrusion took place.  Quite alarmed, I immediately logged in and reset my FTP account and repaired my websites.  I didn’t think much about it until a few weeks later I get another email saying my websites had been hacked again and the same actions taken to reset everything.  Now annoyed, I logged back in, reset my password and repaired the sites.  A month later, I get the same message from the administrators again!  Now I am livid so I again correct everything and make a decision to look into another provider.  Luckily my brother had success with GoDaddy, so I began looking into them. 

Guess what happened a few weeks later…. Continue reading How May I Inconvenience You

Out of Touch Marketing

I can already tell I am going to be all over the board on this post.  This is mainly due to the fact the topic today is about commercials/advertisements and I extremely dislike them – normally I would have used the hay8 word but I am trying to narrow the use of that label to special situations (like Sprint) otherwise it tends to get watered down.  I should probably backup and put some perspective on this.  For probably 10 years now, every time I get a magazine, I take 2 minutes to rip out every double page ad in it.  This leaves a muuuuchh thinner magazine with very little distractions, including those ridiculous cologne samples.  Secondly, I rarely listen to any commercial on the radio – there are multiple (non-satellite) stations I listen to in the car and since the controls are now conveniently located behind the steering wheel, it is even easier to skip through the stations.  That is when I choose to listen to the radio instead of podcasts and audio books.  Lastly, I use a computer to PVR all of my TV shows and watch them later in the night or week.  That tiny little button labeled “skip” jumps 30 seconds ahead so a few clicks of that and I am back into the show adding productive hours to my week.  Getting the picture here?  As a note, when Ted Turner claimed I was stealing his money by doing this I swore to  never watch TNT again (and true to my word).

If you are in the marketing creation business, you might want to rethink your approach if you plan to sell me something.  As a suggestion, you might want to consider the in show product approach – if you are selling soda, you might want to push to have an actor drink from a can (with trademark visible) in the middle of a suspenseful moment or have an actress get into a specific SUV and hit the OnStar button before the villain raises up from the back seat — think the movie Demolition Man and Taco Bell (as you can see that worked)

 But I admit, there is a small window in the morning when I choose to sit (actually stand) through commercials.  That time is in the morning getting ready for work.  I need to know what to wear so the TV is generally on to get the latest updates.  Unfortunately, every once in awhile a commercial comes on that freezes me in my tracks – not because it is actually worth watching, but rather in the “What were they thinking” category. 

One of these moments happened yesterday.

Continue reading Out of Touch Marketing

Wal-Mart Pain

Ironically after recently titling a post in a positive light for Wal-Mart, I fall victim to one of the stupidest processes I have experienced in awhile.  For my birthday, some friends of mine went in together and bought me BioShock for the Xbox360.  Thanks again for that kind gesture!  Anyway, we were playing Rock Band all night and didn’t get a chance to play it.  This resulted in a bonus as it turned out they bought the game at Wal-Mart and an advertisement came out the next day from Best Buy for $20 less.  I figured I would take it back to Wal-Mart and have the ticket adjusted and therefore save my friends some money (it was on a credit card, so the money would simply be added back on to that account).  

A day or two later I headed over to Wal-Mart at lunch to complete the adjustment.  There was even a printed sign on the door how they honor competitor sale ads.  This should have been a walk in the park, but things quickly derailed when I went up to the service desk.

Continue reading Wal-Mart Pain