Category: Rant

For when things go seriously, or absurdly, wrong…

Beyond.com: don’t trust it.

Would you trust a service that scrapes dated resumes, creates profiles without your permission, and make it difficult to get rid of them? Didn’t think so. Then in my personal opinion, you wouldn’t trust beyond.com — find out what unsolicited content was waiting in my inbox.

This morning I woke up to an email, it basically read this:

You received this email because you have created an account on Beyond.com. This is a one-time mailer. If you have any questions, please contact us.

I’m thinking to myself, “what?!?” Actually, I’m thinking something quite a bit more colorful.

Then there’s another message from Customer Service.

Then there’s another message with my username and password.

…right.

After deciding it isn’t some email spammer trying to get me to some foreign national site, I login. And what do I find? Someone had screen scraped an old copy of my resume and contact information and made an account for me.

At this point, I figure that anyone with any common sense should completely discount beyond.com’s credibility completely. Here’s why.

First, if any arbitrary user is able to make up accounts for someone else, then clearly the database of provided by beyond.com can’t be trusted. I know my information was wrong, so clearly any potential employer looking for candidates would actually be wasting their time — it isn’t an accurate representation out there. But more over, this represents bad business and security practice if someone other than the actual person can create an account.

Second, let’s assume that such a thing isn’t possible. The alternate conclusion is that beyond.com is scraping the web, making accounts, in an attempt to build a database to give the appearance they are more than they really are. Will some suckers sign on and “correct” the information? Perhaps. But I suspect many others will ignore it. Again, this is really not helpful for anyone trying to use beyond.com for candidates.

Bottom line, either side of the coin — something is wrong. Very wrong.

And, of course, removing that profile is painful and obscure. The help files toss around words like ‘deactivate’ rather than ‘delete’. Such things should make users of beyond.com question the marketing metrics of beyond.com as well.

To me, and in my personal opinion, beyond.com isn’t worth the pixels its printed on. In fact, it sucks.

REVIEW: Walt gives Beyond.com two thumbs down.

BestBuy Teaches Me A Lesson

Single handedly, he’s more than doubled the amount I was planning on spending on an impulse buy. It’s not cheap, either.

And you know what? I’m happy. I’m genuine, truly, on top of the world, happy.

It was at this point I made my fatal flaw: I went to leave the store.

It’s memorial day, and BestBuy had sent me some coupons. Not amazing coupons, but 10% off this or that, should I happen to be in their store this weekend.

BustBuySo, I’m hanging out around the house and come to the conclusion that having a second digital camera would be a really good idea. And shortly later, I’m standing in BestBuy in Sterling, VA.

Mind you, I’ve already decided upon the camera I want. It’s oh so niiiiiice. And, Noah, our helpful sales person, quickly has it in my hands, so I can grope the box with anticipation.

He’s also, it appears, is the master of up-sales, because I’m now also holding the fastest 8GB card they’ve got, a really slick HD card reader, a nice carrying case, and I’ve just signed up for the 4 year warranty plan …with accidental coverage as well. Single handedly, he’s more than doubled the amount I was planning on spending on an impulse buy. It’s not cheap, either.

And you know what? I’m happy. I’m genuine, truly, on top of the world, happy.

We pay in full, and not on credit, mind you. And Noah packs everything in to a big, convenient, transparent plastic carrying bag with handles that’s labeled BestBuy on the side; and just so I know I got everything, he packs my warranty information and receipt against the side so I, and the world, can see it.

It was at this point I made my fatal flaw: I went to leave the store.

Despite having just come from the registers with everything I was carrying dangling visible by my side, as I attempted to leave the store, I was detained to have my receipt and purchases examined. Not peered at. I mean, hands going through your stuff, as in it’s-not-in-your-possession-any-more kind of examination.

Understand what this feels like to the honest, repeat customer. It conveys you, personally, are doing something illegal or untrustworthy.

Understand what message this conveys from a store to its patrons. It says we don’t want you to shop here.

Yes, a lot of people are willing to bend to the hassle of an over zealous or bored employee. That doesn’t mean I am, or should. Store policy and personal whim isn’t the law. I have no contract with BestBuy, as I do with Costco or Sams, in which I happily comply to go over purchases as previously agreed.

The moment the sale is concluded, it’s my legal property. And BestBuy knows this. That’s why when they ask to rifle through my personal belongings when I leave, I can say “no thanks” and keep on walking. Legally.

I simply don’t trust store personnel to be properly trained that they are not the police, and they don’t have the same rights and authority as sworn officers of the law. That said, no one touched me today. But today’s exit was still more intrusive than I prefer.

It was also clear they didn’t think I was a shoplifter, they just wanted to assert whatever authority they thought they had. No big burly man asked me to step aside or go visit the back room; that, incidentally, would have been just fine if they suspected something. This wasn’t even a security guard. It was a regular employee and the greeter.

And so after they were done searching and returned my bag, without leaving the store, I went straight to customer service to return everything.

It was pretty evident, the store did not want me leaving with any purchases today. While my transaction had just been validated by going through my possessions, without my consent, somehow the situation appeared to require further escalation after my change of direction to remain in the store. Looking back, security folks were arriving at the exit.

Mind you, I had neither resisted nor engaged in any verbal exchange back there. It was now turning into a show, and I wasn’t even party to it. Four to five people where watching me talking with customer service from where I’d been stopped.

I got my full refund, and with the smile and friendly service that the camera was sold to me with. It’s clear where the problem area was, because it wasn’t on sales and it isn’t on returns. And, from my brief discussion with customer service, it was quite clear I wasn’t the first to go through this.

Not only did BestBuy lose this sale, but it also gives pause to future purchases I’d make.

It’s a story I’ll be sharing frequently this holiday weekend and coming week.

And, the weekly business purchases that I do for our office will most likely be done online or at the local Staples now, even if that means driving a little further.

BestBuy didn’t prevent theft, it lost business. More than just the camera.

Checking the receipts at the exit is bad policy, and it doesn’t stop theft. I understand BestBuy’s motive for this behavior, but it’s hurting them in the longer run. Far trivial solutions exist which would be far more effective and not cut into profitability or produce lost sales. Short term thinking and the illusion of security is a negative.

But it’s worse than that. I learned something BestBuy didn’t want me to know.

With my return receipt in hand, back at home, I signed on to Amazon and started looking up the products. Mind you, I had purchased the camera and equipment with coupons, so I was using that as my base price.

Even so, through Amazon, the camera was still 83% cheaper. Carrying case, 74% cheaper. Memory, 54% cheaper. And at those prices, I don’t need the extra warranty.

BestBuy had been so convenient that it just hadn’t been worth the second thought to go comparison shop.

Now, since they made me look at my relationship with their store good and hard, since this incident will remain in the forethought of my mind for quite a while, BestBuy has turned itself into SecondBuy.

BestBuy Taught Me A Lesson: Look Elsewhere.

It’s not just cheaper. It’s much cheaper.

Horrible Customer Service: Sunoco Gas in Ashburn

If you ran a company and could make a customer for 75 cents, so happy you’d make more then 75 cents in profit, would you? If you ran a company and could cheat a customer out of 75 cents, knowing it would impact future sales, would you? Next up, we examine Sunco in Ashburn, VA – which do you think their customer service policies favor? Oh yeah, you guessed right.

I’m beginning to wonder if my second calling in life should be more formal: that of business consultant in the field of customer service.

It seems that wherever I go I notice two things. 1) Businesses complaining about profitability. 2) Customer service incidents that drive customers away.

Tonight’s story has me as passenger, while my friend tries to fill up his tire with air after going to the nearest gas station. In this case, Sunoco in Ashburn Village scored in the location category, and by its car wash station, it had a coin operated compressed air station.

My friend plunked in 75 cents to start the machine, to which an LED turned on indicating that not only was the machine suddenly out of service, but that it had swallowed his money as well.

Naturally, he drove around to the cashier to ask for his money back.

And here begins the lesson, Sunoco.

The correct response should have been to service the machine, activate it remotely, or hand back the 75 cents with profuse apologies. Any of those remedies would have been perfect and cost Sunoco nothing.

Instead, this happened.

The cashier retorted that it wasn’t the company’s problem, that he needed to call the service number on the machine. Thus, Sunoco effectively took my friend for 75 cents.

Now, to you or me, perhaps 75 cents isn’t worth a quibble over. And, discounting the inconvenience of having to drudge up more quarters, there’s a significant point that’s about to be made.

Sunoco says this air pump isn't theirs, and refunds aren't their problem. You agree?

By not doing any of the good customer service solutions previously mentioned, it creates the impression that 75 cents is too great a sum of money for Sunoco to part with. And, by not placing an Out of Order sign on the machine, it perhaps further conveys maligned intent to steal from others.

The point to be made is one of lasting customer impressions. Because while Sunoco may have made 75 cents that evening, my friend refused to fill up there. And, as other people were in the car, we couldn’t believe how shitty Sunoco treated him. Do you think we’ll be filling up there? How many times will it be that much harder to simply use the Shell station up the street about a minute and a half away? And, how many people do you think this story will be told to?

While it might not make a huge dent in Sunoco’s pockets, and there certainly is no organized boycott, it serves as a good example of lost revenues. Especially when after filling up, we usually go inside and grab snacks and drinks. And, of course, that didn’t happen either.

What really struck home was as we were thinking about it, having filled up and gotten free air at the Shell station, that Sunoco tried to deny the air pump was actually theirs. The service number provided isn’t for customer refunds, it’s for getting the device fixed.

We’ll let you make the decision. Is this a Sunoco air pump? Do you see any Sunoco stickers on it? Oh, more than one? Thought so.

Harvesters, Where Are You

Harvesters, I have emails for you to chomp on: emails of an evil company that uses spam for marketing.

I happen to maintain a number of pages concerning programming led signs for hobbyists.

And, while I am willing to converse with LED sign vendors about improvements and protocols, I tend to only post recommendations for specific vendors and equipment that I have personally dealt with and feel that the end consumer would be better for the experience. I’ve had companies offer to buy a slot, and I’ve turned them down.

Also on those pages, I’m fairly clear that I am not an LED sign vendor or manufacturer. I’m not interested in LED products just because things have LEDs. I don’t want parts lists.

And, while some companies marketing departments don’t read those pages, almost all are quick to correct the problem after a polite email.

I have to say almost, every day I get one or more heavily graphic filled messages from tianjohn806@hotmail.com, john@vedonltd.com, tianjohn806@vedonled.com in which his template spam says “I … know that you are one of importers about LED products”. [sic.] The domain’s contact is suny@gol.net.cn, with technical contact domainadm@hichina.com. A quick scan of the website reveals james@vedonled.com and sales-trade@jee-jee.com.

As this appears to be a company, I’ve written twice (and got human answers back each time), but as one might expect that only steps up the spam. Very unprofessional. And very annoying. That raises more questions about how they’d treat customers, and by extension the quality of their products.

Walt gives Vendon LED two major thumbs down and does not recommend their products or doing business with them. They are a classic example of what’s wrong with the Internet.

Comments on: Leopard is the New Vista

PC Magazine’s Oliver Rist has a harsh observation: Leopard is the New Vista. And what’s worse, he may be right. Here’s the Waltomatic take on each of his five points. Who’s the winner?

Today I was forwarded a review of OS X entitled: Leopard is the New Vista, and It’s Pissing Me Off.

LUV OS XI think it’s safe to say that I’m a fan of Apple, in general, as I find their hardware, environment, and tools far more productive for my development, office, and home needs than I ever did using Microsoft or its products.

I think it’s also fair to say that I’m willing to also point out when things don’t work:

Oliver Rist, raises some very good points in his treaty on Leopard’s recent similarities to Vista’s screw ups.

Here’s my take on his five points.

Vista Similarity 1: Wait for a Service Pack—Perpetually


Rist is right in saying that “[With Tiger] Everything. Just. Worked. Period.” I’m also quite in agreement that with Vista, even “a year after its shrink-wrapped release” it still has problems, driver issues, and “doesn’t work with 50 percent of new software.”

But I wonder how far back he’s actually recalling. Historically, I recall that each early version of Apple’s OS had serious kinks. Is comparing Tiger 10.4.9 with Leopard 10.5.1 actually a valid Apple to Apple comparison? (excuse the pun)

I’m with Rist if he thinks it should be, but accept the reality it isn’t. In my mind, Apple changed a number of things about the OS that they didn’t have to. Stability, size reduction, and additional hardware support will always earn high marks on my reviews. Unless the new glitz is functional, it doesn’t do much for me; but more on this in a moment.

At the moment, I’m tolerant because historically Apple has made right in reasonable time. By 10.4.3 and 10.4.4, I was quite happy. Given that I suspect Apple’s real purpose was not to make GUI fluff, but to pave the way for resolution independent graphics and new Core Animation, I’m surprised how well things held up.

Microsoft, Direct X improvements aside, gets no such pass, because as a whole, I still have problems with the OS, and it’s been around longer, and had more people working on it.

That said, I’m also aware that a good number of the Microsoft blue screens of death aren’t Microsoft’s fault — directly. When drivers do bad things, it can topple an OS. Of course, this leads me to wonder why Microsoft didn’t manage their kernel layers a bit better.

Knowing this actually provides some insight for Leopard as well. Everyone understood how Tiger worked. Too well, perhaps. There were quite a number of OS resource tweaks that delivered amazing integration and features. I was certainly one of the advanced users.

However, Apple assumes, and I think rightly so, that if you intend to do an upgrade in place, then if you’ve changed the operating system out from underneath them, you roll the dice. A number of people were bit by Unsanity’s Application Enhancer that didn’t upgrade at the last moment before installing Leopard.

Keeping up to date with OS X third-party applications is just as hard as it is on Windows. That’s why I eventually plopped down the money for Version Tracker Pro. Had I not, I would have been one of those that the new install would have taken out. Diligence is king.

Even so, my problems with an Upgrade was slightly broken features, like the password working after a screen save (despite the settings to the contrary), and performance. I later learned that the former was a permission problem on the preference, and the latter was a library extension that didn’t work with Leopard and just tried to keep reloading itself.

My solution was to do an Archive and Install. All of my options were preserved, just like an Upgrade in place, but because the OS was virgin fresh, my system behaved wonderfully.

I give Apple this round, simply because a “fresh install” with Microsoft is so destructive.

Oh, and yes, once you’ve touted something as a “new” feature, like 64 bit, you can’t do it again for the next release. That’s cheating.

Vista Similarity 2: Needless Graphics Glitz


Leah, my iPhone girl.I love eye candy as much as the next guy, and in my operating systems too.

However, I question the real value one gets out of it. As long as it doesn’t get in the way, that’s great. If it communicates more information subtly, that’s great too. Incidentally, what I mean by that is effects, like Genie, which show where your Window is going when you minimize it, is useful.

All these different preview modes, sliding covers, and non-sense, I could really care less about.

Though, I have to admit I’m a closet user of them. Sometimes it easier to quickly view an image to make sure I’ve got the right one, or scan the contents of a document because a poorly chosen filename was used. I’d like to think Apple could have done this without the big production.

What really gets my goat, however is that Tiger had transparent Windows. Then it went away! That really made me mad, because I was using them since I had a small desktop.

So, that made me go find Virtue, in order to have multiple desktops. My gosh, I loved that product. Where else could you have different backgrounds, on a 3D cube, and get to them by keystrokes, mouse maneuvers, or tilting or laptop or waving your hand over it and triggering the ambient light sensors!

But then Apple went and created Spaces. With no real future, Virtue is going away – – and killing off a fantastic sales tool for me. With no competition, I don’t see Apple adding these things back.

And, only now, are we starting to talk about the transparency I had before. Argh!!!

So, while Vista is pretty, and Apple is pretty, Apple got by for having slightly more than fluff for fluff’s sake. Apple gets to take this round, begrudgingly.

Vista Similarity 3: Pointless User Interface “Fixes”


I’ve got to say, again, I agree with Oliver. The new dock may look pretty, but Apple had an uncanny way of letting me know what was going on with those nice, readable from a distance, black, unobtrusive triangles.

Do I have a way to get them back?

Can I switch an put the dock on the side and get something more acceptable looking? Yes, but then again I don’t want it on the side.

It’s crappy decisions like this that cause people to write utilities to hack the operating system which cause the initial instability problems in the first place.

Using Vista as the example, just because something is pretty doesn’t mean it’s enjoyable to use.

Having said all of the above, I have to admit that many of the things I initially didn’t like, I quickly grew to use. They bother me less.

Let’s just say in this round, the bell rang, and there was no winner.

Vista Similarity 4: Nuked Networking


I groan when I see Microsoft operating systems splinter over stupid artificial limitations like how many network connections can be concurrently inbound or outbound. I shake my finger at any operating system which can’t handle jumbo packet sizes or let me switch between 10/100/1000 ethernet speeds.

But I do accept that Windows shares, using Samba, can be difficult with Microsoft deliberately sabotaging protocols to force a homogeneous network with them being the vendor. Embrace and Extend. Anti-Trust. Bogus interoperability. Halloween Memos. I just can’t take the message that Microsoft is out to help me seriously anymore; too much bad history; too little progress. DRM, WGA, poison pill updates, spying – that’s the reason I left Microsoft.

While I recognize that Apple and Microsoft are in a cat’n’mouse game for accessing Windows resources, I do have a complaint to put on Apple’s shoulders.

And that is: just because I have a network, doesn’t mean I want to network. Unless I’m trying to comb my network’s machines, don’t bring them all to my Finder. I don’t need that. I know what kind of network traffic Microsoft generates.

On the other side of the coin, VNC is now built in. And, well, wow. Apple, you did well there. It’s almost as if Apple knows I’m slowly expelling Microsoft and replacing it with Unix systems.

But that doesn’t change the fact that when I do need access to a Windows box, and I’m using my Mac, I want it to be just as seamless. Just the other day, I tried to copy a file from a Windows share to my local desktop to work with a local copy. Locally. (Sense a theme?)

The Windows box said “that file is in use” (because someone had the network Excel file open) and wanted to know if I wanted a read-only copy. The Mac, however, simply said Permission Error and never told me why.

Apple: I need error messages to not be so abstract. Give me a way to Option-Click on them or something and dump the error.h code; in short, if I’m smart enough to fend for myself, let me. Or, just make it work.

I assume people have already heard that if you Move (not copy) a file from one resource to the other, if the destination is full and aborts the copy, the source file still gets deleted (the other half of the move). I hope that’s fixed.

Now, the sheer fact that Microsoft has a horrible time with other OS’s (and depends on them playing by their rules), the final score for this one goes to Apple. Though Apple got lucky.

Vista Similarity 5: Bundled Apps as New Features That Suck


Oliver and I may start to part ways at this one, although not that far.

All the standard home and media applications Apple bundles with their OS are really top notch in my opinion. In fact, I buy iWork in addition to iLife. It’s Apple’s Pro applications that use a interface that I find very dated. And ugly.

But the feature we all seem to gripe on is Time Machine.

My first experiences with Time Machine were horrible. The system would seize up, and, well to be fair, I have to admit that this all went away after I did an Archive and Install, rather than the Upgrade in place over my existing patched OS Tiger.

And, while I applaud the concept of Time Machine, I don’t like that I can’t force it to kick off when I want. Or that I can’t easily point it at a common server. Or use it wirelessly.

But my biggest beef is why in the world Apple just didn’t hold off, wait until ZFS was working the way they wanted, and delivered something that managed things directly with the filesystem itself.

In addition to Time Machine, I find myself using SuperDuper and Carbon Copy Cloner to make quick, efficient backups, that are also bootable.

What I think Oliver might have missed is a subtle difference.
– With Time Machine, everything is backed up.
– Not that Time Machine backs up everything.

Let’s cover that a little closer. Time Machine does do a full backup, but then everything from then on out is incremental. And intelligently so. In fact, you can even go wandering around the files on the backup disk directly, should you choose to.

The way I’m reading things is that the review gives the impression everything is always backed up. That’s just not so.

Would I like to be able to tell Time Machine to only back up what I want it to? Yes. Please.

Would I like to only delete the things I intend to? Of course. But, realistically, it’s when I delete an important system file, and Time Machine has a copy, that I’ll suddenly become more forgiving of why it does what it does.

All his GUI gripes with Time Machine are dead on. However, when you get Time Machine working (via a clean Archive and Install – which keeps your preferences, data, and applications, btw), it does work as advertised.

It’s close. Time Machine’s integration is trivial. But over all, I think Vista’s backup, is better in the long run. Vista wins this round.

Oliver, I think, in this case was guilty of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. To be ticked off at the first version of a new application that could have been better, is justified. To extend that assessment to all bundled apps, as he does in his title, is not.

What the world hates is that after buying the OS, you still can’t do much with it. With Apple you can. And, with most Window machine purchases, you get a lot of crapware. Apple, you don’t.

In fact, I think Apple misses the mark. QuickTime Pro should be bundled with the OS, and if they were really on top of things, iWork as well. I’d gladly even pay the full retail price rolled into the cost of the machine. Why? Because can you image if everyone’s machine out of the box shipped with software that could do Office related stuff? You’d have a killer do-all platform from time the machine was powered up. There’s no way Microsoft could do that.

So, while Vista won this round, I’m gonna give Apple half-credit, since I think it was an unfair contests.

Walt’s Final Score


Apple 3.5 / 5; Vista 1 / 5.

I’d still rather use OS X Leopard than Vista any day of the week.

Walt gives OS X Leopard a thumbs up, even though it still needs some work.

Battlestar Galactica: Razor – I held it in my hands…

Actually had a copy of Battlestar Galactica Razor DVD in my hands today.

Cylon HeadToday I went to Target, and there in the DVD section was Battlestar Galactica: Razor.

I picked it up and held it in my hands. In fact, I did better than that. I went to the check out register.

That’s when the device beeped. I was quick to learn that the product could not be sold to me until December 4th.

I understand Target’s contractual obligations, and I respect that. But it’s also very unlikely that I will be in Target that day, having plenty of time to price compare. These kind of delayed releases actually cost stores sales, especially those impulse buys.

As a consumer, I’m not at all thrilled with waiting, whether it be for Harry Potter book seven or the latest movie release. When delay is introduced, I believe we all lose. The consumer learns they can live without the product, and to wait a little more causes no harm. The store is aware the consumer is willing to pay the most when they first see the product.

So, rather than groaning about the movie industry inflicting self-wounds and collateral damage, here’s what I read on the DVD.

First, it was the Extended Widescreen Unrated “What They Couldn’t Show You On Television” Edition.

It had Battlestar Galactica facts, and what looked to be a really neat directors commentary.

It was unclear if the unrated was for more brutality, sexuality explicit scenes, or just because the new content wasn’t passed by anyone who would take the time to rate it.

Based on what previewed on the SCIFI channel, I speculate that this DVD is gonna get a Thumbs Up.

Vista DeFrag Sucks

Vista’s Disk Defrag leave a lot to be desired. Here’s how to you can defrag your disk for sure.

Well before Vista was even real, I wrote about the problematic issues, bad practices for customers, and locked in formats that would make Apple Mac a highly attractive option. Pretty much most of the things people said couldn’t or wouldn’t happen have. It’s no wonder that the US Government would rather keep XP than move to Vista, that students on college campuses are reporting terrible problems interfacing with the IT departments and campus infrastructure, and that even Office formats are in dispute.

Even in our own offices, Vista has been one disaster after another, causing us all kinds of heart ache and productivity loss.

We thought the nightmare was over when we found a clever hack to make Vista think our networked HP LaserJet was a local printer (and we’d given up on being able to even use sound). However, we’ve been getting terrible disk performance on a laptop with Vista installed. Turns out the drive is badly fragmented.

Obviously, an XP user would simply run Disk Defrag and let that be that.

Not so with Vista. Sure, it has the program, but it provides no indicator of how much work needs to be done, and no visual interface at all about what’s being done. All you get is a stupid message that says the operation could take minutes to hours to complete.

So, we let Vista run overnight. And performance didn’t improve. At all.

You’ve got to see the conversation over on the Microsoft Developer Network about Vista’s defrager.

It seems that Microsoft expects you to leave your machine running all the time, and at some time like 2am on Wednesday, it will run the defrag automatically for you. Whether you want it to or not. And it will do the same crappy job.

If you’re running an enterprise service, you do not want to take an I/O channel hit “just because.” If you’re an IT administrator, you don’t want to screw with scheduling. If you’re a laptop user, you don’t want to leave your machine running.

Now I know I said I wasn’t going to give Microsoft support anymore. But I occasionally will share tips.

Grab the free version of Auslogic’s Disk Defrag. It will impress you. It’s clean, crisp, visual, astoundingly fast, and most importantly: it solved our fragmentation problems.

iPhone TOS Rebuttal

I held off my iPhone purchase because of an article exposing the evils of the terms of service. However, those have been adequately rebutted, that I now own an iPhone.

One of the big things holding me back from buying an iPhone in the first place, aside from lack of SSH (which was soon resolved), was an article about the hidden evils in the Terms of Service contract.

Well, not sure about whether to take things at face value or not, I bounced my concern off my friend Phil, who’s extremely knowledgeable about telecommunications.

He wrote me back a wonderful point-by-point analysis, which swayed my decision. Feeling that other people might benefit as well, I sought permission from him to reprint it here.

iPhone Requires a 2-Year Contract with AT&T.
1. True; they make the 2-year contract requirement pretty clear. This isn’t a great thing but it’s pretty standard in the U.S. when you buy a phone.

Expensive: Requires $2,280, Over $1,730 in Wireless Costs.
2. Also true, though he overstates the price. The service plan runs about $60/month ($40 voice, $20 data); if that’s too expensive, the iPhone is probably a bad idea. That’s still less costly than a Blackberry or Treo (both about $80/month when you turn on the features needed).

Double Billing. You and the Caller Both Get Charged for the Same Call.
3. True, but not unique to the iPhone. Every cellular carrier in the United States save for a few Nextel plans will charge airtime on both incoming and outgoing calls. If you call another wireless phone user, I suppose you could call that double-billing (though if that other user is on the same carrier [ATT], the airtime rate is the princely sum of zero cents per minute).

All Use of the Networks Are Always Rounded Up to the Nearest Kilobyte or Minute.
4. Standard practice for the wireless industry. The per-kilobyte complaint is pretty funny, though, since the charge per kilobyte for domestic data usage is zero cents per kilobyte.

Customers Are Billed for “Network Errors” and “Network Overhead”.
5. I have no idea what he’s talking about, but it makes no sense.

Billed Even Though the Call Doesn’t Go Through.
6. Basically untrue. Billing in a wireless system begins when the call is answered, though the timer starts when the call is initiated. In other words, if a call rings for fifteen seconds and then is answered, the clock begins at 15 seconds and counts up from there.

Bogus Fees Added to the Bill: Regulatory Cost Recovery Charge
7. While I agree that regulatory recovery fees are basically bogus padding, I challenge him to find a wireless (or, for that matter, conventional wireline) carrier that doesn’t do this.

$175.00 Termination Fee.
8. The early termination fee is pretty well standard throughout the industry. There are certain circumstances where you can avoid paying it (for example, if they raise rates during your contract term).

International Messages Are Charged Additional Fees as Are Files Over 300Kbps.
9. International text messaging (i.e. SMS) costs extra on every cellular carrier I’m aware of. The picture/video messaging charging he complains about isn’t even relevant to the iPhone. And the “additional fee” for large messages that he talks about is irrelevant to the iPhone. My phone communicates directly with my IMAP server over SSL; there’s no way that ATT can tell how large a message is, let alone bill me for those messages over 300K.

Over Your Quota: Get Gouged: 40¢ Per Minute and 69¢ Roaming Offnet.
10. Once again, he’s whining about something that’s absolutely standard in the industry: if you go over your bucket of minutes, you pay a pretty high rate. He conveniently neglects to mention that UNUSED minutes from your plan roll forward into the next month and can be used to offset high usage up to a year later. If that’s not enough, just call and switch to a higher plan and ask them to make it retroactive to your previous month’s usage.

The Services Are Not Secure and Can’t Block Your Phone Number.
11. “Not secure” is a leftover from the days of ANALOG cell phones, which could be listened in upon pretty trivially. And they’re saying that when calling certain toll-free numbers, you can’t block your caller ID since the recipient pays for the call. There’s a MENU on the iPhone that allows you set the default for whether you send caller ID or not; you can also set it per-call. In other words: JUST LIKE A LANDLINE.

The Current Mobile Email Service Doesn’t Support Attachments.
12. Absolutely false. You can send photos trivially (about the only sort of attachment that makes sense to create on a phone), and the iPhone will read a lot of formats (Word, Excel, PDF, JPEG at a minimum).

Prohibited Uses and “Unlimited” Sales Hype.
13. The prohibited uses language is pretty standard wireless carrier language. I agree with him that the claim of “unlimited” is pretty misleading marketing puffery, but it’s an industry-wide problem. If you use your FIOS connection at full bandwidth 24×7, you’ll soon discover that “unlimited” basically means that you’re not billed per unit of data, but that you can still be cut off if you abuse the service. There’s basically nothing you could do on the iPhone that would cause this to happen, though.

Service Is Not Intended to Provide Full-Time Connections: Unlimited is Hype
14. Same as above.

Wi-Fi Service is Limited
15. I think he’s deliberately misinterpreting this one. He’s talking about a completely different wi-fi service that one can purchase through AT&T that has nothing to do with the iPhone. There is of course no limit at all to the number of times in a given time period that the iPhone can connect to a wi-fi network.

“Offnet” Restrictions
16. Another deliberate misinterpretation, I think. “Off-net” usage refers to areas where you’re roaming. Since cell phone roaming charges basically don’t exist anymore for the consumer (the carriers charge each other, though), what they’re saying is that you can’t buy the phone and then use it full-time where, say, T-Mobile has service and ATT doesn’t.

Plan Goobly-gook
17. He’s so incoherent here that it’s hard to figure out what he’s mad about.

Comparing US and Other Broadband Countries: America Is being Laughed At.
18. Perhaps he should move! He forgot to mention that countries using the metric system think we’re pretty silly too–but I’m sure he would have if he’d thought about it. Seriously, he has a point: mobile telephony is more advanced in other parts of the world (largely due to standardization on one network type–GSM). But I’m not sure why that would be the fault of ATT and the iPhone.

Top Ten Bad EMail Habits

With over ten years of email to sample from, here are the top ten bad habits committed by email senders.

eMailOk, I lied. They’re not ordered, and there’s more than ten. Which ones have your friends plagued you with?

Here’s a list of bad email habits that annoy recipients.

  1. When you reply to an email, don’t hit Reply-All unless you intend to send to everyone.

    For instance, when you RSVP to a party invitation, everyone who’s been invited doesn’t need to know your response.

    There’s a difference between Reply and Reply-All, learn it, and use it wisely.
     

  2. You do not need to insert your response above my email and send the whole thing back to me.

    When you hit reply, many mail clients copy the whole of the sender’s message so that you may reference it. Don’t whack a few returns, enter your response, and hit send. Delete the quoted message.

    I can’t stress how important this is for anyone who wants to maintain a sane thread of conversation. This is especially true for replying to Internet newsgroups and mailing lists.
     

  3. Do not reply by inserting your text into the quoted text, even if you make it a separate color or font.

    The most unreadable email comes when people reply to a message, and then just type after a paragraph – usually without a line break. If the recipient’s mail client can’t preserve the color or font, it becomes unclear who said what.

    Those quote levels are there for a reason.
     

  4. Reply-to-reply-to-reply-to-reply…

    You typically see this on mailing lists where someone responds with a short message, preserving the entire historical chain of messages up to that point. Stop it. If you see more than two levels of quotes, something is dreadfully wrong.

    There’s what you’ve said, there’s what everyone else has said, there’s what you’re saying now. If you see more than two levels of quoting, someone is committing at least one of these bad habits.
     

  5. Check the To and Cc fields before you hit Reply-All

    If you’ve been blind carbon copied to a message, there’s most likely a reason the sender did so — that usually involves not wanting the public recipients to know you were included.

    For instance, I maintain a list of my friends’ birthdays. Quite often, I’ll send a happy birthday greeting, but BCC their other friends as a subtle reminder. When someone hits Reply-All, it lets the birthday person know that someone else had to be reminded.

    Be considerate to the sender when that person trusts you by using BCC.
     

  6. Don’t attach a picture or video you found on the internet.

    Attachments take up space, they make getting mail slower, they take longer to download, they chew up quota. If you found something on the Internet, send the link, not the resource itself. The recipient can then use the most efficient means of getting it.
     

  7. Learn to use image compression

    If you are going to send an email with an image attachment, then at least learn to use image compression so that you have a small attachment. I can’t begin to count the number of times someone’s sent me a megabyte jpeg of something stupid.

    Like the web, try to keep images down to 32K or less, if possible. Be respectful of the other person’s INBOX space.
     

  8. Learn to upload content to a server

    Rather than clogging email with attachments, learn how to beam content up to a server, and then point the recipients at the content. The email will be smaller, often get there faster, not take as much space, and can be pulled from online faster.
     

  9. Keep your signature block small

    I don’t need random quotes. I don’t need legal disclaimers. I don’t need ASCII pictures. I don’t need colors and fonts. I don’t need your picture. I don’t need advertisements. I don’t need a notice a virus checker was used. I don’t need your slogan. I don’t need your logo.

    Plainly put, if your signature block is equal to or larger than the content of your message’s body, something’s wrong.
     

  10. Get a personal account, use it as such

    I hate automated legal disclaimer blocks, especially in signatures, and even more so if they are larger than the message content.

    “The information in this email is confidential,…”

    If you’re sending me an unsolicited personal email from your corporate email and someone thinks that legal block is somehow enforceable, forget it – you can’t just throw a legal stipulation on a person, especially if the mistake is yours. As such, I’m not bound to delete the message, either. This fluff is just annoying, and yes, most likely it comes from your work. So, get a personal account. Use it instead.

    You do know your work is legally allowed to read your private mail when you use their systems, yes? That alone should scare you.
     

  11. Stop attaching your vCard on every email

    If you’ve sent me your vCard, I’ve got it in my address book – I don’t need a copy with every email.
     

  12. Stop using backgrounds for the sake of backgrounds

    It’s one thing if your email has some functional layout and design to it, but if you’re just sending a background for the sake of adding texture, don’t. The most common occurrence I see of this is a repeating tile of textured background. Honestly, plain white is easier to read and prints better. Let’s do without the visual noise and extra attachment overhead.
     

  13. If it’s a short message, use text mode.

    Fonts, formatting, colors, and embedded images convey additional information. If you don’t need it to get your point across or add additional clarity, don’t incur the extra overhead of making an HTML message. Plain text messages are much easier to read and respond to on mobile devices.

    We’ve all seen documents and adds that look busy or appear as font soup; don’t commit the same atrocities with your emails.
     

  14. Stop putting pictures in Word and PowerPoint files

    I can’t count the number of times someone’s wanted to send me a few images, and was so clueless that they had to make an Office document to hold the picture. The amount of waste, inefficiency, and platform specific ties this incurs is mind boggling. I just can’t take people seriously who do this.
     

  15. Don’t blindly forward and email and not tell me why

    I’m not a mind reader, I just play one on TV. Yes, the information forwarded may be pertinent, but unless you establish some kind of context, it may be perceived as junk.

    Never assume the reader of your message is going to get your message in a timely manner, or will be reviewing it with the same mindset or information you have immediately at hand.
     

  16. Don’t use tiny fonts

    A number of corporate emails I get arrive as HTML documents with 6 point fonts. Yes, you might have a pretty poor monitor, and it may appear big on your screen, but if you force me to read something at a fixed size, my huge monitor will render it as the microscopic text that it really is.

    If you want me to read your email, make it readable.
     

  17. Run spell check

    If you’re typing and a word is underlined in red, double check and fix it. Additionally, avoid cell phone abbreviations like using UR for “your.” You’re not limited to 120 characters, and you’re not being charged 10 cents per message. Use enough to be clear.

    Emails are often saved, and consequently searched. If the words in your email aren’t ones entered into a search box, then you’ve made if difficult for someone to find or reference your email.

Why We Pass on the Texas Roadhouse

Could there be a reason we’ve gone from four-nights a week at the Texas Roadhouse to suddenly not going at all for the last half of the year? You bet. They sell steaks.

Let’s do a little compare and contrast for a second.

Not that long ago, I used to attend the Texas Roadhouse in Chantilly, VA an average of three to four times as week. And during those visits, I’d bring business clients, friends, coworkers, and family. The staff and management there knew be my name, and I didn’t even have to tell the wait staff what I wanted – they just brought it to me. What I wanted, of course, was the high end fillet, and would convince others in the group that they had to have one as well. We were always pleasant and fun, never demanding, forgiving of kitchen backlogs, and tipped insanely. Waitresses would fight over who’d get us, and even with a full load, they were happy to add us and management helped with that any way they could.

A number of my friends have noticed that I haven’t stepped foot in the Roadhouse for nearly half a year, have vetoed every suggestion to go back, and have talked our customers and coworkers out of going so much to the point it doesn’t even come up in conversation any more. And, seeing how some of my friends aren’t in the know, I’ll address what’s going on for sake of clarification.

But let’s take a quick digression: what business is McDonald’s in? If you said selling hamburgers, you’re wrong. McDonald’s is in the real estate market. What McDonald’s corporation knows is that if they put a store at a location, it generates traffic. So, it’s to their advantage to buy up a lot of property in the surrounding area, franchise a McDonald’s, and then collect big on rent and improved property values. Smart guys.

Now, back to the real question: what business is the Texas Roadhouse in? If you said steaks, then you’re thinking like the current management, and you’re wrong. The real product, whether they know it or not, is superior customer service. Because, frankly, I can get those steaks elsewhere. It’s the experience (despite the ambiance), that brings me back time and time again, hauling new customers with me each visit.

The Chantilly store was an odd breed, and it wasn’t run in the same manner as other stores across the country. The service manager understood how to build a team that felt like it was family, and they rewarded the store with loyalty and happy, repeating customers. That location never had a problem hiring people, and it didn’t have as many intra-staff social problems, and it consistently blew away whatever national goals were set for it.

Without going into details, prior management wanted to relocate and open another store; but corporate felt things better off not changing things. And, as we know from almost any industry, if you don’t let someone grow, they go. Corporate found themselves scrambling to plug the management hole. They did a bad job. A very bad job.

The problem is, the people they got in there now are under the impression they sell steaks, not customer service, and the place has been going downhill ever since. Sure, there may be enough volume to sustain things for a while, but Texas Roadhouse has slipped from superior to mediocre almost over night. Between Morton’s and Ruth’s Chris – we always used to choose the Texas Roadhouse. Today, I’d rather visit McDonald’s than deal with the Texas Roadhouse. And have.

On our third-to-last and second-to-last visits, we had noticed that service started to suck. The staff spoke badly of management at the tables. No one was smiling. And the atmosphere of fun had simply been replaced with loud. We watched as server after server quit, going to other places like the Cheesecake factory. Prior to this, they were happy being there, even if it meant making less.

The nail in the coffin happened one Friday evening when we had family in town. We had promised my niece steak, and that meant she’d get to see her friends at the Roadhouse. My little niece was smitten with the wait staff and would draw them pictures and give them back rubs.

We arrive around 6pm, and are instantly greeted by our favorite waitress who has just had the fortune of a six-top table opening, which would handle the five adult and one seven year old.

Just as she was about to seat us, the current manager came rushing out telling her she couldn’t do that, that there was someone in front of us. A couple.

He escorted them to the only open table, the six-top, and we waited, being issued a pager.

Now I’m not asking for special treatment, but there was a very sensible partaking of logic that this waitress was trying to execute. It was what she was taught by the prior management that no longer worked there. And, no, it wasn’t about making repeat customers happy. It was basic queue management, and we were about to witness it.

In moments, like clockwork less than a minute later, a two-top table opened up. Only the problem was, we weren’t a party of two. We didn’t fit. And then another opened.

People started coming in for dinner, and were jumped past us in line because a table was open for them. Meanwhile we stood there. Waiting.

Had the waitress been able to do what she wanted, we would have been served, and so would the other couple – and given our past reputation – we would have been an easy table, enabling her to give all her customers better quality attention.

About 30 minutes into it, we were assured a table was going to open up, as a guest had just finished eating. False alarm, they ordered dessert. We were promised 15 minutes.

This went on and on, and my niece interrupted to tell us that she had just learned how to tell time, and it had been much longer than 15 minutes. Right she was.

Another six-top paid their check, but then just continued to sit there. We understand that doing this cuts into the number of customers the waitress sees an evening, so when we’re done, we clear out.

By this time we had lost track of how many other couples and groups of four had entered, eaten, and left.

My sister informed me that we were now past her daughter’s bedtime, and we still had not eaten. Only, I had worse problems to deal with.

My mother, who’s 65 and requires a cane, can’t get up and down easily — she was standing this whole time because it was always going to be “in just a moment.” She just started going into diabetic shakes as her blood sugar was going out of whack.

I ended up hunting down our potential waitress and getting an ounce or so of soda in a small cup, and that was enough to slow the jitters.

All of this happened in the open public forum, with the hostesses just watching the show, and management flipping through paper like there wasn’t a thing that could be done.

We’d been on our feet for about two hours and decided we had had enough. For good.

I hunted down the waitress who had tried to help us out from the start, gave her our pager, said we were sorry (since she knew an enormous tip just left), and we were going elsewhere. She was in the parking lot on break. She was clearly frustrated with what was going on, stating it didn’t used to be like this. We let her know this wasn’t her fault.

To end the evening, what we did was drive to the Malibu Grill, and in the height of their dinner time, walked in, no wait, because they kept tables open for larger sized parties, and were immediately seated and all night had phenomenal service. We ate well, got desserts, and tipped hardily.

My niece announced that was new favorite place, and could we go back when she’s in town. Everyone assured her that would not be problem.

The Roadhouse lost our business not just that night, but our regular business as well, and that of our friends and co-workers that we normally have tag along. My family isn’t thrilled with the prospect of returning there, and the incident has been shared as an interesting story in quite a number of conversations. It is saddening to see a great place just crash.

And, from talking with people who used to work there and are still in touch, our decision was the right one — things have only gotten worse. This wasn’t a bad night, it’s been a trend of a continual downhill slide.

One co-worker fessed up that he went there once after work, and described the experience as simply horrible. He has no interest in returning.

I’ve kept a message on my phone for months dated back in April, in which a friend describes: “Yeah, my experiences at Roadhouse are getting less and less enjoyable. It’s been quite a while since I’ve gone due to the service. Very disappointing.” And that was an unprompted email – I share it with anyone I have this conversation with. It isn’t the food, it’s about the service.

Now I’m not asking to cut in line, and God knows I’ve let other people jump in front of me whether for special needs or just general politeness when someone who looks like they’ve had a hard day, but when there’s a young child and an elderly person waiting an excessive amount of time — you do something. This event wasn’t off management’s radar, it was caused by management’s actions.

That something could have been to start reserving adjacent tables, or perhaps offer a glass of water from the bar. You do not make false promises and act like you’re a victim of circumstances. If need be, open another section and let a waitress who’s willing take the extra load. There are dozens of ways to make the customer experience memorable in a positive way, only it requires one simple attribute: leadership.

Well, that is, unless you think your job is just to sell steaks.

And that works in the short term, but I think we can safely say that Texas Roadhouse isn’t opening as many new stores as they had hoped. Hmm, I wonder why.