The $199 Palm Pre that’s Really $299

Customer Service, Misc May 19th, 2009

…And I am not even talking about TCO, calculating life-time cost with subscription.  No, just plain simply purchase price, with a dirty industry trick: rebates.

The long expected Palm Pre will be available from Spring on Jun 6th, at $199 with qualifying data plan, and after a $100 rebate.   And therein lies the rub – it will cost $299 for many.

Fellow Enterprise Irregular Winnie Mirchandani has a long-going series on business processes that badly need “angioplasty“.  Processing rebates is certainly a most convoluted process – unfortunately often by design.  Why?  It’s simple, 40% of rebates never get redeemed, says Business Week:

The industry’s open secret is that fully 40% of all rebates never get redeemed because consumers fail to apply for them or their applications are rejected, estimates Peter S. Kastner, a director of consulting firm Vericours Inc. That translates into more than $2 billion of extra revenue for retailers and their suppliers each year. What rebates do is get consumers to focus on the discounted price of a product, then buy it at full price. "The game is obviously that anything less than 100% redemption is free money," says Paula Rosenblum, director of retail research at consulting firm Aberdeen Group Inc.

What this old article fails to point out is that it’s often not the consumer’s fault who forget to send in rebates.  Sure, we’re sometimes lazy to do the paperwork for a $5 discount, but you would dot it for $100, wouldn’t you?  Yet it’s often the ugliness of the rebate process with built-in traps (did you cut out the UPC code from the right corner on the box, did you circle the right amount..etc), or just the ignorance of the rebate processing company (yes, that is a thriving business  in itself) that robs you of your rebate check.  And don’t for a minute think it’s only from Tiger Direct and other retailers who thrive on the rebate-scam.  Brand-name trusted vendors aren’t any better.  Since we’re discussing the Palm here, here’s my rebate experience from Handspring (the former Pal-spinoff that later reunited with the parent) from a few years ago:

Sent in not only paperwork, but an actual, working older Palm III as trade-in unit (This condition was so ridiculous, later Handspring changed it to providing serial no’s of the trade-ins.)  The $100 rebate never arrived, not even after numerous phone-calls and emails.  They demanded copies of everything, which I sent – but how do you copy the trade-in unit?  My loss:  $100 rebate, $50 trade-in value for the old Palm (that’s what it sold on eBay at the time), postage and about a full day of my time fighting the bureaucracy.

Did that stop my from buying Handspring / Palm products?  Not when they were the only game in time, so I bought two more Treo’s.  But guess what: Palms are not the only choice if you want a smart phone, and obviously I am still not a Palm-fan…

Back to the angioplasty, one way to streamline rebate processing is to make it an all-online process, removing the intentional hurdles.  I can’t see why in the 21st century this is such a big deal. Costco sets a positive example, with simple online rebate entry, prompt payment, and online audit available for years.

But the real angioplasty would be to kill the the whole process.  Forget rebates, it’s time for true transparency: call it what it is, $299 or $199, if you want to promote your product, provide a temporary discount, but forget rebates, which are just a Big Fat Lie.

(Cross-posted from CloudAve. To stay abreast of news, analysis and just plain opinion on Cloud Computing, SaaS, Business grab the CloudAve Feed here.)

 

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Spirit (-less) Airlines Charges Flight 1549 Survivors Cancellation Fee

Customer Service January 19th, 2009

Ouch, this airline badly needs Customer Service training.

Spirit Airlines is trying to charge passengers extra fees after canceling a flight, which forced the passengers to be on the plane that landed in the river Thursday.

Rob and Jeff Kolodjay were scheduled to fly on Spirit Airlines to a golf vacation with four other friends on Thursday out of LaGuardia in New York City. Their flight got cancelled, and they were rebooked on to US Airways flight 1549.

While the Kolodjay’s have good things to say about US Airways, they are less pleased about the policies of their original carrier. When they tried to cancel the return tickets on Spirit they could not use because they never made it to Myrtle Beach, the company representative insisted on charging them a cancellation fee.

Source: Fox61,   Consumerist, and soon all media outlets.  I doubt Spirit has even a clue about the magnitude of the PR Nighmare they are getting into…

Update: The story is making the rounds.  Her’s an interesting reaction:

You know, in some cultures the response to this would be to lock the customer service representative in a room with a gun and expect him to do the honorable thing. I’m not saying that this is the right solution – but it’s probably the one that Spirit Airlines might end up wishing that it could pursue…

(Photo Credit: CrunchGear)

Update:  Somebody who thinks woke up @ Spirit, reversing the earlier decision:

Spirit Airlines has given the Kolodjay family a full refund and have issued credits to their credit cards.  They will not be charged anything by Spirit Airlines..  We applaud everyone involved in bringing these passengers to safety wish the family the best.

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Google Lockouts are not Fun. Are You Prepared?

Personal Productivity, SaaS October 20th, 2008

Loren Baker, Editor of Search Engine Journal discusses his experience of getting his Google account frozen without a warning.  Nothing new, we see these cases every few months. If you’re a well-know blogger like Loren, getting resolution might take 15 hours –  I don’t even want to think how long it would take for less prominent users get their account issues fixed.

There are a few things we can all learn from Loren’s case:

  • Communication – $50 buys you Phone Support
  • Backup – offline, within Google or another Web service
  • Your Domain – should be a no-brainer for Branding reasons anyway, and when all hell breaks lose, allows to quickly switch to another provider.

I’m discussing these and other steps to avoid disruption on CloudAve. (To stay up-to-date on SaaS, Cloud Computing and Business, grab the CloudAve Feed here).

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Does UPS Have Deep Systematic Problems?

Business, Technology July 26th, 2008

(Updated… a lot)
Recently I’ve seen signs that may suggest the occasional UPS glitches are not-so-occasional, and there may be deeper systematic problems with our favorite delivery service.   The brown truck driver is as friendly as he ever was – it’s the systems that appear to s***w customers left and right.

First there was the unreasonable delay within California, then the case of the “lost” packages, a systems failure compounded by rude customer service:

  • Four out of five packages I dropped off at the same UPS store disappeared – i.e. they were never entered in UPS’s tracking system.
  • Since the system is always right, customer service accused me of never having shipped them in the first place, then of not applying the labels properly.
  • When the recipient, Shoebuy.com, a major UPS customer initiated a trace, the previously non-existent packages miraculously all showed up at the destination UPS center, without any indication how they got there.

The above example may not be rare, as demonstrated by this commenter:

Texas-to-Texas package disappeared (was never scanned in) and 30 hours later showed up in Alabama.  UPS has no clue how it got there.

Finally, my third shipping experience within a month:  I’m expecting a Sony Reader sent from NY to CA.  It was originally due to arrive on 7/28 but now I see it’d rescheduled for 7/29.  A one-day delay is not the end of the world, until you look at the details:

-The package arrived at Vernon, CA Thursday, 7/24.

-Next arrival scan is in Los Angeles, Friday 7/25 evening. (Great progress!)

Now, I don’t know why it sat a full day virtually in the same place, but even with this delay, if it’s in Los Angeles on Friday, why on Earth can I not receive it on Monday in the San Francisco Bay Area?   Why the Tuesday delivery?  That’s 5 days within California!

Admittedly my statistical sample is rather small, but 3 failures out of 3 deliveries within a months suggests these may not have been accidents, UPS may just have more serious logistic / system problems than they care to admit.

Update: Rob’s story below is so shocking, anything I’ve experienced pails in comparison.  You just HAVE to read it in full.

Update #2: On second thought, it’s a story worth bringing it up to here in full:

I’ve got one for you….

My sister-in-law has MS and receives very expensive injections delivered once a month, packed in dry ice because it has to stay refrigerated.

My sister-in-law lives with her mother. Well, her mother had decided to cancel her Dish Network subscription. Dish told her to put all of the hardware in a box and they would pay to ship it back to them via UPS. Only problem was, there was no hardware to return since she had already done that through the retail store. Dish claims that they notified UPS to cancel the pick-up…given the rest of this debacle, I’m inclined to agree with them.

Meanwhile, my sister-in-law gets her medication delivered via FedEx (because there’s no way UPS could get it there in time before the ice pack failed). FedEx leaves the package containing the medication on the front porch.

Now, UPS shows up a little bit later and TAKES THE WRONG PACKAGE. Apparently, the instruction to cancel the pickup never made it to the driver. The package they took was clearly in a FedEx box, with FedEx shipping labels, etc. There were no UPS shipping labels anywhere. UPS essentially stole her medications right off of their porch.

You would think, given their commercials about “delivery intercept”…you know, “there’s a problem with the gizmos” that it would be a simple matter to stop the package and turn it around….NOPE. Their advice was to call FedEx (what the *&!@^ does FedEx have to do with it and to call the pharmacy to get a replacement). They said that it was en route to Dish Network and they couldn’t stop it, but that Dish could send it back (which Dish would have to pay for…how is it Dish’s problem?). The problem, which was explained to them, is that by the time all that happens, the medications will have reached ambient temperatures and will be useless and that my sister’s insurance wont pay for the $1500 meds twice in one month.

They eventually rectified the situation by reimbursing my sister the money, but only after she paid out of pocket to get the replacements and after spending countless hours on the phone with UPS customer service.

What can Brown do for you? I don’t know, but I know what I’d like to do to brown….

Update (7/29): Today is the rescheduled delivery date.  The latest scan info shows yesterday my package was in Sacramento, 90 miles NE of me (remember, it was coming from LA, South!).  I smell another re-schedule :-(

Update (7/29 evening): UPS just confirmed they really have no clue where the package is and recommended I contact the sender, as only they can initiate a trace.  Deja vu :-(

Update (7/30): The sender initiated a trace and the expected delivery date field completely disappeared.  A few hours later new scan information showed up:  Out for delivery.   This means I should get it today. Hooray!  Except… the package is in Vancouver, WA, and I am in California.   If UPS keeps on randomly driving around the West Coast, they might just accidentally find me one day :-(

Update (7/30):  I called UPS with my concern that it cannot possibly be “out for delivery” from Vancouver, WA.  They confirmed I should ignore the status, the package indeed will find my way to CA today.  Yeah, right.   A few hours later someone woke up.  Now delivery is rescheduled for the third time, adding two more days, with this status message:

VANCOUVER,
WA,  US		 07/30/2008 10:43 A.M. INCORRECT ROUTING AT UPS FACILITY / THE PACKAGE WAS MISSORTED AT THE HUB. IT HAS BEEN REROUTED TO THE CORRECT DESTINATION SITE
07/30/2008 7:25 A.M. OUT FOR DELIVERY

This is beyond pathetic…

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Belgian Chocolate Online: Chocolaty Sweet Tale of How Poor Service Really Hurts Business

Blogging, Customer Service July 14th, 2008

Perhaps it all started with Jeff Jarvis’s Dell Hell.  Simple story: famous blogger gets poor service > blogs about it > company faces media backlash > company wakes up to social media, turns around > eventually Jarvis praises them as a Cluetrain business.

Then there’s Comcast: everyone’s love-to-hate cable company that now actively monitors Twitter for customer complaints in an effort to improve both their image and customer service.  These companies know something that many others still ignore:

Times have changed. Using blogs, Twitter, social networks one single unhappy customer can make a business look really bad.  Poor service is bad PR, which is very costly to undo. Good Customer Service is great  marketing.

Now here’s my story of an online retailer that’s about to learn these rules.

My Dad has diabetes, and he likes chocolate – not a good combo.smile_sad There’s hardly any choice in sugar-free chocolate, what’s available locally tastes like **** and is overpriced.   Eventually I found two (only !) online sources that sell Milka, his favorite brand.  I ended up ordering from Belgian Chocolate Online,  (www.chocolat.com,  www.chocolatesimports.com) owned buy CandyWorld, USA.   The site claims they ship the day after the order is placed, yet mine was only sent 9 days later, after I inquired.  The delay was actually reasonable, due to a heat-wave, but shouldn’t they notify customers?

But the real surprise came a week later, when I received a large box  of almost-expired chocolate.  True, it had a few weeks left, but given the economics of shipping, I bought 40 bars, i.e. 4 kilos, or close to 9 lbs.  I don’t know about you, but my Dad certainly does not eat that much in 4 weeks…

Two of my email complaints were left unanswered, so a week later, by the third email I was a bit antsy:

Dear Customer Service,
I don’t get it. Is your solution to Customer Service issues to not respond at all?   I’d like to know if you intend to replace the old product with fresh one, or send  refund.  This is my last request, if you continue to ignore me, I will pursue this on my own.

Finally they answered (emphasis mine):

Dear Customer:

We are not ignoring any emails. We are helping customers placing their orders or who really need customer’s service. We can’t help you in an expiration date problem that you do not like and which isn’t a problem.

The chocolates you bought are still not expired and we do not see why to replace or to refund. The expiration date is not the date for consumption, but a date to sell. We do NOT sell any chocolates with an expired date.

Ouch!  Who really need customer service… I’ve just spent $130 on old product and I don’t qualify for attention.  Expiration date is not a problem… although this obviously sounded baloney, I wanted confirmation, so I contacted Kraft Foods, Milka’s parent company, who responded within a day:

The product should be consumed by this date. We cannot assure freshness after that date because the taste and texture may have deteriorated.

(Side comment: talk about the power of brands … yes, Milka is a popular brand in Europe, and Milka is owned by Kraft, by can you imagine asking for Kraft Chocolate?smile_wink)

Anyway, I am confirmed to be right about the expiry date, and  Belgian Chocolate Online’s attempt to explain the problem was a lie .  They were right in one point though: technically, they did not sell expired chocolate.  Not until one day before expiry … then good luck trying to eat it all quickly.  It is common practice by groceries to deep-discount perishable goods a few weeks/months before expiry, and one can even find Milka chocolate on eBay at a  fraction of the original price – but eBay sellers disclose the shortened shelf-life, for fear of eBay ruling against them in a dispute.   I guess there is no such policing on the Wild, Wild Web.

Except… now every consumer has the means to get “noisy” about their problems.  I am no Jeff Jarvis, but CandyWorld USA is no Dell, either: I wouldn’t be surprised to see this post on the first page of several relevant Google searches (see update), and believe me, that will cost them a lot more than it would have cost to keep me happy.   Of course not everyone has a moderately well-read blog, but just about anyone can make noise on Twitter, and Get Satisfaction is another great resource to vent and get service.

In fact a combination of Twitter and Get Satisfaction was what brought me Comcast help a few months ago.  The attention I received from Comcast Executives from Philadelphia and here in California was quite amazing.  Comcast is becoming a hero for listening to customers on Twitter, and others follow. Southwest Airlines now even has a Chief Twitter Officer.

Are these examples PR acts or real customers service?  The individual complaints are resolved, for the customers involved, it’s real service.  But Twitter or not, the “loud” unhappy customers are still just a fraction for now – which is why companies can afford to go out of their way to satisfy them.

I trust that simple market mechanisms will force companies -large and small- to improve service in the long run.  The economics are simple:

  1. The PR damage (and potential loss of sales) caused by “noisy” individuals far exceeds the cost of helping them, so companies pull resources to put out these fires.
  2. Yet firefighting is costly, may work with dozens, hundreds of customers, but not all.
  3. Companies will reach a tipping point, where all the after-the-fact firefighting will become so costly, that it will actually be cheaper to train their support personnel and provide better service in the first place, thus the Twitter-heroism will decline.

We’ll all be better off after #3. smile_regular

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Update: Just as exptected: a few hours later this post is on the first page if you search for Belgian Chocolate Online,  and comes up first, before the vendor if you search for sugar-free Milka, which is how I found them in the first place.

Update (9/16):  Following the trail from my blog referrer log I’ve just discovered this post is now #1 on Google for the “milka chocolate marketing” search.  Oops… that can’t be good – for Milka.

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UPS: Tracking and Customer Service Failure

Customer Service July 7th, 2008

Photo by William J.Image via Wikipedia

Recently I ranted about UPS’s delays and customer service level – oh, boy, little did I know then just how bad UPS Customer Service can really get.

Four out of five packages I dropped off at the same UPS store a 2 weeks ago still showed “Billing Information Received” status a week later.   In UPS lingo this means the shipping label was created, but the package was never received by the company.  There’s nothing to track, as far as UPS is concerned, the package really doesn’t exist.  This was what the Customer Service agent repeatedly told me anyway, further explaining that the only way  this could have happened if I either did not send the packages at all, or did not properly attach the labels.

Of course she did not have an explanation on how the fifth package safely arrived in the meantime – after all, I did not dropped them off at UPS according to her theory.  If it’s not in the system, it doesn’t exist. Only when I asked her if she was accusing me of lying did she change tone, and recommended we put a tracer on the lost packages. Since these were returns to ShoeBuy  using their return labels, they were considered the shipper, not me, so they had to initiate the trace.

ShoeBuy is a company with amazingly good Customer Service – since Zappos is often referred to as to epitome of Customer Service, let’s just say ShoeBuy is like Zappos, often with lower prices.smile_regular They picked up my email immediately, and they probably carry some weight with UPS, since the non-existent packages were found in no time.  The tracking information below tells the whole story:

The packages never entered UPS’s tracking system, there’s no sign whatsoever that I ever sent them from California, yet they miraculously showed up at the destination, ready for delivery upon ShoeBuy’s inquiry.  So much for the rock-solid tracking system…I understand the first step, i.e  a UPS store clerk forgetting to scan the received packages, which then got loaded on the truck anyway, but how were  4 packages then able to bypass all further stages of scanning?

But let’s finish this post on a positive note: it’s a story of good Customer Service, after all – just not by UPS.  ShoeBuy, upon finding what happened, immediately refunded my money, before they even received the packages from UPS.  Wow!  They know something about keeping customers happy.smile_regular

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UPS: Delays and Customer Service

Business, Customer Service June 30th, 2008

I’m expecting a package that was due for delivery today. Here’s the UPS tracking info:

Let me get this straight: the package was here in California, 42 miles from my home yesterday at 8am.  Apparently the train was late, but who cares, it was here yesterday morning, will sure make to my place today?  Nope, a day later it’s still in San Pablo and it’s being rescheduled for delivery tomorrow.

Today it will make it all the way to the UPS center in San Ramon, a 30-mile trip, and just 12 miles from my house. Then tomorrow afternoon it will finally get here – 42 miles in 3 days.

Now, I can already hear the arguments about logistics optimization.  My package may just have missed the early morning pick-up and that was the last one for the day.  But isn’t timely delivery, and consequently customer satisfaction worth scheduling an additional pick-up in case a train is late?

It gets worse.  In this case UPS simply did not go the extra mile to make up for the train delay.  But I’ve seen cases when the package arrived to San Ramon a day earlier than scheduled, yet it did not make it on the truck the next morning.  UPS would rather store it an extra day at their facility than deliver a day early.   Forget customer satisfaction, this is all about market segmentation and protection.  They will have to make sure a 7-day delivery is indeed 7 days and not any faster, otherwise they might just reduce their customers’ inclination to pay for faster delivery methods.

Update (7/1): Oh, boy, when I wrote this, I had no clue just how bad UPS Customer Service can really get…

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How the iPhone Blew Up the Wireless Industry … and Customer Service

Customer Service, Technology January 10th, 2008

Oh, TechMeme has its ways of creating some fun… On the left are the odes of how Holy Apple changed the entire wireless industry.  The untold storysmile_wink.   Too bad it got juxtaposed with the much less cheerful story of a customer being denied warranty for having downloaded a custom ringtone.  smile_sad

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Improving Customer Service

Customer Service November 10th, 2007

Jeff Nolan rants about his bad experience with Frontier and United Airlines. Nothing new there, we all have our own horror stories. (My “favorite” one is the Christmas flight to Los Cabos, which was supposed to be a 3-hour quickie and became a day-and-a-half nightmare by way of Phoenix, airport motel..etc, courtesy of Alaska Airlines.)

The reason why this rant is quote-worthy is that Jeff moves on, and comes up with some creative ideas to improve customer service.

This led me to highlight a couple of things I could wish to inflict on United:

1) United CEO Glenn Tilton has to give up his private jet and fly around the country on scheduled flights in the last row of the airplane, next to the lavatory.

2) United’s top 500 executives will get dispersed around the country to different airports for the week between Christmas and New Year’s to work the baggage handler, mechanic, cleaning crew, customer service, gate agent, and flight attendant jobs. Everyone works a new job each day until they rotate through all of them.

3) United’s top 500 executives have to greet passengers in the terminal at O’Hare, Denver, SFO, and Dulles airports one day a week until their customer service ranking moves from last to the top 3.

4) Lastly, and this one is serious, Tilton and the other execs have to personally call 5 customers a day to apologize for their shitty airline.

I love these ideas, and seriously, they would work. If United Management cared to improve service, that is… smile_sad

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Technorati Deletes Index, Hopes Customers Won’t Notice

Blogging, Customer Service November 5th, 2007

Just two weeks ago Technorati was praised left and right for “returning to their roots”: reinstating charts and the authority filter in search. The most telling title: Technorati Fights Off Irrelevance With Return of Charts.

Today they are back. To irrelevance. smile_sad

When I first noticed I could not find posts older than 6 months, I had doubts if I tested enough, and even if I did, was the issue system-wide, and “by design” or just a glitch. Then I got confirmation from Technorati’s Ian Kallen:

We’re in the midst of some economization, performance fixes and retooling that have required taking some data offline. The data is not lost but our priorities are to prefer keeping recent data online. Most people don’t notice :) We’ll probably be bringing that data back online but I don’t have an ETA yet.

First of all, thank you, Ian, for responding so fast. Second, it’s a sad post comment: you just condemned Technorati to irrelevance. Your new CEO says:

The core of everything we do is in blog search – without question, we must do that very, very well

Hm… and the first step to providing quality search is to take the index offline… 6 months is not “remote past”, significant events were reported / analyzed by blogs, often better than mainstream media, and now they are nowhere to be found! Here’s the result of a search I performed for background to my next story: Technorati (0 results) and Google (83 results). I can’t use Technorati if it does not remember “yesterday”… and you don’t even have an ETA on restoring the index.

But the worst part isn’t the poor performance It’s the attitude: silently take it offline, hoping “most people don’t notice“. Yuck. In the age of transparency. I’m afraid Dennis Howlett is right:

@Ian: “We’re in the midst of some economization, performance fixes and retooling” – in other words – we’re totally messed up and are trying to figure out what to do next. That would be closer to the truth don’t you think?

Update: Any hopes of users not noticing are up in smoke: it’s on TechCrunch, TechMeme and a bunch of blogs including hyku | blog, TeleRead, Susan Mernit’s Blog, Deep Jive Interests, Data Mining, WinExtra, Kevin Burton’s NEW FeedBlog, and The Last Podcast.

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