Posted on The Consumerist via Brand Autopsy. AOL disservice at it's finest. The account anti-cancellation police strike.

Wow, this is too funny. Too bad it's a real call.

B.L. makes a tidy mention of the Sony clusterfuck that's been a rage in the blogosphere and on NPR lately. Sony, ignoring the online voice for weeks, should have learned from Kryptonite months ago that a 'stick your head up your ass and pray' strategy doesn't work anymore.

I especially like the following flash of brilliance.

What kind of 'revenue threat' do you speak of? At least SOMEONE BOUGHT THE DAMN CD you moron, vs. Kazaaing that bad boy from the word go. Tell me, Mitch, where the hell do you think the file swappers go the songs to post online in the first place? And, Mr. Music, how do you think I'm going to get all of my music onto my iPod? It's a rip and burn world man, rip and burn.

Maybe, JUST MAYBE the world is changing a bit, as evidenced by OVER 300 LEGIT online music services spawned in the recent years.

Me, I haven't purchased a music CD in almost a year, and I don't plan to ever purchase one again. If I can't get it legit online, I don't get it at all. I know I'm not alone.

I've been at a lot of wireless hotspots in the past several months, and none frustrate me more than the wireless in my favorite local coffee shop, which shall go un-marred by this rant.

Thanks to the paranoid lunatics over at Green Bay Net who've locked down every single port except web browsing on Port 80, my productivity when doing some evening work from the coffee shop is cut dramatically. No email, (save for web based), no FTP, no Telnet, no VNC...nothing but browsing. Who the fuck gets anything done by just browsing?

Let's look at the equation here. The coffee shop put in wireless internet to attract more professionals from within and outside the area to come dine and work @ their coffee shop. Most professionals that could support the work-from-a-third-place environment are freelance types and corporate types, both of which are looking at this as an interim space of office real estate. They also are used to using applications like their VPN connections, Lotus Notes and Outlook. None of which work from thanks to the nutjobs who setup the wireless Internet access.

When queried about why they did this, GreenBay Net says that they're concerned about child porn and spam. Frankly, that's the most damn retarted thing I've ever heard. What a bunch of crackbrained nutjobs. Who_the_hell is going to go porn surfing or spamming from a low-bandwidth wireless connection in a public coffee house in Green Bay, WI. You've got to be kidding me.

Why can't this be managed by exception or through their terms of service. Anyone else know of companies that have such shortsighted, hamstrung policies on their wireless Internet?

[UPDATE:] Someone suggested using Google's VPN tool (Beta, of course) to get around this stuff. Installing tonight, will test tomorrow eve.

From the 'idiots who have nothing better to do with their time' category, Garrison Keillor is pursuing legal action against a blogger over a T-shirt parody of his show, the Prairie Home Companion.

Garrison Keillor didn't need Guy Noir to tell him that he's an idiot and should get with the program, but at this point it looks like he's losing friends by the dozen in the blogosphere over a damn T-shirt. (My particular favorite is here. Douchebag just has such a ring to it...)

Try this one on for size Garrison...

[Hat tip to B.L for the link]

I'm in the process of moving, and as with any move, you make some choices about what to keep, and what to pitch. As I'm going through my office stuff, I realize that I've never gone through a full box of business cards in my post-college career. In fact, I with the average job tenure among people of my generation at an all time low, I'm willing to bet that many of my counterparts have never gone through a full set of cards from their last employer, let alone their current one.

Just a thought...

Ben has a heartfelt letter to TiVo over at Churchofthecustomer.com. Touching, very touching.

I typically put several items into a shopping cart on Amazon and then do one large order. This works for me.

Interesting - Today I added another item, and the Amazon 'price increase warning page' came up noting over $15 in price increases across 8 items that I had in my cart. One CD went up $4 alone!

Is this the sign of something to come/something going on at Amazon, or am I way behind in noticing this trend?

B&N so does not get it when it comes to customer self service and is the furthest thing from the store of my future. Every time I go in there, I'm looking for something specific, which, inevitably, I have to ask for. I always disappointed at the point of service when it comes to finding a book for several reasons:

1. There is never anyone behind the info counter to ask for a book
2. They don't have self serve kiosks like some Borders book stores, so I can't help myself
3. The people in other depts, like the faux Starbucks & CD areas use equally useless
4. When I do get someone, they are typically incompetent, or I have to repeat what I'm looking for several times, and usually I'm looking for some quirky title that I don't want to have to repeat several times.
5. There's always a damn line for the service counter when there is actually a body behind it, which adds to the frustration because at this point I've usually squandered several extra minutes circling around the store because I'm confused, looking, bored, and frustrated.

The experience in the last 7 out of 10 visits has ended in them not having what I'm looking for, and my ordering it from Amazon anyway. Which may prompt you to ask "why didn't you do that in the first place?" Well, typically I always have a B&N gift card laying around that I want to use, and I really love visiting book stores... And, I like to do biz locally. However, it's such a pain in the ass because they just don't get it, they really don't.

People of the 'digital generation', at least the DG people in B&N, do not care why you aren't behind the counter, and in fact, they don't need you. Period. They know more about finding stuff in Google than you know about navigating the entire library on congress and are more passionate about reading, learning and books than you ever will be, so why the hell don't you just let us do it ourselves???

Barnes & Noble also sucks @ the Multi-channel experience. I should be able to check to see if my book that I want is located here in Green Bay right from the BN.com website...but no. I can't. When will they get with it?

I ordered some planner refills a few minutes ago from Franklin Covey, and am chatting live with a rep to try to fix it just minutes later, and they can't do anything for me and are asking me to jump through a few hoops. This sucks.

I don't have time to call them at the moment, as I'm heading into a meeting, but I also emailed customer service so I'll post their useless reply here later. This just pisses me off that in this day and age the bar is still set so low for basic customer service. I asked them to do a quick change on an order for which the ink hadn't even dried and due to their system saying that it was "picking".

Seriously, did it really go into "picking" within 10 minutes???, or is that just some system flag based on half-assed business rules to provide customers with a false sense of progress via a website that illustrates in some faux way that their order is moving along?

Anyway, the transcript is in the extended version of this post. More to come.

[UPDATE] I retraced my steps in the order and found out that I did what I was supposed to, but the website is flawed. When I selected the dates I wanted, and then selected the size, it reset the dates to the period before what I had wanted, and just deliberately selected! WTF - I can actually reproduce the error on the site...that's proof positive that it's not my fault.

Anyway, I called cust serv and they're going to ship the correct ones, and reimburse me for the return and the shipping on the return when I send the items back. I still waste my time, which is what this planner is designed to manage. How ironic that the premier provider of time saving planning solutions that are designed to make us more effective has such archaic cust service policies & procedures.

What if the Franklin Covey customer service group actually followed the 7 Habits of one of the namesakes of their company?

1. Be Proactive: They'd have fixed the damn website so that I wouldn't be in this predicament

2. Begin with the end in mind: They'd have visioned how they wanted each customer to feel after an interaction with customer service and have trained their agents to make things right the first time.

3. Put first things first: Put the customer first

4. Think Win/Win: They could see that I'm a loyal customer with an annuity product (I'm going to be refilling the freaking planner and archiving the contents in one of their binders every year so, my LTV is AT LEAST $60/year * 30 + more years of work = ~$2500)

5. Seek first to understand, then to be understood: They would have asked me what type of resolution I was seeking and then negotiated from there.

6. Synergize: They'd have collaborated more on a solution (which they did over the phone by offering to at least reimburse me for shipping the wrong item back)

7. Sharpen the saw: They'd be eating their own dog food and figuring out how not to chop the balls off of their customer service support staff.

BL is having some major issues w/ her new Dell. My co-workers constantly bitch about how they hate Dell's customer service. Honestly, I have really good experiences and am pretty easygoing when it comes to computers, especially laptops, as they are prone to failure (more so than desktops). I have a Dell desktop that's been literally turned on for 4 years straight now and it still crunches numbers and processes audio files with much greater speed than my brand new Dell D600 laptop. What a bummer for BL.

What a rip-off, after 6 months of being dormant (seriously, aren't most gift certificates/gift cards good for at least a year) the Simon Malls gift card starts dropping $2.50/month with inactivity. What a worthless gift (almost literally, if you wait too long!)

Guess this is the dark side of the gift card culture that we're in.

More on this rant later. Let's just say that I've been w/out my gmail account for 2 weeks, and the password reset process on gmail is useless. I'll post more of the entire 'sinkhole of wasted time' conversation with Google here later today. Google sucks, gmail sucks, it's all crap as far as I'm concerned today...

So, I bomb out of IE (no shit, like that never happens) and I try to open my HBR purchased article again, and the fu__ing Sealed Media shit software tells me that 'The License Will Refresh at 11:46pm' You're fucking kidding me, right? I can't even access the document that I purchased, it's not my fault, and there's not a damn thing I can do about it. It's like, 9:46 now, and you want me to wait 2 hrs??? What a crock of shit. I'm never buying a damn HBR article again.

I was, however, able to cheat the system by setting my system clock ahead 2 hrs. I can't believe this shit...

In the mood for a good rant today? How about reading from everyone who's already taken a piss on the retards that put together the absolutely moronic Athens 2004 Olympics Hyperlink Policy (opps, just broke a rule right there, sorry 'bout that).

No need to beat a dead horsehere, but I'm more than happy to point out these fine resources for those reading from this site. Enjoy.

* Rick Bruner Mocks the Morons
* Trevor Gets Orwellian on the Obtuse IOC
* Media Culpa Weighs in on the Stupidity

What would really make my day, was if someone looked up the phrase goat ball licker a month from now and came upon this policy. Damn, I'm in a good mood today!

[UPDATE] Out of the blue, HBR refunded my money for the purchase. In fact, I had purchased a hard copy as well due to the printing issues I was having, and they refunded that too. No explanation, just my money back!

I just purchased an article from the Harvard Business Review site and it came in 'sealed media' format, which means that you have to be connected to the Internet to even open the damn thing. Not a customer friendly solution and little more than a royal pain in the ass. Thanks for nothing HBR.

There are a few points about this little turd that really suck.

1. No matter where the file is located, you must be connected to the Internet to view the file. You will need to have Internet Explorer 5.x or 6.x installed (Ass Clowns - I'm usually remote, and like Mozilla)
   
2. You must download additional plug-ins. (more shit on my already overwhelmed PC)
   
3. Look for a username/password for the file. (super, another one that I'll forget. God help us if you need a unique one for each document you order)
   
4. Print a paper copy...due to the limited access to this file, we suggest you print one paper copy for your personal use. (If I wanted a paper copy, I'd have f__ing ordered one. I want to electronic version to read on the plane. Thanks again, for nothing)
   
5. You can't print to any other type of electronic media such as a normal PDF or FlashPaper with this, thus rendering any 'normal' for of distributable electronic media useless.
   
6. This little bastard won't install on our corporate comptuers (or any that have Win2K or WinXP w/user install access locked down) so those of you that are buying HBR articles inside the corporate firewalls might be SOL.

Check out Todd's story about Apple preventing evangelism about their stores. This kind of behavior pisses me off almost as much as the local coffee shop that say's they'll be open at 7AM and at 7:12 the doors are still locked. Retarded Bastards.

Realistically, Apple has a point about not allowing pictures, but when you have a highly acclaimed retail showpiece, I would argue that the public is not incorrect in perceiving different standards...

The Seattle PI [Blogging: a new addiction] and the New York Times [For Some, the Blogging Never Stops] both ask: "Can Blogging Become an Addiction?" Well, if our office is any indication, the answer is yes.

Not only are we blogging, but with all of the JavaScript based tracking tools we're testing, we're looking at visitors in a whole new light...and I tell you, it certainly is becoming an addiction!

What a piece of shit. I want to access an article I read in FC this month online, and they greet me with "please put in your access code from this month's magazine". You're kidding me, right? If I had the damn magazine in front of me, do you think I need to try to find the article online to share here at work? NO you idiots. I just want the f__ing content. Can't you make me put in my name & zip code or something more reasonable, and more ubiquitous than some access code on some obscure page in this month's mag? What the hell? Who ordered this load of horseshit?

This turning out to be a stellar example of how blogs can connect you with your customers - and it's happening right now in front of us!

I was trolling around the MT Beta Blog this morning and found this message:

This morning at 4am PDT, Six Apart is releasing Movable Type 3.0D, the developer edition of 3.0. This marks the first fully-public release of Movable Type 3.0 and along with it, a pricing scheme that makes it easy for people to do business with us, and a new set of licenses that are more permissive than our legacy license.

I personally want you to know that we all really appreciate your help in working the kinks out of this release, and we're also grateful for you patience-myself in particular. In spite of its significant bumps, this was a very valuable beta test, and we went through several hundred bug reports in the past month and a half....

On the MT Forums, someone tries to clarify the situation; things are not looking any better:

I think that Six Appart is abusing us by providing MovableType 3.0D with such licenses.

The previous licenses where not at all limiting the number of weblogs nor of authors.

http://www.movabletype.org/download.shtml
http://www.movabletype.org/commercial_download.shtml

With the Movable Type Free you can not have more than 1 author and three weblogs !
If you already passed trough this limit with MT 2.6x you just can't update for free !
More over, if you already have over 20 authors and 15 weblogs you won't be able to update at all, even by paying !
Because of the Commercial License which is limiting to 20 authors and 15 weblogs.

http://secure.sixapart.com/

MovableType is now TypePad proof.

I'm requesting suppression of the limitations to the numbers of authors and weblogs for all the licenses and for the Free version.

Why such griping? Have a look @ the new pricing structure.

So, almost needless to say, I'm pretty pissed off (me writing in on forums):

Wow, what an announcement to be hit with. I've been doing Alpha & Beta testing for quite a while & feel a bit used to get this message today.

I already have 11 weblogs, albeit with one author, I use different "weblogs" as content areas of my personal site. Basically, I'm pretty much screwed and will be stuck on a Beta version forever, because I can't update with these new license requirements.

Needless to say, if this stuff sticks, and it is what it appears, it could go down as a case history on how to lose loyal fans for life in record time!

More on this crap:

• Mena's rant on why this is a good idea...
  
• Derek on "Why it Looks Like He'll Be Dumping MovableType Soon"
  
• Movable Type RIP?
  
• MovableType 3.0 released,And well... what the hell? No really, what the hell?
  
• Movable Shite - drunkenmonkeys.org
  

Alternatives to MT:

• Pivot
  
• .TEXT for you .NET folks
  
• Open Source CMS.com
  
• Text Pattern
  

People have said that "nothing good in technology comes out of Green Bay". I usually ignore these people and go about my day. However, today has produced two instances which just horrified me.

1. I get a newsletter for a local technology company/ISP touting their recent articles on their website and how great they are at web coding and internet marketing. Intrigued, I go to their site to see just how great they really are. Lo and behold, the links to the very Items which hold my interest ARE BROKEN!

Yours is an Internet Technology company, and you have a site laden with broken links? What the hell? I, would hire you, as a consultant, when you can't even get your own shit right. Pleeeeaaaasssseeee! Moreover, this is not the first time I've been to their site and been let down. Shame on me for having the patience to visit twice.

There goes another one - right out of the rolodex.

Moral of the Story: If yours is a company which posits excellence in a specific discipline, it should be standard operating procedure to showcase your own work and your own branding as best of breed. If not best of breed, then just go simple and to the point. People respect brevity. People do not respect mediocrity.

2. This nice little email comes to me from Door County Coffee. I like Door County Coffee, so I decide to open the email. To say that I was, well, less than amused, would be understating the obvious. Here are a few points which I sent to them in email:

Hi,

Thanks for the Door County Coffee newsletter. A few thoughts on it.

1. The "From" field might just say "Door County Coffee". Webmaster is an outdated term and may not be necessary or espouse positive connotations with recipients.

2. The newsletter is a bit wide for viewing in most preview windows and for users with 800x600 resolution (probably, many of your registered recipients) Could you consider narrowing up the format a bit?

3. Your unsubscribe process is not clear. It simply opens and email (assuming that the user has a client that can spawn a new email document like Outlook - what if they are using Lotus Notes, or on a free web system which does not support the standard mailto: functionality). This could be refined to provide a better user experience.

Thanks for the great content.
Dana

And...here are a few other points which just serve to drive me nuts:

1. No regard for the 2/3 - 1/3 rule of spatial arrangement. Have these people never visited other websites, recieved other newsletters, or read a magazine or newspaper?

2. Digging into you stock animated gif directory from 1997 for the mother's day graphic is not my idea of creative borrowing or good design for that matter. Who the hell let this thing out of the barn door?

3. Subject line/content agreement. The subject line states: "Door County Coffee May News." However, there is nothing of "news" in the email. It's simply an email of featured products and specials. Tell me what it is, straight away, and I'll respect you for it!

Here's a little bit of B2B wisdom for you all today. Hell, here's some peeps to peeps wisdom for communication generally.

DO NOT TRY TO HAVE A CONVERSATION WITH ME THROUGH YOUR VOICEMAIL MESSAGE.

Hi, this is Dana. Please leave me a message, I'll call you back.

See, now that wasn't so hard! No, don't tell me you're not there (no shit, of course you're not there, if you were, you would have answered. Ah.ah.ah...don't tell me that you're on the "Other Line" or "Away From Your Desk" either - I don't care (do you?).

Still don't get it, read Jennifer Bishop's article @ Buttafly.com