FeedMe

Netflix Gets Customer Service (or Not?)

E-mail came from Netflix to tell me they are sending me a DVD — but it's a DVD I already have!

Now, one thing I don't like about Netflix is they have no way to send them e-mail. But their Help site steers you to a toll-free 24-hour phone number and an interesting touch: the website tells me the present hold time is 1 minute. Nice idea. (And clever since it encourages calls when they aren't busy.) So I call and enter a six-digit number which identified my account — that number is also conveniently displayed right there, next to the phone number.

I call. She sees the problem. They promise to ship a new DVD tomorrow.

Done. Happy customer.

Sometimes customer satisfaction is the result of how you handle a screwup.

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Postscript: Irony. They didn't actually send the replacement. Sigh.

Comic Compressed

This is very cool. Alt comic artist Meredith Gran posted a timelapse video of the creation of her comic, Octopus Pie. Hypnotic and revealing of the artist's process, this shows four hours of drawing in a few minutes. Way cool.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeKWsf1UzEg

Free Credit Report -- Really? Really.

The first thing to know is to never use any of the "freecreditreport dot com." They're scum. The one thing they don't do is provide free credit reports.

The place to go annualcreditreport.com. This site is run by the three credit reporting agencies, as required by law. There, you can get a free report from each of them once a year. If you set yourself a reminder, you could get one every four months (one from each agency at a time, spaced out such that each one is used once a year).

Do be careful: There are impostors out there. Here's a good article that talks about the traps and gives lots of good tips.
 

Opt Out the Easy Way

I've started to opt-out of all the mail I receive, both electronic and paper. It's important — not only do these offers waste resources and your time, many open up opportunities for identity theft.

It's a pain to do opt-out one-by-one but happily, there are ways to do it en masse. You can register with organizations (almost always for free) whose members have committed to remove anyone who requests it. They include mail order companies who will stop sending catalogs; credit companies who will stop sending offers; anti-spam lists; and telemarketers.

Even better, all of these services have been gathered in one place. Visit the World Privacy Forum's Top Ten Opt-Outs. Just march down the list and follow the directions. 

One of the most important mailings to dodge are the ones that offer you pre-approved credit. If a bad guy were to intercept one of these from your mailbox, he could sign up for a credit card and if he watched for the response, he could run off with the new card and use it for at least a month. Before you even knew the card existed, your credit history would be a mess. The Pre-Screened Offers Opt-Out (number two on the top-ten opt-out site) is an important one to visit.

Once you have signed up, wait a couple of months and begin manually removing yourself from whatever remains.

And when you sign up for new things in the future, be careful to check (or uncheck) the privacy boxes. But be careful: Some of them are tricky.

Yahoo Deserves Microsoft

Rant time.

Yahoo is so stupid.

It makes me sad to see how badly they operate because I know several Yahoo employees and I really like them — and the company. And heaven knows that Google, as good as they are, needs decent competition. But Yahoo needs good management and heaven knows they won't get it from the clumsy apes in Seattle.

I have many examples but today, it's their support. I have had two problems with their mail servers in the last couple of months. Their server sends an error that helpfully, includes a URL to a Yahoo help page. Good idea, except that the help page, in both cases, didn't solve the problem. The topic was barely related and the instructions were all but indecipherable, even for a technically adept person. Today, it told me to click on the "Options" link at the ul=pper right. There is no such link.

But good news: They include a link right there to e-mail their support.

But the support system, in both cases, sent a message back that said:

1. Please describe all the actions you took leading up to the problem, and include what functions you had wished to accomplish.

2. If you're seeing an error message, please include the exact text of the error messaging.  It's important that you include the entire error message for our analysis.

3. Describe how often the issue occurs and provide any other relevant information.

Fine — but in both cases, I had already provided all these things. It was clear, both times, that no one had read the message. The message was "signed" with a person's name ("Paddy") to give the impression it was a personal reply. Maybe it was — but if so, Paddy is lazy, rushed, or an idiot. So, without reading the messages, they immediately fire back a message telling me to do what I have already done.

The last time, we began a dialog, with a string of idiotic responses. Ultimately, it required a phone call. So in addition to irritating a customer, this maximized Yahoo's costs.

Fortunately, the problem went away on its own.

We will see how it goes this time. I am taking bets. Anyone think it will go well? Anyone think Microsoft will make things better? Time to buy more Google stock.

By Any Other Name

Remember the story, perhaps apocryphal, that Chevy was having trouble selling the Nova in Mexico until someone pointed out that it means "doesn't go" in Spanish?

There is a new free product for people who do web marketing. It's an awesome product -- does what seriously expensive products too but it's free. Measures customer satisfaction and what people want on your site. From iPerceptions, a company I know well, in partnership with one of the great minds in web analytics, Avinash Kaushik.

The product is built around four questions they ask, so they call it 4Q. Which is fine, until you say it. When you watch the product demo, you hear it over and over. 4Q. 4Q. 4Q.

WHAT was Avinash THINKing??? 

Anyway. 4Q is a great product and in my opinion, a no-brainer if you have a website.

Apology

"A good apology has three parts:

I'm sorry.

It was my fault.

How do I make it right?

Most people skip that third part. That's how you can tell sincerity."

— Randy Pausch

Doesn't Matter if it's True

The movie "Secondhand Lions" was on network TV Saturday night and I just happened to stumble upon it, at the exact moment Robert Duvall's character, Hub, is delivering to his nephew, Walter (Haley Joel Osment) the "everything a boy needs to know to become a man" speech, just a piece of it, that he gives young men.  I'd forgotten what a gem that speech was and truth be told, I need to be reminded from time to time of what the speech says.

Following is the text and you can also find a video clip at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-aqLUDMTTI

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If you want to believe in something,
then believe in it. Just because something isn't true,
that's no reason you can't believe it.

All right.

There's a long speech
I give to young men,
sounds like you need
to hear a piece of it.

Just a piece.

Sometimes the things that may
or may not be true
are the things that a man needs
to believe in the most.

That people are
basically good;
that honor,
courage, and virtue
mean everything.
That power and money,
money and power mean nothing;

That good always triumphs
over evil; and I want you
to remember this, that love...
true love never dies.
You remember that, boy.

You remember that.

Doesn't matter if it's
true or not. You see,
a man should believe
in those things, because...
those are the things
worth believing in.

Got that?