Here’s one of the shirts I purchased at Sears yesterday once I was able to find someone to take my money.

I washed the shirt this afternoon and didn’t realize the associate failed to remove the ink tag until it went through the dryer. What you can’t see in this picture is the red ink stains under the tag. It could have been worse. Best I can tell the ink didn’t bleed into other clothing.

I purchased a similar shirt in burgundy at the same time which had the tag removed. Perplexing.

So it’s back to Sears tomorrow. I hope they have the same shirt in stock.

Have you gone into a store and found what you came for, but when you were ready to pay, couldn’t find anyone to take your money? That’s what happened to me this evening when I visited the Land’s End store inside of Sears. As I stood at the counter with my hands full of back to school clothing, I noticed two Sears employees: one was folding sweaters while the other organized shoes. Both  noticed me but kept on folding and organizing. After a few minutes the employee organizing shoes told me to look for help at customer service.

Do you want my money or not?

As much as we like the quality and guarantee of Land’s End clothing, the poor customer service is the last thing I will remember about my visit. Is that fair? Probably not but that’s how I feel. I shouldn’t have to spend much energy or time looking for someone to pay. Maybe we should use the Lands’s End website next time although we like our kids to try on clothing given how fast they are growing.

We left Sears and walked to the Nordstrom wing of the mall. I pushed our stroller through the cosmetic department full of women sporting white jackets and impeccable skin. I’m always a bit uncomfortable wandering into this area in a Stepford Wives sort of way. As we made our way through hundred dollar wrinkle cream, my kids decided to touch every display case, box and perfume bottle. We eventually made our way to the Clinique counter.

It would be easy to ignore a guy herding three kids through the store who appears punch drunk on way too many overlapping scents. I don’t look like I’m on the verge of dropping Franklins on exotic cosmetics I can’t pronounce.

But I wasn’t ignored.

Before I could bring the stroller to a stop, a friendly woman approached me and asked if she could help. I told her I wanted a large bottle of liquid facial soap which she grabbed and rung up in less time than I spent waiting for someone to help me at Sears.

I left Nordstrom feeling like they value my business and my time.

I also smelled really good!

While attending the University of Utah, I visited my grandparents one afternoon to use their computer. When I tired of homework, I’d retreat to the study to browse my grandpa’s stack of Consumer Reports magazines. I’d thumb through them for hours. Especially the Annual Auto Issue.

On this day, my grandfather asked me to look up ratings on refrigerators and tell him which he should purchase. I eventually gave him a list of the top 5 models. I figured he’d make a trip to Sears or other large appliance store in Salt Lake City to compare many of brands and models.

But he wasn’t interested. He and my grandmother lived in a small city called Bountiful, located 20 minutes north of Salt Lake. He made one call to a local, family owned appliance shop just a few blocks away. The owner agreed with the ratings and quoted a price over the phone for the top rated model. No low balling tactics. No tricks. Just straight-forward, honest service.

I suggested he call around to the larger stores in Salt Lake looking for a lower price.

Again, he showed no interest. He said, “I could find it for less, but I’d rather support this local business. I trust the owner and he’s treated me well over the years”.

He purchased his cars the same way. He trusted a local mechanic who kept his eye out for specific models that would work well for my grandparents. The mechanic treated him well for many years and my grandpa trusted him. No need to look elsewhere. 

In today’s age of specialized search engines focused on sniffing out the best deals it’s hard to imagine intentionally paying extra to support local businesses. Now it’s as simple as typing a model number into Froogle to locate the lowest price. If that’s all your care about.

Does it matter if the local shops disappear and we’re left with Costco or Best Buy or whatever category killer moves into town? Will we replace trusted advice from the small business owner with online product reviews from people we don’t know?

When my grandfather wanted to purchase a book he did so at the family run bookstore. My generation made a trip to Barnes and Noble. Will my children assume they only place to purchase a book (or anything else) is Amazon?

I attended the Microsoft Tech Ready conference at theWashington State Convention Center this afternoon and parked my car in their parking garage. After I finished my work I walked to the self-service parking machines where I normally pay for parking with a credit card. There on big black and white signs I read, “Credit Cards Not Working. Pay at Booth”.

I got in my car and began making my way towards the exit when I realized there were lines and lines of cars trying to get out of the garage. I was one of the lucky ones who happened to be parked on the same level as the booth or it would have taken more a lot longer than 35 minutes it took me to reach the booth which was maybe 100 yards from where I’d parked.

The manager of the parking garage has a few choices here:

1. Send more crew down with handheld credit card machines.
2. Do nothing and let the lines back up angering every customers who used your service this evening.
3. Open the gates and and let the 100 or so cars exit the parking garage for free.

Solution #1 requires lots of planning and probably isn’t reasonable in a short period of time. That it happened after 9 pm further complicates the situation.

Solution #2 is what happens when nobody has authority to think of the long-term effects of pissing off a hundred paying customers.

Solution #3 is the choice if you’re looking to take a bad situation and turn it into something your customers will tell their friends or blog about.

The problem is greed. Company greed. The two employees left to deal with the hundred upset customers were taught how to take money and nothing more. They weren’t taught to ensure their customers left the convention center happy let alone to exceed expectations.

So tonight the Convention Center got my $13 parking fee. But not tomorrow or Friday or ever again.

Kim’s cell phone stopped working today so I decided to visit the local Verizon store to replace it. As I pulled into the store I noticed it was closed. A sign on the front door gave the address of the new store. No phone. No directions. No, “located across the street from…”

I called Verizon’s 411 service to get the phone number and was given the old address and and a number which I called. A recording told me that number (given to me by Verizon!) had been disconnected and was being serviced by another number. But it didn’t make any attempt to connect me. Maybe someone at Verizon HQ should notify Verizon 411 when they relocate and change phone numbers?

It was just after 5:30 pm when I finally reached a lady at the new store. I asked for directions from the old store – “just keep going for about a mile” and store hours – “only open till 8 pm tonight”. At the time I thought it was strange should tell me they were open till 8 pm in a tone I understood to mean, “We are near closing so try us again tomorrow”. I should have listened to my gut given what happened next.

I entered the brand spanking new Verizon store and signed into a computer which put me 4th in line. It was now 6 pm. I walked around the store checking out phones for a while and continued to look for my name on the monitor. I waited and waited. I was next in line but it didn’t matter because the guy ahead of me was changing his mind every few minutes. There were only three employees in the store. One worked on billing issues. One worked on technical support issues and the lady I waited for was handling new phone sales.

I gather there were about a dozen customers in the store just standing around. One Verizon employee (She wore a fancy shirt so I assume she’s the manager) stepped to the middle of the store and said, “All of you should go online to Verizon.com and submit a suggestion to get a chair or a couch so you can sit down”. Nobody knew what to say. It was odd and very uncomfortable. Why should the customers have to complain in order to get a chair? I’d been waiting so long I needed a bed more than a chair.

My name was finally called at 7:15 pm. A lady brought up my account on the computer. I asked her to show me some phones which she did. For about 30 seconds before she was called to the service desk to handle a problem. The employee who called her over came over to me and asked if he could answer any questions. I told him the same thing I told the first lady and he showed me a few phones. By this time I was worn out. I didn’t feel like renewing my contract for another two years so I left the store 90 minutes later without a new phone.

My experience tells me that AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile are no better. The customer service bar is set so low when it comes to cell service that I can’t believe I still put up with any of them and I’m beginning to question whether or not I genuinely need a cell phone. I can’t think of another company I give $2000 a year too that treats me so poorly.

Here’s a speed test I ran using Qwest DSL service. This was the quickest of the bunch. Several were in the 300kb range.

Comcast just installed cable internet at our home. Here’s an updated speed test I just ran.

Goodbye, Qwest DSL!!!

When we moved into our current home I had a choice between Qwest DSL service and Comcast Cable for high speed internet. Qwest service was less expensive and we had good luck with our DSL service when we lived in Seattle. So I decided to try DSL since we needed a phone line for our DirecTivo receiver anyway and the bundled price (phone + DSL) was reasonable.

But the DSL service hasn’t been as reliable as I expected. Flashing the DSL modem with the latest ROM from the Qwest website hosed the modem and our speeds have been in the 150k down/550k up range. We’ve never approached the 1500k download speed that Qwest advertises. On a good day we might reach 1100k although the upload speeds have been consistently over 600k till lately.

So last night Kim and I finally had it with slow internet speeds. Running a number of speed tests confirmed we weren’t getting close to the speed we are paying $42/month for. Here’s what I’m getting as I write this.

I went to the Comcast website to see what type of service they have at our location. Their website is easy to navigate although not very helpful. When I fed it my address it gave me the option to order high speed internet online but only if I were a current Comcast cable TV customer which I am not. I eventually located the customer support number and called expecting to hear a message stating their offices were closed given it was midnight.

I was surprised when a man answered the phone and offered to answer my questions. Yes, high speed internet is available at my home. Yes, I can supply my own cable modem. I can even have it installed as early as Monday. The only confusion came when I asked about prices. I heard him shuffling papers around for a bit. He said he needed a few minutes to locate the “pricing chart” for customers who don’t bundle phone or TV service. I can’t be the only person that does this, and why wouldn’t the prices already be loaded in system? He asked if I wanted to order service which I did, but not without a solid price quote.

For a split second I pictured myself signing up for some exotic broadband service that includes satellites, underwater fiber lines and unmarked black vans for $3000 a month.

He eventually found the pricing chart, but his voice didn’t instill much confidence when he said, “It’s about $42 a month…oh wait…it’s ten dollars more since you only have internet”. I said, “So it’s $52 a month?” and he replied, “Let me see what the computer says”.

Can someone at Comcast introduce the computer and the pricing chart to each other?

He typed some stuff into his computer for a bit. He then said, “It’s normally $99 to install your service, but I’ve got some coupons around here”.

Coupons?

More paper shuffling.

At this point I started to wonder if I had called the wrong number and got some kid playing World of Warcraft in his mother’s basement.

More typing as I now wondered if maybe I shouldn’t have removed that 56k modem from my PC a few years back.

Eventually, he enthusiastically exclaimed that the “coupon worked!” and that I would only be charged 20 bucks for the installation. “That’s great news”, I remarked to which he replied, “Funny how nobody minds the wait when I’m saving them money”.

I had to cover the phone while I giggled a bit. This kid is a crack up. 

He then asked me the weirdest question of the night which is saying something: “In order to access your account in the future I’ll need the last 4 digits of your Social Security number. But my system will only allow me to put the last 4 numbers into the computer if you give me all nine digits”.

WTH????

It was past 12:30 am by now. I decided to give him what he needed to place the order and hope my identity is safe.

Comcast internet is scheduled to be installed on Monday between the hours of 8 am and Noon. If nobody shows up, I’ll know there’s at least one more Brett Nordquist running around.

Across the street from my office is a small teriyaki shop. There’s nothing special about its appearance. The decor is bland, the menu is hand written on a white board and their service is slow at best. I’ve been ordering the “all white meat teriyaki with a little spiciness” for nearly five years and I’ve only seen one woman (the owner) working the cash register. There must be someone else behind the curtain making the food but I’ve never seen any one.

Last week I stopped in for lunch. As I walked up to the counter the owner stepped up to the register and said, “How are you doing Brett? I’ve not seen you in a long time”. I chatted with her for a bit. She asked how Kim and my kids were doing and was genuinely interested in them. She asked if I wanted my regular order, took my money and gave me a number that she’s never once called.

So I’m eating lunch at this small, unassuming joint yet I’m treated like my business really means something. I’m never taken for granted. Every visit I’m asked how things are going. She even remembers the ages of my kids and asks how they are doing. Once my order is ready, she places it in a bag along with a set of chop sticks and some napkins. She then takes the bag and ties a knot with the handles before handing it to me. She’s kind and gentle and I enjoy her company. I always walk out the door with a smile on my face. How many places can you say that about?

I contrast this relationship with the one I had last year with Sprint. I averaged a $200/month bill with Sprint for over five years. Yet when I called to cancel my contract to move to Verizon (only Verizon provides decent coverage at my house) I was put on hold, transferred around the horn, and basically tossed around like a rag doll. One night, after spending nearly an hour on the phone, one customer service rep told me her shift was ending and there wasn’t anyone else in her department to help me. Her suggestion? “Call back tomorrow when we’re open”.

I had met my contract obligations yet was told my service could only be canceled at the end of the billing cycle which meant I’d have to call back ON THAT VERY DAY or I’d have to wait yet another month. Let me get this straight: a company that can meter calls to the very second can’t figure out how to cancel my service on a date in the future? Sprint figures many people will give up if they put up enough obstacles. Their goal is to wear you down like a fish on the line until you’re so drained they can reel you with ease.

Why does a business where I spent eight bucks on teriyaki every few weeks treat me so much better than one where I’ve spent over $10,000?

I wish all businesses appreciated my patronage as much as the little teriyaki joint does.

While visiting my parents the past couple of weeks, my father purchased a new computer at Costco. He purchased an HP Pavilion with a 24-inch LCD monitor.  I had about a week to get it setup for him and here are my observations.

The Good:

1. A lot of computer for the price and the 24-inch monitor is gorgeous.
2. Excellent documentation.
3. Reached HP Technical Support in under three minutes
4. Core 2 Duo chip is sweet. It’s a very fast machine.
5. HP didn’t pre-load it with too much crapware.
6. For the most part, Vista wasn’t too annoying when UAC was off.
7. Very well built black case that’s easy to open because HP was smart to include finger screws.
8. Clean and organized internals including good cable management.
9. The computer is dead silent. No loud fans at all.
10. System restore was easy to find, understand and fast to perform.

The Bad:

1. Onboard sound didn’t work. MP3s cracked and hissed.
2. Monitor stand takes some time to get used to, but it adjusts in many directions making it easy to find the right height.
3. Vista with UAC turned on is a terrible experience. Turn it off under USERS in Control Panel.
4. USB ports on monitor could be easier to reach.
5. Symantec suite of products tries to take over your system. It’s nearly as bad as Real products. At least it’s easy to uninstall.
6. HP Printers still have sketchy Vista support. One of my dad’s printers required a fairly complex workaround.
7. iTunes and Vista don’t play well together. When my mom’s Shuffle was connected, messages would pop up every few minutes asking to scan and fix the iPod’s drive. I ran into the same problem when I ran Vista.

The Ugly:

1. The onboard sound didn’t work from day one so I called HP technical support and was told I’d have to perform a system restore before they would dispatch a tech to the house. I did that but when they called to talk to my dad, they told him they would only come to the house if he paid $181 for a 2-year extended warranty.

Overall, the experience of purchasing and setting up a new computer is much better than it was even five years ago. Running Windows Update found about 10 software and driver updates which seemed like a bit much but it’s good to see that Vista ran quite well on new HP hardware. I would not recommend Vista to those who want to upgrade current machines from XP, but getting a new machine with Vista was a better experience.

I’m bummed that the sound doesn’t work on this computer and I’m angry that my dad got taken advantage of by some punk at HP. My dad had tossed the boxes or we would have just returned it all to Costco and asked for a new system. Lesson learned.

But to keep things in perspective, the computer is much faster than his older system I built him about 4 years ago. It’s much more quiet too. I think he’ll enjoy the way Vista handles pictures and other media files. He also seems to like Outlook 2007 along with the other Office 2007 applications. A HP technician is coming to his home on Thursday to fix the sound problem which will likely require swapping the motherboard.

Hopefully, he’ll be up and running with sound shortly. I wonder if Costco knows or cares how HP technical support is taking advantage of customers who bought machines with a clear defect? I think they would and should care.