Archive for the ‘customer service’ Category

I was watching my local newscast the other night when I watched a story about a local — and legendary — butcher shop.

Aubrey’s Meats is over 100 years old, and located in the Byward Market, one of Ottawa’s oldest areas. This may be one of its problems, actually. The Market, as it’s known to us Ottawans, is usually packed with a combination of tourists in search of the right tchotchke to take home to a coworker or maiden aunt and young revelers heading to The Heart and Crown or the Chateau Lafayette to get their drink on. If I’m gonna buy some steaks or a nice roast for the grill I’m not going to head to the Market.

But I digress. Aubrey’s Meats, according to its own “About” page, found itself in a serious bit of difficulty recently. The death of its owner and his declining health meant employees were running the shop. And not too well.

…in December 2010, Catherine Davis, the store’s bookkeeper, was made ad-hoc manager of Aubrey’s. When she took over, certain employees had run our store, between rent to the city and money owed to the suppliers, into a debt in excess of $300,000. Though it didn’t appear so, Aubrey’s was a sinking ship that some might not have tried to save. Out of a respect for Brian and his work, and an undying faith in this store’s potential, Catherine set about to keep Aubrey’s afloat.

So they were in trouble. Like some on a sinking ship, they grasped at anything that looked like it might help them float. And what they grabbed were Groupon and Kahoot.

They embarked on a number of different offers. One offered $200 in value for $89. They sold over 1000 of those. They offered others at $55 for $175 worth of meat. They sold thousands of those.

HANDLE WITH CARE

The hammer started to fall for the people running Aubrey’s when they realized that they couldn’t fulfil all the orders placed. So they limited it to redeeming $50 worth of meat at a time. Now they’ve suspended all redemptions until May 1.

What went wrong here? I think it should be obvious. The cash crunch they found themselves in made them decide to try this for an immediate cash infusion (even though they only get a portion of the revenue — according to the butcher who is the spokesperson for Aubrey’s right now, each $55 coupon resulted in $24 in revenue to Aubrey’s). But they didn’t look even one step down the road to figure out what to do if they SUCCEEDED with the offers. I feel for Aubrey’s employees. It sounds like they’re in a tight spot. But they’ve done themselves no favours by pursuing this strategy.

The companies which marketed their deals? I’d wager that they’re in no way suffering the way Aubrey’s is.

This isn’t a new story. Others, including my buddy Anne Weiskopf, have written about some of the challenges of managing daily deal sites for small businesses. Don’t just dive in. Think about the risks AND the potential benefits. If you’re new to doing that sort of thing, get advice. And if you’re considering a daily coupon site, you need to not only ask what will happen if your offer goes nowhere, you need to  think VERY carefully about what the implications of SUCCESS will be. Dying of popularity is not any better than dying of neglect. 

___

UPDATE, January 23: Three of the four companies which issued coupons for Aubrey’s meats are refunding those coupons, according to CBC Ottawa. Those are: Team Buy, DealFind and Groupon. CBC is reporting that Ottawa-based company Kahoot told its customers:

“We have been made aware of these unfortunate circumstances regarding Aubrey’s. Unfortunately we are unable to refund vouchers outside of seven days after purchase. If interested in a refund, we suggest going directly to Aubrey’s as they are now liable for their commitment to honour all vouchers sold.”

I wonder if Kahoot has thought about the several thousand people who bought through them rather than another of the coupon sites, and how likely they are to return to Kahoot to purchase.

UPDATE, JANUARY 24: I’ve asked Kahoot a couple of questions:

1. Can you provide the statement sent to customers who purchased Kahoot deals for Aubrey’s?
2. Is Kahoot concerned that its decision to not refund coupons will cost it brand loyalty when compared to the decisions of Teambuy, DealFind and Groupon to refund the coupons?

I’m hoping for a reply more substantive than this one from them:

Just 3 more and I get one free!

The Consumerist is one of my must-read blogs. But I don’t necessarily read it for solid marketing and communications advice. Until this morning, when I opened up my feed reader and found a post called “The Silly Hat Shop.”

It reminded me of a cool furniture store in my neighbourhood in Ottawa. They sell the sort of furniture that funky condos would have, as well as custom design services for furniture.

On their door, they trumpet that they’re on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. What’s that mean? For Twitter, they’ve posted 76 tweets in two years, with less than 50 followers. Most of those tweets are for sales on their products. On Facebook, a page with 133 friends and an unending series of sales. And on LinkedIn? Well, they have some employees there.

What does their online presence say to me? I’m NEVER buying full price from them, and they aren’t that different from a Leon’s, a “The Brick”, or other furniture stores.  In short, Ben Popken needed a hat and bought one at a new hat store. They then subjected him to a variety of marketing and loyalty techniques that, in his opinion and mine, don’t fit a hat shop. A frequent buyer card? Really?

I’d also wager that neither the hat shop nor the furniture store have put a second of thought into how they are going to evaluate the success of their frequent buyer club or their Twitter account.

Being a great buyer / retailer of hats, of furniture, of whatever, does not make you a great communicator of what you’re REALLY all about. If you sell great funky furniture that deserves premium treatment — and prices — why not treat it that way? And act as if you’re a trusted advisor rather than a salesman? If you sell hats, don’t treat them like they’re a cappuccino.

And if you can’t think this through because you’re too close to your store, too much in love with what you do — hire someone with a clear vision and trust their insights to do it for you.

(Photo CC licenced from Flickr user Slimmer_Jimmer)

I shouldn’t need to write this post. But somehow, I think I do.

On July 18, in Gatineau, the city across the river from my city of Ottawa, someone recorded this:

So not surprisingly, this bus driver was quickly up for discipline.

It’s the job of the driver’s union to represent him. So, Local 591 of the Amalgamated Transit Union (French site) did so, with both his employer, and with the media.

The CBC story about the ATU response says:

“Felix Gendron, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union in Gatineau, said the driver’s privacy rights were violated after a passenger shot video of him and posted it on YouTube…’I think that the person who makes the video, if they don’t like the way the driver’s doing that they should go tell the driver. Not go put that on TV,’ said Gendron…Gendron said the union asked STO to ban passengers from being able to record drivers.” 

Here’s the part that I can’t believe I’m writing:

1. If you’re a bus driver responsible for the lives of dozens of riders and other motorists around you, don’t fill out paperwork while driving or steer the bus with your knees. 
2. If you get caught doing something that stupid, accept the fact that you were caught doing something that stupid. Focus on serving your customers (by not endangering their lives) rather than shoot the messenger. The person with the camera wasn’t the one in the wrong. 

A Toronto company named EasyDNS has become a potent case study of two things: crisis communications and the limitations of journalism in the Internet age.

EasyDNS provides domain name servers for clients all over the place and is also a domain registrar. Until early December, there wasn’t much reason for an average person to know much about them.

But that was before a misunderstanding catapulted them into the middle of the largest news story of 2010. Someone, somewhere, confused EasyDNS in Toronto with EveryDNS in New Hampshire. EveryDNS had terminated its servicing of Wikileaks. This ticked off the supporters of Wikileaks, and when someone mistakenly identified EasyDNS as the villain, things went wrong.

Valleywag was the first major site to make the mistake, posting “Wikileaks loses its domain” on December 3rd. Within two hours of finding the Valleywag post, EasyDNS has gotten the post corrected and put up  a blog post of their own explaining the situation. After that, the Financial Times(registration required) the  New York Times “The Lede” blog, the Associated Press, and The Guardian all — independently — ran stories perpetuating the idea that a company who until now had no dealings with Wikileaks had struck the organization a blow.

Mark Jeftovic, EasyDNS CEO (Globe and Mail)

And in the meantime, EasyDNS’s team, led by CEO Mark Jeftovic (left), who seems a savvy and smart guy, were eliciting corrections and trying to keep their site and blog up to provide correct information. Aaaaannd… they were approached by Wikileaks to be one of several companies providing DNS services. By December 6, EasyDNS was providing service to Wikileaks.

You can read the full timeline in quite some detail in Timeline of an Epic Fail, the company’s blog post trying to compile all of this information. I’m more interested in teasing out some of the implications.

First: you are always at risk. I’m sure that if Mark Jeftovic at EasyDNS had someone tell him in November that his company would be misidentified as a “villain” in the biggest story of 2010, he’d have chuckled (or “chunkled”, as he writes in his timeline). But he was. One of my rules for crisis communication and response is that even things that are HIGHLY unlikely sometimes happen.

Second: as an organization, you need to be flexible enough to devote ALL your resources to resolving organizational crisis. At one workplace a few years ago, my team and I were running flat-out on a crisis that threatened customer service standards, financial damage, and public embarrassment. A few office doors away, I don’t think the response would have been “Crisis? Is this a crisis?” You need to have your whole organization be aware that a crisis state exists (not necessarily an EMERGENCY) and that action has to be quick, decisive and significant.

Second-and-a-half: Just because you’re totally focused on the crisis, don’t forget you have other business. EasyDNS was sending out e-mails to its customers as well as updating its own blog, as well as keeping feedback channels open on e-mail, twitter, and phone. They seem to have done a good job of keeping their existing customers informed and addressing their concerns.

Third: Be politely persistent with media who get something wrong. It’s shocking and disappointing that EasyDNS were badly served five separate times by media both blog-based and mainstream. It’s certainly made them more cynical about the quality of journalism. Who can blame them? But they did things right. What’s also interesting is that some media noted the error, while others simply corrected it in their online versions.

Fourth: Don’t be shy. EasyDNS was tireless in chasing down rumours and being proactive. Particularly if you’re “in the right” as they were, don’t just hope for things to “blow over”, be quiet, and wait for eyes to pass you over. You’re already part of the story. You might as well be a FULL part of it. I don’t know how “human” the company’s voice was before this, but their tweets, blog posts, and e-mails had a great voice, correcting errors and portraying emotion without coming off like ranters or bullies.

Fifth: recognize that in crisis lies opportunity. Jeftovic was already thinking this way when he wrote his blog post OK, so would we take on Wikileaks at this point? Now is there business benefit to EasyDNS actually doing this? Probably not directly. But my impression of EasyDNS has gone from zero — until yesterday when Jeftovic appeared on CBC Radio’s “Ontario Today” (you can listen to an interview with Jeftovic there) I’d never heard of ‘em — to “this is a company that has its act together and has some principles.” That can’t be bad.

Are there other lessons to be learned from this incident? You tell me. And attention Craig Silverman! There’s likely a whole chapter of “Regret the Error Volume 2″ in this story.

UPDATE: The 92nd Street Y has apologized to Martin and Solomon, and posted the apology on its blog. Here it is:

We know there have been a lot of stories in the media over the last couple of days about our evening at 92Y with Deborah Solomon and Steve Martin and our decision to offer gift certificates to our audience.

We realize now that offering a refund, especially without consulting with our guests who graciously gave of their time, was disrespectful.  We have learned our lesson, and this will not happen again.

For what it’s worth, this is good apologizing. It’s specific, it doesn’t weasel, and it’s not too long. Well done on that front.

END UPDATE

I’m watching with train-wreck fascination as New York’s 92nd Street Y seems to tick off every party involved in a recent event.

For those not in the know, the 92nd Street Y, or 92Y, is not a Y like we Ottawa folk might envision, with a small pool and a weight room and an aerobics studio and a couple of change rooms. Like most things in New York, it’s a LOT bigger. It’s got annual revenues approaching $100 million. Their speakers list includes names like Salman Rushdie, Carol Bartz, Tony Blair, Dan Rather… It’s a giant-sized cultural centre, performance space, and a health centre TOO.

So. One recent event at 92Y was a public conversation between Steve Martin and New York Times Magazine writer Deborah Soloman, held November 29. Soloman does Q&A interviews for the Times, and is a frequent target of satirical website Gawker for her style.

The conversation, held in front of 900 people who paid $50 a head to attend, apparently went off the rails. How badly? It’s hard to judge, since there’s no video available (yet), but  badly enough that an organizer brought out a note to Soloman halfway through. One twitterer (The COO of Newsweek, not that that matters for this purpose) wrote:

Incredible sight: interview w/ witty & charming @SteveMartinToGo botched by boorish & blundering NYT writer @92Y. Audience almost hissing.

The note asked Soloman to move the conversation away from art (the subject of Martin’s novel An Object of Beauty) and towards his movie and entertainment career. Neither was happy, apparently, and likely a bit embarrassed. Especially when Soloman read out the note and the audience cheered.

And the Y folks apparently weren’t happy to boot. The executive director of 92Y sent an e-mail to ticketholders the next day, saying (according to reports): “We acknowledge that last night’s event with Steve Martin did not meet the standard of excellence that you have come to expect from 92nd St. Y.  We planned for a more comprehensive discussion and we, too, were disappointed with the evening. We will be mailing you a $50 certificate for each ticket you purchased to last night’s event. The gift certificate can be used toward future 92Y events, pending availability.”

That move displeased both Soloman and Martin. Martin tweeted:

So the 92nd St. Y has determined that the course of its interviews should be dictated in real time by its audience’s emails. Artists beware.

When twitterer @Brilliantbooks noted to Martin that “Y billed it an evening with a star. Not a talk about art” he responded “Then they lied to the audience. They knew what it was.” He’s since moved on to making jokes about interrupting sex with his wife with “book chat” and her demanding a refund.

And like most things in the fishbowl of celebrity and New York, it’s a media story. To my mind, it’s the biggest interview-fiasco story since the 2008 Lacy-Zuckerberg kerfuffle (credit to Holtz and Hobson)

So what’s to be learned here?

• Know what you’re getting before you go public. Martin says 92Y knew what they were going to get. And it was he, not the Y, who asked Deborah Soloman to be his conversational partner. Yet the Y billed the event as: “Steve Martin with Deborah Soloman. Steve Martin is a celebrated writer, actor and performer. His film credits include Father of the Bride, Parenthood and The Spanish Prisoner, as well as Roxanne, L.A. Story and Bowfinger, for which he also wrote the screenplays. He’s won Emmy Awards for his television writing and two Grammy Awards for comedy albums. In addition to a play, Picasso at the Lapin Agile, he has written a best-selling collection of comic pieces, Pure Drivel and a best-selling novella, Shopgirl. His most recent novel is An Object of Beauty: A Novel.” I have no idea whether the organizers knew what Soloman and Martin were planning to discuss. And I have no idea whether Martin saw the promo copy for the event. But there was a disconnect, and it hurt.
• When you’re in the middle of an event, don’t try to pull a 180. A number of years ago, I was at a “Newfie night” fundraising event for a church-related fundraising project at a church in Ottawa. The headliner for the evening was Greg Malone of CODCO fame. Malone came out and did some humour that was sharp-edged, dark, and a bit blue. Halfway through his routine, people started leaving. Then someone stood up and heckled him. And then an organizer came out and whispered in Malone’s ear. “I guess I’m done,” Malone said, and stalked offstage. It was, to put it bluntly, a disaster. Would it have been worse to let Malone finish? Was the best course of action for the Y to have sent out the note? Ummm, no. In a Stephen King novel, a character says “done-bun-can’t-be-undone.”
• Be careful with your apologies. I’m not convinced the refund was the way to go. I’ve been to some stinko plays in my time; I’ve attended boring readings. But how bad does something have to be to offer a refund? Again, it’s hard to know how bad THIS was without having attended live or via satellite, but jeez. Was it THAT bad?

So now the 92nd Street Y has a disappointed audience and offended presenters, one of whom has 399,000 Twitter followers. Let’s go over the lessons for event organizers once again:

• Make sure EVERYONE involved in an event knows what the event is.
• Even if it goes off the rails, it’s almost always too late to try and pull it back onto the rails in the middle. You have to rely on the people on stage.
• If it has gone wrong, be very careful how you make amends.

There was a time when I pointed to the Transportation Security Administration as an example in social media, like this:

Hey, if the TSA can start a blog, what’s stopping other government agencies?

But I have to say that they’re fumbling badly with the introduction of their new Advanced Imaging Technology machines and the “advanced patdown” – also known as the “Don’t touch my junk” patdown.

I don’t need to tell you how much attention all of this is getting and how many gaffes and incidents are getting attention now.From women being asked to remove breast prostheses to children being patted down to an amputee having to run her prosthetic leg through the luggage x-ray machine to a woman doffing her duds and trying to be patted down in lingerie to (and this one hit home for me) a bladder cancer survivor having his urostomy bag broken by the pat-down and having to board his plane with pants soaked with his urine.

And tomorrow seems like it’s going to make things even worse, with “National Opt-Out Day” encouraging US travellers to opt out of the scanners and allow themselves to get groped.

The TSA’s response? In part, this video:

Not Blogger Bob.

Ouch. The lameness burns.

UPDATE: The very smart (and very good on how to work with video) Ike Pigott has taken a run at why the Pistole video doesn’t work in his very worthwhile blog Occam’s Razor. Check it out.

TechCrunch has pointed to the mysterious “Blogger Bob” as having the most unenviable job in social media — that of running the TSA’s social media presence. He’s at the former “Evolution of Security” blog and he’s running the one official TSA Blog Team twitter account. And man, he takes a lot of heat.

But the problem with TSA isn’t their social media activity. It’s that their social media activity isn’t matching up with their real-world actions. Blogger Bob is trying to do his best in the time-honored Dell model, but it doesn’t feel like TSA is doing what Dell did to re-engineer their business and to better meet their customers’ expectations and demands.

If I use TSA as an example in a future, it is going to be more along the lines of:

Don’t start down this road unless you’re willing to actually CHANGE based on what you hear. Just saying you’re listening only gets you so far.

So to Blogger Bob, I wish a happy and stress-free American Thanksgiving. To all those travelling, I hope your trips are free of horror stories.

To the TSA, I hope that you’re soon better able to balance the need for security with basic human rights.

And finally, if that video by TSA administrator John Pistole has left you with a bad taste in your mouth, here’s something that’s about airport security, but also a bit more entertaining: webisodes from the Gruppo Rubato production of “Airport Security”, starring buds Kris Joseph and Nancy Kenny, among others.

Johanna Skibsrud, author of The Sentimentalists, in a photo from the Toronto Star

Recently, a young writer won Canada’s richest literary prize. Johanna Skibsrud won the 2010 Giller Prize for her novel The Sentimentalists.

She gave a moving acceptance speech, thanking her late father for information, and then started to prepare to rejoin her mother on a vacation in the Middle East. A great story! But  … that’s where the trouble started.

Skibsrud’s novel, like her previous volume of poetry, was published by Gaspereau Press, a small publisher based in Nova Scotia’s Annapolis Valley. Gaspereau describes itself as part of: “a unique but traditional publishing model that brings printing and publishing together under one roof [whose] publishing program stresses the importance of quality across the entire process, from editorial and design to the manufacturing stage.”

In realistic terms, that meant that The Sentimentalists could be produced at a maximum rate of 1,000 copies per week. That was fine for the roughly 800 copies it had sold since its release. This was not going to work for a Giller winner. For example, last year’s winner The Bishop’s Man sold about 75,000 copies. Even if you halved that number, Gaspereau was facing a bit of a problem. They had demand that was far outstripping supply. It could take the better part of a year to produce enough to meet the immediate demand, and this is the time of year — as Christmas shopping ramps up — when the vast majority of books are sold.

So let me lay out the issues that faced Gaspereau as I see them:

• They have a principled commitment to quality production
• They have a book in demand far beyond what they can supply (Amazon is selling ONE copy for nearly $900!)
• That demand is partially time limited
• Printing by someone else will likely reduce the quality of the physical book
• Printing by someone else will generate additional revenue for the business
• Printing by someone else will generate additional revenue for the author

Today, it appears that Gaspereau has found a solution. They’ve sold trade paperback rights to another publisher, Douglas & McIntyre. This means that their editions will still be the beautiful objects they are, but that many more people will be able to buy paper versions. There will be 30,000 copies available in about a week, and if they need more, they can do another 20,000 pretty easily. Douglas & McIntyre will also make e-reader editions available for all the popular e-readers. Previously, you could only buy it for Indigo’s proprietary Kobo e-reader. There’s a certain irony in a book published by a craftsmanlike press being primarily available for e-readers, I think.

All that is good news, and I wish Gaspereau and Ms. Skibsrud much more success in the future.

But the story of The Sentimentalists made me think. On one level, I admire Andrew Steeves and Gary Dunfeld of Gaspereau Press for their dedication. But I’m led to believe that most of the time, when a book is shortlisted for a Giller Prize, the publisher prepares for a possible win by making printing arrangements.

So perhaps what the folks at Gaspereau did was to neglect to prepare for success. It’s easy to think about failure. It’s easy to disaster plan (even though we often don’t do it!). But do we prepare and plan for success in the same way? I think it’s worth thinking about.

Grocery store managers don't have time to take calls.

My partner and I are both involved in Show Tune Showdown, a fundraiser for great Ottawa choir Tone Cluster. The event is a lot of fun to put together.

Except when some people are utter jerks.

One of my partner’s tasks has been to try to drum up food donations for the afterparty for performers, the production team, and the volunteers. One of the approaches she’s made has been to a local chain grocer located around three blocks from the venue. The goal? A sandwich tray, a $25 gift card, something like that.

At every turn, it’s been a frustration, for WEEKS. Hand-delivered a personal letter of request to the manager. Waited. Called. Sorry, the letter never got to the manager, and besides, a letter won’t do it. You need a form. No, can’t e-mail the form. No, you have to pick it up and either mail it and drop it off. Dropped off the form. Nothing. Call. Yes, they’ve received the form. No, don’t know when there will be an answer. No, the store manager isn’t here right now. No, you can’t leave him a message. No, you can’t e-mail him. You need to keep calling.

Compare this with the other big chain with a store in the neighborhood, which promptly replied: “We don’t give food, but here’s a gift card. Go shopping.” Or to our local greengrocer, the Herb & Spice, which with a simple ask offered up a box full of fruit, drinks, and the like. Or the local coffee chain Bridgehead, which is providing coffee during the  day for our volunteers and production team, based on a simple ask.

An open letter to the manager of the big chain grocery store on Rideau Street that isn’t Metro:

Seriously. Dude, you run a grocery store. You sell commodities. I can go anywhere else to get groceries. The price differences aren’t so immense that I won’t make that choice. You aren’t so important that you get to not take messages and ignore existing or potential customers.

The people who gave us a little stuff are going to be publicly thanked for their generosity in front of 460 people tomorrow night. And again at the volunteer party. And again on the Show Tune Web site. You, on the other hand, get this cranky blog post. Who do you think gets a better deal? Who do you think doesn’t seem like a jerk?

So Yay:

Herb & Spice shop

Bridgehead

Metro

And Yay Show Tune Showdown and Tone Cluster.

Customer service photo from the Captivated Customers blog.

Once upon a time, Technorati rankings meant something. I used to look at mine regularly (probably more regularly than was wise). And that only increased when Todd Andrlik created what became the AdAge Power 150 blog, which ranked PR and marketing blogs on a number of factors, including Technorati authority. And Dave Sifry’s regular reports on the state of the blogosphere were fascinating reading.

But those days are gone. Technorati has gone from a blog search engine to … I’m not sure what. And man, is their system borked.

An example:

I migrated this blog from Blogger to this WordPress platform in November. And I thought it would be a good idea to get it listed in Technorati. The process involves placing a “claim token” on the site and in the RSS feed. On November 25, they noted that token and said my blog was “awaiting review.” For what? I didn’t know. For how long? They didn’t say.

After a few days, I visited the support forums Technorati’s established on GetSatisfaction. Uhoh. There were dozens and dozens of open threads, and one titled “Blog claiming is taking FOREVER!” featured prominently. Worse, it was begun by a Technorati employee.

That thread now has more than 400 posts from frustrated bloggers. During that time, one Technorati web developer was responding to reports of problems with more than a little defensiveness:

“There’s a lot of misinformation here, and I’m afraid that the time it would take to correct it all would impact the wait time for more approved blogs. I share your frustration, and wish I had a spare couple of days to respond to each comment.”

“back when I was frequently posting here, most of what I received in response was more grief.”

My blog sat from November 25-January 19 waiting for “review”, which apparently involved weeding out spam blogs. Three of those weeks were apparently spent reviewing submissions from November 24. Yes, that’s what I wrote. 15 working days to review one day’s submissions.

On January 6, VP of marketing Jen MacLean posted on the Technorati blogthat “Blog claiming is fixed“. She was wrong.

A week later, blogger Louis Gray claimed that Technorati was focusing on quality. According to Gray’s blog, written after meeting with CEO Richard Jalichandra,

Many bloggers, including the visible futurist Stowe Boyd, have already given up on Technorati, after seeing the company’s early promise seem to crash and burn, through a confusing product strategy, spam-filled results, poor uptime, and bad news followed by no news. It seems the darkest times are behind them, and the company will have to make good on its promises before many bloggers learn to trust them again. But in my meeting with them Monday, they clearly said they’re not done fighting.

I disagreed.

On January 19, the review process ended and I was asked to rewrite the description of the blog. I tried to do that, but there was no way to do so because their web site was glitched. On January 25, they fixed that glitch, I resubmitted my description, and here I sit. Again. Waiting.

It’s shocking to me that a company that has received $32M in venture funding and been around since the beginning of the blogging revolution could be operating so, so very badly. Perhaps it’s time that we all just look away and let it die as pain-free a death as possible.

Here in Canada, Rogers is a huge communications conglomerate that includes cable TV, DVD rental, cell phone, magazines, radio, and high-speed Internet services. Most people, including me, have some interaction with Rogers. To be quite frank, I try to keep mine as limited as possible. Our Internet at home? Rogers. Our home phone is Rogers too. My ancient and loathed work Treo, soon to be replaced by a Blackberry — Rogers. For now, we still have rabbit-ears on the TV at home, so we don’t pay ANYone for TV, and the DVDs we rent are from a local independent video store.

I have a knee-jerk negative reaction to Rogers. But then again, I also have a negative reaction to Bell. That might be because of their INCREDIBLY stupid “ER” campaign.

But man, oh man, I got something today at my house that just drove me to the computer.

When I arrived home, a piece of advertising was rolled up in my door handle. From Rogers. Here it is.


Let’s see if I can ennumerate the ways in which this piece of marketing collateral left me gaping in slack-jawed astonishment.

1. I’ve lived in my house and this neighbourhood since 2000. I know my neighbours. Some of them come to my house concerts. So why would you (a) give me a piece of mail saying “the previous account holder at this address has requested that the Rogers Cable services be disconnected.” (b) and THEN SCRATCH IT OUT.
2. Why would you change the terms of the offer by hand? Can I write up my own terms? Do I get to choose too? Is this legally binding?
3. On the first image, it appears that FREE as in installation is scratched out. On the second image, something is written over the word FREE in FREE INSTALLATION. Does that mean it’s not free, or does it signify an initialing, as in Tech # 0285 is endorsing the free installation?
4. I’m ALREADY A ROGERS CUSTOMER! Why not treat me like one?
5. Is this a better offer than anything I can get from Rogers online or elsewhere?

UPDATED: I’ve taken out the name and number of the rep in question at her request. I don’t think we need to single her out on this one.

I’ve gotten a ton of direct mail from Rogers over the years. We used to joke that we were the white pin in the sea of red, as non-cable-TV people. But I’ve never seen something as obtuse as this.

Ciao,
Bob.