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Since I am on my airline diatribe, let’s talk about airline customer service. I know, what more is there to talk about, it’s non-existent? No, it is not only existent you can actually pay MORE for the experience described in part 1 of this series. What do I mean? Well recently I booked a round trip ticket to attend my sister’s wedding. A week before my flight I had a job emergency (I travel a lot for my job so I am graced with many opportunities to pay for and experience airline customer service). Needless to say, I had to take a different carrier into the destination for my sister’s wedding but would be flying out on my originally booked flight after the wedding.

I contacted my initial carrier and clearly communicated my need to cancel just the first leg of my flight but I would be keeping the second leg active. The attendant quickly and graciously obliged my request. Too good to be true? Absolutely!! When the time comes to check in online for my last leg of travel, you guessed it … NOT FOUND.

I frantically try entering confirmation numbers, last name, “VIP” miles number, my freaking first pet’s maiden name … Nothing! So I call the “VIP” number, get harassed by an automated voice response system which refuses to allow me to connect with a live customer service agent. Finally, after 5 minutes of computer interrogation Jody answers.

“Jody,” I say in my most pleasant voice, “I spoke with Stacy last week who kindly assisted me with cancelling the first leg of my flight and keeping my 2nd leg active.”

Without missing a beat or even hearing what I had just said Jody methodically responds, “I’m sorry but you were a ‘no show’ for your first flight so we automatically cancelled your second leg. BUT, I can get you a new one way ticket for $605.00.”

In my most sarcastic manner I reply, “Jody, let me understand this correctly. I paid $178.00 for a round trip ticket which I proactively changed with one of your agents and you expect me to pay $605.00 for an error that occurred at your operation?”

Oblivious to the situation Jody replies “well it’s $605.00 plus … a $50.00 change fee.”

Many people wonder, why are airlines going bankrupt? Well one thing is for sure, they’re bankrupt on customer service. There’s a bit more to this story but to summarize, Jody agreed it was an error on their part, I ended up taking a different airline (which of course was delayed) and I now have a $178.00 credit to use on any flight with Jody’s employer of choice … minus a $50.00 change fee.

As I reluctantly walk up to the stern faced gate agent and make my request, I hear the ever so familiar “ma’am that will be a $50.00 change fee to get you on an earlier flight”. Forlorn I pay the fee and hustle to the gate only to be greeted by the all too common “delayed” sign next to the flight number that ironically matches mine, number for number. I exhale, shoulders slumped, head down, and drag my carry on to the gate. I take a seat and wait. An hour and a half later I am relieved to hear “ladies and gentlemen we will begin our boarding process shortly”. Tired, and contemplating why I paid a $50.00 fee to make it to my destination at the same time as my initial flight, I make my way to my assigned seat and squeeze my 115lb body in a seat that was made for a 9 year old child, squished like a sardine between two 250lb gentlemen.

The flight attendants do their normal drill that hasn’t changed for years and wonder why nobody is listening. (side note) I think the first question the flight attendants should ask “is this anyone’s first time flying?” If so, the monotonous hum drum “in order to securely fasten your seat belt slide the flat end into the buckle…” should be directed towards them. I mean seriously, if you can’t buckle your seat belt you should probably get the hell off the plane! Okay so I have digressed, back to  the boarding process. The doors close and we back away from the gate. But wait! We have been told we can not take off due to an air traffic control issue at our destination. So we sit and wait, no apologies or offerance (I made up that word) of a drink or refreshment. As a matter of fact, after we have sat on the tarmac for over 30 minutes and finally take off, we don’t even get a full soda! You get a cocktail glass stuffed full of ice ½ filled with your drink! If someone asks for anything more than their peanuts or ½ drink, the flight staff acts like they have been asked to donate a kidney. Finally I arrive at my destination, 2 hours later than planned, 30 minutes after my original flight and $300.00 dollars is all I had to pay for this adventure…plus a $50.00 change fee.

The One Laptop Per Child Project (OLPC), founded by Nicholas Negroponte, has brought a remarkable vision to life - the $100 laptop. Slashdot.org and I have tracked this project’s progress since roughly 2002 - you should read the ambitious goals and massive collective effort that is taking place, it is quite a story.

While “It’s [OLPC] an education project, not a laptop project.” I want to focus on the laptop itself and offer one simple suggestion for Mr. Negroponte and his project. Help provide third world children with the $100 laptop by offering the laptop to first world consumers for $1,000. Below are 7 reasons why the OLPC and their laptop is well worth $1,000.

1. The project uses the domain www.laptop.org. Michael Dell himself couldn’t get that domain name and yet the OLPC uses it.
2. The software is 100% open source
3. The LCD screen is dual mode 200 DPI color and high resolution black and white for viewing in direct sunlight. The screen can also pivot and is reversible allowing pseudo-tablet computing.
4. The laptop is very portable, weighing less than 3.3 lbs/1.5 kgs and has a built-in carrying handle.
5. Panasonic Toughbook has competition. This $100 laptop includes 2mm thick hard plastic water and dust proof casing with a waterproof keyboard. No moving parts with built-in 1 GB flash memory. Expansion slots are protected by swivel Wi-Fi rabbit ears.
6. This laptop is oh so green. Depending on the display mode the laptop uses a mere 0.2 watts in black and white to a whopping 1 watt in full color. As one could imagine with power consumption so low this opens up many doors. This laptop features numerous power generating options such as foot pedal, hand crank, pull cord (similar to a lawn mower) solar (solar backpack anyone?) and more. Battery life is estimated at more than 4x a standard laptop’s battery life today.
7. It utilizes the revolutionary mesh network. Each and every laptop serves as a dedicated router thereby exponentially increasing the range of internet access. Instead of every laptop needing to be within range of the internet they will only need to be within range of each other, as long as one laptop has internet access.

Don’t get me wrong I love my mac but I would proudly use the $100 laptop. Watch out Steve Jobs!

Attention all SEO black hats this just in, you can now buy blog comments for the low price of 100 comments for only $24.99! This service will not only promise to increase your blog traffic through the use of comments but guarantees to alienate your site from many blog users if you are found using this service.

Below are my top 7 reasons why NOT to buy blog comments with commentary from the site’s home page in quotes:

1. It is spam. “Buy Blog Comments dot com is NOT spam!” Hello founder Jon Waraas (pronounced Warez). Yes it is! Besides, any seasoned comment moderator backed with the power of Akismet should not be too affected by this new service anyways. Actually, it is really easy to detect a Buy Blog Comments’ comment just look for a post by Jon Waras.
2. It is a black hat service. “We specialize in selling blog comments for blackhatters who are looking for good quality backlinks.“
3. There is not a PageRank minimum for the site’s they comment. FAQ - “Will this help my page rank? Oh yeah! It most definitely will.“
4. Buyer’s confidence is not very high. “We are working hard to get all the orders done, we will try and get all orders done within 3 days of ordering […] Once you order, we will start working on your order within 48 hours. Once we get done with your comments, you will get a text file with all the links.“
5. They are an expert on the nofollow tag. Or are they? “However, it [nofollow tag) dose not work. I and a few others have personally tested it and have gotten decent rankings from just using pure blog comments.” Later on … “BUT! We try to not post comments on blogs with the nofollow tag on the sites. We have gathered a list of people who don’t support the nofollow tag, and some types of blogs that do not use the tag at all. So don’t worry, you will still be getting weight to your site.“
6. Rest assured your comments will receive the same quality copy writing skills as the buy blog comments website. See above in bold. Dose != does.
7. It can ruin your credibility. What will your peers and readers think if they cannot trust the dialog that is taking place on your site?

Well Jon Waraas, if your service does not take off you could always resort to extortion. I mean why not? You already seem drawn to the black arts. Just start a new site, www.seoblackhatusers.com, and auction off the names of everyone who signed up for your buy blog comments site.

This objective, unbiased review was brought to you by impaul.com (sarcasm). A good start for your SEO is to review the various plugins and best practices.

In a world of limited lifetime warranties L.L.Bean takes the high road, less travelled, while wearing the latest in Gortex foot technology. They stand by their quality, life time guarantee and most importantly their customer service. Read on…

Everyday we analyze, compare, sort and search, Google, Yahoo, clip ads, flip countless pages and more just to find the right deal. But what happens when the “chosen one”, the best deal or simple transaction goes awry? Who comes to bat for you?

Customer service … or at least that’s the plan

MSN, the de facto home page for more corporate users than Starbucks abusers, reported the “Bottom 10 in Customer Service.” Big names you associate with price and product but not necessarily value show up on this list:

Bottom 10

1. Sprint Nextel
2. Bank of America
3. Comcast
4. Time Warner Cable
5. AT&T
6. Citibank
7. Wal-Mart
8. Verizon
9. Wells Fargo
10. DirecTV

Dishonorable Mentions

1. Dell
2. Circuit City
3. Best Buy
4. Home Depot
5. Sears
6. Macy’s

Notice any similarities? These are all household names that are probably responsible for the largest marketing expenditure in their respective industries. But why skimp on the customer service? Is a relationship too costly to manage? Of course it is! <author’s point to be lazy> If you Google (do you capitalize it when used as a verb? I guess so) “cost more to keep a customer” you will find multiple reinforcements to my statement.

The question now is why? Why go against the grain, invest in your customers, seek long term buyer-seller relationships?

I am sure there are countless answers to these questions - profits, image, integrity, ethics … loyalty (notice how I slide morally to the right). Now who is the champion of customer service and comes first to mind as far as customer loyalty is concerned? Well if you read the title of this blog and have been wondering when I was going to get on point now is the time.

Tested and true experience has shown me the pinnacle of customer service is L.L.Bean. When entering college they replaced the 10 year old backpack I had since third grade. L.L.Bean over-nighted a pair of gloves to my grand father on December 23rd because the post office delivered the original order to the wrong address. More recently, my wife and I through our infinite consumer novice ended up with three XL dog beds. At first we were going to replace just one bed. However, we soon found out XL was far bigger than what we imaged from the L.L.Bean website therefore we needed to return two of the beds.

I logged into my UPS account, put together a shipment and received whiplash from the sticker shock that slammed me with $65+ shipping fees!! I frantically voided my order and thought to call L.L.Bean for advice. This was 10:15pm PST. I pulled up their website, easily found their customer service phone number and next to the phone number I found a familiar friendly phrase I have never seen in the corporate world, “anytime.” Where 24/7 rules supreme L.L.Bean walked past the water cooler, beyond the Mantra Machine (the remnants of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse word of the day machine), grabbed a black coffee off the camp fire and replied, “Yea. Call us anytime.”

I dialed.

It rang once.

A woman picked up. It was like calling a friend.

She understood my plight and offered to send me a UPS shipping label for use with my return. I quickly and gratefully accepted the offer.

Total time to resolve my issue: 2 minutes

Total time I will be a L.L.Bean loyal customer: lifetime + word of mouth to family and friends = forever

So while I’ve had my countless run ins from the “Wall of Shame” the few times I have ever needed a success story in customer service, L.L.Bean has not only stepped up to the plate but to string along another baseball metaphor they hit it out of the park!

Customer Service Good Bad