Close but no cigar…

Yesterday I spotted a deal on Lowes.com. To avoid shipping charges, I arranged for pick-up at a local store. Paid with my Debit card and everything was hunky-dory.

So far so good.

About an hour later my cellphone rang; it was a nice chap from the store letting me know that my order had been “pulled”.

As Darth Vader would say “Impressive“.

On the way home I decided to stop in and pick the item up. Even though, for once I was on a tight deadline, as I had ordered some food to take home for the posse.

In retrospect, this was a bad idea.

When I approached the customer service desk the chap nearest me was walking away. Initially I thought that this was rude, but I found out that he was the telephone-answering dude and was returning to his post.

About fifteen seconds later he noticed me and asked “Do you have a question?” (personally I prefer “How may I help you?”, but I suppose that I should be grateful that he acknowledged my existence). I told him that I was here to pick up an Internet order. He asked for my phone number and checked it his computer. Since he was seated about twenty feet away I had to shout. I don’t really mind but a little discretion would have been nice. The next customer could be your teenaged daughter…

Anyway, he called out on the PA system and a couple of minutes later a young dude showed up, got his instructions and headed, to my surprise, towards the back of the store…

I waited, and waited, and waited. Finally after what seemed like an age he showed up with a bunch of keys, walked over to a wall-mounted cage at the front of the store and pulled out my order. A couple of minutes later I was on my way, incandescent with fury…

Why so angry? Simple, I placed my order on the Internet because it was fast and convenient. So why on Earth did it take 22 minutes to fulfill a single-item order?

By far the greatest delay was the young dude’s odyssey in search of the keys. Looking at the process from a time-and-motion perspective, the keys to the “internet cage” should be kept at the front desk. If they were elsewhere, they should have been called to the front desk instead of dispatching a runner and wasting fifteen minutes.

Lowes, if you are listening, your ordering process is first-rate, and the follow-up phone call is a brilliant idea, but the in-store execution leaves much to be desired. I get the impression that the stores have not yet caught up with this Internet thingy.

To quote Yoda, “Much training you still need“

Just give me six minutes with the RIAA…

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Recording industry, thank you for allowing me to speak.

I am nobody special. I am not a rock star, an industry insider or an executive. I am the voice that is never heard. The voice of the customer. What I have to say gives me no pleasure, but I’m going to say it anyway, because somebody has to.

Ladies and gentlemen, your industry stinks. Only the Oil business is more hated and reviled by its customers. Unlike them, however, your commodity is a luxury, and you consider your customers to be thieves.

And what, exactly, is your business? Here’s the surprise - you are not in the Music business.

You are not in the Art business either, even though your suppliers are called Artists.

You are not in the publishing business.

You are in the business of selling little plastic disks, and have been for over half a century. Everything else is secondary to that. The music, the artwork, the packaging, the record deals, the distribution are all concerned with maximizing the price and sales volume of those little plastic disks.

While it is true that music can now be supplied in digital form, sans disque plastique, I am sure that if you could wave a magic wand and make MP3, iTunes et al vanish, you would do so without hesitation. How do I know? Because you have a consistent track record of trying to destroy any technology that threatens your plastic-disk model. The Compact Cassette was nearly destroyed, the MiniDisk was effectively castrated because of your actions; your hatred of the PC, which you consider to be a clear and present danger to your business model, is well documented.

The world has changed. Get over it.

Your paranoia is showing: You have bought and paid for horribly draconian legislation like the DMCA that forces the Government to do your dirty work while making it a felony for your customers to put their music on their iPods because you put some lame “protection” on those plastic disks - protection that does not work, is an inconvenience at best and breaks computers at worst - and that’s ok, because your rights are the only ones that matter enough to need protecting.

Your blatant hostility to digital music is a matter of record. When Apple first came to you in 2000 with iTunes, MP3 was already about five years old; the genie was already out of the bottle; yet they had to wrap it in DRM at your insistence. Now you have a love-hate relationship with iTunes; you would love to raise the prices, but they won’t. You would love to walk away, but cannot say goodbye to the profit

When a Russian site called AllOfMP3 started selling music files online you tried to shut them down. Your claim that they were “illegal” made no sense - you make your plastic disks in China, because it is cheaper, but when your customers wanted to buy their music in Russia for precisely the same reason, that was suddenly “illegal”. They continued to be a thorn in your side until the State Department pressured the World Trade Organization to shut the site down as part of Russia’s price of admission.

In your stampede to put them out of business, however, you missed the point. They thrived, not because people are thieves but because they supplied something you wouldn’t - choice, convenience and freedom from DRM at a price the customer is willing to pay.

You insist that a song download is worth at least a dollar; I disagree - music has become a background task; something we do while jogging, driving or working. It has been years since “listening to music” was considered a pastime. Like long-distance phone service, it has lost its value.

Personally I would pay 25-50c for a high-quality song, $5 for a downloadable album. You may consider that too little, but given that it is almost all profit, with a cost to you of almost zero. At that price people purchase without thinking, and will not care for resale rights. Wrapping it in DRM lowers its versatility, and hence its value to me - so if you want to add DRM, you had better cut the price even further.

You currently insist on charging $10 for a downloaded Album, even though a used CD can be procured for less. You insist on $1 per song, even though it has been proven that halving the price results in a sixfold increase in sales. As Mr. Spock would say, “Fascinating”.

You also insist on pricing new music the same as old music, which makes no sense to me. Personally I believe that copyright on music should expire after ten years - copyright was intended to be temporary - but since your paychecks depend on eternal residuals I have absolutely no chance of persuading you of that.

My purpose here is not to destroy your business, but to point out that your business model no longer works and needs changing. If you are serious about improving your profits, here are some suggestions:

1. Lower your prices - $1 per song is ok for hot new releases, but once the hotness has worn off the price should drop. 25c to 50c per song, depending on quality, is good. Anything over 50c per song means that your customers will think before buying; people pick up dropped dollars or quarters; anything smaller they usually ignore.
2. You’ve sold plastic disks, why not sell data? A per-megabyte cost works. Higher quality and longer tracks can and should cost more.
3. Don’t try to control digital music distribution - iTunes can sell more music and do it better than you can. Let the sellers do what they do best. Stay out of that business.
4. DRM does not work - drop it. This has been proven time and time again. If the price is right, people will repurchase if they cannot find their old purchase.
5. Simplify the royalty structure. 25% for the distributor (e.g. iTunes), 25% for the artist and 50% for you is more than fair. How many industries make 50% profit? Don’t be greedy.
6. Relax… we’re not all thieves, and at 25-50c per song you can compete with free. Just ask the guy who dreamed up AllOfMP3.
7. While on the subject, find him and hire him. If you can hire a white house staffer who accidentally “corrected” a law in your favor, you can certainly hire a guy with a proven business model.

Make these changes and I will happily buy digital music instead of used or cut-price CDs. You will get $10+ per month out of me that you weren’t getting before. That’s “easy money”; or to put it another way, “money for nothin’”

Thank you for your time.

Don’t Proctor & Gamble with your floor!

About eighteen months ago, we had a hardwood floor put in. It was an engineered Laminated product, and when completed it looked beautiful. I remember putting on a pair of clean white socks and “skating” on it.

Recently, however, it has started looking decidedly faded, and seems to stain easily. Whether you are wearing shoes, socks or are barefoot, it leaves unsightly marks, and your shoes/socks/feet “stick” the the floor.

We had been using a wet Swiffer on it once a week to keep it clean - the product is advertised as being “suitable for Hardwood Floors”, but when I did a little googling I came across several websites that all said “Do not use a wet swiffer”.

Now they tell me.

I also found a lot of recommendations to use this product, from a Swedish company called Bona (which sounds rude if you pronounce it carelessly). A mopping kit cost $35, and I was able to pick one up from a local Hardware Store.

Last night I tried it out for the first time. The verdict: “We have a winner!”. While the results were not perfect, they were a major improvement - it will take a good few applications to remove the accumulated gunk of a year and a half of Swiffer debris, but already the floor is a little less sticky in the area I tested.

I’ll follow up with subsequent comments on this one.

Now reading: How to think like Leonardo Da Vinci

The Force is strong with this one…

Review of Eragon

Long ago, in a galaxy land far far away…

It is a period of civil war tyranny. The galaxy land of Alagaesia has been taken over by a Sith Lord Dragon Rider.

Once the Jedi Knights Dragon Riders were the guardians of peace and justice in the galaxy land, but they were betrayed from within a rogue Jedi Dragon Rider who betrayed and murdered the rest.

Meanwhile, out in the middle of nowhere, a farm boy named Luke Skywalker Eragon finds himself caught up in his events he cannot control. He finds his Father’s Light Saber a Dragon Egg, and reluctantly at first, becomes a Jedi Dragon Rider.

He is mentored by Obi-Wan Kenobi Brom (played by the highly-acclaimed British Actor Sir Alec Guinness Jeremy Irons), himself a Jedi Master Dragon Rider, who dies in battle saving Luke’s Eragon’s life.

In the climactic scene, Luke Eragon confronts a the rogue Jedi dragon rider named Darth Vader Galbatorix, who has become a dark lord of the Sith King of Alagaesia.

Guided by a recording vision of a Princess named Leia Arya he ventures forth to rescue her. In the climactic battle scene, About two-thirds the way through the movie. Luke Eragon takes out the Death Star Durza, the King’s Sorcerer with a well-placed pair of proton Torpedoes Sword Thrust right in the Thermal Exhaust Port, right below the main port heart. In so doing, he fulfils his destiny as the last Jedi Dragon Rider.

In spite of the numerous Star Wars comparisons, I found this to be a highly enjoyable film, though Ed Speleers (who plays Eragon) is a little wooden at the beginning. He plays the Heroic Dragon Rider far better than the callow farm boy.

Perhaps the best accolades go to the Dragon, Saphira, beautifully voiced by Rachel Weisz who conveys just the right mixture of emotion and feral power (Dragons choose their riders - their bond is so close that if a rider dies, so does the dragon, though the converse is not true) (the moment when she first breathes fire is one of the most triumphant of the entire film.

In the Sequel, the Empire King will surely strike back.

Now Reading: On Intelligence, by Jeff Hawkins

We, the people…

…are getting tired of being gang-raped by the oil companies. We are sick of sudden spikes, one-penny-difference “competition” and continual “Prices are going up!” gloom-and-doom on the news, presumably circulated by the oil companies. We hold the following truths to be self-evident.

• The Oil Companies will continue to maximize their profits at the expense of the rest of us.
• Most consumers have no effective choice when it comes to transportation.
• The Petrol industry is NOT operating according to free-market principles. The small number of Oil companies has led to an oligopoly.
• The Oil companies will suppress anything that threatens that oligopoly, including alternative technology that threatens their business model.
• The Oil Companies have acquired and buried patents and technologies that would have resulted in significant lowering of Petrol consumption.

We the people therefore recommend the following remedies.

• All Gas stations will be prohibited from changing their price more than once per day
• That daily change will be limited to five cents.
• Those who break this law will be required to refund ALL customers who purchased on that day, on request.
• Credit-card companies will be required to assist in providing said refunds.
• Oil companies will be given the choice of investing in new refineries and drilling for oil within the US, or paying a windfall tax to be set by Congress.
• This tax, alone with 25% of the taxes that are currently coming from Petrol, will be used to finance academic research into alternative fuels.
• The results of that research will be made freely available to all except the Oil companies, who will be prohibited from investing in or owning any alternative-fuel businesses, due to the inherent conflict of interest.
• Tax breaks will be made available to businesses offering alternative fuels and technologies.
• The building of new clean-burn coal-fired and/or Nuclear electric power stations.
• Research and investment into a viable inter-city and inter-state Public Railway system.

Well… that’s the best I can manage at short notice. The question is: do you have a better idea?

Now Reading: The Testament, by John Grisham

Buh-bye Hillary…

Last night I broke a longstanding rule and watched politics on TV. Senator Obama had received enough votes to clinch the Democratic Nomination.

If you had tuned in without being aware of this fact it would have been easy to assume that Senator Clinton was giving a victory speech instead of conceding defeat. It was certainly long enough…

“For the past seven years, so many people in this country have felt invisible, like your president didn’t even really see you. I have seen the shuttered factories, the jobs shipped overseas, the families struggling to afford gas and groceries, but I’ve also seen unions retraining workers to build energy efficient buildings, innovators designing cars that run on fuel cells and bio-fuels and electricity, cars that get more miles per gallon than ever before, cars that will cut the cost of driving, reduce our reliance on foreign oil and fight global warming.”

What exactly are you trying to say here? The president is far from perfect, but this looks like you are trying to blame him for the bad things while taking credit for the good ones.

“Now the question is, where do we go from here, and given how far we’ve come and where we need to go as a party, it’s a question I don’t take lightly. This has been a long campaign, and I will be making no decisions tonight.”

Decision? What Decision? As best I can tell the “decision” is out of your hands. It has been made for you.

It is my opinion that Senator Clinton should have done this several months ago instead of dragging party and country through this wringer. In my opinion her inability to admit defeat has made the Democratic party into a laughingstock and caused much amusement.

As one wag put it: “Quitters never win, Winners never quit. But those who never win and never quit are called idiots“.

I also watched the Victory speech by Senator Obama. He was far more gracious and statesmanlike than his opponent, and while I don’t agree with his “FedGov-can-fix-everything” politics, I respect his position and achievements.

That a black man an African-American (literally - his Father was African and his mother was American)  could be nominated to run for President is the best proof of the greatness of America that I have seen in a long time.

How to keep my business

It never ceases to amaze me how corporations will spend huge amounts of money to win new customers, but once they have your business they act like they are entitled to it, thus losing the most important marketing tool of all - word of mouth. Here are some of the ways that you can impress me.

• Don’t hide from me! Too many businesses have an attitude that can be summed up as “give-us-your-money-but-don’t-talk-to-us”. They bury phone numbers deep within their websites and hide contact info, perhaps in the hope that you won’t ever trouble them again.
• Pick up the phone! Part I : “Press 1 for the runaround, press two for a total waste of time. If you want to talk to a real person you are out of luck”
• Pick up the phone! Part II : Don’t tell me that “Call Volume is high” unless you are going to tell me when it is not high. Don’t tell me that “All of our operators/associates/peons/slaves are busy” unless you are going to tell me when they are not busy or will offer a callback. Both of those phrases mean the same thing: We do not employ enough people and we’re hoping you don’t notice.
• Indian Call Centers? Just Say NO! A lot of business farm out customer service and support to India. The first sign of this is when they pick up and give their name - and you know that’s not their real name. Think about it: the first thing that they tell you is a lie… and it usually goes downhill from there.
• Answer the question! When e-mailing, I don’t mind getting an auto-generated “we-got-your-message” reply, but I would appreciate it if the subsequent reply was read and replied to with something that was not spat out of a boilerplate-cut-and-paste machine.
• Share the love - and the paperless savings! “Going Paperless” may be and added convenience for me, but is a massive cost savings for you. So why not cut me in on those savings? A one-off $20 bonus - or $5 annually - should cover it.

Now reading: Me, myself and Bob, by Phil Vischer

Vote for me!

If I am elected President I promise to attempt the following:

• Repeal the 16th amendment, abolish the Federal Income Tax, and replace it with a 15% Purchase tax on goods.
• Abolish the Department of education, which costs taxpayers a billion dollars a year and educates nobody. Education belongs to the States and Counties - it is not the Federal Government’s job.
• Expand and fund the INS so that they can do their job properly. Policing our borders is our job.
• Bring our soldiers home - not right away, but soon - from the 130+ countries in which US Troops are currently stationed. They can’t all be vital to our national security, and we can no longer afford to be the world’s policeman.
• Quit meddling in the internal affairs of other countries - or, as Jefferson put it, “Free Trade with all, entangling alliances with none“
• Quit sending Tax dollars overseas - reduce the Foreign Aid budget to $0. If you want to help the poor and needy overseas, knock yourself out - you just don’t have the right to do it with OPM (Other People’s Money).
• Establish a trade policy of reciprocity. You tax our goods, we’ll tax yours. Fair?
• Balance our budget. We expect you to live on less than you make, it’s time we did the same.
• Allow anyone to opt out of Social Security, and refund their contributions. Again, this is not the Federal Government’s job - let the States take care of this.
• Establish a referendum on energy policy. Do we drill for oil, build refineries and power stations and have cheap energy, or do we protect the environment at the cost of dependence on foreign oil? Hint: You can’t have both.

A letter to my Congressman

Every day, I record the prices at the eight gas stations that I pass en route to work. Once at my destination, I enter those prices into a web site (www.louisvillegasprices.com). I have been doing this for some years. During that time, I have noticed some patterns that I would like to share with you.

The overall trend is 7-14 days of slowly falling, interspersed by lightning price spikes.

In a falling phase, prices generally go down by 1-2 pennies per day. During a falling phase there is diversity in price among the eight stations I pass.

During a spike, the price rises by 15 to 40c. The petrol sitting in the underground tank is suddenly worth more than it was last night. At the end of the spike, everyone is selling at exactly the same price, except for a few stations that lower their prices by exactly penny - presumably this is what they call “competition”.

Here in Louisville, the price also spikes at Derby, The Car show, the Quartet Convention… basically, if the circus is coming to town, prices spike. Apparently they never saw it coming. Again.

I am less bothered by price than I am by volatility, which seems to be getting worse. Some stations have installed LED price signs, presumably so that they can jerk the price around more quickly and more often.

I believe in a free market. I don’t believe that price controls will solve anything, but it is axiomatic to anyone outside of the Petrochemical industry that something is rotten in the States of the Union.

At first I thought that one method to stop them bouncing the price around would be to mandate that they only set their price when they get a delivery (which I am told is every 2-7 days). However, they would simply take a small delivery every day, set their price as before… and nothing would change.

In the short term, one solution is to prevent the stations changing their prices by more than 5c per day. How Congress might choose to enforce that without violating free-market principles is a challenge.

In the medium term, Repealing the Federal Gas Tax and getting the states to agree to repeal their gas taxes would be a start. Auto manufacturers should also be manufacturing smaller more fuel-efficient vehicles instead of marketing SUVs and Trucks. One way to encourage this is to suspend the car-tax breaks on those vehicles (unless they are purchase by a business) and moved those tax breaks to vehicles that make over 40MPG. It’s time we admitted the obvious - SUVs are not trucks, they are passenger vehicles, and not all Trucks are business vehicles.

In the long term, we need to be drilling for oil and building refineries and power stations. Environmentalists will complain; if they want to save the Earth, let them limit or ration their electricity and gasoline. At some point, we will have to make a choice between the environment and progress; we cannot have both. That choice should be made on a State by State basis.

Just a few thoughts.

Underwhelmed

Of all of the elections that have been held in recent years, the current Presidential election is the least impressive.

Why? Two reasons:

1. The Democrats seem to be dragging their party and the country into the mire by their inability to settle on a candidate. This ongoing cat-fight must end.
2. With a moderate Socialist, a Socialist, and a Hardline Socialist, the only real choice on the table is what brand of Socialism you prefer.

I think that the picture sums it up best:

If you vote for what you’ve always voted, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.

Don’t blame me - I don’t get a vote; and if I did I don’t think I would know what to do with it.

Now Reading: Freakonomics, by Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt