Route 23 Honda

Last month I had to make one of those big financial decisions. My old truck finally crossed that line of marginal utility where the cost to benefit ratio was no longer in its favor. New car time.

So, you're looking at the title of this and thinking, "this guy bought a Honda." Wrong. However, I did have a great interaction with a Honda dealership. I came so close to buying a Honda Fit that I actually put a down payment on it to hold it until the weekend. In that time, I decided to buy a different car. Yet, I walked away from this so happy with the way I was treated by Route 23 Honda that I feel I need to sing their praises.

First, there was our salesman, Alton Brown. We wanted to buy the car just so we could make Good Eats jokes for the next 10 years. Of course, he was just a pretty good guy. He wanted to sell the car. He didn't want to lie to us. He didn't want to make a bunch of small talk or try any sneaky salesman tricks. Sure, he had the pamphlet on the car memorized, but I never caught any of the little deceptions that pretty much every other salesman we met threw in. Over the course of our dealings he was pretty open and didn't disappear for too very long.

Then there was the price. Cost was a major factor for me. I need basic transportation with a little cargo flexibility and room for my family. Beyond that it's all dollars. I have a spreadsheet that compares the yearly TCO for a range of cars. I used various resources to collect information on the price of each vehicle, including what people really pay. I knew that Honda doesn't cut too many deals. And yet, they did. They offered me a price that sites like TrueCar say the Fit simply doesn't sell for, at least not new. Even better, I was approved for a loan with a 0.9% APR. I knew I was getting a great deal.

So, I signed some papers and put a deposit down. They said the deposit was refundable. The paper they had me sign said it wasn't. So I had them note that it was and initial it. I knew Amex would have my back, but I was still nervous about the potential fight to back out. I had a pit in my stomach about it afterward. Oh well, it would be a pain but it might not even be necessary.

It was, though. We backed out. Not because the deal was bad. Not because the car was bad. Instead it was because another car, the Kia Soul, was a better fit for us. We liked it better. It was more comfortable. No fault of Route 23 Honda, they did a great job.

Amazingly, here's where things got even better. A simple phone call to my salesman was all that was required to cancel the deal. I could hear he wasn't happy about it, but he didn't say anything to that effect. I thanked Alton and told him we'll see him next time. I hung up. A few days later I had to give my credit card number to their billing department (they actually have security on their system so the number was unavailable) and they issued the refund.

That's it! It was one of the best experiences I've ever had with a dealership, and I didn't even buy there. Because of this, I will certainly visit Route 23 Honda any time I'm shopping for a car. Good dealerships are few and far between.

Answering Google Searchers

We've already established that I like to check out my traffic stats. Of course, there's that little section that tells you what search terms were used to find your site. I've seen plenty of sites simply lampoon people for searching things. I'm going to do things a little different and try to answer some questions.

Ever since I wrote my complaint and follow-up about Chegg my blog has started to come up when people try to find out more about book rentals. I'm still a big advocate of this, it is usually the cheapest way to get textbooks. So I'm going to focus on that right now, since we're right at the beginning of the semester.

"chegg crappy service"
It makes me a little upset with myself that this was the top search term for my site last month. I was venting after a bad experience. I want to take a moment to clarify that one experience doesn't define a company with hundreds of thousands of customers. If you hit my site because of this I hope you read that and let it sink in. It is also worth noting that eventually Chegg responded to my complaint, this indicates that up the chain people care and it's actually a sign of a good company to resolve issues like this eventually. While it can be terrible to be on the consumer end of these exchanges, we have to take the corporate side into account. Some extent of the treatment I received is there because Chegg must deal with fraudulent claims. There is always some friction required to push back and keep frauds from running wild.

"chegg charged me for full cost of book", "chegg lost book fee", "chegg missing book", "what happens if you dont return chegg books"
Chegg does charge fees for lost and damaged books. So do all book rental services. In fact, if you change the media you'll find that under certain conditions you'll be charged for the replacement of DVDs from Netflix or games from GameFly. It's a perfectly reasonable requirement and it is necessary for these service to stay in business. However, that does not excuse these services from providing their customers with reasonable due process to prove that the missing book is indeed the fault of the customer. Netflix is pretty good about this, they excuse a certain number of missing discs before they begin to bill you. They also monitor their distribution and return process closely to look for theft trends. I think there may be a problem with this process for Chegg. That doesn't excuse you if you lose a book. My suggestion is to thoroughly document the return process so that if something goes wrong you can easily demonstrate that it was beyond your control.

"what box do we use to return to chegg"
Ideally you'll save the box they shipped your book in. However, I realize that's not always possible. Use the smallest box that will fit your book while still allowing it to lay flat. I suggest you wrap it in newspaper and put something in the box to keep the book from bouncing around, which may damage the book. I returned the last book I had in an Amazon box and had no problems. If you can't find a box for free then you can buy one cheaply at a UPS store, the couple of dollars likely won't break the bank and it's still cheaper than buying used from most sources. You have to go to a UPS location to drop off the package anyway.

"quality of chegg books"
Chegg books seem no better or worse than any decent used books. I didn't have a problem with them at all. In fact, I've actually found some useful notes. I don't recall any books being pristine, but the economics books I rented were both in very good condition. Comparatively, the used books I've bought were no better. Also, I recently rented a book from BookRenter, which I was expecting to be in excellent condition since their policies are less lenient to abuse, and I found it was in no better quality than those I'd received from Chegg.

I hope that helps you wayward searchers. Next time it seems I should take up some questions about Hulu.

Book Rental Industry Madness!

The Google email alerts were aflutter with activity today after I wrote my post about Chegg.

One of the benefits of having a blog that almost no one reads, yet still having access to Google Analytics, is that I can practically hone in on every little hit my blog receives. Sometimes it's just fun, because I can presume to know exactly who that hit represents. Other times it's handy because I can track down strange traffic.

In this case, there was strange traffic. I do get stray visitors to my blog, but they are few and far between. So when three people replied to the last post, something seemed odd. Maybe my preachy rant about how to run a customer service operation had gained traction somewhere. Needless to say, I was curious.

So I checked. My little blog received visits from a PR management firm, Chegg competitors, and of course, Chegg.


I have to say... I'm flattered.

I'm also impressed. It's good to know that these companies are paying attention. It's great to see them using the web to manage their reputations. This probably shouldn't be too surprising. These are web upstarts, they aren't stodgy blue chips and they haven't grown beyond the point of caring.

Since I know you guys are reading, I want to say something to you.

Chegg: Thank you for your efforts to make me whole again as a customer. I don't know if that was a direct result of what I wrote before, or if it was already happening. We weren't expecting another call or the personal attention we received. Any way I look at it, in the end you went above and beyond.

I hope my story raised some eyebrows. My wife said that she found other stories of similar experiences on the web. The problem we had, more than anything, was how far things went and the treatment along the way. Until this incident I was an advocate of your service. I hadn't written about it, but through word of mouth I would tell everyone in college to check your site first. I'm sure if experiences like mine are limited then you'll continue to have high customer satisfaction.

Fleishman-Hillard: I suspect your reputation management service had something to do with the above. Kudos to you.

BookRenter: I do still intend to use your service. Thanks for visiting.

And I'm not quite sure why Follett visited. I know they're in the textbook industry, but that one seems odd.

It's been a weird day, but I feel like this was productive.

Edit: My wife points out that Follett also does book rentals. Guess I didn't look hard enough (and thinking back I vaguely recall the press release on that one).

Chegg: Cheap Books, Crappy Service, Costly Results

My wife and I have been using Chegg for a while with decent success. Renting a book through Chegg is generally at least $30 cheaper than buying used, even if you sell the book back. I like the business model and all was going well until last semester. Now they're trying to charge me full price for two books on a gotcha scheme where you can't prove their employees' ineptitude.

Here's what happened: Both of us rented several books for Spring semester. Time slipped by and my wife never sent them back. So we paid a late fee. That was fine, it was our fault. After that we made sure to send it back, because inaction on our part would result in the purchase of the book. So we sent three of them back in a single box.

The catch: only one of those books was checked back in. The box was received, there was no mention of damage to the box. Thing is, we can't prove that we put all of the books in it. Why? Because with Chegg you simply use their return labels, so there's no receipt saying how heavy the box was, nor is there any remaining evidence of the contents. It's your word against theirs.

What this means for you is that if one of their warehouse workers screws up, you're paying. Or at least you'll be charged. I'm nearly certain that's what happened here. I have no hard evidence but it certainly does fit. We know we returned all of the books due at the time, the box arrived, but only one book was checked in. That's not all, though...

Just today, as we attempted to print the return label for the last book we'll ever rent from Chegg, we found that the book was marked as returned. It happens that this is my Macroeconomics book, whereas the Microeconomics book from last semester is one that went missing. Needless to say, they're very similar books. Why is this one, which I'd only just received back then and is still sitting in my office, marked as returned when the other went missing?

There's a million scenarios, but this is what seems likely: The books arrive and for whatever reason they are manually checked in (a barcode is misread, maybe that's just the process). The worker receiving the book doesn't pay enough attention, because they're probably not paid well enough to pay attention and likely have quotas to meet for the day. Said worker checks in the book that was recently rented instead of the book that was due.

That still leaves a mystery of what happened to the other book that is missing. However, in such a scenario it's likely that stressed, underpaid workers doing repetitive cataloging will make mistakes. So it wouldn't surprise me if that book were simply not properly checked in.

Of course, that's only half the problem. The other half is the way this service will treat you in this scenario. They're argumentative. They're brash. They refuse to acknowledge any possibility of fault. You'll spend countless calls with different members of their CSR team explaining the same thing over again, and receiving the same attitude each time. Then they charge you full price and completely destroy the value of their service.

That ends my relationship with Chegg. Well, there is one more chapter to this. After my wife speaks with yet another supervisor today, if the problem is not somehow amicably resolved, we'll be speaking with our credit card company to dispute the charge. Fortunately, Amex tends to look down on this as much as I do.

Update: It would seem that it is possible to get through to these people. After a conversation with a supervisor, and an explanation that yes there are two economic fields with similar names, we're getting a refund. There's no explanation as to what happened to the other book. I don't particularly care, though. It's over and that's what matters.

Update 2: Pretty wild. We received another call and a bit more of a refund. I think Chegg is taking this to heart. There's more here.

Cablevision

I'm a fan of Cablevision. As an addendum to my recent decision to cancel cable again, I want to clarify that it is not the fault of my cable company. I may not like giving them too much of my money, but I'll likely remain a customer of theirs as long as feasible.

Their services are great. I realize that they're a little pricey, but you get top notch service for the added cost. My Optimum Online connection is reliably fast, and I certainly could not do better for the price. At the very least, not without signing a prolonged contract that would surely balloon in cost after some period of time. Their cable packaging is a bit more expensive than Time Warner at the top tiers, but they offer lower tiers that are cheaper than what you can get elsewhere. I'm a little less bullish on their phone offerings, but I think they're good for a cable company. I truly believe that the totality of their services provides great value compared to others in the industry.

The customer service at Cablevision has consistently been top notch. The only unpleasant experiences I can recall involve installation. Like the time that we had to have the installer dispatch four times because they kept installing at a business with a similar address down the street. That happens so rarely that it's pretty much a non-issue. Every time I've called customer service or visited one of their locations the people have been helpful and friendly.

The impetus for this post was a reflection on their customer service during my cancellations. I was never treated poorly. I was never deferred to a retention specialist. There was no push back, no fight, no pleading for me to stay. Each time I was treated with respect and a friendly person helped me accomplish my goal.

These things matter. Service and value are the sign of a good business. More importantly, I can't think of the last time I thought of these things as the strength of a cable or phone provider. Typically, this industry thrives on anti-competitive practices, coercion and cost-cutting measures. I honestly believe that Cablevision has better values than most of its competitors. It isn't their fault my values have changed such that I no longer need as much of their services.

Cutting the Cable

Enough talk. This weekend I took action. I cut my cable service back to basic cable. This means my cable bill will be roughly $13 per month for television. I still have to return the DVR/cable boxes, though, so currently the television part of my bill is around $40.

The number porting process seems to have canceled the VOIP service for me. That part of the bill has already gone away. I am not going to cancel Internet service, so that will represent $50 of my bill. The final cable bill should be ~$63, the actual number depends on what taxes apply.

Here's the breakdown of the old bills:

Cable television, Internet, and phone: $164
Netflix: $15
Total: $179

The new bills:
Cable television, Internet: $63
Netflix: $18
Phone: $15
Total: $96

Savings: $85

After a few months of savings in the entertainment budget I will probably buy another antenna to see if I can get a good enough signal. If I can make that happen then I can save almost $100 per month over the old plan. We already used the first month's entertainment budget to buy Kevin some DVDs. I hope he won't miss Moose, but at least he can still watch a show or two.

One last note: Cablevision's customer service was top notch during my interactions with them. I'm unhappy that they misled me when I switched to their service but at least they were pleasant about everything. Most importantly, I never once had to speak to a customer retention specialist. No one tried to talk me out of my decision. No offers with strings attached. They just did what I asked while treating me politely.

Wonderful Apple Customer Service Experience

My iPod Touch was having problems. It would randomly crash, displaying a vomit-like multicolor display of failure that was inescapable until the unit ran out of batteries. I restored the software, bought a couple of upgrades. Nothing fixed my problem.

I had another issue. I won that iPod and didn't have a receipt or service contract or anything. Still, I was fed up with the shenanigans so last week I walked into the local Apple store and asked to see someone at the genius bar.

If I'd made an appointment I may not have had to wait a half hour. So I wandered around the mall. Thirty minutes later, back at the store, I was able to go sit up at the bar. There I listened to some poor fellow that was going to have to wait for his custom MacBook Pro to be shipped to the store, replacing the old one that died.

When it was my turn I handed over the device. The tech plugged it in, looked at it with a magnifier and a light (I think he was checking for water damage), then proclaimed that he'd give me a replacement. ...Wha?

That's right. I walked in with no receipt, no warranty contract, no explanation of what happened, and he simply replaced it. He even gave me a receipt this time. His explanation was that he thought it was a software issue but he saw something going on with the hardware and he'd rather give me a new one than potentially force me to come back in two days when it happens again.

That's good service. Actually, that is pretty much the best customer service experience I've had with small electronics. Not only are my problems solved, but the new device is shiny and free of scratches from before I bought an iPod case.

Shockingly Pleasant Verizon Service Cancellation Call

I just canceled my Verizon Wireless service. The call took 8 minutes total. The person who helped me was very polite and was never forceful, nor did she try any annoying retention techniques. Service like that will make me consider Verizon if I'm ever dissatisfied with AT&T.

Why Doesn't the Theater Industry Do Something?

Here's a brief diagnosis of what's wrong with the theater industry. I was going to suggest that they do more dinner theaters and IMAX screens, and I still think that's the answer. Make a movie ticket significantly more expensive and increase your service level. That will make movie goers feel special and they'll respect the entire experience more. One thing is for certain, something has to change if this industry doesn't want to join the drive-in...

After much ado, I recently purchased my first HDTV. I've had a surround sound system for quite a while. I also have a Netflix membership and a very comfortable couch. This leads me to the question:

Why should I ever go to the theater again?

I'll further qualify this by stating that I am nearly 30, so I'm mature enough to not bite on advertising hype. I've learned the people and conversations that I need to ignore so that the plot is not spoiled for me. There are other factors to help solidify the decision that I really don't want to go to the theater anymore, but I won't bore you with them.

Back to the question, I think that people need a compelling reason to go to theaters. I'm going to try to find ways that the industry could answer this question, but in reality the industry should be attempting to answer it themselves. Without an answer, I believe that somewhere around three of every four theater goers who purchases an HDTV will abandon the theaters and never look back.

The Simple Answer

The simple answer, and the one that theater owners have stuck to, is that they must keep DVD release dates pushed back as far as possible. They must cling to the old system where movies come out in theaters and then are released on consumer media some arbitrary time span later. This gives the theaters a temporary monopoly that adds value to their ticket sales.

This is the same flawed logic that is hurting the entertainment system everywhere. They are simply so afraid of change that they will spend every dime they can to make things stay the same, instead of adapting. They're ignoring what their consumers want. The consumer wants to either stay at home or have a better experience at the theater. They don't want to go to the theater to spend $50 for sticky seats and obnoxious company. (I can hardly remember the last time a movie at the theater wasn't marred by some selfishly loud commenter or teen who can't hang up their cell phone.) People will not continue to honor the monopoly of the theaters if the entire experience is terrible, the rest of the industry will not continue to ignore this either.

If the industry and the consumers abandon the theaters, who is left? No one. The theaters will fold at that point. America will then be left with an immense collection of empty big box multiplexes and a mere memory of when it was worthwhile to go out and see a movie.

Basically, while the limited monopoly answer is still part of the equation, it's not a good answer. Theaters can not afford to rely on this. The supplier is threatening to take it away and the consumer is demanding it go.

It's an indictment against the theater experience. The only way to fix this is to fix the experience. The answer lies in asking more questions. Questions like, "How can the experience be fixed?"

5 Days

5 days is how long it's taken my package to get from Jersey City to... Jersey City. I don't know whether Amazon or the USPS is at fault but it is ridiculous either way.

Thank You For Working

I want to take a moment to express my appreciation to everyone who is working during this three day weekend. Even those who were able to take the 4th off, but have to work today or tomorrow, deserve some gratitude. Holidays are great, but the world continues to move. Thank you for facilitating that movement. Rest assured that there are people who don't take you for granted.

Netflix Redeemed

After a few weeks of customer complaints they decided to keep their profiles feature.

I'm still going to work to move my ratings outside of Netflix. I've begun rating movies on IMDB for this. Then I'll delete my profile and assimilate my information into my wife's, since she's no longer using the service anyway. I still wish they made the data portable, it would make everything so much easier.

Why, Netflix? Why?

I just talked to Danni from NetFlix customer service. She provided more psychological help than anything else. She can't help me, because they haven't enabled her to do so.

Netflix is deleting my profile in a few months, and there's nothing she or I can do about it.

The closest thing to a solution she offered was to go into my wife's account, look at my account through the friends feature, and manually add all of the movies from the queue and rate all of the movies again. There is no way to switch my account to the main one, make my account a new account, or copy the data automatically. It's really disappointing.

It seems that I'm somewhat alone in seeing the value of all of this. My wife mocks me for it. To me, this was a database of nearly every movie I've ever seen with at least some thought put into how I felt about that movie.

It won't seem right to mix that data with my wife's. Suddenly I'll have to think, did I watch that movie, or did she? Did I really give that 4 stars, or was it her?

More than that, I occasionally took part in the community, and had recently made an effort to write a few more movie reviews. I was toying with the movie reviewer rankings to see what I could do to raise mine. Now, why bother?

I'm pretty disappointed, NetFlix. I've often evangelized your service and I've rarely had an issue with your customer support. By your own metrics I was within the top 2% of reviewers even before I actively tried to manipulate the rankings. You're just tossing that in the trash in a couple of months.

You couldn't even write an account migration script? What a letdown.

Difficult Choices

This is an email I wrote to the users of one of our applications. I realized that none of the users want to hear all of it, so I decided not to send it. Still, I think it's an interesting look into what I do, and the little details that I toil over.

Recurrence, recurrence, recurrence…

One of the most requested features for the new Corporate Events Calendar is now implemented, sort of. We have partially implemented the feature, and plan to finish it soon.

Recurrence is one of those things that are easy to describe, but hard to get right. We had a very crude implementation done by release date. We realized that it was not right and so it was removed from the calendar. In its place was a message [I considered it a promise] that it would come soon. Since then we have spent much time in planning and development to strike a balance between easy to use and powerful, functional and sane.

We believe we have achieved those goals, but you are our ultimate judges. Read on to learn how it works.

Recurrence can be broken into a few questions: How often, how many, and what gets copied.

How often can you schedule a recurring event; daily, weekly, monthly, yearly? We chose the middle two. You can either schedule a weekly or monthly event. Daily and yearly events rarely recur in such a pattern, and we do not want a lot of wasted reservations being created, we are going to handle those differently. I will cover that later. As for the weekly recurrence, you can set what day of the week to start and how many weeks between occurrences. The monthly scheduling is done by selecting the day again and which week of the month the event should be held.

How many events can you schedule at once? This was a particularly challenging question. We would love to allow for infinite scheduling, but that is not very manageable. We chose to limit you to 24 monthly occurrences and 52 weekly occurrences. You will have to revisit your events to create a new schedule each year, which will allow you to make the necessary adjustments and will self-clean any abandoned event schedules.

What gets copied? Again, there were no easy answers. We could copy everything, from basic information to each invitation sent, but only certain values apply to every event. We chose to copy: Event Information, Rooms/Equipment, Scheduling, Capabilities, Facilitators, and Sign Up settings (not the attendees). We have left off the Invitations and Menu, because those tend to change from event to event. Obviously, while the schedule is copied, it is also modified to start as of the new date.

One last feature is that you will see a list of all scheduled occurrences after you have added recurrence. This will allow you to quickly jump to other occurrences. You can also use this list to cancel future occurrences, just select one or more and press the Cancel Selected Occurrences button, then confirm your action.

Now that I have covered what is implemented, I need to discuss what is still missing. The biggest feature that is missing is the ability to modify all of your occurrences at once. After you schedule multiple occurrences of an event you will have to manage each one separately. We will implement a way to push changes to all occurrences and plan to release it in the near future.

Another feature that is missing is the ability to add an individual occurrence. This will allow easy scheduling of yearly events or quick copying of an event with two instances. We think this could be of great benefit and plan to release it shortly.

I cut it off there, realizing that I need no conclusion to an email that I will never send.

I love to be open with my clients about what I do. Sharing information is important to me. I find that when people know what goes into every decision that we make then they're more likely to appreciate what we get right and positively contribute when we get things wrong. The problem here is that most people don't care about the decisions, especially not until they believe it effects them. So, I'll hold this one back.

Seth Godin on Customer Retention

Last week I lamented our experience with the attempt to cancel our Vonage service. I couldn't help but think of that as I read Seth's blog today. Although his experience was different than mine, it illustrates the opposite end of the same concept.

Last week, my company switched providers of an expensive commodity. The company we had been with realized we were moving on and moved into high gear to keep the account. At one point, it was clear that they could have gone into war room-mode, denigrating our decision, criticizing the new company and scorching the earth. I watched the gears turn, though, and saw them take a different path.

Then later...

That company we switched from last week? Instead of ruining our relationship and criticizing our judgment, they kept the door open. They congratulated us on our growth and earned the right to work with us again one day.

See the difference in the tone [theirs and his] and the experience? Great customer service also means knowing how to say goodbye.

No Further Remorse for Vonage

Just as I'd started to have a little remorse over my decision to leave Vonage, my wife gave them a call. Their customer service was terrible. My wife came away upset and more ready to leave, and never return, than ever. Unfortunately, she wasn't even able to get what she wanted to done.

First, why do I have to cancel my account within business hours? If you have CSRs available 24/7 then you should be able to make account changes during that time. Checking a box to cancel an account, which I should be able to do from my computer anyway, is not something that requires a lot of training, time, or money.

Then, they ask for verification by using information that you may not have readily available, and not every CSR asks for the same things. She was disconnected twice while trying to retrieve this information. Once you get past this step, the person verifying the information can't even help you deactivate your account. You have to be transferred to "someone who can."

Enter the dreaded Retention Specialist. These are the people who are willing to do everything to get you to stay, but will argue forever if you still want to leave. These people will offer you deals, and they're great if you really want to stay. My wife wanted to leave. The other person wanted her to stay, but could only offer a small concession on price and some magic benefit where if there were a hurricane people could somehow stay in touch with her. In the end she was disconnected again.

The specialist left us a snotty voicemail saying he was sorry that she hung up on him and she'd have to call back to finish the disconnect. I'm inclined to believe that she did not hang up on him, but hearing the complete story I feel she'd be justified in doing so. The funny thing is that he left the voicemail on our Vonage service, which we don't use anymore.

In the end, I have no more remorse. Even if the cable company screws me by raising the price down the line, they've had excellent customer service for the last few years, so I'll be fine with it. If I do leave and look for another VoIP solution (I'll probably just get rid of the home phone completely in that case) then I won't look to Vonage. They hassled my wife for over an hour with what should have been a 2 minute procedure, or a 30 second one that she could complete on her own.

Vonage, please fire/reassign every retention specialist. They don't work the way you want them to. For every customer you save using a retention specialist you piss off five more to the point that they'll never consider your service again. Focus your money on excellence and value of service and you'll have less customers even considering leaving. Make leaving easy and make returning even easier, and you'll win back customers if your competitors aren't up to the challenge.

An Open Letter to Dell

Dear Dell,

Over the years I've been a fairly staunch supporter or your business. I argue with friends and coworkers, often against an unseen adversary of their other acquaintances or just hearsay, that Dell is no worse than any other major computer manufacturer, just cheaper. I also own several of your products, including two computers that I paid for and several that I inherited over the years.

With that in mind, I offer you a small piece of advice: A $130 battery's lifespan should be more than 2 years.

Thanks
Dan

HeaDache TV

I'm trying to buy my first HDTV.

This is a huge entertainment purchase for me. Aside from a few computers that were around $1,000, I've never spent this much on electronics. The closest I've really come to a purchase like this was when I bought my first LCD monitor.

The purchase process is a confusing nightmare.

This market seems to be a huge mess. Depending on who you listen to you are either wasting money by buying a name brand, or saving yourself from huge problems. You should buy a TV that can display 1080p, unless your viewing distance is greater than 360 deg.* 60 * pixel pitch / 2 * Pi. I'm not kidding, either. Most TVs have VGA hookups, but if you use those many display at full resolution and you have to use a DVI to HDMI converter.

When you walk into a store that sells these you can immediately see the difference from brand to brand. Unfortunately, many commentators online will tell you that the people in the stores don't know how to properly adjust the units, so you can't even trust that. It makes perfect sense for an electronics store to spend time adjusting a set with a high profit margin while leaving a set with a low profit margin alone.

Finishing off the whole negative experience is when you find out that you're going to need $50+ worth of new cabling for this TV. Also, the salesman informed me that I need some outrageously expensive surge protector. If I bought the setup he was selling it would cost me nearly $300 in cabling just to accomplish my goals.

Who do you trust?

Trust your senses. Well, the safe bet is to pick a unit that has a good picture and a good price in the store. Then go home and find out what the bargain basement price is for that set. Trust your eyes. Trust your common sense.

Trust the manufacturer. The manufacturer will have some spiel to try to get you to buy their product, but the facts about the unit must be documented. While a reseller has an excuse, and a reason, to have vague or misleading product information, the manufacturer really doesn't. Any manufacturer that is vague or misleading shouldn't be trusted and should be avoided. If you can't trust the people who made the device then why would you put down hundreds of dollars for it?

Trust the consensus. Don't listen to any one individual, especially online. Remember that a dissatisfied customer is generally 5 to 10 times louder than a satisfied one. Also, a satisfied customer typically feels good about their purchase and any negativity about that product makes them question their decision, so they get defensive. The only way to reconcile this is to get a consensus of opinions. If you can't find a negative comment on a product then it's probably not very popular and you're running the risk of spending money on an untested product. If a product has nothing but poor reviews then it is, at best, mediocre. Mediocre products rarely have fans. Ideally you'll find a comfortable ratio of good to bad reviews, somewhere between 5:1 and 10:1 is a safe bet, note that a bad experience is far more likely to earn a review so these ratios really heavily favor a good product.

Don't trust salesmen. They are there to sell you something. They want to make you feel good about spending as much as possible. They can help you find what you want, but you have to walk in with a budget and an expected price point. The salesman will fill that price point and then try to nickel and dime you with cables and extended warranties. Don't fall for this. The extras that the sell at those stores are horribly overpriced and you may not even need some of them. You will need some new cabling, and if you only have cheap surge protectors then a new one isn't a bad idea. Don't pay these people for them.

Don't trust haters or fanatics. This goes back to the idea that you shouldn't trust a single source. A hater will dislike a brand because they had a bad experience with that company, or someone they know did, or they're merely a fanatic for another company. Fanatics won't allow reason to influence their decision that only one company sells a product worth buying. Often, they have a distinct lack of reason for why that is the only brand they'll accept. These people are only worth listening to if you also plan on listening to their contemporaries with differing opinions so you can decide who is the most persuasive.

I really wish this were an easier process. I don't like spending this much time and effort to make a purchase for a device that I'll merely be staring at. Hopefully in another 5 years the quality of these products will be to a level where few deviations in picture, features, and durability will exist. When that happens the whole process will be as simple as it's been for the last 20 years to buy a CRT. Until then, it'll be a headache. Right now that headache is mine.

Oops

Okay, so I should have verified that Vonage still doesn't offer anonymous call rejection before I wrote that last post. They now offer it, not that I was ever informed. I checked earlier this year and it wasn't there, so it still took them nearly 3 years (since I joined) to implement it. That's way too long.

My other option saves me money, so I'm not changing my mind. Such is life.

So Long Vonage

Dear Vonage,

I write this farewell with a heavy heart. There are many reasons why I didn't want to let you go. In the end, I failed you and you failed me. It's time to leave.

My friend was an early adopter of VoIP and his testing led me to sign up for your service. I've been a loyal customer for about five years now. I recognize that you're a pioneer in the field. I appreciate that Vonage isn't part of a monopoly. I liked most aspects of your service. I never cared much that 911 didn't work quite as reliably as with a POTS line, and I realized that the telcos were the real bad guys in that situation.

I really wanted to make it work. I stuck with you when my cable company started offering VoIP. I even went so far as to take pleasure in thwarting their telemarketers when they called to offer their service to me, "No, I have Vonage and I pay $15 plus tax." That always shut them up.

That was then. Now it doesn't shut them up. Their first tactic was to offer a year of service at the same rate. I don't like introductory offers as much as permanent ones, especially when after the introductory offer the deal isn't as sweet as what I have. Now they've changed the deal so that it's permanent. On top of that, they discount my television and internet service as well, making the phone bill virtually disappear into the cable bill. The pragmatic side of me, the one that would rather have that extra $15 for his son, said that it was time to bite.

You failed me first, though.

Despite the easily implemented advanced functionality of VoIP service, you never implemented the one feature that I wanted so dearly, the only feature I miss from the Verizon days. All I asked was for an anonymous call rejection function. It's not that hard, and most phone service providers offer it.

ACR was the real deal breaker. Without it we still receive too many telemarketing calls. Even New Jersey's strict telemarketing regulations don't eliminate all of these incredibly annoying calls. This includes the one company that sneaks under the telemarketing radar by being a charity*. Another large segment of these calls were pre-recorded campaign statements during the last major election. They're an annoying way to push information or make a sale. The worst offenders use a call box to call several numbers at once and put the others on hold. These organizations don't want you to know who they are because you might not answer the phone, you might complain about them, basically you might do something to stop them from annoying you other than give them what they want - normally your money.

When I found out that my cable company offers ACR and their service will save me money it was too much. I couldn't stay with you. I'm sorry. I wish you well. Maybe some day I'll be back.

Sincerely,
Dan

*They've called with a few charities. The names are always very close to legitimate charities, but slightly different. One can assume that some money makes it to the claimed beneficiaries, but this company always shies away from any attempt to find out more about them. If you interrupt their script with a challenging question or request for more information that doesn't involve a commitment to donate they hang up on you. The last few times they've called I've taken to saying, "Take me off your list," as fast as I possibly can. A few times I've made it through the sentence before they hung up on me. My guess, based on their shady telemarketing practices, is that almost none of this money goes to charity, instead it probably gets sucked up by "overhead" in the form of huge salaries for the executives. I bet some of the new employees even think they're doing legitimate charity work, maybe they are... but that's not the way to do it.