Giving Up the Ship

We came across two items in the news last week and are trying to understand why they elicit different reactions from everyone who encounters them(including us), even though they seem to be morally equivalent.

In the first case, 17 year old Jacquelyn Lockard noticed $2.2 million extra in her bank account. She informed the bank of the error, and the bank credited here with $125 worth of interest the deposit had gathered while it was in her account.

In the second case, Microsoft overpaid the severance of some workers it laid off, and asked for the money back. This was met with general outrage that Microsoft would expect the money back. Microsoft has since agreed to let the affected employees keep the money.

We are struggling to find the fundamental difference here. In both cases, a corporation mistakenly gave people money they were not entitled to. In one case the expectation is that it should be returned, and in one case not. Some possible distinctions:

The Amount Of Money Involved
It’s possible that this is a question of magnitude. A multi-million dollar error is so clearly egregious that it must be returned. An error amounting to mere thousands is a cost of doing business. This is an unsatisfying answer because the magnitude of the error should not affect the moral calculus.

The Size of the Corporations Involved
Perhaps we have more sympathy for a small credit union then a huge multinational corporation, especially when the small company has made a huge error. This is likewise an unsatisfying answer. Stealing from the rich is as wrong as stealing from the poor.

Who Discovered the Error
Perhaps the difference is that in the case of the credit union, Ms. Lockard reported the error to them. She is therefore portrayed in a sympathetic light, as someone who made a choice to do the right thing. In the case of Microsoft, the company contacted the employees and asked for a check back, causing it to be perceived as a bully. We hesitate to accept this explanation, as we are fairly certain nobody would object to the credit union asking for $2.2 million back from Ms. Lockard.

How Sympathetic the Person Who Was Overpaid Was
Being that these were severance payments and Microsoft had just laid these employees off, Microsoft already appears in a negative light towards them. Nobody has sympathy for the bully boss, firing employees. These are unemployed people in a terrible job market and our sympathy naturally goes towards them. Asking for money from them, appears to us to be adding insult to injury. In the case of Ms. Lockard and the credit union, there is no perceived wrong done to her. She may be a nice person, but there was never any expectation that she should receive this money.

Morally, there is no difference between the two cases, but in both customer service and interpersonal relationships, being right is not enough. Especially when dealing with a public image, corporations need to take a step back and look at how their action will be perceived and not just at whether what they are doing is legalistically correct. Microsoft’s cost was far greater than the $125,000 they overpaid here.

Perhaps Chris Cummings can give us an example of this from his deep experience.

In addition to sharing a love of each other, Troy Cobb and Lacey Williams share a deep love of all things LEGO. Cobb arranged for a sign saying “Lacey Will You Marry Me?” to be added to the Vegas Strip model at LEGOLAND. Lacey obliviously walked past the sign twice before Troy finally got down on one knee and presented her with a LEGO box containing a traditional ring. No word on whether a LEGO Elvis will be conducting the ceremony.

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• Man Proposes At Legoland [Proposals] (i.gizmodo.com)

One hundred fifty feet below the Earth, in an unused section of a limestone mine, one might be forgiven for not knowing what to expect. A mad scientist’s evil lair? A massive bomb shelter? Whatever fanciful speculation one might have, it would not be as incongruous as the booty stored in such a cave by O’Shea Ltd.

O’Shea stores over one million sealed game cartridges for the Atari 2600 and 7800 including titles such as Ms. Pac Man and Pole Position. GameSetWatch recently interviewed Bill Houlehan, O’Shea’s president. Houlehan spoke about the circumstances of O’Shea’s initial purchase of three million games in 1990, about the trends in sales, and recent price change.

We still have a working Commodore 64 in our closet, but if we had a 2600, this would be quite a temptation. Remaining games can be purchased from O’Shea’s website for $5 each.

Airlines want your love. Desperate to save themselves, and divert attention from their panoply of surcharges and fees, they’re asking you to beg congress to stop the greedy oil speculators. We don’t expect them to find a lot of sympathy from anyone who’s flown in the last 10 years.

Smart

My dad gave me one dollar bill
‘Cause I’m his smartest son,
And I swapped it for two shiny quarters
‘Cause two is more than one!

And then I went and showed my dad,
and he go red in the cheeks
And closed his eyes and shook his head-
Too proud of me to speak!
-Shel Silverstein

We usually enjoy reading Steve Silver’s blog(we still can’t help but smile when recalling the story of the neo-nazi who lived with a black prostitute in a storage container in his ex-wife’s yard) but were puzzled by his description of a post by Shysterball as “genius”.

Shysterball points out that the Yankees lineup average age would only increase from 32.1 to 34.98 if 34 year old Hideki Matsui were replaced with 60 year old Billy Crystal, and comments “I know the Yankees are an aging team, but wouldn’t you hope that adding a 60 year-old to your lineup would skew that average age up a bit more?”

Actually, the age of the Yankees lineup is irrelevant.

60(Crystal)-34(Matsui) = 26 years

26/9 = 2.8888888888… years

No matter how young or old the Yankee lineup is, swapping those 2 players will increase the average by exactly 2.88888..

While reading the Boston Globe last week, we were surprised to learn that Ghost trackers detect ‘presence’ in town building. Apparently, faced with plummetting profits, the Globe editors have begun to run old stories from the dear, departed Weekly World News.

What else explains the breathless, credulous reporting of this story:

The ghost trackers who spent Monday night at Town Hall investigating eerie footsteps that echo upstairs said they found something that may indicate a paranormal presence.

The two-member team from Paranormal Institute of New England said their laser thermal detector - which measures dramatic drops in temperature that some say indicate the presence of spirits - went temporarily haywire, soaring up, not down. A digital camera that ghost tracker Len Anderson was using also went on the fritz.

“That’s usually an indication of a presence,” he said.

Anderson and his fellow ghost tracker, Ed Beaulieu, are busy this week reviewing the film and audiotapes they obtained Monday night. Spirits are not visible to the naked eye, they say, but do register in photos, videotape, and recordings. Anderson and Beaulieu do not intend to release the full results of their excursion into the paranormal until next week, when they meet with selectmen, who allowed them to investigate rumors of the otherworldly in the 135-year-old building.

Beaulieu said that he didn’t sense a definite unearthly presence in the cavernous room during the investigation, as he has in other locations, but that doesn’t mean there were no spirits present. It’s also possible, he said, that spirits were scared off by reporters who accompanied them on the exploration.

The two may return, by themselves, for another check

Some have claimed that the death of the newspaper is greatly exaggerated; We have proof that it is not: We have seen its ghost.

Apparently, the Department of Defense has run out of email addresses. In the flyer distributed throughout Baghdad announcing a reward for information on missing soldiers, tipsters are urged to send email to a yahoo.com email address(baghdadtipshotline@yahoo.com). The military has apparently been using this address for some time, as it is mentioned in an article on the Fort Drum website from January 2005.

One wonders about the genesis of this. Presumably concerns of professionalism and security were pushed aside in favor of expedience; this is likely the electronic equivalent of troops armoring their own vehicles.

We hope and pray for the safe and quick return of Sgt. Anthony J. Schober, 23, of Reno, Nev.; Spc. Alex R. Jimenez, 25, of Lawrence, Mass.; Pfc. Joseph J. Anzack Jr., 20, of Torrance, Calif.; and Pvt. Byron W. Fouty, 19, of Waterford, Mich. We just hope that bureaucracy and process are not impeding their rescue.

A soldier on patrol in Iraq had his life saved by this iPod. An insurgent fired at him at close range. and he was hit where his iPod was in his jacket pocket. It slowed the bullet down enough that it didn’t completely penetrate his body armor, and he escaped unharmed. More info and pictures here.

We knew the iPod was everywhere…even Iraq. We know you can do all sorts of things with it, and enterprising manufacturers are building accessories that integrate it into clock radios, speakers, etc. We did not know Apple was marketing it as a lifesaving device. Apple has offered to replace the iPod, as have several organizations. Apple should ask to include this in their slogan. “Wear your iPod…it just might save your life.”

Next Monday, the maker of Equal will take the maker of Splenda to Federal District court in Philadelphia. Since Splenda was introduced in 1999, it has replaced Equal as the Number 1 artificial sweetener in the United States with 62 percent of the market.

The case centers on Splenda’s advertising, which states “Made from sugar, so it tastes like sugar.” Equal claims that to be an “urban myth” on its website.

Spenda’s main ingredient is sucralose, which does not appear naturally. There are dozens of ways to make sucralose, some of which use sucrose. The maker of Spenda states that the process it uses involves sugar. To make sucralose, three Chlorine atoms that are naturally found in foods like salt and lettuce to a molecule of sucrose(sugar). The sucrose vanishes during the process, but the result, sucralose, is 600 times as sweet as sugar. Splenda then mixes two bulking agents, dextrose and maltodextrin.

The key issue appears to be what you can say about a lab product and its relationship to nature. Equal, an aspartame product, is composed of two amino acids and a methyl ester group….and those has no relationship to actual sugar…despite its sweetness. It describes its product in advertisements as “like sugar”.

Equal’s ally in this lawsuit is the Sugar Association, a trade and lobbying group for the natural sugar industry, which has separately sued the company. If Splenda isn’t sugar, can it point out it starts out as sugar, or is that misleading advertising.

As the New York Times points out, the situation could change the market share of the industry, and it all comes down to consumer perceptions and how they interpret these claims.

Someone placed a fake ad on Craigslist, inviting people to take whatever they wanted for free from a Tacoma, WA rental property. The owner, Laurie Raye, recently evicted her tenant and cleaned out the place. However, a phone call alerted her to the destruction caused. She found the outside trashed, the inside nearly gutted and covered in graffiti.

The house was virtually dismantled. The light fixtures, hot water heater, the front door, the windows…even the kitchen sink. Her neighbors later reported seeing strangers hauling stuff away from her home, seemingly looking for salvage material.

An off-duty police officer noticed the ad, inviting people to enter the house, and later noticed the ad was flagged and cancelled after a reported burglary. Raye believes the poster had a personal grudge against her, and commented that, “The instigator who published this ad invited the public to come in and vandalize me.”

When Raye contacted Craig’s List, she received an email back saying they can’t release information about who posted the ad without a subpoena or search warrant. News story available here.

Going to the Post Office is a pain in the neck. Our neighborhood is apparently so dangerous that they need thick plexiglass there. Some think it is to protect the postal workers from robberies…but we think it is to prevent angry customers from rushing the postal employees.

The Associated Press recently reported that as part of a “retail standardization plan,” clocks have been removed 37,000 post offices. Unless they start medicating us while on line, I think with or without a clock, a visit to the post office is going to take a long time.

We recently gave up and bought a postal scale and started using Click N Ship on the USPS website. You can mail order everything you need. The Post Office will send you priority mailer boxes free of charge, as well as all the other postal equipment you need. And we bought blank shipping labels. With any luck, we’ll never have to see the inside of a post office again…

If we only could find a way to deal with our less than professional mail carrier…

How long before young Ms. Spears(or is it still Mrs. Federline) shows up in Bahrain in a burka married to Michael Jackson?
One of the enterprising scribes at an established and respected news source ought to set about to make this happen. If they can also adopt Anna Nicole Smith’s baby, we may be able to save the newspaper industry.

Oliver Desofi, a 77-year old retired bank executive, has won a battle with Cingular…thanks to the efforts of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. Cingular refused to remove more than $31,000 in roaming charges for calls that he said he never made.

Desofi couldn’t have made these calls…as all the over 4,000 calls were made in Nicaragua…a place he has never been. He complained of fraud…Cingular disagreed. We wonder they assumed Mr. Desofi was sleepwalking…or suffers from amnesia about his trip to Nicaragua. They cancelled his account when their fraud department could not find any problems.

While now, the bill has been credited, and an additional $120 added for the inconvenience…should he wish to return…Mr. Desofi does not plan to return to Cingular.  We don’t blame him.

We are not sure which is harder…trying to get yourself declared not dead when an organization thinks you are, or trying to convince an organization that your loved one has died and thus will not need them anymore…

• Sprint refuses to cancel the account of a man’s brother, who died suddenly in December. After over forty minutes, the best he could get was a $5.95 a month vacation hold. He had all the information and passwords, but no death certificate for eight to ten weeks, since he passed in his sleep with no apparent cause of death. There is no indication they even informed him they would do so when such a document was available.
• Verizon has done just the opposite, declaring Catherine McCall, a Verizon retiree, deceased, even though she is not. In August, she lost her husband, and in early November, notified the company to stop sending a stipend to pay her husband’s medical costs. Not long after, a letter arrived addressed to her estate, demanding the return of the September through November pension checks, and a letter to her husband, advising that since his wife was dead, he was no longer eligible for the stipend. Despite vows to repair the problem, she did not receive a December or January pension check…as this Philadelphia Inquirer suggested, perhaps the slogan, “We Never Stop Working for You,” is inaccurate.

Generally, the attendance of a father at his child’s birth is not optional. This potentially put Chicago Bears superfan Mark Pavelka in a bind. Pavelka had scored much coveted tickets to Sunday’s NFC Championship Game against eh New Orleans Saints, but with his wife pregnant and due on Monday, the prospect of birth and sport colliding put him in a quandry.

His wife, Colleen Pavelka, perhaps fearing what Mark’s decision might be, opted to be induced on Friday to avoid the conflict. Said Mrs. Pavelka: “I thought, how could [Mark] miss this one opportunity that he might never have again in his life?”

It is unclear whether Mrs. Pavelka was referring to the game or the miracle of his son being born.

Our blood is as red as that of the next American, but we think this calls for some perspective. Are sports entertaining? Yes. Is it an electrifying experience to be in a stadium full of myriads of fans cheering on a team to which they have arbitrarily pledged allegiance despite having absolutely no real connection? Yes. Is its importance even remotely comparable to attending the birth of one’s child? Not even close… though we might be more understanding if it were a Yankees game.

We bring you another part of the Consumerist’s series on tips on exercising your rights as a consumer, with our comments

1. Use a speaker phone - recording helps too
2. Set aside at least 30 minutes - On hold time alone can take that away
3. Get a human - Gethuman is very useful. And you can’t argue with an interactive voice response system
4. Gather your evidence - keep all written correspondence, recordings of conversations, financial statements, etc.
5. Act like a human - Acting like a rampaging animal won’t make someone want to help you.
6. Don’t think the world revolves around you - any corporation has a lot of customers…things shouldn’t be slow…but don’t expect instant results
7. Know your enemy - Become intimately familiar with the people you are fighting
8. Take notes - Writing down important information is a great way of organizing your thoughts and plan of attack
9. Don’t be afraid to hang up and try another operator - not everyone is as helpful or competent as you’d like
10. Run out the clock - Be patient…triumph takes time
11. Be firm - Don’t give up
12. Keep calmly repeating your story
13. Say exactly what you want - Have an idea of your desired course of action and/or compensation
14. Don’t ask for yes from someone who can only say no - don’t just ask for a supervisor…ask for someone who has the authority to act
15. Make a business case for your wants - don’t just say what you want…say why it is a good idea to give it to you
16. Honesty begets honesty - If they catch you in a lie, they won’t help you at all.
17. There’s sometimes more freebies to give out early in the day, or early in the quarter
18. Email a company executive, then print it out and mail it

The next ten tips are from the customer service representative side, courtesy who run CustomersSuck.com…with our notes, of course.

1. Be civil - they are human beings(hopefully)
2. Let the rep talk - nothing gets down when two people are talking at once
3. Don’t ramble - it undermines your position
4. Don’t blame reps for corporate policies - they aren’t management, and cannot change them
5. Remember the other person is a person - they don’t deserve your abuse
6. Demanding a supervisor will not always work - they often don’t have any authority either
7. Be reasonable and keep perspective
8. Consider seeing a therapist if you’re screaming at a powerless rep
9. Sometimes you just can’t be helped
10. Don’t tell them how long you’ve been on hold - It may have made you angrier…but the clock starts when they start talking to you

You go on vacation with your family to Disney World…one of the ‘Most Wonderful Places on Earth’, and a costumed man dressed as Tigger sucker punches your fourteen year old son. But at least you capture it on video.

Tigger claims it was “self-defense”…and exactly what led up to the event in front of his parent’s camera is unclear. Was he deserving of violence? Tigger has been suspended, and rightly so. The general manager apologized, and offered compensation…all Jerry Monaco claims he wants is an apology from Tigger.

As proof the Internet is a dangerous place…someone harvested a woman’s blog to produce pictures and details about her apartment and used them to post an ad on Craiglist advertising an apartment for rent.

The blogger, Beth, found out about it when a stranger called about the apartment. Beth contacted ‘Beth’, the one who wanted to rent the apartment, and was told she was in Fremont, CA and could not show it. Instead, ‘Beth’ would overnight the keys if Beth sent her $1500, and if she didn’t like it, ‘Beth’ would send her the money back. Beth couldn’t speak to ‘Beth’ over the phone because she was a ‘deaf-mute.’

The lesson…be careful what you reveal about yourself online. Honesty is good, but personal information should be avoided.

WFTV Florida reports that an angry woman is accused of setting a Walgreens on fire. One moment…she was angry about receiving incorrect change, and the next, she was going up and down the aisles lighting things on fire with a lit cigarette.

In the Walgreens TV commercials, they recount the story of the town of Perfect. The idea being that if you can’t be in ‘Perfect’, why not try Walgreens? Nobody is perfect…of course, most of us don’t burn down the house to protest imperfection.

Another bit of advice from the Consumerist, on how to get satisfaction.

1. Ask for what you want really nicely.
2. Hone in on solutions, not on how bad it makes you feel.
3. Cut to the Chase…expect solutions now…not at some indefinite time in the future.
4. Volunteer Mediators are your friend.
5. Complain to the relevant organizations…consumer advocacy, state attorney, licensing authorities…
6. Take it to Small Claims Court
7. File a Civil Lawsuit