Author: Jason

The Desk That Helps

Random Thoughts
“Hello. How can I not help you?”

So, you have a company and you have customers and they might have problems with your products. You need to provide a method for them to redress those problems. First thing first, decide if you are building a Help Desk or a Call Center. Hopefully you are building a Help Desk, because if you aren’t, I will cut you.

Now that you are building a Help Desk, the next thing to do is determine the avenues you wish to open for support. Phone support is a tried and true method, but you can also do support by email, text, live chat, message forums… So many options. Which ones work best will depend on the type of products and services you provide, but the key is to just avoid confusion. It should be clear to your customers how to contact you and the level of feedback they should expect.

Feedback is very important. If I call and leave a message and then no one calls me back, I feel ignored. Next time I go to buy a product, I might not buy yours if there are other options. The same goes for emails and forums and texts… anything asynchronous needs to have a response time, a point by which you will either have an answer or you will contact the user and tell them you are working on it. I worked for a company once that funneled all support calls to a voice mail box, then when a caller left a message a pager would go off in the office, the person in charge of the pager would listen to the message, create the ticket, and assign it to a tech. We would only call the customer if the message was unclear. The tech would have 60 minutes to respond to the customer, either with an answer or to get more information. The important part is that we explained exactly how this worked to our customers, and while some people I know predicted we’d be flooded with messages that said “I have a problem, call me” the opposite happened. Our customers began leaving extremely detailed messages. Later we added an email address they could send problem descriptions and screenshots to. Again, some people predicted we’d get lots of “I have a problem, call me” emails, but instead we started getting well written narratives with pictures. It was great. But the point is that we established an expectation – report a problem, get contacted within the hour – and since we never ever failed at that, our customers worked to maximize that system, providing the best detail to speed response and increase accuracy of solutions.

Now, the next step is one that nearly all help desks/call centers I’ve interacted with fail at on some level. Assume you are in the business of providing phone service. Now assume half of your network has shit itself and half of your customers are experiencing problems. You need a way to communicate to your staff that the problem is known, how to identify if a caller/user is affected and what to say to them to explain the problem. If I call your help desk to report a phone service problem and your people there happily take my information, assign me a ticket number and tell me a technician will call me shortly without even a mention of a wide-spread outage, you have failed. And the failure will just get bigger because in an hour when I’m still having problems and no technician has called me back (because he’s too busy trying to fix the problem), I’m going to be furiously angry and possibly seeking out a replacement for your service. What would have fixed that? “Oh, this issue is linked with the current company wide outage we are experiencing. Our technicians are working to resolve it as we speak. I will put your name on our call back list to notify you of any significant updates or when a resolution is found.”

The final part of a good help desk (besides good help) is the followup. After the problem has been resolved, probably the next day, someone from your company is going to call the customer and ask them if everything is okay and if the problem was resolved to their satisfaction. Don’t outsource this. And I don’t mean to another country, don’t outsource this to people who don’t know anything about the problem. I work with one company and their followup call is a person who not only doesn’t know anything about the problem, the only thing they know is my name, my phone number and the problem ticket number. They can’t even tell me what the problem was, which is a problem when I have a half-dozen open tickets. 83759374 doesn’t tell me anything worth knowing. And when I ask, “Is this concerning the [insert problem description here]?” they can only reply, “I don’t know.” And I can’t fault them, because they don’t know, they haven’t been given the tools. However, I do fault the company, and it means they exist with one strike against them all the time.

I just don’t understand how so many companies can get something so simple, so basic as setting up a functional help desk that provides actual help and makes their customers feel helped. No, wait, sadly I do understand. Lots of people just don’t care.

Email: The Lost Art

Random Thoughts

I suppose I should entitle this something like “Reading & Comprehension: The Lost Art” because that’s really what’s about to happen, but since I’m most irritated with the way people treat their email, I went with this instead. Anyway, onward…

Let’s pretend I send you an email. And let’s pretend that in that email I ask you two questions. When you reply, answering only the first question and I have to send you another email with the second question, you look like an idiot. Emails aren’t twitter. Don’t stop reading at 140 characters. Read the whole damn thing.

Extending this, if you are sent an email asking you to do something – for example, to look into a previously reported problem and find out why it doesn’t appear to be being worked on – and your first thought is that you need more information – continuing the example, the ticket number of the original problem report – before you fire off an email asking for the information – “Do you have the ticket number?” – you should probably scroll down and read ALL of the emails in the chain – including the one right below the one you are replying to, in which the ticket number is given. When you don’t do this, you look like an idiot.

Some people – idiots – will defend this behavior, often citing reasons such as “I was reading this on my phone and the screen was too small.” As a solution, try this: Don’t read emails on your phone if you can’t properly read emails on your phone.

Lastly, sometimes when a company sends out an email – specifically an automated one – to which they do not expect a reply – probably because they are just informing you of a status or error – and within the body of the email, either at the top or the bottom or somewhere in between, it says “this email comes from an unattended mailbox, do not reply” or some variation thereof, when you reply to that email, get no response, and then later call up angry that no one replied to your email that you send to the totally non-functioning mailbox that the sysadmin only checks to see if it’s getting a large number of bounces or other error conditions, you look like an idiot.

Seriously, though, I’m saying this for your benefit – and mine – because you don’t want to be thought of as an idiot – and I’d rather get stuff done than repeat myself or listen to you complain about a problem that isn’t mine. For the sake of all that which you hold dear, read your damn emails! In full!

I Still Write for Shakefire

Reviews, Stuff on the Net

Shakefire.com… such that it is.

  • Accident : A team of killers create elaborate accidents to take out their targets, but now they are falling prey to accidents of their own, or are they not accidents?
  • Falling Skies : I got to preview the first four episodes on the new season.
  • Trial & Retribution – Set 5 : The UK makes some pretty good cop shows, and this is another one.
  • Road Trip : It was funny when I originally saw it, and it’s still funny now.
  • The FP : This movie is a comedy, but it’s done in the style that the film takes its subject very seriously, leaving the comedy to be found by the audience. The subject? Gangs who battle through a Dance Dance Revolution type game.
  • Franklin & Bash – The Complete First Season : Love this show!
  • Rogue River : Some horror films make sense, and some horror films just get made.
  • A Necessary Death : This was far more interesting than I though it would be. It captured the idea of following around a person intending to kill themselves very well.
  • Destination Truth : I watched the first couple episodes of the new season and mostly concluded that these guys seek truth without science, and thus will never find truth.
  • Freakshow Apocalypse: The Unholy Sideshow : I’d ask who gives these people the money to make a movie, but clearly they spent very little on making it. Terrible.
  • Warehouse 13 – Season Three : I love this show.
  • Extraterrestrial : Simply the best romantic comedy set against an alien invasion ever. This was hilarious and fun.
  • Sanctuary – Season Four : It’s a shame they didn’t get a fifth season, but this works as a good finale.
  • Ghost Attack on Sutton Street : Is this a documentary or a horror movie?
  • Lady of the Dark, Genesis of the Serpent Vampire : This might have been a good short film or music video, but it is a terrible movie.

And there you have it.

Transformation

Writing

Over at the Broken Forum there is a thread for writing in which one of the community is running a series of writing exercises, the first of which is due today. The subject: a transformation. This is short-ish, and I want to revise it again. A couple of trips through editing and I think it could be pretty good.

Anyway, enjoy….

I scratched at an itch beneath my watch band, then turned my wrist to see that she was a half hour late. The dinner rush was still a little while off but the restaurant was busy with the employees setting up all the tables, switching out the afternoon settings for the evening finery.

The waiter brought me another basket of rolls, my third, refilled my water yet again and asked me once more if I wanted to go ahead and order or if I wanted to wait. I told him I would wait. He rolled his eyes at me and walked away.

Another thirty minutes, a basket of bread, and three glasses of water later, Clara finally stepped through the door.

She was looking as good as ever. Her red hair was pulled into a loose pony tail, and it swayed across her back as she looked around the room. I shrank in my seat a little. I wanted to see her, but something made me want to hide, to run.

My waiter tapped her on the shoulder and pointed in my direction. As she walked toward my table I became mesmerized by the measure of her steps. She was tall, nearly six feet, and the grey dress she wore was short enough to reveal her legs with every step. Each foot touched the ground in time with the steady slow beat of my heart.

I exhaled as she reached the table.

“Hi Clara.”

“Jeremy,” she said. It was stiff, not the friendly hello I’d been hoping for. We hadn’t spoken directly to each other in nearly ten days. Trading voicemails, emails and texts.

I stood and pulled out her chair. She sat. There was a little smile as she did. I wiped a droplet of sweat from my brow and then took my own seat.

My forehead bumped the table as I leaned forward to scratch an itch above my ankle.

“Did you say something,” she asked. She’d been looking around the bar. It was getting more crowded.

“Me? No. Nothing. It’s good to see you.”

She didn’t smile. “You too.” It was matter of fact, not pleasant. “Should we order?”

I laughed nervously. “If we don’t, the waiter might explode.”

“How’s that?”

“Nevermind. I’ve just been here a while, drinking water and eating bread.” I indicated the empty basket, the half empty one, and the array of water glasses.

“Sorry, I lost track of time.”

She buried her nose in the menu. I glanced down at mine as well. I didn’t need to look as I was familiar with it, I’d even memorized the prices and which items were recommended as lighter fair for those watching their waistlines.

The waiter approached and asked if we wanted to hear the specials. I shook my head and Clara launched directly into her order.

“I’ll have the chicken fettucine, with the house salad.”

The waiter didn’t write it down. “And you, sir?”

“I’ll have the same.” He nodded and started to turn. “I’ll also take a steak, medium rare. No, make it rare. Can I have two of those?” He nodded again and wandered off.

Clara was staring at me. She blinked slowly and collected herself. “Should we start talking now, or should we wait for the food?”

“Now is good.” I pulled at my collar. My hand went to loosen my tie and then I remember I wasn’t wearing one. I pulled at my collar again and drank another half glass of water. “Where have you been?”

“I’d ask you the same.” Clara unfolded her napkin and laid it out on her lap. “But I already know. You’ve been at home, on the computer perhaps, or maybe you’ve been down to the bar.”

“I went to see a movie.”

“Of course you did.”

“I’ve just been trying to get back to normal.” My left shoulder itched, so I rubbed it through my shirt with the opposite hand.

“And I’ve been trying to avoid normal, Jeremy. I don’t think I can go back.” She sipped a little water from her own glass. “I’ve changed.”

“Is everything so different since we went camping?” I tried to keep the pleading out of my voice but I didn’t succeed.

“It’s all very different, Jeremy! We almost died!” People were looking at us as her voice raised, but then she breathed deeply and regained her composure.

I was scratching at my thigh without thinking of it. My nerves were frazzled now and I was sure I was breaking out in hives. “It wasn’t that bad. We ran them off.” My voice trailed out at the end. She’d actually run them off, while I was busy holding the bandage. It had been sort of amazing, like she was some Amazon warrior princess or something.

“Since we’ve been back, though, all you want to do is stay home, which isn’t much more than we did before. But I want to get out.”

“And do what?” I slugged down another glass of water and the waiter brought me three more along with our salads.

She busied herself with her salad. I could see she was trying to pick out all the right word, she was preparing a speech, or perhaps just recalling from memory she’s already written and practices.

I mopped at my brow with my napkin and pushed my own salad aside. My stomach grumbled. I could smell the kitchen, the steaks being lightly cooked, just enough to warm them without browning. I swallowed the saliva that was pooling in my mouth.

“I started biking to work.” She said it between bites.

I kicked off my shoes under the table and curled my toes. “For exercise?”

“Not really. Just to see more of the world. You know?”

“I guess.”

“I took a pottery class.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Down at the continuing education building. I’ve also signed up for some self-defence, and I joined a book club.”

I ran my hands through my hair and kept tossing glances at the kitchen. I was starving but I also felt like I wanted to bolt.

“What’s wrong?”

“With me? Nothing. Why do you ask?”

“You’re just very fidgety.”

She was right. My hands almost didn’t stop moving. I scratched at the itches on my wrist, my thigh, my shoulder. I was using my feet to scratch at my shins. I rubbed one hand behind my ear and mopped my brow with my napkin again. I took in a deep slow breath and tried to calm myself.

Clara and I locked eyes for a moment, and then she looked away. “Is there something you want to tell me?”

She took another sip of water and pushed the remains of her salad to the side. “I met someone.”

“What?” It came out higher pitched than I wanted.

“It’s just, I’ve changed, and you haven’t, and I need someone who fits the new me.”

“It’s only been four weeks,” I snarled.

She sat back in her chair, pulling away. “A lot has changed in four weeks.”

“We almost died and you run off and find someone new,” I growled. I growled.

Her eyes opened as wide as they would go, and then as I stood they opened wider. I could feel the low rumble in my throat as I rose. My fingernails dragged along the tablecloth.

“Who is he?”

Clara’s mouth moved but no sound came out.

I asked her again, slower this time, stopping after every word, the rumble in throat coating each one with anger. “Who is he?”

She managed to squeak out, “I met him in my pottery class.”

“Pottery,” I grumbled through a mouth now full of extra teeth. I looked down at my hands and saw the elongated nails. Past them I saw my feet. My toes had ripped out of the end of my socks. I glanced toward the bar and caught my own reflection. My ears were pointed just slightly at the tips, my eyebrows were thicker and my hair was growing as I watched it. Hair was appearing at my wrists and my collar.

I thought back, four weeks, to the camping trip, to the attack, to the bite on my arm.

The waiter arrived with our dinner.

I stared at him and the low rumble emanated from my throat again. He didn’t flinch. He looked bored.

“I’m going to take these to go,” I said as I grabbed the two rare steaks from their plates with my increasingly furry hands. “She’ll get the check.”

I ran out of the restaurant, howling into the night.

2012 and still they fail

Random Thoughts

NOlympicsIt’s 2012 and companies are still failing at The Internet.

The Olympics have begun, and NBC has made available every event online for streaming so you can watch them on your PC or tablet or phone. BUT only if you are already paying for TV. If you are one of those people who decided to cut the cord and go back to getting your broadcast TV by antenna or through websites on the Internet, then you are shit out of luck.

NBC had a real opportunity here. They could have allowed people to purchase an online package to get access to the feeds without needing to have Comcast or Cox or DirecTV or some other service. The pitch could have been, “Get access to all the Olympic events streaming on your PC, tablet and phone for $99!” with a perk of “Or, if you already pay for TV through one of our partners, get it for FREE!” Instead though, we are left with “If you are already paying for TV, get access to the Olympics events on your PC, tablet and phone for FREE!”

I really want to give NBC my money. I’d be willing to set aside a number of activities for a couple of weeks while the world’s best athletes compete for the gold, but I can’t. I cannot give NBC my money. Instead, I have to give Comcast my money, so that Comcast can give NBC a tiny fraction of that.

Well… fuck that! I’m not about to pay Comcast a bunch of money for access to 300+ channels I will never watch just so I can stream Olympic events to my PC, completely not using a TV, a set-top box (that Comcast requires) or even Comcast’s internet (since I’d be watching more stuff at work than at home).

This is crazy ass backward. I know why they do it though. It’s because the subscription cable/satellite business is too much to give up. It’s the same reason you can’t get HBO Go without already being a PayTV subscriber and already having HBO through that. I’d love to give HBO my money, but they won’t take it unless it comes filtered through Comcast and their ridiculous pricing plans that force me to get 300+ channels so I can watch 5.

Oh well, I guess I won’t be watching the Olympics. Maybe they’ll get this sorted out by 2016.

And I was doing so well…

Site News

Two weeks. And not long before that there was a ten day gap. I blame a lot of things. The untimely end of the Rebuild project was a bit of a blow. I had intended that to be a weekly feature here on the blog for a long while, and my motivation to start back up has been flagging. I will though, as I plan to sit down on the coming weekend and play through the entire game in one or two sittings to get all the details and screen shots I need, that way the game can’t delete on me again. This will have the unfortunate side effect of me knowing how it ends before I start, knowing who dies before I create them, which is less fun for me as I enjoyed the idea of being shocked and then forced to write out the scenes. I also needed to revisit how I did the screen shots. Before I was manually doing Alt+PrtScr and then pasting into GIMP, but now I’ve got IrfanView which will give me a simple key combination that will screen shot directly to a file in a directory of my choosing, so I can speed through the game. Then I’ll probably take a week or so off and start writing, hoping I’ve forgotten exactly what happens to any individual character.

I’m also working on Season 2 of Man vs Wife. I’m calling it Season 2 because of the, at first, unintentional break we took. In part this was because Dungeon! was such a bad play. I mean, I like the game, but the 2 player version in the manner we chose to play it was rough. The wife hasn’t really felt like playing much, though I did manage to get her to play Fluxx (the write-up for which is going to be hilarious). Any way, so I decided that we are going to line up about 8 games and then do a marathon weekend, which will become Season 2, eventually. I just need to find 8 games worth playing. And I might cheat in order for me to actually win a game – I’ve got a copy of Trivial Pursuit, Genus Edition from the mid-1980s that I’ve played a lot, plus I am a fountain of inane and useless information, and she isn’t.

In spite of not doing much writing for the blog, I’ve actually been writing quite a bit. Reviews for Shakefire as well as my own stuff. I got crafty and took a couple of Sharpies to my NEO and now instead of being Sherman Tank green it’s black on the back and has a nice blood-red top. I haven’t colored the keys yet, and I’m not 100% sure I will. I kinda like that the keys stand out. I’ll post a picture at some point, once I’m sure it’s done.

Speaking of crafty… Dragon*Con is also coming up, and we’ve been trying to actually put together ideas for costumes AND execute them. That second part will be a new endeavor this year as we usually just dream them up and never do anything.

Also, I’ve been sort of working on an idea for a podcast. It’s still in idea mode and I’m working out some of the logistics, but I think it’ll be pretty cool, and different. Maybe… it also might suck royally. Or I might drop the idea and simply not do it.

Anyway, more to come, I promise.

Minecraft 360

Gaming

I bought Minecraft on the PC early on. I played through a lot of the alpha and beta phases, and even quite a bit after release. And still, I always felt like it needed one more update, one more thing to make it a really great game. This weekend, I sat down and tried to find a game for the wife and I to play cooperatively. There really aren’t a lot of games like that. But as I was flipping through the list of games on my Xbox 360, I saw the Minecraft trial I’d downloaded a while back but had never played. She was a fan of the game too, so I loaded it up to see what it was like.

Perfect.

Minecraft 360The 360 version of Minecraft has the one thing that the PC version lacks: recipes. Yes, when playing on your PC you can Alt+Tab to a browser or use a second computer to pull up a wiki and learn everything, but in the 360 version all the recipes are there, and you don’t even have to put the items in the right location to “figure out” the item to craft, you just select the recipe and if you have all the needed items on you, you press A/Green and the item is crafted.

Better still, the wife and I can play together in split screen mode, which makes finding each other when we are lost a thousand times easier than having to turn my back on my own screen while looking at hers. Instead, I just glance down at the lower half of the screen.

Currently, I’m building a mine, digging deep looking for ore. She’s building additions to our home. What started as “Honey, do you want a little fishing shack?” turned into “Look at this cylindrical great room surrounded by aquarium!” “Where is my fishing shack?” “I’ll put a dock off the roof or something…”

Our original home is an upside-down pyramid. You know, you build a little shelter, and then it gets blown up once or twice and you decide to just dig out all the ground beneath it and have a floating house with a bridge to it. Then you want a second floor for more stuff, so you build up, but bigger than the floor below (also because the lip prevents spiders from climbing over the wall). And then the floor about that is even bigger, and so on.

Since I have more shooter skills than she does, every morning I go kill the creepers, which I’m finding to be very fun.

All in all though, I’m finding the experience of playing Minecraft on the 360 to be superior to the PC in just about every way. A big piece of that is the 360 version doesn’t randomly crash and lock up like it does on our PCs. The 360 version just works.

If you are on the 360 and have Minecraft and you want to play around together, my gamertag is Jhaer.

The AlphaSmart NEO

Random Thoughts
AlphaSmart NEO
You are the One, Neo. I have spent my entire life looking for you.

So, a month ago, I wrote about wanting an eInk writing device. I then purchased an AlphaSmart NEO from a seller on eBay for around $40. The idea is to have a tool, with a good physical keyboard and free from distractions, to take with me anywhere and be able to write. As bizarre as this thing may look, it’s actually pretty incredible. Though the memory is limited (not really) and you get only 8 files, the total storage capacity is around 72,000 words, which is enough to win the NaNoWriMo and then some. The screen IS small, but this isn’t an editing tool, it’s a writing tool. Just write, edit later. Boot up time? Instant. It saves after every keystroke. And it runs over 700 hours on 3 AA batteries. I’ve only used it about 50 hours so far.

I’ve hauled this thing with me to places like the Renaissance Festival, the back yard, the mall, work, the hospital. I get inspired, I bust it out and write. It helps that I’ve gotten into the habit of taking a small backpack with me most places.

One of the coolest parts of this device is how you get the files off. For most other portable electronic devices these days, you’d either be saving to “the cloud” or you’d plug it in via USB and drag & drop the files. The NEO, however, is a fully functioning keyboard. When you want to get a file off, you plug it into your PC with a USB cable, the PC recognizes it as a keyboard, you open the program you want your file in (Word, Notepad, Google Docs, WordPress, etc), put the cursor in the correct field, select the file on the NEO and press Send.

As an example, yesterday I had to take my father to the doctor. I also needed to write a review of a movie for Shakefire. I took the NEO with me and wrote the review while I was waiting at the doctor’s office. When I got home, it was lunch time, so I made some lunch. I then sat down in front of my PC, hooked up the NEO, opened up the entry form for the site and pressed Send. While I was eating, I got to watch as the NEO typed out my review. It types a little faster than I do – well, I probably beat it in raw typing speed, but it types at the same speed without stopping. And as it typed, I read. Because I could read comfortably and my eyes were incapable of glancing ahead (the NEO hadn’t typed it yet), this lead to more critical reading. It was as if I was reading someone else, not me.

In addition to the editing, there was a certain… gravity? weight? added by watching the words type out. Something very satisfying. I’ve written a lot in my life, but when I’m done I’m always done, the writing just is. Watching the NEO re-type everything I’d written, it just adds a level of “I wrote that” pride that I didn’t have before.

Another nicety, since this thing can’t do much more than write, I get more writing done. When I sit at a PC and write, if I have a question about what I’m writing, some detail, I’m tempted to Google it.  Doing so often leads to a lost twenty or thirty (or more) minutes reading sites, checking emails, and doing stuff that isn’t writing. The NEO allows for much more focus on my writing. Sure, there are programs you can get to disable your Internet access, but as easy as it is to disable it can also just as easily be re-enabled. With the NEO there is no Internet access to enable.

Anyway, I’ve written more in the last month than I did in the previous 5 or 6 before it. The freedom the NEO has given me is unparalleled. I can’t say I’d recommend the device to every writer, because every writer has their own style, but if you haven’t found a style that works best for you yet, I’d totally recommend giving one of these a shot. Buy one on eBay, and if it doesn’t work for you, sell it on eBay.

Signifying Nothing

Random Thoughts

This is a rant…

Recently it came to my attention that I was probably paying too much for my car insurance. Not because I saw a Geico commercial or anything, but because I was randomly musing about the fact that we have two cars, one a 1997 Volkswagen Cabrio and the other a 1998 Jeep Cherokee, and they are both (obviously) old, 15 and 14 years old respectively, and that they probably aren’t worth very much, each is worth – in theory – about $2,000 for private sale or maybe $1,500 trade-in value. We currently are sporting a policy with a $1,000 deductible. Given the worth of the cars, any accident which is going to cost more than the deductible to fix is going to be 50% or more of the value of the car, thus the insurance company is likely to just “total” the car and cut us a check instead of paying for repairs. So, it seemed silly to me to pay them what I was paying them for them to not really cover anything.

So, I called them up and cut my insurance payment in half, maintaining the medical coverage and the liability (damage to other people). They were very happy to do it and thanked me for my continued business and all was right with the world. Until…

Money to Burn
Like any average American, I have so much, I can do this. Not.

A couple hours later, I’m sitting there smiling about the money I’m going to be saving when it occurs to me that the value of my cars hasn’t changed much in the last couple of years. They’ve hit a sort of “value plateau” where the fact that they are running in good condition is the bulk of the value. Which means that I’ve been overpaying on my insurance for a couple of years. It’s going to total out to probably around $600 a year that I save, which means I’ve probably paid $1,200 to $1,800 for coverage I didn’t need.

Being a software developer, I know that it would be painfully simple to have a program that compares the coverage on a vehicle to the vehicle’s reported value (using something like the Kelley Blue Book as source) and this would generate a list of people to whom you could contact, by mail or email, and make them happy by offering to adjust their rates.

Of course, I know why they don’t do this. Something like auto insurance is seen by people as being required but interchangeable. They have to have it, and they pay more attention to the ads the companies run than to their actual policies. Most people will go to another company, get a quote and switch insurers before ever considering calling their current insurer to see if they can get a better rate. As such, companies focus more effort on signing new customer than on retaining existing ones.

For a non-insurance example, look at your local cable company. When was the last time they called to say they were running a special for all existing customers? Never, that’s when. The half price deals are for new or returning customers. Or for people who call to cancel. If you don’t leave and don’t complain, they’ll happily charge you twice what they charge new people, returning people, or people who threaten to leave.

Lesson: call your cable company every six months or so and threaten to cancel. Tell them you are switching to satellite, and then accept the new rate they offer to keep you.

You can probably do this with your garbage collection too, if you have to pay for it yourself and there is competition in your area. I’ve had the same company for a couple years, but where I was originally paying $30 a month, I’m down to $10 because they’ll “price match” any competitor’s offer, I just have to prove it’s a real offer. But they know who their competitors are, and they know what they charge. Why aren’t they sending out a letter to all their customers saying, “Hey! In appreciation for using us, we’ve reduced our rates!”

The other main reason they don’t randomly call existing happy customers to offer new lower rates is because those customer are, apparently, happy overpaying. Why would they throw away that money? Sure, being awesome for your customers might breed some loyalty, but loyalty is nothing in the face of cold hard cash.

Where am I going with this?

I have no idea. It all folds into that idea of “enough” I suppose. Some of these companies are making lots of money in profits, and they don’t reinvest that money into making the company better, nor do they reinvest it in reduced prices, they take it out of the system. Maybe they spend it back into the system somewhere else, but not at the rate it would get spent back into the system in the form of a few dollars into the pockets of thousands, tens or hundreds of thousands. Despite what the self proclaimed “job creators” tell you, a person, or small group of people, earning $5 million a month aren’t going to spend $5 million a month, but a million consumers saving $5 each on their bills are incredibly likely to spend that $5.

It just seems logical, for the better health of the entire economy… which is probably why I’ll never run a company or be in politics.