The Truth Hurts

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I really dislike XM/Sirius now.

December 10, 2009 in Business Ethics, Gadgets, The Truth Hurts by datapoohbah | No comments

So the only place I use XM is on my motorcycle.  XM has value for me, as I typically like to ride long distances.  It’s not unusual for me to say ride 2400 miles over a 3 day weekend whilst rallying.  (yes you read that right twenty four hundred miles).

This certainly means I’m all over the place and being able to listen to a consistent signal or station is a good thing.

XM is pretty consistent on the highways, but when you’re in the mountains (which is where we prefer to ride) it can be spotty.  Especially when you’re on the north east side of the mountain.

So, being that I live in the North East, motorcycling unfortunately isn’t a year round event.   From sometime in November to at least the end of February, with a few exceptions the bike gets put away. 

Every year I call up XM, explain to them that I don’t need the service until March.  They threaten me with re-activation fees but when I persist they have usually discounted those months.  Enough so that it’s still worth it for that rare winter day around here when it hits 50 degrees and we go out for a ride.

Since the XM/Sirius merger, there isn’t any competition.  You can’t play one off the other any more.

I picked up my bill this year to start the negotiating process that happens every winter. Only to come to a few new realizations that really bothered me.

XMBill

I remember last year being promised the price wouldn’t change for, I *think* 3 years. 

So what’s the strategy?  We didn’t raise our prices, but we now have to charge you a music royalty fee.  WTF?

This irritates me.

I *may* not even listen to music, in fact I generally listen to sports, or the comedy channel.  Their 80’s channel only has 100 songs, if you ride a 12 hour ride you will hear all of them, often twice.

I’m not against the artists being paid, but I am against XM billing me for a line item that is simply part of their cost of doing business.

Very few industries can do this.   I don’t patronize car repair places that charge me a line item ‘rag-fee’ or ‘fluid disposal fee’, and I likely won’t patronize XM any more.

I also get dinged $2.00 so they can send me an invoice.  I’m perfectly happy to receive this digitally, but no, I’m not going to let them auto-charge me for anything.   When they auto-charged my credit card in years past they couldn’t seem to charge me the same amount twice (even though my subscription didn’t change)

This year, they have a new feature.  I am apparently not alone.  They now let you suspend your account.  So that later you don’t have to be threatened with re-activation fees.  They also get to continue to list you as one of their ‘subscribers’ albeit a suspended one.

So for now I’m a suspended subscriber.  Helping to dilute your royalty fees.  I expect that will remain until I just have to have it for a big trip.

We’ll see.

AVG Trial Download – Broken

January 6, 2009 in Commentary, Network Managment, The Truth Hurts, Utilities by datapoohbah | No comments

When your business model is try before you buy.

It’s in your best interest to make sure the ‘try’ part works.

We’re re-evaluating centralized Anti-virus and would really like to evaluate AVG’s Network offerings, but it’s proving to be harder than it should be.

avgtrialbroken1

We’ve used Trend for the past couple years and it’s been OK.  Recently we’ve had a few things get by Trend and AVG Free has picked it up and dealt with it.  So we’re anxious to give it a look.

Dell e4300 is bittersweet.

December 16, 2008 in Commentary, Gadgets, Network Managment, The Truth Hurts, Things that are Awesome by datapoohbah | 108 comments

e4300

We’re Dell fans, especially latitude fans.  Super stable hardware.  We recently did a technology upgrade in our department and switched from the D-Series Latitudes to the e-Series.   We have a handful of e6500’s, a few 6400’s and a couple e4300’s.

For the most part this 1st generation of laptops has gone well.  Not perfect, but pretty good.  The e64/6500’s have seen a few BIOS upgrades that have worked out most of the issues.   The fingerprint reader/software combination (Dell Control Point) is still crap though.  Very unreliable.  Especially when compared the Wave fingerprint software that came bundled with an XPS that I own.

Outside of that they have been pretty good.

The e4300, not so much.

This little laptop is super sweet.  Nice small, fast, good battery life.  But we’re experiencing some hard hangs/freezes.   We’ve tried multiple flavors of OS’s, multiple driver combinations, all with little success.   We’ve also replaced the motherboard in one unit.  The problem persists.

I realize these are relatively new, but it amazes us that a google search for this issue returns nada.  Both laptops behave the same, random hard lock-ups.

It seems sleep/video/audio related, and no we can’t make it happen but it’s enough to send them back for the time being.

We’re working with our Dell rep and hopefully someone from the Brand Team to get to a resolution.  We really want them to work and be stable.  There isn’t another laptop out there that $ for $, feature for feature meets the need.

So if you’ve experienced similar issues I’m interested in hearing from you.

Post a comment and we’ll get in touch.

UPDATE

On Friday the 19th I had a conversation with a Latitude Brand  Manager.  He assured me that this problem is well known, especially with e4300’s running Vista.  A BIOS updated to address this specific freezing issue is in the works and slated to be released on the 29th.

We’re going to hang tight until then.   If this is known inside Dell, and being worked on.  The fact that none fo the Tier 2/Tier 3 Support people had any clue is somewhat bothersome.   We’ll report back if the fix does what it’s supposed to.

Unwinding the Marketing Spin

December 8, 2008 in Business Ethics, Commentary, The Truth Hurts by datapoohbah | 4 comments

"The Datapoohbah is frustrated.  Frustrated with MBA’s and "Highly Educated" people that quite simply, “do not have a clue”.  I have long subscribed to the philosophy that it is simply possible to over educate.  That higher education, without real world experience, is a dangerous thing.  Unfortunately today that seems to be more the norm.

One needs only to look at the economic crisis on Wall Street, banking, big business, retail and the automotive industry.  All of these industries are filled with MBA’s and folks who should know what they are doing.  They are supposed to be smart, right?

  • I know a person with a Masters in Computer Science who also holds an MBA and that literally couldn’t change a toner cartridge in a printer without help.
    (Yes I know they can be complicated, but damn, the instructions are pretty clear on the bag that the toner comes in).

The item that really got my goat today can be found here in the article written on November 28th entitled "You Can Support Headcount and Share of Voice on a Tight Budget" by one; "Alan See", Marketing Genius and MBA.

In this ~750 word article, the marketing genius would try to convince you that during these tough economic times you can "Do more with less" and by doing so you can still build sales leads and retain head count.

On the surface the article looks pretty good.  No, it’s not real deep, not a lot of marketing material is deep.

But the reality is this article spins and skews what went down during this "engagement" in a way that is almost criminal.

"the company increased qualified leads by 7 percent while cutting the budget by 24 percent. The decrease in spending was not the result of reducing headcount. During the campaign, the sales force set three consecutive monthly sales records, as well as three consecutive quarterly sales records."

Sounds pretty good doesn’t it? 

Who wouldn’t want to hire a guy who could increase your sales leads 7%, set sales records, cut your budget and allow you to retain staff during these tough economical times?  Oh, and while he’s at it, single handedly increase your "share of voice".

So that’s the spun version of what happened at this "engagement", and as you know there’s almost always two sides to every story.

I’ll try to keep this simple so those with MBA’s can keep up.

Suppose you run a lemonade stand.

Your basic costs include: Water, Ice, Lemons and cups. 

Your primary method for advertising includes:

  • Word of mouth (Brand X, our lemonade is delicious)
  • Print advertising (Direct, local market advertising, perhaps leveraging coupons to reach your market).
  • Direct Customer marketing, via email or snail mail.  (Hey Joe, you’ve enjoyed our Lemon aide in the past, you should try our new pink Lemon Aid)

You’re trying to grow your business so you hire engage a marketing genius.

This new guy has lots of great ideas for focusing your marketing. 

  • Fewer Tasters, More Buyers (Marketing term: higher quality leads)
    Specifically he wants to reduce the number of ’shoppers or tasters’ so that you use fewer resources sampling your products (cost savings). 
    (Bear in mind that tasters and samplers aren’t a burden, and history has clearly shown that the more people you have tasting your product the more people buy)
  • Stop/Slow Direct Marketing (decrease the spend, save the headcount)
    Stop doing what you’re good at.  Stop that local or direct marketing that has worked so well in the past.  Stop inviting new and current customers to taste your new flavors, that might waste your time.
  • Use Smoke and Mirrors (Marketing term: proclaim yourself thought leaders)
    Instead of spending your hard earned marketing dollars to generate leads (tasters of your product).  Spend it on a thought leadership piece, to educate the market on organic lemon farming, water filtration.  The things that help to make good lemonade.  Nothing directly related to your specific product, just over-all feel good, brand awareness marketing. 
  • Get on the Web 2.0 bandwagon (Marketing term: leverage social networks)
    The value proposition here is still debatable.  This too is feel-good marketing.  Being where your customers expect to see you.  Nothing wrong with this just, but be mindful of the time you spend doing it and the ripples that come from it.

There is nothing wrong with thought leadership marketing.  It’s generally a good thing.  But it’s the type of marketing you do "in addition to" what has made you successful in the past, not "instead of".

The problem comes in when you cut your marketing spending on your bread and butter marketing and focus all your internal resources on the other.

What you don’t read about in Mr. See’s article is the flat spin he put the company in by neglecting the bread and butter marketing that the company lives on.

Three months of consecutive sales records?  That’s a true statement that had absolutely nothing to do with his efforts to ‘reduce the spend and save the head count’.  
It’s completely unrelated. 

Did any of his work pay off?  Yes, in some ways it did.

It is true that the thought leadership piece did drive a few highly qualified prospects our way.  A few prospects closer to buying without wasting a lot of time tasting.  If we calculate the true cost of those leads, the cost would be considered astronomical.

In the process of this engagement we all learned a very valuable lesson.

Do what you’re good at, and do it well. Ignore the obvious and it will eventually catch up to you.

Yes it’s true, the Blackberry Storm is a turd.

December 5, 2008 in Commentary, Gadgets, The Truth Hurts by datapoohbah | No comments

BB_Storm_Front_Left271x500

Thankfully I don’t have to use one.  But I did get to play with one at a Christmas gathering last weekend.

It was pathetically slow, slow switching applications, slow changing from portrait to landscape.

The clickable front, button simulator, was a nice touch.  But the Pearl like keyboard in vertical mode is horrible.

I hope Blackberry can fix these issues.   It will not replace my 8830, or my iPhone which is still a sub-par enterprise device.

So basically, everything you’ve read on the Internet is true.  This phone sure is pretty but its poorly executed.

Using Cintas for your off-site tape storage? Be afraid, be very afraid.

August 15, 2008 in Business Ethics, The Truth Hurts by datapoohbah | 4 comments

                         Cint-Ass

[Warning: Rant eminent]

The following is an account of our tale of woe using Cintas Document Storage for our offsite tape storage. 

Background:

We currently back up our infrastructure to tape in multiple ways.  Including but not limited to:

- Critical daily backups, these get rotated off-site daily.  There’s a box with these tapes that get’s swapped out with the vendor every morning exchanging the tapes from the previous nights backups and retrieving the tapes for the next days backups.  These tapes never leave their carriers.  The carriers are stored at the offsite facility and are never opened by them.

- Weekly archives, every weekend we backup all the critical stuff, plus the next level of things deemed necessary are backed up every weekend.   These go off-site in bulk about 2x a month.   These tapes also live in a storage container and are never touched by Cintas unless we move them to the archive pool.

- Archives, we also backup everything, full server bare metal restore, at a minimum monthly.  We also backup *most* workstations on a best effort basis nearly ever 60 days.   These also go offsite for bulk storage approximately monthly.  these tapes are handled by the vendor, they are removed from the travel containers and are slotted in storage racks.

Service:

A little over a year ago we contracted with Cintas Document Storage for off-site vaulted media storage and tape rotation.   The rotation part has always been acceptable.   The tape retrieval process has failed miserably.  While we have been fortunate enough not to need our tapes critically fast, we contracted with them to have this ability.

They use a web based application to ‘request’ tapes or items to be delivered the next business day during their run.   On multiple occasions (3x in one year) they have failed to service our tape retrieval requests in less than 5 days.

They have miss-slotted our tapes, and simply miss placed them.  They have also miss-placed our daily rotational containers…   All of these things are bad, very very bad.

A better solution comes along…

About two months ago we were contacted by a competitor.  Unfortunately for Cintas this sales person called on us while we were in the midst of a miss-placed tape container episode.   So we were certainly open to receiving a quote for services.

This competitor is just as secure, and is actually geographically 30 miles farther away.  Their cost for the same daily rotation and tape storage space was literally 1/2 the monthly cost of Cintas and they don’t have any of our other document storage or shredding business (yet).   This may be too good to be true, but it honestly can’t be any worse so we agreed to switch.

While signing the contracts we were warned by this vendor that Cintas would not play nice.   That they behave like 3 year olds when it comes to customers leaving them.  They flat out told us we’d have trouble retrieving our tapes.   Imagine that… 

Well silly us, we thought they’d be professional.

The following Monday we requested our archival tapes through the website.   We should receive these tapes the following day (Tuesday) per our contract.  Tuesday came; no tapes…   Wednesday came; no tapes…   Thursday came and the Jig was up… 

We had already started our daily rotation with the new company so it became clear to them that we were no longer going to be customers.

This is when all hell broke loose.

Nearly a week went by with no contact from Cintas, emails and voice mails were not returned.   Then out of the blue we get a phone call from the sales person attempting to save the account.  Something that should have taken place after any of thier tape handling failures.   Once it became clear that the account wasn’t to be saved they decided to play hard ball.   We received an invoice for 3 months of tape transportation and a year and half’s worth of storage  (discounted 50%).   Apparently I didn’t realize we had to give 90 days notice.  Fair enough.   I was not aware that their contract is so one-sided. 

They can drop you at any time for any reason.

You on the other hand, have to give them 90 days notice, and 30 days to resolve any issues.   So when they misplace your tapes as long as they get them to you within 30 days, they are off the hook for their poor service.   As a penalty for leaving them you still have to pay them 50% of the storage fees for the remainder of the contract.   (In our case another year and a half’s worth).

Given their repeated failures, I was not about to give them that.   Regardless of what the tapes were worth.  (We have and still have duplicate archives of nearly everything we’d need on site anyway). 

About two weeks ago they sent out another representative to try and salvage the account and discuss the ‘settlement’.  This obviously wasn’t going to go anywhere, but we agreed that we’d pay for 90 days of service (the notification period), provided one of those months was the current month.   We’d pay the transportation/delivery fees for this period and a final delivery charge, but we wouldn’t pay for vault storage past the 90 day window.   We reached an accord.   I now have checks on my desk for the 90 day period, and the previous monthly invoice. 

We’re ready and willing to exchange these checks for the hostages  (our tapes), but even that has proven to be difficult.  Again they are non-responsive to emails or voice mails.  I suspect it will happen, but I don’t know when.

My advice to you:

If you’re a Cintas document storage/vault customer, get out while the getting is good.   Review your contract, if it has clause 16 ‘SERVICE GUARANTEE AND TERMINATION’ you’ll need to be stealthy about getting your stuff back.   It appears even though they have you over a barrel contract wise, they think nothing of going Al Queda on you and keeping your stuff hostage.

Yes they will loose our other business, and that’s a damn shame.

It gets better…

As part of our settlement, we paid a Final delivery charge.  I just spent the last day and a half trying to arrange this final delivery (basically the exchange of the hostages for the ransom money).  I was just informed that:

“Apparently they trust their drivers with our entire business on our tapes, but they don’t trust their drivers with a couple of checks of their money.”

Because of this, we’ve apparently agreed to pickup the tapes.  I don’t think so… It’s the principle of the exchange and the fact that they charged us for final delivery.

As of right now their supposed to do the deal tomorrow.   I’ve never, ever dealt with a company (or manager in charge) that was so full of excuses for not doing their job.   Since they can’t commit on a time, they are to give us a call 20-30 minutes before they head over.  I highly suspect that won’t happen either.

Final Result:

As expected, they didn’t call they just showed up, and as Murphy would have it we were at lunch.  We should have made them wait longer but in the interest of getting our tapes back we rushed through our lunch to get back within 15 minutes.   We have our tapes and they have their ransom monies.   All is now well with the world.

Again, I highly recommend that you avoid this particular part of the Cintas organization. 

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