christophe thinks out loud

Happy Holidays!

Allow me to say, as a merchant, that the secularization and commericalization of Christmas is the best thing ever.

Idiot "Customer" of the Week

Please remove me from all mailing list.

Due to the anti-military, anti-American, pro-terrorism policies of the people of San Francisco. I will no longer purchase from merchants from your traitorous city.

Very, very disrespectfully

Some I. (for Idiot) Customer

Promise?

A company with issues

I post entry after entry about politics and things, and I'm talking to myself. I post an entry complaining about Sprint customer service, and I get tons of replies.

Despite what the last commenter says, I'm very sympathetic with CSRs, given that I run a customer-facing business myself. While most of the calls we get are from nice people who just want their reasonable problem sorted out, we do get a certain number who are... Well. My feeling is that they have discovered they can no longer beat servants, so they try to beat people in retail, instead.

Largely, these calls come down to one of two things:

• I don't like your policy, so it shouldn't apply to me.
• I screwed up, and I expect you to do everything humanly possible to save me from the consequences of my actions.

That being said, companies can be pathological. Sprint's "our billing specialists are too good to talk to you" attitude is particularly bad: First, it wastes the cusotmer's time, and second, it guarantees the customer is already going to be a bit cranky when they finally do get through to a billing person. Why not just take the call and get it over with?

FAQ for Adulterers

Rejected addition to the Blowfish Ordering FAQ.

Dear adulterers of either sex,

Blowfish is nothing if non-judgmental. Therefore, the fact that you are cheating on your spouse is of no concern to us. Conversely, we are not specifically set up to make cheating easy and convenient.

Thus, we would like to offer you some tips on making your adultery experience much more enjoyable in the long-term:

• Get a separate address for your orders — You would be astonished how many people have their lover's order shipped directly to their home, in the assumption that their husband/spouse/partner will not be home or will simply not be curious about this box. This assumption is very, very wrong. PO boxes are available from just about evey post office. Private Mailbox firms (PMBs, for those in the know) have long experience in the area of people doing things they ought not to be doing. Avail yourself of their expertise.
• Get a separate credit card for your orders — Our rule is that, if a caller can give us a complete credit card number, we will tell that caller about any order placed using it, including the harness and dildo you had sent to Peggy in Pismo Beach, or the Aneros you had sent to Carl in Carlsbad. We will give them, happily (perhaps even gleefully, depending on the call), the full delivery address and telephone number. A moment's thought will reveal how this might be a bit awkward.
• Once you have this separate credit card, have the bill sent to the above PO Box or PMB — You would be astonished how many people have the credit card bill, full of hotel room rentals on nights they were working late, purchases from fine firms such as us, and other information that had not been disclosed to their spouse, sent directly to the home that they share with this spouse. If you think that the spouse will not open this bill, see the first point. If you are curious what will happen when the spouse calls our 800 number to ask about these charges, see the second point.
• No, we won't promise that nothing will ever be sent to your billing address — One of our Fundamental Rules is that, if you ship an order to an address other than the billing address of the credit card, we may (or may not) send a receipt to the billing address. We do this because, in the case of credit card fraud, it lets the would-be fraudster know that the person whose card it is might be informed of the charge. To be blunt, our fraud control is more important to us than your affair. Consider this little bit of education in how to take responsibility for your own privacy to be just one more service we offer you, at no additional charge.
• We understand your marriage is important to you (you wouldn't be cheating on your spouse if it wasn't, right?), but please don't lie to your spouse when confronted — A not-inconsiderable portion of the disputed credit card charges that we receive follow the pattern of: "I found this charge on my credit card and my husband says he never placed that order and we'd never buy anything so filthy and perverted and we want the charge reversed now, you horrible people!" "OK, Ma'am, let me look that up. (clickity, click click click) Do you know a Tina Tartt in Toluca Park?" (awkward pause) "I'll call you back." We always win those disputes, and you've just made a bad situation worse.

We hope you have found these instructions informative. Once you are divorced, we have a wide selection of toys suitable for masturbation, for both sexes. Let us know your new address, so we can keep sending you our catalog.

Idiot Customer of the Week, part 2

Second candidate! This one hails from a unnamed country which, for purposes of this entry, we'll refer to as "France."

First step: The customer orders products from us, which we ship, which arrive. However, said customer is just horrified that he must pay both VAT and customs duties on an import, thus being, in all likelihood, the absolute last person in France to realize this. His reaction? He wishes to return the products, even though this means that he will have to pay:

• Shipping outbound from us to him, for the original order.
• VAT and customs duties.
• Shipping back to us.
• A 15% returns fee.

Well, OK, fine, who are we to stand in the way of principle? He returns the products, we issue the credit (satisfaction returns are for store credit only), and he places another order. We ship this one on September 2nd.

Now, today is what? September 13th. Let us count US working days between then and now: Six. So, what do we receive today? An angry missive from him demanding a full refund because his order hasn't been received. For crying out loud, orders shipped on the 2nd are just arriving in the East Coast of the US today. He also threatens us (don't they all?) with unspecified horrible, awful bad publicity. What-the-fuck-ever.

Relax, Monsieur. Your order will arrive soon. Sang froid and all that.

Idiot Customer of the Week, part 1

First candidate . . .

We have an option by which the customer does not receive item details in their confirmation emails. This particular customer wrote in asking that item details be turned off, which we did. The acknowledgment we sent back had our slogan, "Good Products for Great Sex" in the .sig line (just like all of our confirmation emails do). In reply, we receive this charming missive (James is the CS manager who sent the first email):

James you idiot: I sent y'all an email asking to exclude item details, for really obvious reasons such as privacy and discreteness. So you felt it necessary to send me an email that includes "Good Products for Great Sex." Surely if you just put your mind to it, you can come up with something even more obvious and entertaining for the two people with whom I share this computer at work. Would you like for me to give you their telephone numbers, so you can call them directly and tell them all about it? And it ain't like an entity named "Blowfish" isn't unusual or strange, in and of itself. So by all means, send me as many unnecessary emails as possible, until someone here gets curious enough to google "Blowfish."

And here is how I felt like replying . . .

Dear Moron,

Let me get this straight: You use a work email that you share with two other people to order sex products from us, and then you complain that we're not doing enough to keep your conversation private? When free email addresses are available by the wheelbarrow-load? And, then, you complain that someone might search for "Blowfish"? What, precisely, should we do? Get a fucking Hotmail account just to send you, personally, email? Maybe we could come up with our own personal little code to tell you about your order. Or maybe Pig Latin. Ouryay ugehay analway ildoday orfay ammingray upway ouryay atherray izablesay assholeway ashay ippedshay, oronmay.

Get a grip, please. And please remember that, among human beings, opening a conversation with "You idiot" is considered the sign of an idiot, you idiot.

Love and kisses,
Christophe,
President,
The Blowfish Corporation

So, instead, I called him, told him that I didn't appreciate my staff being addressed that way, and that I was canceling his order and we would not do business with him. He sounded flabbergasted. I felt much better.

DHL/Airborne Has Their Work Cut Out For Them

One interesting thing that has popped out of the survey is that DHL/Airborne is perceived as being significantly worse by our customers than the United States Postal Service. Lowest ranking of any parcel carrier, in fact.

This is quite a distinction, albeit a dubious one. Given that they try to sell us on their services once a quarter, regular as clockwork, I am looking forward to imparting this information to their rep the next time we speak.

Customer Service, the Blowfish Way (part 1 of a series)

I've started formalizing a lot of Blowfish's customer service policies, and I thought it might be fun to publish them here. Given how lousy so much CS in the world is, it can't hurt.

Today's Topic: We don't say “no.”

Of course, that doesn't mean we always give the customer what they are asking for; that would be insane. It means that we do everything we can not to use the word “no” with a customer, especially in a way that directly contradicts the customer.

Wrong interaction:

Them: “Your web site said that I could return it!”

Us: “No, that's not what the web site says. That item is not returnable.”

Correct interaction:

Them: “Your web site said that I could return it!”

Us: “The description of the item does include a note that says that particular item is not returnable. Is it defective in some way?”

The important points are:

1. Do not directly contradict the customer unless it is absolutely required. It almost never is.
2. Tell the customer what is the case, rather than spending time on arguing with the customer's perception.
3. Always lead the customer from what they want to what we can do, rather than dwelling on what we can't do.

Stupid Business Tricks: “Receipts” vs. “Invoices”

Today, I received a shipment from a company from whom I had rented a (gasp) dirty video. The shipment included a piece of paper on which the transaction details are recorded. This, by itself, is entirely reasonable. So, what's the stupid business trick?

• The piece of paper says “invoice” across the top. This is a stupid thing to call a piece of paper you are sending to a retail customer, since it implies a demand for payment, even though it's already been paid. (Back before we had our own order management software, the less-than-wonderful software we were using called these things invoices, and you couldn't change it. We got lots of freaked-out customer calls.) What's so wrong with “receipt”?
• The invoice doesn't include any information about payments that have been applied, really making it look like a demand for payment.

So, what have we learned today?

• Don't call things “invoices” in prepaid retail transactions.
• Always show payments that have been applied to an order, and make it clear that no balance is due (if that really is the case).

UPS and Old Mort

I've been known to bash the Post Office once in a while. But, to be fair, we have horror stories to go with each of our parcel carriers, here at Blowfish.

Recently, a customer ordered some stuff from us, via UPS 2nd Day Air, to be delivered to her house in Alaska. UPS claims that they deliver, themselves, to each and every street address in the United States.

Perhaps they believe Alaska to still be part of Russia.

When the parcel reached the UPS station in Fairbanks, we discover that, no, UPS does not deliver to that particular street address in one of their happy wrapping-paper brown trucks. Instead, it appears that they see who is driving by, yell out the window, “Hey! Going to So-and-So's place?” If the local in their pickemup-truck answers in the affirmative, the parcel is tossed into the back next to the deer carcass, and Old Mort in the truck is entrusted with the delivery.

In this particular case, Old Mort seems to have been hitting the Ranier Pale Ale a bit too hard (well, it is February in Alaska, you would too), and throws it onto the wrong step.

Eventually, after much complaining to UPS, we get them to call Old Mort to go back out and get the rifled package and toss it onto our customer's porch. The unintended recipient has rifled it, but apparently doesn't like any of the stuff that our customer has has ordered, so Mort was able to extract the package.

The customer was very nice about it, thank goodness, although she was a bit mortified about having her order be quite so public. We were pretty mortified, too.

But, so far, UPS has never lost a $600 package off of one of their trucks, like Fedex Ground did to us.

Do as we say, not as we do, eBay Division

PayPal has strict policies against processing payments for adult material.

Unless, of course, that adult material is being sold off of eBay, which owns PayPal.

If they catch you processing payment for adult material through them, they'll embargo the money in your account for 180 days. Getting 180 days free interest on nasty porno money has nothing to do with it. PayPal wouldn't sully themselves like that. They need to sit on your cash for 180 days to make sure, um, the money isn't infected with sex industry cooties, or something. It's for your own good.

Thus does sex make hypocrites of us all.

And in case you were wondering why Blowfish doesn't take PayPal for payment, that's why.

Good Rules in a Strange Post

I was entirely and completely prepared to hate this blog entry by the founder of GoDaddy.com. The whole strut-and-preen “I'm such a success that I can barely stand it” school of small business writing really does not do it for me.

That being said, the “rules” that he offers up are actually very spot-on advice to anyone who starts a business, and they are not just duplicates of things I’ve seen elsewhere.

Business Logic

As my customer service manager just pointed out to me, the phrases "If you are a customer, you are right" and "if you are not right, you are not a customer" are logically equivalent.

James Boyle: A natural experiment

James Boyle, writing in the on-line edition of the Financial Times, has a simply brilliant article about copyright and its failings, in the particular context of databases. It is very pleasing to see someone use the terms "copyright" and "monopoly" together with such eloquence and frequency.

My favorite quote: "First rule of thumb for regulators: when someone with a profit margin over 20% asks you for additional monopoly protection, pause before agreeing."

Clearly, I'm Missing Something

It's that time of year, and that time of year means that it is time for us to renew our Cisco support contract. You would think, Cisco being such a hip, with-it, connected company, that this would be as painless as spending money ever is.

Oh, and how wrong you would be.

First, you can't just walk up to Cisco and say, "We'd like to renew our support contract, please." Oh, no, you foolish little mortal, Cisco does not deal with the likes of you. You must go to your Cisco Partner, and they will pass your supplication along to Cisco for consideration.

Fine, whatever. We go to the company we buy a lot of our tech stuff from, and ask them, "We'd like to renew our support contract, please." And they say, sure, we'd love your money . . . and here's how it works:

• We give our Cisco Partner our money.
• The Cisco Partner calls Cisco, and tells Cisco that the Cisco Partner has our money.
• Cisco contemplates this interesting tidbit of information, and gives the Cisco Partner a Very Important Number (VIN, for short).
• The Cisco Partner then ships us this VIN in a box.
• We then (I think) are supposed to go to Cisco's web site and type in this VIN.
• At this point, our service contract is supposed to be renewed.

How is this superior to going to Cisco's web site, giving them our credit card number, and having our contract being renewed on the spot? Well, it's not, of course, but it's just the Cisco Way.

SonicWall used to do something remarkably similar, but they wised up and let you renew without having to buy a Very Important Number from a dealer, and having that VIN shipped to you in a box. Someday, maybe Cisco will figure out that this web thing is pretty cool for selling stuff.

Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust

I was the lead architect, back when I was at Scient, for Fasturn, a sourcing site for the apparel industry.

Just out of curiosity, I tried their URL, http://www.fasturn.com/. Back to the primordial ooze it has gone. I wonder what happened to all that software we wrote for them? Last I heard, they had licensed some of it to Accenture.

Want to work for Blowfish?

We’re hiring a bookkeeper and an inventory clerk.

Does Amazon Get Email Like This?

Just tonight, we received the following happy missive from a customer (original spelling, punctuation, and capitalization):

Yes, My order HAS shipped. YES it HAS arrived. BUT THE DRIVER WOULD NOT LEAVE IT WITHOUT MY SIGNATURE ! WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE ? YOU KNOW I SLEEP DAYS ! I am very displeased. CONTACT UPS IMEDIATELY and tell them they can leave it tomorow. ELSE I have to drive to xxx. I DO NOT HAVE TIME FOR THIS SHIT. Thank you

Here is the reply that we didn’t send to said happy customer:

Dear Moron:

Let us explain something to you, since you obviously have the brains of a turnip. We have more customers in our database than live in the stupid little infected pimple of a town you live in. We do not keep track of which of them sleep during the day, and even if we did, we are not able to tell an employee of the the largest package delivery company in the world, “Oh, this moron sleeps during the day, so please just go ahead leave his expensive package sitting out on his porch next to the pit bull and the Wal*Mart lawn furniture, even though his meth lab-operating neighbor will steal it and then you’ll get fired. Really, it’s fine.”

The driver isn’t going to leave it. It’s not going to happen. So get off your fat lazy ass and get down to the UPS depot and sign for the package. You’re just going to have to find the time, or the package will come back to us, and we’ll rip our satisfaction return fee out of your pasty little behind. Get the picture, sunshine?

And before you give us a spittle-coated rant about not ever ordering from us again: We think it is a dandy idea if you never order from us again. We need your business like we need smallpox. Every company knows that 90% of their customer service problems come from 10% of their customers. The trick is to identify that 10% and get rid of them. Thanks for making it so easy.

Love,
The Blowfishies

Of course, we’ll say something else. Why did I ever get into retail?

Signal vs. Noise vs. the USPS

USPS 1, Signal vs. Noise 0.

Over at the wonderful blog Signal vs. Noise they have discovered the hell that is the United States Postal Service. (The company behind Signal vs. Noise is the great design firm 37Signals, whose stuff we love even if they apparently don’t like smut and won’t work with us.)

Their commentary is pretty mild and polite. Needless to say, I feel no such contraints.

The whole Priority Mail thing is a joke. The USPS pushes it as if it is a guaranteed, door-to-door second day guaranteed service. It is not. Our experience (and we ship a ton of Priority Mail) is that 3-5 days is about the best you can expect . . . if it gets there at all. The USPS provides no insurance on parcels, unless you follow a Victorian-era paperwork system that would make a mockery of our attempt to process customer shipments effectively. And when you do insure parcels, they pay incredibly slowly, if ever, when there is a loss. And there will be a loss.

Even Express Mail, the ultra-expensive premium service, has service commitments that are almost no commitment at all.

The whole thing is a disaster. Kill it, and start over.

The United States Postal Service is More Evil Than You Can Imagine

Just when I think that the United States Postal Service has reached bottom, they manage to come up with something new. The latest one, just discovered today, is that they have contracted out Express Mail delivery in Canada (and probably lots of other countries as well) to a courier company that can’t deliver to Post Office boxes, because they’re a private company, not Canada Post.

That’s right, you can’t send Express Mail to a PO box in Canada. Only the USPS could come up with a way that you can’t send mail to a PO box.

If there was ever, ever, a government monopoly that should be privatized, broken up, and sold off for scrap, it is the USPS. (Yes, I know that technically the USPS is a private company, but as long as the Private Express Statutes granting them an effective monopoly on letters are on the books, they’re effectively a government agency.)

It’s not the unions; UPS workers are in the Teamsters, and they make postal unions look like complete wimps. It is not the universal service commitment; UPS and Fedex both deliver to more delivery points than the USPS. It is stupid management, pure and simple; a classic example of how a long-term monopoly can rot the competitiveness of an organization.

E-mail is killing the USPS, and I for one will not cry to see it gone.

I Love Our Customers

It is not often, thank goodness, but sometimes I have an interaction with one of our customers that leaves me scratching my head, wondering exactly what planet this person is from.

Recently, I had a call escalated to me by customer service because an angry customer was demanding to know where the order he had paid for by money order was. Our extremely polite customer service rep had searched and searched for this order, but we had no record of it. None. Of course, I took the call; one of the things that isn’t so hot about being the company owner is the buck does indeed stop with me.

Let’s say that it wasn’t a particular satisfactory conversation for either one of us.

“So, let me get all of the information so I can help you. When did you place this order?”

“Three months ago! It’s been three months, and I want my order!”

“And we want you to have it, but I’ll need some information to get it to you. How did you pay for it?”

“A post office money order! Is there something wrong with that?”

Oh, great, it’s going to be one of these. “No, that’s fine. We’re happy to take orders paid for by money order. Did you call and place the order with us, or send it in on paper?”

“I didn’t call . . . I paid for it by money order!“ Now, this is starting to be a bit odd. Since January of this year, we haven’t accepted orders that are just scribbled out on a piece of paper and sent in. We ask customers to call us, get the total and an order number, and then send us the payment. If we had gotten an order like that, we would have just sent it back. But we also keep a log of those orders, and his wasn’t on it.

“OK, did you check with the post office to see if the money order has been cashed?” We put the order number on every incoming check and money order. We’ve never in the history of the company cashed a check without processing the order it came with, but there can always be a first time.

“No, the receipt was just a little stub at the end of the money order, and I sent that in with the money order by mistake! Where’s my order?’ Now, this is getting a bit stranger: that’s not a postal money order he’s describing; PMOs have a separate carbon sheet, not a stub.

“It’s possible that we didn’t actually receive the order, then . . .”

His next statement comes out in a rapid fire burst: “I know you got my order because I got a call from a woman at your office on February 17th telling me she couldn’t read my handwriting and I gave her the right address! The bottom line is you have my money and I want my order!” I’m starting to wonder if this guy has the right company. We’d never handle something like that in the way he’s describing, but . . .

“Could you hold for a moment?” I wander over to our phone system, and scroll back to February 17th. Not a single call to the area code that this customer is in, not on the 17th or on any dates around it . . .

“Sir, I’m back. I’m sorry, but unless you can get us a copy of the cashed money order, we won’t be able to do anything for you.”

(Sputtering on the other end of the line.) “You know what I’m going to do! I’m going to write to the Federal Trade Commission!”

I’m terrified by this, of course. “I’m sure you will. Be sure to send us a copy of the letter. I have to take another call now, sir. (This is, of course, a lie.) Goodbye. *click*”

We’ve never heard from him again. But I still wonder: What in the world was going on?

• Was this an attempt at a scam? Does that actually work? Can you call a company and insist that you ordered something without any ability to prove it whatsoever, and have them ship you stuff? If so, could you tell me what companies those are, and if they have anything good I might want?
• Did he really try to place an order with us, have the order get lost in the mail (entirely possible), and then invent the story about the return phone call because he was too embarrassed to admit that he didn’t keep the PMO receipt?
• Did he actually place the order with an entirely different company? We get those, sometimes, people who scream at us about a missing order until we discover that the product they claim to have bought is one we don’t carry, and never have.
• Or was he just nuts?

We may never know. But I can hardly wait to see what the letter to the Federal Trade Commission is like.

Retail is Hell

At some point, I really need to start documenting the Stupid Customer Tricks that certain of our loyal Blowfish customers pull on us. Until then, if you want a remarkably good simulation of what it is like at Blowfish, dealing with the public on a day-to-day basis, I would like to recommend The Barnes & Noble Experience.

Christophe Sells Out

Because I’m curious about how it works, the bottom of this column has Google AdSense ads on it. Don’t feel an obligation to click on them. Of course, don’t feel an obligation not to, either.

R.I.P., Bookpeople

It is very painful that Bookpeople, one of the best independent book distributors, has gone out of business. For Blowfish, it is particularly personal, as they were one of our first vendors, way back when. Some of my fondest memories of the early days of Blowfish were driving over to the Bookpeople warehouse near Oakland airport to scope out the latest arrivals and pick up what we needed.

I’m still in a bit of denial about them really being gone; just as when you lose a long-time friend, it seems as though they are still there. I still almost ask our book buyer, “Hey, does Bookpeople carry that title?“ . . . and then I remember.

Over the years, Bookpeople also provided many friends of mine with jobs when they needed them, and they were the kind of jobs that are getting scarcer and scarcer: Full-time jobs that paid a living wage, with health insurance.

We’ll miss them. Buy something from an independent bookstore, in their memory.

Postal Follies

We at Blowfish have a love-hate relationship with the United States Postal Service. On the one hand, it still to this day provides good value for money . . . when it works. When it doesn’t, well, at least we’re glad to know that we are not alone in our experiences.

Why analysts are overrated

According to Prudential Equity Group (quoted in Forbes), Apple Computer “still needs to make structural changes on the cost side in order to compete more profitably against Dell . . .”

Yeah, those Macintosh clones from Dell are really pounding Apple. I’ve been worried about Lamborghini’s cost structure relative to Skoda, too.

Drive a Modest Car

This is Blowfish's 10th anniversary (in less than a month!), and I am still amazed that we've hung in there this long. The company has had plenty of moments in which it did not seem like we'd make it. On the other hand, I have never in my entire life had a job whose satisfactions approached those of being here. I love my job, and cannot imagine working for someone else again. (Of course, my unemployable attitude may be also due to certain former employers.)

Someday, I will write a book about how to run a small company. Until then, though, we have a great alternative: Drive a Modest Car by Ralph Warner, one of the founders of Nolo Press (Nolo Press being one of the Great Good Companies of the universe). It is full of very sound, real-world business advice (something that I have found utterly lacking in most books on business). Warner is encouraging, realistic, and has been there himself. Highly recommended.

(And, for the record: A 2002 Mazda Protege 5. Blue. It's adorable.)

To serve you better

An actual voice response unit prompt from the merchant account division of some large bank:

"To serve you better, we have changed our system so that you need to enter your 16 digit merchant account number before speaking to a representative." And this is serving me better how, precisely?

To add insult to injury, or vice versa, the representative answered the phone with, "Hello . . . may I have your 16 digit merchant account number, please?"

From Blowfish's customer service rules: Never transfer someone blind. Always make sure that the person who is picking up the phone has as much information as possible about the call, so we never have to start over with, "May I help you?" with the customer.