Google, its products and its customers

Google isn’t just a giant in the data collection and advertising business, it dabbles also in selling some tangible products. Things like thermostats, smartphones, surveillance cameras among other gizmos. For a dozen years, we’ve been using Nest thermostats a few months before the company bought the brand in 2014. 

The three machines we have have worked perfectly during that time until late October I was told by some email I ignored that Google would no longer support the 1st and 2nd generation of that product. A few weeks ago as I was fine tuning my climate control ahead of winter weather, I realized that I couldn’t do it, as was the case in the past, from my smartphone or my computer. 

Then I realized that I would have to upgrade with the company 4th generation of product at a preferential cost just under $490 instead of $885! I tried to contact Google to know the details involved with the deal, but wasted my precious time in the maze of their web-based customer support service. I got stuck and couldn’t get anywhere. 

That’s how, through various forums and other inline information I gathered, I came to the conclusion that the Google management knows damned well that their customer support is worthless. Yet, the company has historically prioritized self‑service help centers and community forums over direct human support, which fuels my perception of “hopeless” service. 

Directing most users to its online Help Center allows Google to do without live agents and save big. With billions of users across Gmail, YouTube, Android, and more, Google leans on automation and documentation rather than staffing massive call centers. For the love of money, Google’s leadership has chosen to invest in scalable, automated support rather than traditional customer service models. 

This is a deliberate decision, not ignorance, in spite of the fact that complex problems (account recovery, billing disputes, device malfunctions) often leave users stranded. The net result is that most customers feel abandoned, especially when compared to competitors with stronger live support systems. Google’s leadership knows its support reputation is down the toilets, but it’s a calculated trade‑off. 

They’ve chosen scale and automation over human service, which leaves many customers frustrated but adds to their bottom line. So, what will I do? Never, ever buy a product from Google. The company is only good at selling ad space and sucking customer data, but is woefully unable to “play merchant”.

Kohler, a great company?

I can’t even remember why we got all of our faucets from Kohler when we built our current home 13 years ago, but over the years, I’ve been impressed by the company’s responsiveness in terms of customer service support. 

In fact, much more so than any other, American or European consumer product firms. In digging deeper when I hear good things about that Kohler brand, it's typically based on a combination of the company's long-standing reputation, product quality, and market position. For one thing, it’s been around since 1873 and has been a leader in the kitchen and bath industry ever since. Its long history gives the brand a sense of stability and reliability. 

Further, its faucets are widely praised for their quality as they’re made with durable materials that resist corrosion and normal wear and tear. While some components may include plastic, the core structure is quite robust, leading to a long-lasting product as acknowledged by plumbers whose sole criticism might be that some specific models can be harder to install or repair than competitors. 

Kohler is also considered an industry leader in design. Their styles are widely varied and fit any decor while also standing at the forefront of innovation. Then there’s the Kohler warranty that’s hard to beat and so easy to use. It’s also a strong reason for the trust the brand enjoys. About 6 years ago, I had a shower water mixer that stopped working. I contacted customer service that sent me a replacement mixer with easy instructions on how to install it, and since it was easy to implement the switch was a cinch!

A couple of years ago it was a frayed pull out faucet flexible tube that they replaced. Recently, our 12 year old kitchen pull-down faucet began to stick, I found the Kohler video showing me how to repair it (watch it below, its quality and simplicity shows the consideration this company has for its users), it looked so simple that I couldn’t wait to order the free replacement kit and that was it. 

Sure when I got it, I discovered other problems that negated the ease of the video, but nonetheless, Kohler stood head and shoulder not just over its competitor, but largely ahead of major household name companies that have yet to learn, understand and apply what exemplary customer service 

is!

How dishonest Vail Resorts is?

On Tuesday I received an email from Vail Resorts alerting me about a soon to come payment date for the balance for our family passes. The amount for my wife was correctly posted while mine showed $1,075 due which wasn’t what I was expecting. It should have been much less. 

So the next day I call Vail Resorts’ customer service hidden away in the Philippines, and after the usual communication struggle, I finally got to state my case. I had booked my pass on April 13, paid my $49 deposit out of what was then a $1,051 grand total, and not $1,075 for the final amount. So in spite of telling the service person on the phone, I was told “You’ll only have to pay $1,026, after deducting your down payment of $49”. I said “No, the pass amount was $1,051 and not $1,075!” 

The person puts me on hold, checks around and comes back on the line acknowledging that I’m right, it will be $1,002 after deducting the deposit. Then, I go on: “That’s still not right, it’s not the amount I owe, do you show any other credit in the system?” The service person puts me on hold, gets back to me and says “No.”. 

Then I go, “This must be part of Vail Resorts deceptive tactics to ‘forget’ about its promises. I’m owed an extra $246 credit following the ski patrol strike!” I give the guy the promo code number, he puts me on hold again and a few minutes later returns on the line and says “Yes, you were right”. 

I then tell him that Vail Resorts acts like a bunch of thieves and ask him to confirm all that via email which he agrees to but didn’t do. Evidently, it would appear that Vail Resorts does that maliciously to evade the credit extended they hope their pass-holders will have forgotten by September. So much for the “Vail Resorts’ Epic Promise!”, just hot air as I had suspected! 

Cheating is definitely into Vail Resorts DNA. I wonder if some CRISPR gene editing might help?

Tesla’s AI customer support…

Like many, I have heard that Tesla's customer support was receiving mixed reviews, with some users praising its convenience and effectiveness, while others reporting significant frustrations. I had never used it until last week when “SmartThings” , an app newly installed on my Samsung Galaxy phone, messed up my car audio system, preventing me from listening to my music, using the GPS or my car telephone system. 

I first tried to solve the problem myself and one hour later when I couldn’t figure things out, I called Samsung support which is chat-based, something I find utterly annoying. After spending 45 minutes, nothing was resolved. All this work happened inside my car. 

Then I only had one option left, call Tesla. I did, and after moving through a series of annoying menus, I got a female voice on the phone who asked me what my problem was and alternating between the Tesla screen and my smartphone, made me try this, that, and that other thing, and after 26 minutes of seemingly fast and efficient trouble-shooting suddenly the phone conversation came through the car audio system! 

The problem was solved. Not at all the horrible situation I was fearing about Tesla’s support service. I was very impressed and since I had noticed that during the whole process the voice would continue while I was interrupting it, I asked that question to the “lady” who had solved my problem: “Are you a human or a robot?” 

The answer was: “I’m a virtual assistant”, it was indeed a robot… That made me think that AI can be formidable when correctly harnessed. I was at the same time amazed and worried for all the white collar workers of tomorrow that might no longer have a job because of it...

Vail Resorts still doesn’t get it!

Recently, Park City Mountain, that’s owned by Vail Resorts, sent me one of their customer surveys. I get two or three of these by winter. This time, I said once more that I wasn’t terribly satisfied with my experience. 

Good points: Removal of “whippers”, on a few ski runs. These plants growing on ski runs are both dangerous and unpleasant that have grown since Vail Resorts took over Park City Mountain ten years ago, yet many more still need to go. 

Negative points: Had lunch with family once this winter at “Cloud Dine”. It was messy, overcrowded, dirty with mediocre food, the experience was unpleasant. Then, you closed down most of your Canyons Village parking lot mid-March to build a new covered garage. Why didn’t you wait till mid April? 

This clearly shows the lack of importance of customers to you. Since Vail Resorts took over, that parking lot has been peppered with huge potholes that were a challenge to avoid. So to add insult to injury, you’ve plastered the chain-link fence that borders the construction site with stupid, arrogant signs making a mockery of its clients. 

Like “Your car alignment will thank us” or “Potholes, the ultimate speed bump, enjoy them while the last!”. Not funny, when it’s Park City Mountain that let that lot deteriorate to its terrible condition and should PAY for wheels alignment and damages to my car. It shows that Park City Mountain has no concept of customer service. 

I guess, like for the Aesop fable of the frog and the scorpion, bad customer treatment is in Vail Resorts’ nature!

T-Mobile, like in “Test My patience!"

Since June 2021, we have been using a cell phone company 5G tower router as our internet source. It’s been working great, provides us with fast internet speed and would be perfect if the tower didn’t die every two years. The first box made by Nokia was toast in February of 2023 and just last weekend its replacement also kicked the bucket. So after three consecutive router shut down I insisted on getting my device replaced.

My nearby T-mobile store had it in stock, so at 12:30 pm, I drove there and was apparently second in line, but failed to see a third customer floating around, and after waiting for 30 minutes, what seemed to be the store manager came around with his tablet and asked me the reason for my visit. Then I had to wait a total of 2 hours before being taken care of. I guess the focus of brick and mortar stores for these phone companies is to sell products, not customer care. 

The guy assigned to us had no clue what he was doing and his lack of knowledge and concern for his customers’ time suggested that T-Mobile doesn’t pay its people well enough to get good ones. Two days later, as I called support for setting up my phone app, I finally spoke to a competent technician, which shows the blatant lack of training received by store personnel. Routers must more easily break down that phone, hence the limited staffing needed at physical stores. My alternative would be Comcast, but I hate the outfit, so in spite of these problems I am sticking with T-Mobile. 

If it eats up some of my time, it must be good for training my patience! June 25, 2021

Customer support in the Philippines?

As I was trying to get some refunds related to some of the airline-caused incidents we experienced during our trip, I was transported to a Filipino service center that Air France – KLM seems to have chosen for handling their customer relations. 

On Wednesday I spent 2 hours, spread in 3 calls, to get through! This European airline is not the only one to rely upon call centers in the Philippines to handle that work. Over the years, I have experienced “support” in Asia, like India and more commonly, the Philippines with HP, my mobile phone provider, and Vail Resorts among others. 

These decisions are obviously made to save huge amounts of money at the expense of pleasant and effective customer experience. What typically happens is that the hourly wage of customer service or customer support personnel hired in the Philippines by western companies varies depending on a number of factors, including the employee's experience, skills, and the company's budget. 

However, in general, the hourly wage in Philippine Peso ranges from ₱61 to ₱259 per hour ($1 to $4.50) that breaks-down as follow with experience: Entry-level: ₱61-₱99 ($1.00 to $1.75), Mid-level: ₱100-₱159 ($1.75 - $2.80) and Senior-level: ₱160-₱259 ($2.80 - $4.50). As we all know there are other factors like command of English, diction, adaptability, IQ and EQ that affect the performance. 

So, in the worst possible case, if an entry-level employee’s performance is terrible, and takes ten times the time to solve a problem, the cost per hour is still only $10 per hour. In all cases however, one needs to add the call center’s margin. Since productivity is generally bad, it contributes to customers’ huge wait time. 

Despite their (alleged) fluency in English, some Filipino call center agents have difficulty understanding and making themselves understood which further irritates an often dissatisfied caller that to make things worse has waited in queue forever. Further, cultural differences between the United States and the Philippines often lead to misunderstandings or miscommunications. I’m not even mentioning security concerns about information (credit cards, financial information) that could add to the pitfalls.

In summary, we ought to stay away from companies that save money on the backs of their customers that ultimately pay for the corporate cost-saving in terms of poor service and horrible amounts of time wasted!

Customer service’s Achilles heel

In my house we have a few clad sliding doors made by Windsor the same company that manufactured the windows. 

Of these doors, the one we use most opens from the kitchen out to our outdoor deck. One day my wife found a weeny, tiny screw sitting on the desk and it came from the lock assembly of that door. 

I tried to replace it, but its thread was stripped. After a crazy amount time researching what kind of part it was and after trying to contact in vain the manufacturer, I only could reach out to its reseller in Salt Lake City that was woefully unable to get me that replacement screw, even after I made a pest of myself in insisting about my query. 

Eventually I went to the Park City hardware store that has not been killed yet by Walmart or Home Depot, and had someone quick and knowledgeable to find me the right replacement screw. 

Will I ever recommend Windsor windows and doors in the future? Don’t even think of it!

Best Buy’s good tech support

I’ve been lamenting about America’s declining customer service, but was pleasantly surprise in experiencing Best Buy’s Geek Squad, the large electronic retailer’s customer service. 

In the past, when I ran into computer problems I couldn’t solve, I turned to local tech repair men who were all but nice, helpful or affordable. To put it simply, they inspired me everything, but confidence. 

When I got my most recent computer breakdown, I couldn’t get the hold of these tech guys I usually work with, so I turned to the Geek Squad. First, over the phone and then in person at their store. 

In both instances, I found them to be courteous, effective, pleasant and not pushy, in other words, neither tech (a girl then a guy) I experienced that time, tried to sell me anything like a service contract or attempted to tell me that my computer was too old and needed to be replaced. 

This has changed my view on the “big box” store and next time, I’ll consider going there when I’m in need of some tech products or a repair!

Testing the IRS

Late April, I received a letter from the IRS asking me something I couldn’t understand (I believe they wanted me to pay several hundreds of dollars for an error I had made), so I turned it to my accountant, who in turned discovered that she too had messed up even more with my 2020 tax return. 

So I filed an amendment that was going to net me a sizable reimbursement by the taxing authority, in other words a rare agreeable surprise from that administration! Late May, the IRS sent me a letter asking me to verify that it was me who had initiated the amendment process, in order to get the refund (the state of Utah had already sent me its share).

For that, I had to call a certain telephone number, which I did immediately, but whenever I tried, I was told that the agents were too busy and that I should call at a later date. I persisted the best I could, go lucky a week or so ago, but was missing documents and could not complete the procedure. 

So I called again, was turned down because no one was there to take my call, on day I stayed 50 minutes on hold for nothing and finally this past Friday, after waiting 2 hours and 32 minutes I was miraculously able to interact with an agent, who asked me many more stupid questions, before telling me that all was okay and that I would receive my refund between 3 and 9 weeks from that time. 

Altogether, after checking on my phone I called more fifteen times, spent about 5 hours doing that, leaving me very dissatisfied with my Federal taxing authority. Not only they seemed grossly understaffed, but I suspect that many agents are working from home, are not at all effective at working that way, spend more time walking their dog and taking care of their kids, while we, the taxpayers suffer immensely. 

It’s also true that the IRS has been grossly understaffed for years, especially in the customer service department. And so it's not uncommon for taxpayers who call the agency, like me, to experience crazy wait times. Not so long ago, $80 billion in new funding (over 10 years) was awarded to the IRS by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) to add staff and go after tax-cheats (which would have more than paid for itself), but the recent bipartisan deal to raise the debt ceiling just clawed back $20 billion. 

Of that, $10 billion will be “repurposed” in fiscal 2024, along with another $10 billion in 2025 to be allocated toward more resources for non-defense priorities. When all is said than done, roughly $29 billion could now be spent on additional enforcement and auditing over the next 10 years as opposed to the $45 billion originally allocated, and the $25 billion boost to operations could fall as low as $16.25 billion under this scenario. 

That’s why I don’t expect a miracle any time soon with the IRS!

Our wonderful small local bank...

We’ve been banking at our small Park City bank since July 1985. Quite a long time, by American standards. In those days, the bank was called “Silver King Bank” after the glorious mining era that began placing our little western town on the map. 

After that, and through years of mergers and acquisitions its name successively changed to “Valley Bank”, “Bank One” and today “Chase”. Along the way, service has become far less personal with tellers changing continuously and online banking becoming the new way of transacting, we hardly ever go to our bank except when we need to access our safe deposit box. 

This precisely leads me to the core subject of this blog. A week ago today, we received a letter stating that the safe deposit box we had for 37 years was going to be closed for good. Irate, I tried to call my bank by using the local number, but after spending five minutes going through interminable menus I found myself somewhere at Chase, but definitely not at my local Park City branch and unable to speak to a human capable of helping me. 

That left me with no other choice, but jump in my car and drive to the branch. There, after waiting more time speaking successively with three people, I finally found one willing and able to look at the letter I had received. After trying to make sense of it, she still couldn’t understand why my safe was terminated. Since it was the weekend, she said she’d get the problem resolved the following Monday, which of course, she didn’t. 

On Tuesday I called the bank’s local number and when I heard the employee unmistakable Indian accent, I asked him if this was Park City and he said no, this is Mumbai, India, and I responded that, while I had nothing against India, I would have liked to get the Park City Chase branch on the line. He sounded sorry and he said “This is how our phone system works, when no one answers in Park City, we handle the call overflow” which, I found later wasn’t quite true. 

At my request, he then transferred me to the Park City branch, and since it’s chronically understaffed to save Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase’s CEO, some precious cash, a recording told me to try later... Eventually, during the course of the day I got a voice message on my phone telling me that the letter was just an error, and that I should call the branch back to get a confirmation. I did and after five long minutes of waiting was back… you guessed it, in India!

How does Vail Resorts delivers skiing

Yesterday, we brushed a picture representing the ideal mountain ski resort. Now, contrast this idealized picture with the one offered today by big conglomerates like Vail Resorts, that are promoting traffic jams, lift-lines, unmet expectations, terrible communication and there’s suddenly a huge disconnect. 

Their product has turned into a lackluster consumable commodity, not a special, uplifting experience as it should have. Skiing should be like an Apple or a Tesla branded thing. It should be an experience, not just a product or a service. 

Tesla and Apple product faults or flaws are largely erased by the superlative quality of the experience they are able to deliver. There absolutely no question that in products like in services, experience should be the shining element that overwhelms everything else.

Have I said that folks who run ski resorts should also understand their local culture, come from the mountains or at least live there, be passionate about skiing and not consumed by greed, corporate schemes and tactics. Vail Resorts stands as the perfect example of what not to do in that area. 

With its approach, the quality of the experience is erased by a tsunami of misery coming from all sides, like over-flooding its slopes with skiers, creating excess traffic, poor service, lack of communication and irresponsible decisions. 

There are lots of areas where economies of scale from a slow, inflexible cookie-cutter made website, to a proprietary pass scanning system, or too many old and inefficient lifts like those still found in Park City are hampering Vail Resorts productivity and responsiveness. 

These regimented economies of scale are hurting a company’s flexibility and tying the hands of its local management. It seems that Alterra was more sensitive in keeping the traits of each one of its resort more distinctive in not blending them uniformly together. 

From an outside and cynical observer standpoint, it would even seem that Vail Resorts’ management is now squeezing its product every which way, as soon as possible, to produce more dollars, just before global warming makes it business model fully irrelevant…

Remarkable businessman, extraordinary customer service

This new year has been particularly cold in Park City with temperatures down to -5 F some mornings. So, a few days ago, when I turned on our gas fireplace and it didn’t start, I was disappointed, and even though the heat was on, the added warmth provided by the fireplace as well as its flames are a cheering sight when outside temperatures are so low. 

So I looked closer and found out that the pilot light was out. I opened up the compartment, took the instruction book out, and restarted the flame, but when I hit the switch there was still no fire roaring. 

I check on YouTube and the rest of the Internet to find out that perhaps the inside of the fireplace was dirty. That fireplace was put in service when we built our home eight years ago! I then proceeded to take of the glass plate off, removed the fake logs and engage into a thorough vacuuming and cleaning of the entire insert. 

When I though all was done to my satisfaction, I re-installed the whole assembly, and as I lit the pilot and tested again, there was no flames to be seen. I dismounted the whole insert again and thoroughly cleaned up the thermocouple to make sure it was free of soot and reset the whole fireplace, to alas, no positive result. 

That’s when I decided that I would call the fireplace supplier (Alpine Fireplaces in Lehi, Utah) after the holiday weekend. We were on New Year’s day and I thought of taking a look at the supplier’s website and let them know about my problem so they could put me on top of their list the following Monday. I got in the chat room and said that I owned a fireplace installed in 2014 and when I turned on the switch, the fire failed to ignite, yet the pilot light worked, and ask them to come over and fix the problem as soon as possible. 

One hour and 45 minutes later, on that same New Year’s day when everyone is supposed to be hung-over, do nothing and is half-asleep in front of the TV, I received an answer that said: “A couple of easy things to check. One, is the valve still in the pilot position? Common mistake, this lets the pilot operate but wont let the fireplace ignite. Make sure the valve is turned to the on position. Two, the switch on the wall that turns the fireplace on, may need replaced. This is a millivolt system and will not shock you, you can easily take the switch off the wall and take the two wires and touch them together, if they ignite the fireplace, replace the switch. Let me know what you find”, signed, Bruce Broadbent, CMO.

I started backward, found out the switch was okay and then discovered that I had not reset the pilot light to the “on” position. When I did it, it worked perfectly well. Bruce was my hero and along with my heartfelt thanks and congratulations I sent him something via Amazon as a way to reward him for his extraordinary response. 

What I learned from that story was that Bruce is an outstanding executive who knows what extraordinary customer service is, and that the incident gave the opportunity to effect a long overdue deep-clean of my gas fireplace insert from top to bottom!

Samsung’s planned obsolescence?

You would think that Samsung, the TV world’s market leader, with its 20% share of global shipments would be more concerned and careful about its consumers.

In our home we have two of their TVs and at least three cell phones made by the Korean firm. Yet, Samsung, in spite of its great products, seems to be oblivious of its consumers’ happiness with its brand.

For the past 10 days, I couldn’t load directly the app menu by pressing on what they call their Smart Hub. An error message invariably came up announcing “Smart Hub is being updated. Please try again later”.

I went online and discovered that it was a widespread problem dating back to 2018 and that seemed unresolved by the techs at Samsung. I unsuccessfully tried several “recipes” offered on the web, further wasted my time on Samsung chat feature and finally called the company three times and none of their support folks was able to help me; in fact, they knew less than I did on the subject.

I finally realized that the app display had changed ever since I got the error-message, and that it now takes longer before the new displays fully loads on my screen (1 or 2 minute, an eternity in modern electronic timeline).

Further, this display vanishes too quickly and don’t let the operator the time to make a selection. This is not impossible to deal with, but certainly inconvenient enough for many people to choose to dump their current TV and buy a new one.

If I can give them a piece of advice, don’t buy another Samsung, the company certainly doesn’t deserve a repeat purchase, go for an LG or something else!

Delta Air Lines’ phone service

Recently, I was booking some rather complicated air travel with our main air carrier, Delta Air Lines. I was doing this online and when I got close to the end of that rather arduous work, the airline wouldn’t accept my frequent flier account number.

This was an old recurring story that began after 9/11, when air travel security measures where tightened up; prior to that, I used the initials of my first name (as it appeared on my SkyMiles number) and after repeated attempts to correct it with the air carrier, their records never reflected the change.

So I was rather upset as I had secured good seats, just by the aircraft bulkhead, as we like them to be and was one more time rebuffed. Since I couldn’t do anything on line, I had to call and was told that my waiting time would be half an hour, so I postponed till the following morning.

At that point, when I called again, I had no choice but wait, and wait a very long time before I could speak with a human being. All told, it took me 45 minutes to get through. The agent got my problem partially resolved and I shared my frustration with her about having to wait for so long.

She simply replied “It’s the summer season and we’re extremely busy”. My answer was: “This not the first summer Delta is in operation, the airline knows that summer is busier than other times of the year, therefore it should staff its phone lines accordingly”

I asked her to pass my comments along to her management. She invited me instead to use Delta website for this. I guess you never win with the airlines!

Prime’s “subprime” delivery service...

For a while, Amazon has been contemplating to launch its own delivery service, and now, its blue vans can be seen all over American neighborhoods.

Even though the company has used Fedex, UPS and the postal service for years, it would love to reduce its huge shipping bill and that’s one reason why it’s bringing that activity in house. That way can make even more money, following the typical American greed scenario.

Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder, can’t help but look at UPS huge quarterly profits and salivate in thinking that even a piece of that pie would be a big boost to its bottom line. Also, by handling deliveries itself, Amazon can speed up delivery times and attract more customers to buy its Prime memberships. Finally, it can also track deliveries on its own, and not be caught in the middle when customers complain that they’ve never received their order.

All this sounds good in theory, but the devil is in the details, as shipping and delivering is yet another set of skills that must be mastered before it becomes fully operational and competitive. To get off and running quickly, Amazon created its “Delivery Service Partners”, a new program aimed at entrepreneurs willing to invest into their own Amazon delivery service for as low as a $10,000. If successful, owners are told they can expect to earn between $75,000 and $300,000 in annual profits. Recently, I experimented twice with that brand new “Prime” delivery system.

On June 3, I had ordered a communication device and never received it. We weren’t home as the parcel should have been delivered, but obviously wasn’t to be found. Sure, the order confirmation showed a photo of the parcel next to an entry door, except that it wasn’t mine. I had to spend 30 minutes chatting with an Amazon associate to explain the situation, hear his side of the story, and get the transaction credited back to me.

I immediately re-ordered the part and on June 5 was expecting it again. This time, I was cautious and followed the interactive map that popped up on my computer, so when the delivery van was just 300 yards from my home, I stepped outside and waited for the van to arrive.

Arrived it did, but seemingly without any intention of stopping at my place. I had to get in the middle of the road, wave the lady behind the wheel until she stopped and gave me my parcel. She seemed totally clueless and obviously not up to the task.

All this to say that Mr. Bezos will have a few improvements to make if he wants to stay in the package delivery business and not drive his customers away…

Apple's nasty business practices

I've never been a fan of Apple and have just been the owner of one iPod. My wife, however, is on her second iPad and bought it because it first came on the market ahead of the other tablets. The first iPad she owned died when its battery failed to recharge.

We didn't throw it away as we were under the impression that Apple would replace it for about $100, but since my wife didn't want to wait for that, she purchased a replacement one. Recently, we finally contacted the Apple Store, and after a rather convoluted protocol, we ended up having to make an appointment at their nearest store to carry on that battery replacement.

We were bounced from one associate to the next and after about 15 minutes past our stated appointment, we were told that Apple didn't change batteries in its iPads and that we would be “given” the option to purchase a new replacement one for $300.

All told, another half day totally wasted! Nowhere during the time I booked the appointment was I told about our lack of options, even though we had to give both the model serial number and date of purchase.

If this sounds like highway robbery, it certainly is and we won't buy another Apple product anytime soon. What I will though, buy a battery replacement kit, including one new battery, the tools to handle it and the video for installing it.

Then, our next tablet is more likely to be branded Samsung or Asus...

A regimented motel

The Japan House in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho is quite unique in terms of the form of hospitality it offers the unsuspecting traveler. I booked the hotel through Expedia and still can remember that most of the comments were extremely good, particularly those about the quality of the breakfast offered, so with absolute confidence, I pulled the trigger and booked a room.

When we got there, the outside didn't look that fancy, in fact it was just your traditional American motel. At the reception, Kim, the owner gave me a very exacting order form for the next morning's breakfast. It took me a good five minutes to go through it (multiple options, but rigid flexibility) and a set time for showing up in the morning.

Then we got into the room. Quite clean, but lousy Wifi signal. I went downstairs and began bitching about it. We got it working. The TV was an old cathodic tube, low definition model that we didn't use, but it sure failed to impress us. Any remote chance of a view was blocked by the staircase, but the king size bed was very comfy.

The next morning, our breakfast appointment was set at 7:30 am sharp. Problem is that we came straight north from British Columbia and assumed that we were in Idaho (correct) and still in the Mountain time zone (wrong), because Coeur d'Alene's heart beats in unison with Spokane's and its Pacific time zone. Go figure!

So we had been up since 6:00 am, hungry and champing at the bit for our breakfast slot, so by 8:00 am mountain time, I went down to plead for moving up the time to 7:30 pacific time. In the meantime, my wife was wondering if we'd get at least two slices of bread and always re-assuring, I told her that “everything is gonna be alright”.

The lady of the house wasn't not enthused about my requested change of plans and told me that she could not run her business if every guest were as scattered as I was. Still she granted me an exception and authorized me to bring my wife downstairs for the meal at 8:00 am. When we got there, everything was measured and tiny.

It was a Lilliputian version of breakfast. The coffee mugs were small, the sausages tiny and we had two slices of bread each, but together they added to a third of a normal slice. Granted, we were offered coffee refill that we gladly accepted and it's only when we checked out that our hosts became very pleasant.

The guests from hell were gone!

Adventures in irrigation

Utah is so dry that we must rely on some sort of irrigation, especially if you grow a vegetable garden or want to get grass, flowers or bushes established. When we built our home in 2014, we choose to have an automatic irrigation system to jump-start our landscaping, even though we lived one third of our time in Park City without relying on one of these water guzzlers!

The programming controller we used is the X-Core made by Hunter Industries. It is highly sophisticated, allows for a multitude of programming options, but is woefully difficult to understand and adjust, to the point that the company has a full-time crew of technicians at their call-center ready to guide users into their convoluted product. It's clearly a case of a product designed by engineers with absolutely no regards towards the end-user.

As you might guess, I've resorted to that call-center on multiple occasion ever since our system has been up and running, which means that I know it pretty darn well. This said, it still happened to start inadvertently around midnight when I'm sound asleep; the noise wakes me up and forces me to get up and shut the controller down.

I've called the support team many times about their product erratic behavior. They told me to do a “soft reset”, I also did hard ones, but the problem kept propping up. Finally I called again yesterday, went through my controller with the factory technician and when all was said and done, he asked me to look for the assembly date, printed on some obscure corner of the control panel. I told him what it was and he said “The units made during that time have all been recalled and you must change yours.”

Since we are talking about a $100-150 piece of equipment, I must now drive one hour away to get a replacement, waste half a day of my precious time and that's about my sole expeditious option if I want this problem out of my life sooner than later. Another adventure in consumerism and a very, very bad grade for Hunter Industries!

Reaching (banking) closure

Almost three month after I demanded it, my bank account with Crédit Agricole is finally closed.

I got a check and a confirmation. It was long, arduous and painful process that is quite illustrative of how certain service business still work in my home country...