Companies seem to think technology is an excuse to provide bad service. Or maybe they don’t need any excuse at all to do so, based on how often they provide bad service. My latest experience with lame pointy haired boss technology came while looking to watch a football game online. Years ago you could listen to any Wisconsin Badger game over the internet - very simple, no special software (just the simple free Real Audio plugin). In subsequent years (just to play a simple audio stream that had worked in previous years they kept requiring upgrades and their ever more complex required software would fail very often). Then the option of listen to online radio broadcasts disappeared altogether (for schools that chose to prevent this anyway).

Now sites that provide video seem incapable of making it a simple process. They chose not to use standard open software solutions. Instead they require you follow their desires to use this or that and then the whole operation fails quite often. Google, no surprise, is an exception (yes it worked prior to Google, they were just smart enough to buy it and not break it). YouTube just works. Can others copy this, idea? Some can, but many phbs decide that really everyone that uses their web sites should be happy to try and download special software and make configuration changes… to get their site working on their personal computers.

The idea that playing video online is solved problem and just making it more and more complex is not a good idea for users no matter if they want to add some bullet points to their boss on why they should get a larger raise this year because they got the engineers to add on some additional new feature that no-one actually wants. Granted This solved problem is a bit lame now, so I am all for improving it. But this should be a process that goes for simpler solutions, not more complex ones. And certainly any timed to the operating system of the end user is too idiotic to consider.
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How is this for Gobbledygook? Your home banking access code is expired! You must change your access code at this time. Your access code:

* may be between 4 and 20 characters in length
* must not have been changed within the last 0 days
* may not be one of 3 previously used access codes
* must not repeat the same character more than 0 times
* must not contain 0 characters from previous access code
* must contain at least 0 non-alphabetic character(s)
* may contain the following special characters: !”#$%&()+,-/;<=>?[\]^_`{|}*’
* must contain at least 0 alphabetic character(s)

1) What does “must not have been changed within the last 0 days” mean?
2) How about “must not repeat the same character more than 0 times” ?
3) Or “must not contain 0 characters from previous access code” ?

This kind of stuff is what makes people think computer programmers are crazy. I am sure the software allows users to set criteria. Then this screen is suppose to explain the criteria to users. It seems to me, if the selection is 0, then the correct procedure is to not display anything about it to the user.

Really I am not sure how “must not contain 0 characters from previous access code” is even to be applied if an positive integer were used. I guess you could not allow using any characters from the last access code, which seems crazy to me to begin with, but setting a number seems totally bizarre. I could see setting a requirement that says no repeat of the same sequence of x characters. I think that would probably not work well, but at least I understand what it would mean.

Related: Change Your Name - Bad Software Visual Controls - Complicating Simplicity - web usability resources - Schneier on Security

HP shatters excessive packaging world record

It is hard to imagine what management system creates such solutions. But it is not hard to image Dilbert’s pointy haired boss fitting right in there.

Related: Is Poor Service the Industry Standard (HP)? - Muda/waste - Customers Get Dissed and Tell - Companies in Need of Customer Focus

It is obvious a few companies don’t have any ability to, provide even just reasonably bad service (for them the goal of decent service is so far away as to not be reasonable). How often do Verizon (based on their lousy track record I won’t get FIOS), Comcast, Time Warner, AT&T, United… get blasted for horrible custom service? So often it is not news. Still, the stories of their failures are written about over and over as they make so many people so mad some can’t help posting yet another story about the failures to value customers. Seth Godin is one recent example - Learning from frustration:

Related: Dell, Reddit and Customer Focus - More Bad Customer Service Examples - Customer Hostility from Discover Card - Is Bad Service the Industry Standard? - Ritz Carlton and Home Depot - Better and Different

Why is it? I really don’t know. It drives me crazy though - having to put up with horrible service again and again. Is it possible that only a few people actually care about service? I know I care about it, but given the preference of business to continually provide horrible service it should be that you can just provide plan mediocre service and take their business. Yet these companies providing what seems likes worse and worse service somehow stay in business.

Related: Is Bad Service the Industry Standard? - Customers Get Dissed and Tell - Poor Customer Service from Discover Card

Re: Boing Boing post - Why HP’s region coding excuse is bogus

There is a simple method for large multi-national companies to use to protect against currency fluctuation. They can use foreign exchange futures to do so. Companies do this all the time (some also chose not to for their own business reasons). “Foreign Exchange is the largest of the global financial markets. Daily trading volume in the currency markets is estimated to be 1.1 US trillion dollars.” - Smith Barney Citigroup. Some companies choose to speculate on the direction they believe exchange rates will go (either directly, or by not hedging when they believe rates will move in their favor and hedging when they predict doing so will benefit them).

In fact the United States government gives beneficial tax treatment (60% of profits are classified as long term capital gains, regardless of the holding period, thus reducing the taxes owed) to profits from “futures” trading. The reasoning is that creating a market for companies to hedge their risks is so important we must provide tax benefits to create a market for this activity. Some may think that the special tax advantages are more likely due to large payments from lobbyists to those who write the tax code than the merits of such tax law. In fact I may be one of them. Farmers often use futures contracts (on, for example, wheat or corn) in much the same way that companies can use future currency contracts to hedge their risks. That point is mentioned by the lobbyists, I would imagine.

The argument that you need to cripple products by geographic area to cope with currency fluctuations is false. It might be that a company wants to practice Price Discrimination (definition from US Federal Trade Commission or from the Digital Economist) to charge more where they can get more and less where they can get less. In the view of such a company, the internet, and other factors, have made it increasingly easy for people to buy in the low cost region and resell the items in the region where the company wants to charge higher prices. If you want to keep practicing price descrimination as a company you have to erect barriers to the free trade of your products by your customers.

Reimporting drugs is another clear example where companies try to use price discrimination - to charge US consumers more than Canadian consumers. Drug companies have successfully created legal road blocks to those trying to get around the geographic price discrimination. However, since lately those responsible for enforcing those laws have not been very eager to do so you can imagine the drug companies would like a drug that only worked in the country it was purchased. Another example of price discrimination are the regional versions of Windows.

I happen to believe companies should have the right to practice price discrimination. And in fact they should have the right to make products that have replacement parts that have been crippled to work only in products sold in specific countries. I would rather deal with companies that were trying to provide me more value not less. So I would be reluctant to buy from companies that practice such anti-consumer behavior. And luckily the internet and blogs are making it very difficult for companies to hind such practices. My guess is once attention is focused on such practices some companies will take advantage of such behavior by pledging “to do no evil.” And those companies will gain customers. The process will be quite a bit more confusing in the real world but that is how things will play out in the long run.

Hedging Currency Fluctuations:

• To Hedge or Not to Hedge? - for an individual investor (from Vanguard Australia)
• Foreign currency hedging transactions under Section 988 temporary regulations