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Sunday, May 14, 2006
Outa here 
| | Flying to Syndicate in New York today. See ya there. |
Ass roots
| | These ass backwards actions are exactly the reason why we don¹t trust you and your future plans for the internet. Can¹t you see that? |
Been called worse
The forgetful CRM
| | Most companies with lots of customers use CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems for guiding the "relations" that might happen between customers and factota at the company. |
| | Every time we've moved (6 times in the last 9 years), DishTV's CRM has done a nice job of remembering what a good customer I've been. Their phone workers have thanked me for being a good customer since 1997 and seemed to go out of their way to be nice to me some way or other. Last time it was selling us a cheap DVR/PVR (they use the two terms interchangeably — both mean "TiVo"). They've also sent out these nice gift packages to give to postential new customers moving into the houses we were leaving. Both we and the new customers at the old house would get some kind of cost break (a month or two of free service... that kind of thing) |
| | But this time our needs were a bit different, and no special help was forthcoming. There was no "Thank you, mister Searls for bing asuch a fine customer." Worse, the care-package of bargains for the new and old customers would take "several weeks" to deliver. And, worst of all, they were not in the least interested in helping figure a way to stay connected during the two months or so that will pass between leaving our old house and moving in to the new one. They still have free installation at new locations for existing customers, but weren't real interested in just letting me have the receiving dish to install on my own at the interim home. That was something they had to do, and only at the new home. So we "parked" the account for the interim. |
| | None of this was a big deal, by the way. It just surprised me to have been forgotten by a big company's CRM. Especially after all those years as a customer. |
Doesn't this take asymmetry a bit far?
| | What's wrong with this picture? |
| | That's the speed we're getting over wi-fi from the dining room of our interim home (we call it our iHome) here in Santa Barbara. This speed is what my wife is getting on her 17" IGhz Powerbook. I get the same on my newer Powerbook. Meanwhile, on my ThinkPad T40 running Linux, I get 5720kbps down and 750 up. |
| | (Tests are all via Speakeasy, by the way. Very handy service.) |
| | But if I take the PowerBooks to the living room, which is a bit closer to the access point (in a bedroom upstairs), they get about the same throughput (in each direction), as the ThinkPad gets in both the dining room and the living room: about 5.7Mb down and 750Kb up. |
| | [Later...] After I tested my wife's Powerbook in the living room, I took it back to the dining room, where it did better (about 3Mb down), but still not as well as the Thinkpad. |
| | Any ideas about what's going on here? There are no microwave ovens or cordless phones here — or any other source of intereference I can think of. |
| | This concerns me because I'm leaving for New York in several hours and want my wife to be set up and trouble-free here in the iHouse while I'm gone. |
| | Unrelated: I'm paying $64/month to Cox High Speed Internet for 10Mb down and 1Mb up, which the Cox guy on the phone told me should be coming to Santa Barbara soon. Meanwhile I'm getting the 5Mb down and 750Kb up service they sell for $53. Though I'm paying $64. Both numbers would be lower if we aslo got cable TV, but we're not interested in that. |
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