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Saturday, June 9, 2007
A little VRM for United 
| | As we were being herded into Santa Barbara-bound shuttle vans to replace the airplane that couldn't take us, I noticed that one of my checked bags — one filled mostly with electronics — was open on the side. I didn't have time to check through it, but I was sure that I hadn't opened it, and that it had only been in United's custody when it was out of my hands. |
| | When I got home I looked in the bag and found that my camera bag was missing. The camera hadn't been in it, fortunately. Nor were lenses. Just some filters, lens caps and other minor accessories. The camera and one other lens were in my briefcase, where I carry them when I travel. |
| | It's not a huge deal. The total replacement cost is maybe $60. But it annoys me that one of two things happened: 1) somebody opened the bag and stole something; 2) somebody inspected the bag then failed to put everything back into it, or even to zip it back up properly. |
| | So I called 1K (the top United frequent flyer caste, to which I now belong) Customer Service number, and was told by a recording that it's only open Monday-Friday during business hours. This being Saturday night... feh. |
| | Then I wandered around the United website until I found my way to this Customer Service page, where it offers one minimally helpful item: |
| | Whom do I contact if I am missing items from my checked luggage? |
| | Please call our baggage service representatives at 1-800-221-6903 to report a claim. Our representatives will provide you with a Missing Property Questionnaire which can be completed and mailed to our Central Baggage Service Office. You may also request this form via our website. Please retain your passenger ticket receipt, claim check, and, if applicable, evidence of Transportation Security Administration (TSA) inspection. |
| | I'm less interested in telling United what's missing than I am in letting the airline know they have a problem. (There was no TSA greeting card in the bag telling me it had been inspected — nor, since the flight originated in London, the U.K. equivalent.) |
| | But I guess theft and/or incompetent inspection are so standard that both fall under the euphemistic "missing items" heading. |
| | I called the number, by the way. It's useless. Just like the "lost and found" at SFO, which I had the displeasure of dealing with several months ago after an external hard drive disappeared in the course of a TSA inspection. |
| | I'm filling out the form at the last link above. We'll see what happens. My expectations are low. |
| | [Later...] I filled out the form after I could check through the bag to see what else might be missing. So far, nothing I can tell. (But I carry a lot of junk in that bag: adapters, accessories, power strip, USB keyboard, headsets, gps, radio, spare batteries... inspection bait for sure — which is why I put it all in one carry-on that does get inspected about once every other time through TSA security checkpoints.) Here's what I wrote: |
| | A bag filled mostly with electronics, which I was normally carry on board, was checked at Heathrow (where only one carry-on was allowed) for flight 935 to LAX. The bag arrived at carousel 4 with one side unzipped. The only missing item I know about so far is a camera bag. Its only contents were my business card and some lens filters. There was no inspection notice inside. The bag tag # is 3016UA-750302. The bag was originally going to fly on to SBA on UA 5585, but that flight was canceled. With other passengers from that flight I was quickly herded into a van bound for SBA, so I did not have a chance to report the loss to the baggage office at LAX. Thanks for your attention to this matter. |
| | Thank you for contacting United Airlines. Your comments, both positive and constructive, help us to serve you better. |
| | Now I'm wondering... What would be the VRM approach to this kind of thing? Meaning, what tools would be good to have on the customer's side to deal with (or prevent) this kind of thing? It's an open-ended question. I don't have an answer. Yet. |
Quote du jour:
| | Johannes Ernst on vendor sports coverage: Here is some advice if you want one if you aren't a vendor: ignore all of it. At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is whether or not we vendors manage to make it easier, and cheaper, and better, to empower you, the customer and the user, to make use of these technologies in better ways. All of the vendor mud fights contribute absolutely nothing to this, and might well distract. |
War and ennui
| | Made it to LAX. The only bad part of the flight was air just bumpy enough to keep the belts on and the bladders full. That ran from Scottland to the far side of Greenland. |
| | Got some nice photos of Iceland and parts of Greenland. I'll have those up soon, I hope.* |
| | Sat next to an army tank commander on leave from his station in Europe. Nice guy, and a veteran of the Gulf War, Afghanistan and Iraq too. I asked him if he was optimistic. He shook his head. He loves his work and does it willingly. Good soldiers do that. But he made it clear that the situation is, as they say, FUBAR. |
| | And what can be done? He shook his head again. |
| | * 5:10pm ... just found out that the plane to Santa Barbara has been cancelled. They're going to pack passengers onto airport shuttle vans and drive them to SBA. Fun. |
Gimme some of that what's-its-name
| | Could it be that the future of "advertising" or "marketing" is to work with our customers to actually design better products? (As opposed to how to position, market or package them?) |
| | Yes, but will it still be advertising or marketing, and will the same people be doing it? |
Coastward bound
| | I'm flying back to Santa Barbara from London in a few minutes. Then it's a bit more than 11 hours from here to LAX before a layover there and then a half-hour flight to SBA. Total: about 18 hours. I'll be home this evening, or tomorrow in the wee hours, London time. |
| | Love London, by the way. I'll also love getting home and giving my rotting eyes something bigger than a laptop screen to work with. |
Species cleansed by comet
| | Interesting stories in The Economist and the Guardian/Observer about how UCSB professor James P. Kennett, director of the University's Marine Science institute, and other scientists, suggest that a comet wiped out both humans and animals in North America in roughly 10,900 B.C. |
| | Evidence is found in the widespread dispersal of tiny diamonds that would be formed by a comet arrival, by the similarly dispersed charcoal in soils of that time period, and an absence of the iridium that would have accompanied an asteroid impact. This event also marked the end of the Clovis culture and the road for large animals (e.g. mammoths) that had perisisted up until that time. |
| | Of course, humans may also have killed the big animals, but the comet would have done them both some major damage. |
| | [Later...] Here's a report (from last summer) of a substantial impact in Jordan dated a bit more recently: |
| | According to Salameh, the meteorite struck the area around 7,500-10,000 years ago with an impact diameter of about 100 metres. |
| | "The damage force of such an impact might equal 5,000 times that of the Hiroshima atomic bomb," according to Salameh, adding that it would have destroyed everything within a radius of hundreds of kilometres. |
| | The crater consists of two concentric circles. The diameter of the outer ring measures around 5.5km, with the inner ring measuring 2.7km. |
| | The impact size and velocity, according to Salameh, would have raised the atmospheric temperature within a radius of 10 kilometres to more than one thousand degrees centigrade, spewing millions of tonnes of rocks, vapour, dust and smoke into the atmosphere. |
| | This in turn would have formed an atmospheric cloud so large as to plunge the entire earth into darkness, with continuous rain for months or even years, resulting in the widespread flooding of low lands, according to a statement by the University of Jordan. |
Local cooling
| | The U.S. continues to lag in Net connectivity. Right now it's down to 15th, according to one among a variety of discouraging surveys. Kevin Barron: |
| | While I admire the desire to drill down into the details, no matter how you count the lifeboats, the fact is the Titanic is still going down. Unless we wake up and realize how critical the Net has become to every facet of society, including our economy, we will wake up in icy waters instead. |
| | Meanwhile, House Bill 1587 in North Carolina, misleadingly titled "The Local Gov't Fair Competition Act", would effectively prevent local governments from offering public services that "compete" with the barely competitive private phone/cable duopolies that currently offer Internet service as a side dish to their legacy offerings. |
| | This legislation is nowhere informed by the realization that Internet service should be as much a public utility as roads, water, electricity and waste treatment. This doesn't mean there souldn't be private ownership. On the contrary, it means there shouldn't be just one or two companies owning the whole infrastructure and preventing countless businesses other than their own. |
| | What we really need is opening up of data connectivity to all kinds of enterprise and grass-roots initiative, with government help in the form of easements to both private and public network build-out efforts. We need the market to open up for other parties to do what the incumbent carriers will not do. |
| | What we don't need is more pro-incumbent carrier legislation that will further lock out not just competition at the connectivity level, while preventingt countless businesses and public services that we'll never see because they can only thrive on a wide open and ubiquitously deployed Internet. |
| | Here's the question: Do we want a rising tide that lifts all boats, or a swamp habitable only by dinosaurs? |
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