Here's why:

We propose four psychological needs. The first is safety/security, which is the need to feel like you'll survive, like you are not in danger, like you will have enough food and water and shelter to make it another day. The second is competence or efficacy, which is the need to feel like you are skillful and able to do the things that you set out to do: I need to feel like a good psychologist, you might need to feel like a good journalist, etc. The third is connection or relatedness, which concerns having close, intimate relationships with other people. The fourth need is for freedom or autonomy, which is feeling like you do what you do because you choose it and want to do it rather than feeling compelled or forced to do it.

As I lay out in my book, The High Price of Materialism, people who put a strong focus on materialism in their lives tend to have poor satisfaction of each of these four needs. In part this is because of their development, but it also is because materialism creates a lifestyle that does a poor job of satisfying these needs. That is, a materialistic lifestyle tends to perpetuate feelings of insecurity, to lead people to hinge their competence on pretty fleeting, external sources, to damage relationships, and to distract people from the more fun, more meaningful, and freer ways of living life.

Kimberly Palmer, who writes the Alpha Consumer blog, says that Kasser lives "a lifestyle known as "voluntary simplicity," which essentially means opting for a less materialistic life. Instead of spending the evening in front of a plasma-screen television, a voluntary simplifier might cook a meal with the vegetables he grew in his garden. Instead of splurging on two lattes a day, he might bring his home-brewed beverage of choice to work in a reusable mug." Personally, we live a modified version of this lifestyle. Ours includes the flat screen tv. Hey, football won't watch itself.

Actually, Kasser addresses that issue too:

There is a story about a man who approached Gandhi and said that he'd been thinking about living a simpler life, but he didn't feel like he could give up his collection of books. Gandhi is said to have replied, "As long as you derive inner help and comfort from anything, you should keep it. If you were to give it up in a mood of self-sacrifice or out of a stern sense of duty, you would continue to want it back, and that unsatisfied want would make trouble for you. Only give up a thing when you want some other condition so much that the thing no longer has any attraction for you."

My take on this, and on your question, is that simplicity is not an endstate that is achieved but a path that one is walking.

What do you think? Are you happier when you strive for simplicity...?

How to Live the Simple Life [Alpha Consumer]
(Photo: Getty)

#1: Build it before you need it
#2: You must make a deposit before you have the right to withdraw
#3: Give more than you receive
#4: Be open and genuine
#5: Follow up and stay in touch
#6: The devil is in the details
#7: Your network doesn't end with your contact

Using these principles, the writer had two job offers within a week of being fired. Within two weeks he had settled on one of them — ending up with a promotion from a better company despite the hard economic times.

His take: developing a solid network offers wonderful job security.

What's your take?

Network Your Way to Job Security [Get Rich Slowly]

— FREE MONEY FINANCE

First phone call was to my mom. Probably the toughest day I've ever faced, ever. Ever, ever, ever! Because moms have a way of putting their sons up on pedestals. I said, "Mom, how are you?" And she goes, "Great. Why are you calling me at ten in the morning?" I just said, "Hey, I just want to tell you, I'm not with Starbucks anymore, but everything is fine."

The three men also talk about the big blunders that happened on their respective watches—Donald says he should have expanded Starbucks internationally faster to offset the plunging U.S. economy, while JetBlue's David Neeleman says it was the infamous, icy Valentine's Day 2007 when passengers sat trapped on tarmacs as thousands of JetBlue flights were canceled.

I think on the PR side, we did it right. I've always learned, if you make a mistake, you admit to it. You explain what happened. And then you explain how it's never going to happen again and what you're doing to make sure it doesn't. It's a very simple formula, I think. But really there were two events: the stranding of people on airplanes, which was absolutely inexcusable. Then there was the lingering on—how it took us three, four days to get all our flights back in the air. We learned our lessons from that.

[Later] a couple of board members came to my office and said, basically, "We want you to step down as CEO and be the chairman and be responsible for strategy." I was flabbergasted. I couldn't believe it. Just the fact that I was flabbergasted - either I'm the biggest idiot on the planet or maybe the process could have been better.

"Lessons of the fall" [Fortune]
(Photo: Getty)

From Marketplace:

Ryssdal: How important is remaining ad free to your business model?

Buckmaster: The way we look at it is our users aren't asking us to put banner ads or text ads on the site, so we don't consider putting them there. That's kind of the way we make all of our decisions.

Ryssdal: Based on what the users want.

Buckmaster: Yes. Certainly we are approached from time to time and it's explained to us the massive amount of revenue that would come should we put text ads and banner ads on the site, but the simple reality is that users aren't asking for it so we don't consider putting them there.

Ryssdal: Do you find people who you interact with in your professional life . . . business consultants, and other CEO's and who knows who else you talk to . . . do they just kind of shake their heads when you say, "massive revenue opportunity but we're just not interested."

Buckmaster: Certainly there's been a lot of head shaking. If you go back to the Internet, the original Internet or dot com boom and bust going back to 98, 99 . . . people were very skeptical of..we were a company who at any time could have gone public or sold ourselves to someone else, or the thousands of Internet companies that were started for the purpose of making a killing, they shook their heads at our approach. And the ironic thing is virtually every one of those businesses that was founded on the Internet to make money went bust without making a nickel and we've just kind of chugged along and been profitable even though we never really set out to make money.

Later Rysdall asked how the company chose which new markets to introduce Craigslist into. Turns out, they make those decisions the same way they make all of their decisions, based on what users want:

Ryssdal: What is your criteria other than a whole bunch of people asking for a city?

Buckmaster: That basically is the criteria.

Ryssdal: That's it?

Buckmaster: Yeah. Like a lot of stuff we do, we've found it to be very effective and basically fool-proof to just prioritize our activities according to what users are asking for.

Ryssdal: Seems bizarre in this economy to be so democratic.

Buckmaster: Well, it certainly makes our lives simpler since we just have the one criterion to go on. We don't have to sit in rooms trying to figure out how to conquer the world because basically we are not trying to achieve any particular market share or world dominance. We're just trying to follow up on requests that we get from users.

Ryssdal: And yet you have enormous market share and very nearly world dominance.

Buckmaster: Well I guess irony is . . . well I think maybe it's not ironic in way that . . . what better way to operate is there than to just follow up on what your customers or users are asking for and to just block out everything else, you know, everyone else who is asking for your time? Much of it just takes away from what you should be doing, which namely, is trying to please your users and customers and, I guess the general public.

Ryssdal: And make a buck or two, right?

Buckmaster: It is important for us to make money because we don't want to have to borrow or sell ourselves.

Service comes first for Craigslist CEO [Marketplace]

Video inside.

Note: Anyone ranting off-topic in the comments about how Nader threw the election may get a visit from *~El Bandito~*

POPKEN: Would you say that consumers and companies are at war?

BURLEY: Oh yes. The mentality of companies and customer service departments these days is definitely that customers are the opposition. And this is large part due to the new business model that I uncovered at the Harvard Business School. It's called churn. It's represented by the fact that the three largest cellphone companies in America last year had 1/3 of their customers leave. Each company, over 1/3 of their customers turned over. How can these be successful companies? So what these companies are looking for is the largest number of sheep possible. It's astounding, isn't it?

POPKEN: POPKEN: Definitely, it's what we hear about all the time, and now we need some of the techniques that you describe in your book to be able to shift the balance. But before we get into those, I think it's important to set up a preface of who your book is NOT for. Because there's definitely certain situations and contexts...

BURLEY: I wrote the book for customers dealing with legitimate companies. This is not for scams. If somebody is the victim of a scam, a criminal scam, they need to go to their District Attorney. Because that's illegal activity. What I'm trying to do is level the playing field between consumers and legitimate companies. Where they're getting bad customer service, and, as you said, the subtitle of the book is Getting What You Paid For. And it's not to shake down a company or get revenge or bankrupt a company because that's not going to happen. It's not even about getting a letter of apology. Because actually what's a letter of apology worth from a corporation? I mean, it's an entity licensed by the state. If you've been cheated on a $200 cellphone bill, get the $200 and get it quickly. And that's what the techniques are designed to do. Level the playing field, show the consumer where their leverage is so that they can get what they paid, they can get their $200, they can get the product they paid for.

POPKEN: So where is the leverage, what is the fulcrum? Because the traditional advice that you might hear on the local news or in the "Consumer Corner" of the local newspaper is various things about "escalating," asking for supervisors, finding out the regulatory agencies, etc, but it sounds like what you're saying is there might be a different way of going about it, something swifter.

BURLEY: There's only one leverage any consumer has with a company. And that's financial. They don't care about your personal story, they don't care about the wedding photos that were missed, they care about the bottom line. And what consumers don't realize is that they really have a lot more leverage on the bottom line if they exercise certain of their constitutionally protected powers. And it isn't that they're going to take away their business. And it isn't that they're going to take away the business of their family. Because corporations now are multinational. One consumer, 10 consumers, they don't matter. But what we have, because of the information age, we have the leverage of hundreds of thousands of consumers, or even at the local level with just a little bit of effort. And this is the first story I tell in the book. Now I know that most people are not going to do this, but actually you don't have to. And if you read the first true story in the book you realize I didn't have to either.

POPKEN: I love that story. That's my favorite story in the book.

BURLEY: This is when I wanted to go out and buy my first new car. And I was so excited about it, and I went to the car dealer and I got a good bargain, and I got the floor mats tossed in. It was a great bargain except that I went home and read the paper on Sunday and realized they had a sale on that car. It was $1200 less than what I paid. And so I went back and said, "You overcharged me." And they said, "No, no, you didn't bring in the ad." And I said, "Well, it doesn't say I have to bring in the ad, this is just an open sale. Why didn't you give me the price?" They said, "I'm sorry, the contracts are done."

Well, of course at that point I wasn't sophisticated to realize that I had leverage and I went home and I stewed about it. Then I realized I did have some leverage. So I printed off a couple dozen fliers that said, "AKAMI motors doesn't treat their customers fairly, cheats their customers." And I put them in a folder, and I went back to the car dealer and put those folders on the desk of the sales manager and said, "Here is the equation. You can give me the $1200 that you owe me fairly." And this is the thing, it has to be fair, you can't shake down a company. But they rightfully owed me the $1200. Because they had advertised the car at the price. "You can give that to me or I can stand out in front of your car dealership for a handful of Saturdays. Now it's not going to give me my $1200, but I'm certainly going to feel better because I've exercised my constitutionally protected right of free speech to tell my true story." And you know that as a journalist we do have that right. Absolute protection against slander or libel is the truth.

POPKEN: What happened next?

BURLEY: I didn't have to stand out there. That sales manager did the math in his head, simply, talked it over with his managers, came back and said, "Mr. Burley we'll have a check ready for you in a few minutes." Because he realized that if I were to stand out there and make one customer go away, just one customer, realized, or believed what I was telling him, and they went to a different dealership, it would have cost him more than just dealing with me. And the rest of the techniques in the book all leverage in one way or another the customer's right of free speech telling their true story against the company's desire to do business. And that's why it has to work that way. But what it does is it does level the playing field.

When I was writing the book, one of my readers told a friend of his about the technique and she made some flyers. She's a rather quiet second-grade teacher. She made the flyers and she put them in a manila folder and went to a car dealership that had been stonewalling her over a lemon. She bought a car and it was just a lemon and they wouldn't let her do anything about it. Well she walked into that car dealership went up to the General Manager, and didn't even have to pull out the flyers. She called me later, and just knowing that she had an option helped her find the words. She got satisfaction just knowing that she had an option.

POPKEN: That's a great story because one of the things that some of my readers have talked about when I discuss your techniques, and what I have personally wondered, is how does the average person find the courage to stand up like that? There's the force of the crowd and no one wants to stand out. Do you just have to get angry enough?

BURLEY: As you know, none of the techniques require anyone to scream or yell or spit at great distances. As a matter of fact, those are disqualifiers. There's an old-school belief, yes, walking into the middle of a showroom and screaming at the top of your voice, "They cheated me!" These days that will get you escorted out by the security guard. A lot of the techniques in the book put a twist on the old techniques of being a squeaky wheel. Such as writing a letter. Writing a letter to the president of the company these days is not going to get you anything. They've got legions of people and the president of the company is never going to see that letter. But I have a letter-writing technique that's called "Spokesperson For The Competition." You don't write a letter to the company that's causing you a problem, you write a letter to the president of the company that is their number one competitor, telling your true story and offering to become their number one spokesperson, and giving them permission to give a copy of your letter to every one of their sales people. Now before you send that letter to the competitor, you send a copy of that letter to the president of the corporation that's causing you a problem. And now they do the math. They say, ok, instead of losing just that one customer, our competitor is going to have evidence of just how poorly we treat our customers. And since we're in a highly competitive business, and we're trying to get those business accounts and fleet accounts or whatever, if every one of their sales people have evidence of how badly we treat our customers, how much business will we lose? You see what's happened there, it's the same technique, you're writing one letter, but you have somehow multiplied the effect, because you're not now one individual against the company that is causing you a problem. Using this technique of writing a letter to the competition, and offering to become a spokesperson for the competition, you've now multiplied your impact, your effect, a thousand fold? Ten-thousand fold? And suddenly, once again, it becomes more cost-effective for the company to take care of you than to ignore you. Which, initially, they thought it would be more advantageous to ignore you then to take care of you. It just turned it over and makes it a simple business equation on their part. They're not admitting wrong because they're never going to admit being wrong, it just becomes a business decision. Make this person go away because ignoring them is going to cost us more than taking care of them. That's the consumer's real leverage: when the company believes that it is going to cost them more to ignore you than to take care of you, you will get instant satisfaction. So, you don't have to scream or yell, you just have to present the facts in such a way that that business equation becomes very apparent.

POPKEN: So what you're basically describing is that consumers should stop thinking of themselves as consumer sheep, but they themselves should act like business entities.

BURLEY: Absolutely. We need to be mature, not screaming or yelling, realize that we really do have power. One of the most powerful things these days and a thing that even the most timid person can do is use the internet. Amazon.com sells everything in the world and you don't have to have purchased anything from Amazon.com to have a consumer impact. I bought a photo printer from well-known photo-camera company whose name begins with a C. I'm not going to mention them. You can actually search online and find this though. They were selling this photo printer in the early 2000's, but didn't have a photo printer driver for Windows XP, which was the only PC operating system available on the market. So they were selling the photo printer right alongside Windows XP machines but they didn't have a driver to make it compatible, and said they were never planning to. So you're buying a brand new printer next to a brand new computer, but the printer won't work with it, and never will. I thought that was absurd. Well, I didn't have to do a spokesperson for the competition didn't do anything except go to Amazon.com or any other of the online warehouse vendors, write a review of the product, it had instant impact, and corporations know this.

Now one of the things to remember is, don't pull the trigger first. Once you write the review then all your leverage is gone. But what a consumer can do is write the company and say, "I'm going to tell my true story. I'm going to write that review on Amazon.com exactly how you treated me. All I'm asking for is what I paid for. I'm not trying to ask for four times that, I'm not trying to ask to be compensated for the time that I've spent on the project. But I've purchased a photo printer that is worthless. And you say you're not going to have a driver for it. I don't care if it was on sale. Because it doesn't work." And what that corporation will do is say, hm, we refund your $250, or, that review goes up, and how many customers do we lose? They'll refund the $250. But if you put the review up first, your leverage is gone.

So, one of the things I do in the book is I give a step by step. Do this then this then this then this. Because, often, people will go pull the trigger first. Company is wounded, then come back and say, now I want my money. No, that's not how it works. So leverage is upfront. They have to know, if we do this, then we won't suffer that. And so you have to be patient. But most of these techniques work in just minutes.

I of course as an author I have a book agent. And, my agent likes the way I write and she can sell the book, but I'm not sure if she believes, do you know what I mean? Believes at the core. Well, until one day she calls me up, I'm on my way out of town. So I'm away from my house, it's exactly 12 minutes from my house to the airport. She calls me up as I'm pulling out of my driveway, she says, I've got this $300 charge on my cellphone bill that I've been trying to fight for five months. I've been reluctant to call you because you're my client but I really need your help. Can you take care of it? When I pulled into the parking lot of the airport, I got a call from the vice president of the company saying they've refunded the $300. What did I do in those 12 minutes?

POPKEN: 12 minutes? That's how much time some people spend on hold just waiting to talk to a customer service rep in the first place.

BURLEY: This is the thing, don't call customer service. Well, call them first. If you don't get help in 5 minutes, hang up. I mean, in the middle of the music, hang up. You can increase the chances of getting customer service 400% just by changing the phone number you call. The next number you call is the sales department. Three things are going to happen. They're going to pick up the phone right away. They want to make sales. Secondly, you're going to be talking to an employee of the company you want to deal with. Because what happens with customer service these days of course is 50% of the time you're talking to Rashneesh in Bangalore. He calls himself Frank but we know his name's not Frank, it's Rashneesh. And the third thing is that this person in the sales department is trained to make happy customers, not to make customers go away. If that doesn't work, call investor relations. These are people that really understand the impact of negative publicity. They know how much their stockholders hate reading in magazines and the newspaper about their company mistreating anyone. And that's what I did, I called investor relations of the cellphone company. And I said, hi, here's the issue, and if we don't get it resolved, I'm going to buy 100 shares of stock, and I'm going to show up at the stockholder meeting, and as is my due, walk up to that microphone and tell everyone at the meeting, and you know this one of the techniques in the book, Mr. Stockholder, tell every one at the meeting, exactly how she was treated. Now you know at those meetings they're attended by analysts, and institutional investors, and not that I would actually fly to New York and attend a stockholder's meeting, but if there was even the slightest chance that I would, imagine what goes through that investor relations person's mind. Because if that stock price dips by even a nickel, they've lost millions of dollars of market capitalization. Talk about multiplier effect. Instead of a $300 cellphone dispute, if one institutional investor decides to sell off and that stock price drops even a little bit, suddenly that $300 turns into $30 million. You can hear her heels clicking as she runs down the hallway. That's why it took only 12 minutes. Because of the leverage. That $300 wasn't my agent threatening to take her business elsewhere. Because what happens with a cellphone company? They're going to charge you $150 to do that anyway. The early termination fee.

POPKEN: They're like, bring it on.

BURLEY: They're not going to pay any attention to that. Yeah, okay, I'll remain a customer. In fact, I'm going to become a stockholder, and I'm going to go to the stockholder's meeting, and tell Mr. Big Hat that we shouldn't be treating our customers this way! It's counterintuitive, isn't it? Instead of running away from them, threatening to leave, run to them. It's kind of like a domestic dispute, you know? In the middle of an argument with your spouse, you shouldn't scream and yell, you should smile and say hi honey and walk towards her and give her a hug. It's the last thing you want to do, and it's the last thing you want to do with your cellphone company, or the big box store, is actually get closer. To actually get instant satisfaction that's what you have to do.

POPKEN: Because if you're actually going to leave then you're worthless to them.

BURLEY: Exactly. But if you participate in the system, move closer, become a stockholder, get in their face, very nicely. If you never raise your voice, it's actually far more intimidating. I call this being "Just a little bit Jack." Like Jack Nicholson. He's far more intimidating when he says, "Here's Johnny." Not screaming or yelling. When you say to someone, "You know what? I'm going to call up Delta airlines and get myself a ticket to New York. So I can come to the stockholder's meeting. Because I really don't think we should be treating our customers this way." Hear the smile in my voice? But you know what? That's scary as all get-out. If you sound just a little bit crazy, well, it's actually fun. Try it sometime. Because if you put that smile in your voice because you know you're right, you know your leverage. Just imagine actually going to that stockholder's meeting. You get all dressed up you go on down to a nice New York restaurant and a show and go on down and kick some big corporation's tail while you're at it too.

POPKEN: Stroll on down and void your right to proxy and walk up to that microphone and tap it and ask "is this thing on?"

BURLEY: Just manifest that and think about how empowering that is. Because they've put up these walls to keep us out, but the reality is, they need us. We are the engine that fuels it, they've just forgotten. They're kind of like kids. Teenagers. Teenagers rebel and they say, "I don't need you." Who do you think filled the refrigerator? Who's gas are you using when you're driving the car? We all know it's fictional, a teenager rebelling, it's not real, but it's what they're supposed to do. Corporations are kind of the same way. They push us away, they push us away, they don't need us, but you know what, they really do. And we don't have to have Consumers Unions, although those are great institutions for education. Each individual consumer using the techniques in this book can have that leverage, and one of the things that I've worked at very hard in the book is to make all of these things approachable, and to give a formula on how to select what you do.

One of the most wonderful techniques was given to me by a 75-year-old woman at one of my seminars. And she stood up in the middle of the seminar. A mic was passed around afterwards for a Q&A session. She said she got this blouse for her granddaughter for the holidays. And it was torn. The seam had burst. And so she walks it into the department store. And it's the department store's private label, okay? So there's no question it was purchased there. And it's still in the department store box. But she doesn't have a receipt, not a gift receipt. She goes up to the counter. Of course, the woman behind the counter says, "I'm sorry without a receipt we can't take it back, or give you a credit." The woman says, "really?" The woman says "Yes, that's our policy." The best line I ever got, I wish I could take credit for it, a 75 year old woman looks straight across the counter and says, "Excuse me, but your internal policy decisions have nothing to do with my expectations of customer satisfaction." And then she stands there and doesn't move. The woman once again says, "Well I'm sorry, but that's our policy!" And the woman doesn't move she just stands there. The line of course is getting longer behind there. And the woman doesn't move. And it's like "it's our policy" is this magic wand they're supposed to wave at us and it's supposed to make us disappear, like Harry Potter or something, or Bewitched. But no, the woman just stood there, the box in front of her, she said her piece and she wasn't moving. She wasn't being angry or anything. Eventually the clerk calls over the department head and the department head calls over the manager, and finally the manager says, "Can I help you?" And she tells her story. And the manager says, "Give her a refund." Because he sees the line of people lining up behind her and that is to me the purest example of customer leverage. She just didn't move. She didn't have to scream or yell. She just stood her ground, realized that their policies did not have anything to do with what she could reasonably expect, and should expect, as customer service. And she waited until the right person got there.

If you're on a customer service line you can keep escalating, and you want to be polite all the time, and if you're right, if you're correct, and use some of the techniques in that book, you will prevail every time. And quickly. This is the problem with going to court, or writing letters in general, is that it takes it weeks and weeks. I don't know about you but I value my personal time. I don't want to spend a lot of time fixing things that shouldn't have been problems in the first place. The techniques are designed to work quickly and effectively and in such a way that even the meekest person can use them.

POPKEN: Also in the book you talk about how you should sit down and figure out how much your free time is worth. And then, sort of controversially, you should give up if after applying this effort you actually end up expending more money hours than what the refund or resolution that you're looking for.

BURLEY: This is the hardest thing for most people. I will raise my hand when somebody asks, "Who has a justice streak a mile wide?" I hate this myself. I don't like to give up, I don't like to admit defeat, but we all know intuitively that you shouldn't run around all day chasing 50 cents lost from a coke machine. It just isn't worth your time. Is it worth running around town all day for $10? Maybe not. How about $20? $50? $100? At some point in there is a number where we would say, yeah that's worth me taking my day off to chase. That's the principle at work here. I've put some metrics to that to figure that out, to help people figure it out what is that decision. Because I value my free time. I figure my free time is worth twice what my work time is. The quick thumbnail is figure out what you get paid per hour, double it, and that's how much your free time is worth. And this is why the techniques have to work quickly. If you get paid $30 an hour, your free time is worth $60 an hour. If you're talking about a $100 dispute, you can pretty well figure out that if you have to spend more than 45 minutes resolving it, it isn't worth your time. Which is why a lot of these techniques will work in 5 or 10 minutes with one phone call. If you reasonably project out that I lost 50 dollars and that I'm going to have to spend a couple of hours on this, for most people it isn't worth the time. Just mentally I know that anything less than $100, if I can't take care of it in one phone call, it's not worth my time. Because really when it gets down to it, we don't want to spend our evenings at home, waiting on voicemail, talking with customer service reps, when we could be, you know playing the guitar or playing with our kids, whatever we live for. Hopefully most of us work to live, not live to work, and quality of life means that we don't get stressed out about these things, that we don't let sour sense of justice and wanting to get revenge rule our lives. So putting a value on it, keeps that under control.

I bought this little Styrofoam hovercraft thing down at the mall last year. It was $20. It was one of these little kiosks in the mall that appear during the holidays. Only to find out that the one that they were demonstrating was the only one that worked. They knew these things were broken and bogus. It was a scam, it was a gypsy scam. They probably sold a couple thousand of these things, and they all had manufacturing defects. They also knew that nobody was going to open these things till Christmas, and the few that did, they gave them an instant refund. It was a newspaper story a couple of weeks later, thousands of these Styrofoam hovercrafts. People showed up at the mall, the kiosk was gone, and they were all faulty. Well that's scam again. That's a criminal enterprise. I paid my 20 bucks and I felt stung and my kid was really disappointed. But you know what? I went out and paid 40 dollars for one that worked. My kid was happy, I was a little lighter in the wallet, but I didn't sit there and strew and stew and stew and ruin my day, and the hours I spend with my kids. I just said hey, that isn't worth my time to chase these gypsies down wherever they are in the country, they disappear into the vapors somewhere. Too much time, too much effort. It would be impossible because they weren't really a legitimate company. They had obviously set out to perpetuate a scam, and if the DA ever finds them and they ever have any of the money, then I'm sure I'll get a check for 4 dollars. You can see that in this case, 20 dollars, it's just not worth it, not worth my time, not worth my effort. It's kind of like a bad girlfriend. It stings you, know, she treated you badly, it's like one of those country songs. "She done me wrong." Well get over it. And that's the hardest lesson in the book, I think, is how to get over it. Because it's not about getting that pound of flesh, it's about getting what you paid for.

POPKEN: I have to wonder, these techniques, sound great and gratifying and immediate and the solution that a lot of people are looking for, but have there any been any situations where you or some of the people that you've coached have failed, has the Unscrewed method failed them?

BURLEY: The biggest trap is when somebody is a stupid business person. And stupid business decisions are made every day. When they don't realize the business equation that you've laid in front of them. I had another incident that isn't in the book with a mailbox company. They had canceled one of my business mailboxes and returned my mail. What had happened they had forgotten to put a slip in the box. It was their mistake, but they had my phone number and they could have called and I had been a customer for a half-dozen years. You would think that a 6 year customer would be worth a phone call before you cancel their box and return their mail,. Well that should have indicated something: this is a really poor business person. I went there, I did the whole unscrewed thing, "I'll stand out front, I've got my flyers, I'm going to turn away business," and he said "go right ahead." Well, what I had to realize right then was this guy was a lousy businessman. He had demonstrated that initially, that he didn't have enough sense to pick up the phone and call a customer of 6 years and make sure. He's trying to get new customers all the time, he's advertising in the Penny Saver newspaper, he's got signs out, he papers cars in the parking lot with flyers, so he's spending money to get new customers and he's not protecting his old ones. And he's got a bad attitude to boot. So this is where if he's not willing to save his own company, if he can't see the financial downside that you're presenting him. But because this is a business equation, what it really turns out though is good news still for the consumer. You shouldn't be doing business with this person. You don't want to continue doing business with them. In the case of the mailbox company I realized that something was eventually going to happen here. I'm glad it was just this and that it wasn't something worse. He didn't mess with my outgoing mail, checks that were supposed to be paid or something like this. But in that case, since the unscrewed principles do depend on someone making wise business decisions, if you're dealing with a totally idiotic company, sometimes they won't work.

POPKEN: So that's one, are there any others, maybe in the ways people approach it, they have the tools but then they sort of deliver it with the "wrong color," shall we say?

BURLEY: Well, yeah, the thing is, well you get where you know in the book I present an analysis method. You've got to have your plan of action. Your unscrewed game plan. You know there's the unscrewed principles and setting up the plan of action and pretty soon it becomes intuitive but the first few times you're going to want to refer to the book and go through and figure out exactly what technique might work. But also we have to change our behavior, because most of us get really frustrated. We get angry. And if you slip, and I tell a story in the book about, well there's actually two stories in the book where I lost. Two out of the sixteen. For example, and I included this to show hey, this is how you lose. One of them, I had made the mistake, I needed to get this priority insurance, and I was too busy, and I blew it off and I was trying to muscle someone into writing a policy with 4 hours notice so I could clench the deal, and I made the secretary cry. Well, her boss, the insurance agent, so valued his employees, that he refused to do business with me. And so instead of doing what I should have, saying, "I made the mistake, I really need your help," I tried to be bombastic and say, "You need to help me! I'm a good customer!" The moment you start yelling, the moment you make it personal, you're going to lose. Whether a small company or a big company. With a big company, they can hit the hang up button and they've got the perfect excuse to do it.

When I was talking to an airline, I was trying to save them money, had this half hour turnaround for an international flight, and I just knew because they were always late that I would miss it. So I said say, "Hey, we could come in a flight the earlier evening," but they wanted to charge that change fee. And I said, "Hey, I'm saving YOU money." And I could tell on the phone, just I could tell that the gentlemen at the other end of the phone was gay. Shouldn't have mattered, shouldn't have been anything. but I just knew it. So I was trying to be friendly, but I made it personal. I said, "Just imagine if you and your boyfriend..." Right then, I knew I had blown it. He lit up at me and said, "You shouldn't be making assumptions or comments about my personal life blah blah blah!" Yep, I had made it personal. Now I wasn't trying to be antagonistic. I was actually trying to make a good analogy, but still, I had broken that first rule. This is, as you said, consumers need to behave like companies. They don't care about our personal lives, we can't comment about their personal lives. You certainly cannot threaten a company, or the person at the other end of the line. That may actually be actionable. And remember, they're taping everything, so never, ever threaten. The police may show up at your door. Particularly if you're a man talking to a woman. It doesn't even matter if you don't know where they are, if you make a personal threat to do harm to the company or the customer service rep, they can take action, and sometimes will. It all depends on how personal you get. And of course swearing, name calling, it's a disqualification, you're never going to get anything. You get blackballed, that note, they've all got records on us. We want them to because we want them to remember. "Well I called 6 months ago." We're really pleased when they have that record, oh yes I see you called. The downside is if you get personal, they're going to have that record.

POPKEN: The last rep will have notes on the account that this guy is crazy.

BURLEY: Exactly. This is a crazy person. If you ever blow it like that, I would say cancel whatever account you have with that company and go to another one. Because you're not going to ever get good customer service. Because yes, it's in the record. They remember and they remember a long time. So if you blow it, move on. But that's the thing, it takes a little while to remember this, and a little bit of patience, but you're not going to have to hang on the phone for 45 minutes or an hour, you're not going to have to write letters and wait weeks for an "I'm a sorry we've reviewed your account and we're still billing you anyway" letter. Because you can get satisfaction if you just understand the principles and implement them following a few basic rules. It will work better than 90% of the time.

POPKEN: Powerful words. Excellent. Thank you very much Mr. Burley. We've learned about how important is the fastest and not necessarily the nicest, and how to think like a business, and how to get what we want out of consumer relationships, and resolve our consumer complaints with minimum effort, blood, and tears. I hope that our readers can learn from some of the things that you've described and help and lead happier lives, because that's kind of what it's all about.

BURLEY: It really is. Saving up free time. Getting satisfaction. Feeling empowered. Because a lot of us feel that we've lost control of that relationship. The corner hardware store is no longer the corner hardware store, the corner deli is now a Boston market. We want to have those personal relationships, we want to feel that we get product or service of high quality for the money we have hard earned. And we can, if we just know how.

POPKEN: And where can people go to learn more about your book?

BURLEY: UNSCREWED: The Consumers Guide To Getting What You Paid For is available at all the online bookstores also at Barnes and Noble and Borders and also most neighborhood bookstores. It's from 10 speed press. You can also go to 10speedpress.com. if they want to know more about me and what I'm doing, they can go to unscrwed.biz.

We've also done a few posts based on the material from Ron's book:

• How To Kick A Scammy Car Dealer In The Nuts
• Can You Do Simple Math? Good, Then You'll Soon Realize Why You Need To Resolve My Complaint...
• Company Ignoring You? Fax 'Em To Death
• How To Never Ever Get In Trouble For Recording Calls With Customer Service

The immediate goal of our service is to stop defamation by positioning links on the Search Engines and by appeals to law to remove negative information. We send cease and desist letters and if necessary, file legal actions against the perpetrators and Internet service providers contributing to the unjust defamation of our members.

I wonder how long it will take ComplaintRemover to push this negative link down on the search engines?

n+1: What's a paradigm shift in finance?

HFM: Well, a paradigm shift in finance is maybe what we've gone through in the sub-prime market and the spillover that's had in a lot of other markets where there were really basic assumptions that people made that, you know what?, they were wrong.

The thing is that nobody has enough brain power to question every assumption, to think about every single facet of an investment. There are certain things you need to take for granted. And people would take for granted the idea that, "OK, something that Moody's rates triple-A must be money-good, so I'm going to worry about the other things I'm investing in, but when it comes time to say, 'Where am I going to put my cash?,' I'll just leave it in triple-A commercial paper, I don't have time to think about everything." It could be the case that, yeah, the power's going to fail in my office, and maybe the water supply is going to fail, and I should plan for that, but you only have so much brain power, so you think about what you think are the relevant factors, the factors that are likely to change. But often some of those assumptions that you make are wrong.

n+1: So the Moody's ratings were like the water running...

HFM: Exactly. Triple-A is triple-A. But there were people who made a ton of money in the sub-prime crisis because they looked at the collateral that underlay a lot of these CDOs [collateralized debt obligations] and commercial paper programs that were highly rated and they said, "Wait a second. What's underlying this are loans that have been made to people who really shouldn't own houses—they're not financially prepared to own houses. The underwriting standards are materially worse than they've been in previous years; the amount of construction that's going on in particular markets is just totally out of proportion with the sort of household formation that's going on; the rating agencies are kind of asleep at the switch, they're not changing their assumptions and therefore, OK, notwithstanding something may be rated triple-A, I can come up with what I think is a realistic scenario where those securities are impaired."

Interview with a Hedge Fund Manager [n +1 via Kottke]
(Photo:Getty)

One is that not only should we not be giving corporations the special rights that humans are given, but we also shouldn't expect them to behave morally.

It's kind of an anthropomorphic fallacy, and it's very dangerous. Corporate social responsibility is a nice idea, but corporations will not be socially responsible, if by socially responsible we are suggesting that they sacrifice consumer deals and investor returns. They won't.

"Consumer-Driven Culture Is Killing Our Democracy" [AlterNet]

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CONSUMERIST: How frequently did someone have to call to get terminated for calling customer service too much?

SPRINT INSIDER: 90 times in a 6 month period was the standard I think.

CONSUMERIST: Were they calling about the same service problem?

SPRINT INSIDER: These were the customers that had nothing to do but call us every single day demanding credit. And they were getting it because customer care was getting exhausted from arguing with them. So a nickel at a time these customers were collecting literally thousands of dollars in credit balances.

We were targeting people that were just outright defrauding the company. These customers will probably eventually force their future service providers to take similar action if they do not change their ways.

CONSUMERIST: One reader said he got canceled because he kept calling you because you were charging him for text messages he shouldn't have been charged for.

SPRINT INSIDER: I can't really get into specifics on an account, BUT... I will re-direct to what I mentioned earlier...These customers were for the most part literally defrauding our company. Not just a courtesy credit or two... We're talking customers that haven't made a payment since 2005 and still have active service. Customers who were getting better deals than our own employees get for their own personal accounts. These weren't the customer care horror stories we've heard where a billing issue drags on for 8 months. This was just unrealistic amounts of credits and at the end of the year we were LITERALLY paying these customers to use our service.

CONSUMERIST: That's pretty amazing, considering people have been emailing us this story all week saying, "Don't complain too much to Sprint about their crappy service or they'll cancel you." PR wise, it spins very badly, very quickly.

SPRINT INSIDER: Most of these customers are just looking to make a scene and want their excessive credit balances sent in a check. And that's just not going to happen. We are considering every request on a case by case basis. We absolutely will not terminate a customer who had a reasonable claim for calling in. But the ones with the $5k credit balances... they're going to hear us say no. It's a harsh decision but it really makes sense to almost anyone who knows both sides of the situation.

CONSUMERIST: Of the 1,000 or so that were terminated, how many are calling in?

SPRINT INSIDER: Haven't seen any reporting data yet but by the end of the week I anticipate most of them.

CONSUMERIST: They're sad the video game is broken.

SPRINT INSIDER: Ten months of calling customer care and telling us how badly they hated us and threatening to cancel to get more credits... And one day we say, "Okay. We'll credit your balance, waive your contracts and you're free to be happy." And then they don't like the ink the letter was written with. Kills me. I'd be devastated if I got a letter like that from a company I do business with. But if I hated them I'd gladly walk away in a situation like that.

PREVIOUSLY: Sprint Drops You Because You Call Customer Service Too Much

The problem is that management at these places typically aren't that tech literate and the techs are underpaid skeezy comp-sci majors. One guy actually resold to amateur porn sites with what he found. A 4-year degree for 9.50 an hour and that's the kind of "great attitude" you end up with.
benpopken: Precisely the scenario I envisioned, reselling to amateur sites.
hashand: Yah. 11 years at these places. Geek Squad didn't start it. It's the industry.

benpopken: Was it a national chain or just local?
hashand: Regional chain. 42 locations. To be fair, this is a relatively "new" problem. Maybe in the last 8 years. But yeah, we had a whole 2TB server + directconnect hub. If there was enough good stuff, we'd rip your drive and replace it with a refurb. Keep the drive and just tell you we wiped it
benpopken: Hot.
hashand: I didn't do repairs, i worked on the database and that's how i found out about the server.
benpopken: What place was it?
hashand: I really don't want to name names. My managers were good and it's a good company. The people who did this ultimately got fired.
benpopken: This was in the states, though?
hashand: Yeah. I worked in the flagship store with the owner. Doing database management for all the locations. But 21 year old underpaid "professionals" are going to do whatever they want. And if they set up entire p2p networks with firewalls and blacklisting of corporate and government snoops, they can hide data stashes in a largely unmonitored internal network easily. If they don't just use thumbdrives, there's always a server stack and there aren't enough hours in the day to audit what every little black box with lights is doing.

My best advice to anyone sending their computer in for repairs is find a shop that'll take it without a hard drive. We would, if you asked. It;s easy to slot in a blank drive, run knoppix, and format it. We just booted to a separate partition anyway, so its not even like we needed your data.
benpopken: Pretty much the only way to guarantee safety.
hashand: Or, if they won't let you do that, go buy a new drive. Put it in, reinstall your os, then ship it off.
benpopken: Unless the problem exists on the hard drive.
hashand: Well, yeah. But at that point, do you really want someone you don't know "recovering" your data for you anyway? If there's a hard drive problem, they're just going to send you a refurb drive anyway. So if replacing the drive fixes the problem, you just saved yourself a huge headache anyway. Sketchy untested drives aren't worth it. Storage is so cheap these days.
benpopken: Was checking out the content on the blinking box a group activity?
hashand: It's hard to say. But it was endemic to at least 30% of our stores. Primarily the ones located near college campuses.
benpopken: That would figure.
hashand: You can see a real demographics trend in where these problems are.
benpopken: Basically wherever you find horny young cocky boys who think they're invincible?
hashand: I won't go that far. It's the sense that they're disposable. In the it industry, you're nothing if you don't have an ma or phd and 10 years on the job. Entry level it is no better than working at target.
benpopken: So it's more of if you don't care about me, i don't care about you?
hashand: They get fired and there's another job. They're a dime a dozen. And no chance for advancement. Or if you do advance, its not even worth your time.
benpopken: Is porn-stealing then a form of insubordination and acting out?
hashand: Well, more a sense of "I want what I want and there's no good argument for not having it" i.e. mp3 sharing. We literally paid less than a job at Costco, and the benefits were a joke.
benpopken: You would think the rewards would be greater. Handling technology and what not. At least that's what the Devry commercials tell me.
hashand: Devry's a whole other scam. Going to community college or devry for computers gets you basically nothing. An AS in computer science is worth less than just being earnest about technology and having used linux in high school for a couple years. When you get out of school and find out you're 20 grand in debt and your job prospects are nil. What do you expect of someone? People just need to treat computer repair the same way they'd treat a home contractor or anything else. You want to meet the person who'll be overseeing your work and you don't want that person to be 22 years old and wearing a pot leaf shirt.

But yeah, this goes way back. Even working at AT&T in the 90s, this all existed. Just not on the scale it does now. It's bbs [bulletin boards] culture projected onto a much more savvy generation.
benpopken: Why do you think it only started 8 years ago?
hashand: Combination of the dot com boom and 80s babies graduating. Kids who grew up with computers but were teenagers in the 90's. Napster, bbs', warez culture. IP [intellectual property] in general means less to people these days than it did back then. For better or worse.
benpopken: What did ip mean back then?
hashand: Well, the rise of things like the gnu [a free version of the Unix operating system] have instilled a certain consciousness about it within long time computer users. Your work is always attributed and you get credit for it. Period. People who break the gnu invariably disappear because no one trusts them. When you're a hacker and your code gets stolen, you have a better appreciation for why you shouldn't take things from other people without permission.

benpopken: So, since the kids don't have to create any intellectual property in order to use computers, they have less appreciation for other's intellectual property? And the bar is lowered?
hashand: Essentially. Two clicks and you have the new t-pain record. And no one seems to care. There are some niche music communities, for example, that have gotten proactive about calling out people amongst them who steal. Side-line.com is a magazine that hosts forums And many of the musicians whmo the magazine covers post there. And there was a recent thread where a guy was file sharing from work. Three of the bands he was pirating ganged up, tracked up his ip, got his real name, and called his employer.
benpopken: That's impressive.
hashand: It's interesting. It stinks of vigilantism, but the guy's gone from the torrent sites he was on and, as far as has been revealed, has been fired from his job. And that's what the coding scene used to be like and still is. Because for these musicians, they're happy to let mp3 blogs and internet radio stations post or play their stuff for the public.

As with putting your record out in stores and crying when it gets stolen, the best protection is to keep stuff you don't want people to take out of their hands. Data on your drive, music you've written, anything. Either that or publicize it to the point that it's worthless.

My personal data storage solution is that i have a 40 gig drive in my actual desktop and 500 gigs of network storage for business records, etc. All on usb devices. It's better to treat your personal setup as a series of legoblocks where every piece is interchangeable, but the whole thing functions as a whole without every little bit.

But even drive encryption on your home computer is worthless. Because, again, these are trained computer professionals with years of college schooling and nothing better to do than crack whatever encryption or protection you've set up. And snagging a drive out of the refurb pile is no big deal. These guys routinely build new PCs out of "spare parts." I'm sure you could write a whole doctoral thesis as to why all of this is.
benpopken: Right, but it's still a barrier. Since it's a crime of opportunity, won't some protections increase the likelihood they will pass on to the next one?
hashand: Well, definitely. But short of having your computer repair cost 3 grand, nothing's going to be done about it. Lowest bidder wins. Capitalism has its shortcomings.
benpopken: By the same token, the personal file pilfering can be combated if its costs are raised. Like if individual people, local news stations, or kids for science fair projects start doing their own honeypot missions and published/broadcast the results.
hashand: Yeah, but will it change anything? Probably not. Like auto mechanics doctoring your bill. One guy gets fired, two more get hired. You're not going to convince computer repair to start paying double the wages to get people who actually care what they're doing.
benpopken: I suppose not. There's been all sorts of jiffy lube investigations and people are still getting screwed by car repair.
hashand: Yeah. It's systemic.
benpopken: But if we get people to take their computers to other places, or to local outfits, maybe... I've been talking to a reporter in Canada, and she's interested in the story because they're going to do a piece asking whether computer repair needs to be regulated and require official certification before you're allowed to work on computers. So maybe some day the other option will be to send your computer to Canada. Free socialized computer health care.
hashand: I would *welcome* official certification. Computer engineers should be bonded just like contractors and have insurance. I'm a registered libertarian and I think there needs to be *some* regulation. Take that how you will.
benpopken: I would take it that if even a libertarian is supporting regulation, than you know they're serious about it.
hashand: Totally. Bonding is a nice non-governmental way to go about it.

(Photo: Getty)

PREVIOUSLY:

VIDEO: Consumerist Catches Geek Squad Stealing Porn From Customer's Computer
How To Make Your Computer Catch People Stealing Your Porn
2 More Former Employees Claim Geek Squad Stole Customers' Personal Files

We caught up with "The Kuch," as John Edwards has been known to call him affectionately, after he taped "Late Show with David Letterman" on Monday, although it was hard to think with his 29-year-old statuesque redheaded English wife standing heroically beside him...

CONSUMERIST: Is credit card industry reform doable in a Kucinich first term?

KUCINICH: It has to be... because what's happening is people are already maxed out on their credit cards. Many people are going into bankruptcy, not being able to afford [to pay their debts.] I think there has to be a restructuring of the bankruptcy laws... and also, raising some questions about raising the limits on interest... because there are some real problems with luxurious interest rates...

CONSUMERIST: Speaking of bankruptcy. The bankruptcy bill—

KUCINICH: Well, the bankruptcy bill was meant to keep people in bankruptcy. One of the biggest problems is that pensions do not have the same standing as financial institutions. I think pensions should be right up there with the first claims of the banks. I think those are basic rights that people have, they were promised. Those resources, they need them to live.

CONSUMERIST: How much, really, will climate change affect the American economy?

KUCINICH: Greatly. I mean, you're looking at the potential for rising sea levels that's gonna wipe out a lot of real estate on the coast. It's talking about changing migratory patterns, causing certain species that are part of the cycle of life to become extinct. I mean, how do you quantify that? I mean, when you're destroying the habitat that human beings need to survive, how do you quantify that? I mean, our whole life is at risk with global warming. And so I'm dedicated to creating an alternative with what I call the WGA... the Works Green Administration, organize everything in our economy toward our sustainability. Not just one area, the government and the private sector... move it away from coal, toward sun, wind, and fuel technology.

CONSUMERIST: Do you think our wonderful voting machines are going to play as big a role in '08?

KUCINICH: I have a bill that I'm about to introduce that will end the role that these electronic voting machines have in Federal elections. I think that voting machines... there's a lot of questions with that technology... the programming, the software... the Diebold company has not, to my satisfaction, answered the questions about how do they protect against a someone breaking into the software and changing the outcome of the election. I'm for paper ballots in all Federal elections—

CONSUMERIST: Optical scan?

KUCINICH: No, paper ballots, the ol' mark your ballot and that is the paper trail.

CONSUMERIST: Is campaign finance reform gonna do a damn thing in the immediate future?

KUCINICH: Look what's happening, these candidates are already raising an excess of 50 million dollars. When you have people that put that kind of money into a campaign, they expect something in return. So, when you look at the kind of money that's going into the system right now, it's pretty obvious that interest groups want to buy the government. Well, with me, what people see is what they get, there's no interest group that's gonna buy me or tell me that I gotta be more for for-profit healthcare, for war, for the oil industry when I'm not, that I have to be for a lack of oversight be the SEC when I'm not... people have to get the connection between the individuals that give and the impact on the decisions of our government. We need a public finance system... that may mean the Justice Department suing to overturn Buckley v. Valejo, or having a Constitutional amendment that will say all elections have to be publicly financed and end the influence of private interests in our political system.

Obviously, public financing is a major endeavor, with a Constitutional amendment a far off dream for anybody, including a brand-new President with it as his or her top priority. There is also a campaign brewing to publicly finance all Federal elections for $6 per citizen. Your thoughts in the comments... — BRIAN FAIRBANKS

(Photo: Mark Esper)

Peter Leppik responded with a novel, albeit, one offering a compelling strong insight into why customers often find themselves strangled by the phone tree.

CONSUMERIST: What's the number one reason for customer service failure through the phone lines?

LEPPIK: We see a lot of the same complaints over and over: automated systems which are hard to use, difficulty reaching an agent, and poor agent skills are the most common.

A lot of people would assume that the root problem for a lot of bad customer service is that the companies aren't willing to spend the money it takes to provide good service. It is true that if you want to provide Ultimate Customer Service and give each customer his own personal butler you're going to have to spend a lot of money.

But for providing a reasonable level of competent service—what most customers would expect—the issue usually isn't money. In fact, incompetent customer service is often more expensive than competent service, since it takes more phone calls and more time to take care of each customer's problem...

The real issue is twofold: one is the mistaken belief that better service is more expensive, and the other is a simple lack of management attention to customer service quality.

Since people often believe that better service is more expensive, one common reaction when companies cut costs (and let's face it, every company is cutting costs all the time) is to make service worse. They do that by trying to force customers to use automated systems (which doesn't work because customers call back to get to an agent when they need to), cutting agents and training (which just forces longer hold times and more time for less skilled agents to handle questions), and similar techniques.

For more on why forcing customers to use self-service doesn't work, see here.

What we've found in our research is that most consumers are perfectly happy to use an automated system for routine tasks, if the system is easy to use and able to complete their task. So if a company wants to save money by getting more customers to use the automated system, the way to do it is improve the self-service so that customers prefer to use it when possible.

In other words, companies can often save money by improving service levels (in a smart way).

And that brings me to the second point: lack of management attention.

Let's face it, in some companies customer service and support is viewed as a nettlesome cost center, rather than an integral part of the company's product or service. Managing the call center isn't a stepping-stone to the corner office in most companies. (As an aside, if you name the companies with truly outstanding service in their industries—Midwest Air, Apple, Four Seasons, etc., you'll generally find that these companies (a) view customer service as an integral part of their product or service, (b) spend considerable management time and attention on service, and (c) view outstanding service as an important competitive differentiators which allows them to charge a premium price and earn a higher profit margin.)

One great example of the lack of management attention is the fact that "end-of-call" surveys are so popular these days ("end-of-call" surveys are the automated surveys where the customer is asked to stay on the line after the agent hangs up). This technique is deeply flawed because it is easy for the customer service agent to manipulate which customers take the survey—and the flaws are usually obvious to anyone who spends more than a few minutes looking at the data (one red flag is that the data often shows absurdly high satisfaction rates, numbers 30 points or more higher than anything we've ever seen at VocaLabs in five years of surveying). Yet this flawed survey data—supposedly a key driver behind management decisions—often gets accepted without question.

(For more on this particular topic, here's an overview of survey techniques:
Here's more on the real-world data we've collected.
Here's a discussion of the reasons why bad surveys often go unquestioned. As you can tell, bad surveys are a topic near and dear to my heart.)

Another great example is the fact that nearly every large call center records at least some calls for quality assurance, but almost no call center has the ability to record entire calls from end to end. In other words, at most companies the recording begins when the call connects to the agent—all the frustration with the automated system is lost forever. At some companies, they can record the agent and the automated system, but it comes out as two (or more) separate, uncorrelated recordings. How many customers experience only the agent (or automated) part of the call? To a very good approximation, zero.

(By the way, you may find it hard to believe that end-to-end call recording is so rare, but we've actually had some client projects where the entire project was just to record calls end-to-end, because the call center didn't have the ability. This despite the fact that we're a survey company not a recording company.)

But if the CEO says that outstanding customer service is a priority, and backs that up with tough questions and action, then you find that several things start happening: 1) the company does a better job of measuring service levels and generating actionable data about how to improve service; 2) the company does a better job trading off cost vs. quality and stops doing dumb things; and 3) morale in the call center improves because agents feel like they are important partners in the company's success, not just worker-drones.

CONSUMERIST: Relative to the number of calls you process, are complaints rising or falling?

LEPPIK: We can look at a couple specific industries which we've been following for a long time.

In the mobile phone industry, which we've been tracking every quarter since the beginning of 2004, there actually has been a long-term trend towards higher satisfaction with customer service, and Verizon, T-Mobile, and Cingular/AT&T are all providing pretty good service these days (pre-merger, the old AT&T Wireless scored relatively poorly).

On the other hand, in the financial service industry, which we've been tracking since the beginning of 2005, there's been no meaningful long-term trend among the handful of mega-companies we've been following—though individual companies have gone up and down.

It's not really meaningful to try to look at customer service trends globally, since every industry and company has its own dynamic. When industries go through a phase where they compete heavily on price (such as the mobile phone industry in the late 90's), often you'll see service deteriorate, both because management thinks they can save money by making service worse, and because service is no longer the focus of attention.

On the other hand, when customer retention becomes a priority (such as the mobile phone industry today), better customer service is often viewed as a key driver of retention, so service levels go up.

Another driver is the availability of competitive data about who has better service. It's surprisingly hard to get high-quality data about which companies in a given industry have better customer service (and more importantly, why), and if a company doesn't know where it stands relative to its competition, it's hard for them to know if they need to improve. One of my goals at VocaLabs is to be able to supply reliable and actionable competitive data about customer service quality in a number of different industries. Most existing comparisons (such as the ones Consumer Reports publishes) are based on consumer surveys which often happen months after a customer's call—that's OK if you want a general sense of whether people like a company, but it's useless for trying to figure out why Company X does a better job solving customers' problems than Company Y.

CONSUMERIST: Do you think people's experience with the phone systems are affecting their future purchase decisions?

LEPPIK: Every piece of research I've ever seen (and some we've done in-house) shows that customer service experiences are among the most powerful drivers of brand loyalty and future purchases, both positive and negative.

Unfortunately, most customer service experiences happen after the purchase, which is why some companies have been able to get away with lousy service for so long.

The Internet is becoming a more powerful force for getting information about service into the hands of consumers pre-purchase. For example, it used to be the rule of thumb that a mistreated customer would tell ten friends, but these days, that unhappy customer is just at likely to blog about the experience (or send an e-mail to The Consumerist), exposing the service problem to thousands of other potential customers.

If there's a critical mass of upset customers, this can snowball out of control—the classic example is Jeff Jarvis' bad experience with Dell a couple years ago ((Here's what I wrote at the time, one and two.), which spiraled from blog entry to mainstream media, and likely eventually contributed to a management shakeup at the company.

— BEN POPKEN

PREVIOUSLY:The Most Excruciatingly Painful, Yet Typical, Customer Service Call Ever

On Tuesday night we chatted with Mike over drinks at Manhattan's Commodore Grill.

CONSUMERIST: One issue that comes up in the Consumerist a lot is credit card industry reform. Do you think they're predators?

GRAVEL: The credit card industry. Look, they are predators... I just had an overdraft protection— they were charging us 19 percent— and I went there and paid it all off. They wouldn't close my account that day. Before I finally could, they charged me another 34%... even though I'd already paid off the credit card. Now, how are you gonna deal with corporations that screw you like that? You can't, it'd be too expensive. So you pay it, even though you feel violated.

GRAVEL: Gosh, that would be like Sarbanes-Oxley. Those ideas would take a lot of study. We should appoint people in positions of power to address that subject straight on.

CONSUMERIST: In April of 2005, the Senate passed the Bankruptcy Abuse and Consumer Protection Act, which made it harder for Americans to fight predatory lending. Do you think that bill should be repealed?

GRAVEL: I've been bankrupt. And I gotta tell you, do I know the problem. That law was all for the benefit of the credit card companies. So obviously, that has to be changed. And we haven't had a Congress that can put the interest of the average person ahead of corporate profits.

He went on to say the other Senators and ex-Senators running for President are rich and can only say, "I understand your problem." He expressed deep concern about being able to trust the other candidates on bankruptcy and consumer protection, saying that only he would "know the right people," to appoint to the administration.

CONSUMERIST: You and Republican Congressman Ron Paul, also running for President, agree on at least one thing: a progressive National Sales Tax, a.k.a. the Fair Tax.

GRAVEL: The most serious domestic problem we have is our system of taxation, which is unfair to the average American and really, in particular, does damage to the poor. And what we have to have is a system where the people know it's fair, that it has total transparency. The only way we can turn this country around is by having a revenue system wherein the people can stop what they're doing... they spend more than they earn. We cannot afford to do that, we're courting disaster. So, if you turn around and give them an incentive to save, not to spend, which is what a national sales tax does, then we can begin to turn around the fundamentals of our country.

What about a national sales tax, like the high VAT tax on purchases in Europe and other countries? Would it work, as Gravel suggests, to do away with income taxes and impose a national sales tax, say, 25-percent? — BRIAN FAIRBANKS

Target gets a free pass in many cases, as opposed to say, a certain blue-colored store, thanks in large part to its eye-popping ad campaigns and associations with artists and feel-good organizations, but the allegations by one disgruntled Target worker, which you should read with a hunk of salt, paint a different picture...

landlease: I work full time at Target and id like to tell their secrets
benpopken: We love secrets
landlease: I worked day time and overnight so i know what its like around the clock First, the security mostly follows black people. One manager told me they don't want a black person working in electronics, because they steal more than others...

(Photo: nycmstar )

Everyone makes fun of customers as soon as they walk away. We wear fake name tags so that when a customer DOES tell a manager that an employee was rude, nobody gets in trouble.

When we apply, we are promised 40+ hours a week. I am down to 24. And every week my manager tells me they will go up to 40. The only reason is that I'm under 40 is that then you don't get health benefits.

benpopken: What store do you work in?

landlease: I work in NY. I'm not telling where. Oh and theres a bar across the street. So on the measly half hour breaks they give you in an 8-hour shift, many people down as much as they can and return to work buzzing or drunk.

Oh, and I'm getting a surgery next month, so i begged to work 40 hours so my health insurance can activate, they said no. So I'm gonna have to pay like, full price.

Oh oh oh, one more thing before i go, the dog recalls. Apparently the people working in pets, don't give a shit, cuz they didn't remove anything....

UPDATE: And now, counterpoint from a current Target employee:

I just read the new article about Target and wanted to share my insight on the issue.

The employee said some truthful things, but some were extreme exaggerations.

1.The security mostly follows black people

a. Not true at all. I work at a very busy target, and we usually have 3 AP people on site at all times. They rarely have time to follow anyone. One usually stands at the doors, one is in plainclothes and wonders the stores looking for suspicious activity - never following unless told to do so by the third person who is usually watching the cameras.

2. Everyone makes fun of customers as soon as they walk away. We wear fake name tags so that when a customer DOES tell a manager that an employee was rude, nobody gets in trouble.

a.Several things wrong with this one

b. We sometimes make fun of customers, usually in jest to make the time fly by faster - and it's usually not about a certain individual.

c. We do wear fake name tags SOMETIMES. The majority of team members wear their real names. The executives give you a random nametag if you come to work without one.

3. When we apply, we are promised 40+ hours a week. I am down to 24. And every week my manager tells me they will go up to 40. The only reason is that I'm under 40 is that then you don't get health benefits.

a. Bull Fucking Shit.

b. When you apply, you're told that you have an opportunity to work 40+ hours. You are never scheduled over 40 hours unless you're paid overtime. There were no promises. Target has been cutting hours but if you are only working 24 hours a week suck it up and maybe learn other areas of the store. I'm trained in 8+ areas of the store and get over 30 hours per week.

c. Theres also a sheet where you can cover shifts for another employee - great way to get new hours.

4. On half hour lunch breaks:

a. Yes, this is true but it's plenty of time if you don't try to get drunk before coming back to work. Almost all of the team members at my store eat in the break room or restaurants nearby and end up waiting at the punchclock to be able to clock back in.

5. Dog Recalls

a. It was removed if there was a specific recall. Target stores were sent signs and lists of recalled food items and dates. The food was removed from the store I work at the same day.

Target does have some flaws, but this is just crazy - she was probably reprimanded for working drunk and took out her anger on here.

• The Classes Scam
• The Return Scam and
• The Price-Match Scam.

benpopken: Tell me about the scams you mentioned

cyclops: The classes were originally a Chuck Wolf idea. All that was good in the company left when he did. When we bought wolf camera in early 2000 (i think) we also took on the classes. I even heard David Ritz say he wanted it to be the factor that separated us from our competitors. When I first became a teacher, we had projection screens. We had pamphlets to give to every person taking the course. The classes consisted of about 20 customers. Since chuck wolf has left, the district managers have taken more control of the classes. The classes are now pretty much designed to set up new sales.

If I'm teaching a class about wildlife photography, most of our customers will buy a nice zoom lens in the future. But i can't just recommend any zoom lens, or even mention several, for that matter. You HAVE to recommend the QUANTARAY 55-200mm zoom lens, because it's "optimized for digital." Quantaray is very much in bed with ritz camera, almost totally exclusively. The company is based in our warehouse. Now, don't get me wrong i like selling Quantaray stuff, I'd make $10 if you bought the lens. But the fact is that Ritz doesn't really allow me to talk to you about name brand equipment, such as Nikon or Canon.

benpopken: Is that the extent of the scam?

cyclops: Well, it's used as a major selling point when buying a camera that you get to take all of our classes for free. There are a total of 7. During the sale the associate will tout the classes as "not only will you get a great deal from us, but we'll teach you how to use your camera." But if you look at what most stores usually only offer 2 of the 7 per month, and classes are booked up to 2 months in advance. I stopped teaching in protest, because the company started giving us mandates on what products to offer. Like if we mentioned filters, we were directed to offer Quantaray filters. Same with flashes, bags, tripods... We were also encouraged to offer equipment throughout the class, not just introduce it. It used to be, "this is an add on flash for your camera, it's good for ....." But now it's "here is an add on flash by Quantaray for your camera, it's easy to use, it'll make your pictures better and it only costs $99." They turned a great established program into another sale.

benpopken: What percentage of people taking the class would you say ended up buying the products you mentioned?

cyclops: The classes now have between 30 to 40 people in them. After class, I'd say at least 25 buy something I've mentioned.

I left about the time when the regional trainer was giving people a hard time for not trying to sell more filters and tripods during training. At the meeting another instructor put the question out about sales versus instruction. After that meeting, 4 instructors quit teaching, including me. The sales are quite lucrative on it now, from what i understand. In the DC area, there are only 2 instructors teaching classes where there used to be 10. It's not about teaching you to take better pictures. They give you one piece of information that you could easily find online, then try and sell you something to make your camera "better." I would liken the classes now to those free bank seminars.

benpopken: Tell me about the return scam.

cyclops: The reality is that the ritz return policy is one of the most liberal policies of any company anywhere. You can buy practically any product from a store, and if it's not broken, you can return it for full price. However, while the associate will tout this policy during the sale "in case you change your mind," they frequently try and tack on fee's and penalties for returns.

For example, "Well sir, I'm sorry you didn't like the camera, I'll be happy to return it for you, however I see that you have opened the batteries that came with the camera. I'm afraid I'm going to have to charge you $15 off the return for that."

There is only one reason this is done: when you discount any product in the register, if the item had an automatic commission (say $5 when sold) then the item's commission drops off. So if i sold you camera for $200, and i made $5, if you return it for $200 i lose $5. But if i reduce the return price to $199 or lower, i keep my $5. Additionally, I may refuse to return something on the grounds that it's no longer sellable, but I will allow you to exchange it. Same thing if it's outside of the return policy. The return policy is 10 days for digital items. If you come in on the 11th day, the nicer stores will take care of you, but many stores will allow an exchange only. This keeps them from loosing sales and commissions.

Again, the policy i have seen allows the customer to return practically anything at anytime in almost any condition. The trick is to call customer service if they don't give you what you want right away. Ritz has no restocking fee's for opened items, but they try very hard to stick it to customers from time to time. Even my employees did sometimes, just to keep their commissions. We were all rather poor,and $5 and $10 per sale means a lot to us. Bt if customers knew they could go over us and force us to take a full return without much effort, that would change quite a bit in the stores.

benpopken: What's the price-match scam?

cyclops: The bottom line is that if you call 3 ritz cameras and ask them what the price match is you'll get 3 different answers. The only consistent rule is that we don't match online offers, and we only match "local competitors." Local is a very ambiguous term, especially in the dc metro area.

benpopken: The influence of the evershifting swamp beneath your feet

cyclops: Because of this, there is a lot of grey in how to price match and what to price match. This is yet another tool employees use to sell to the customer. "Well, I know that bargain city has the camera for $50 less, but they're 100 miles away and i can't price match, it's technically not local to us. but i'll tell you what I'll do, if you buy XXXX and XXXXX i'll give you $40 off the camera." That's wrong, and they don't have to do it. In my store, I fought this for the nice customers. Gor those spending quite a bit of money, we'd price match stuff from stores 300 and 500 miles away. I once price matched something from a small shop going out of business in Alabama. I was in Maryland at the time.

I've also seen people refuse to match a best buy coupon price, because best buy is based in michigan, and is not "local." The price match is just another bs tool used to leverage against a customer, but if you call customer service for the match you should get it.

benpopken: Wow, they were doing it based on where the HQ is?

cyclops: Among other techniques, yes.

benpopken: That's nuts.

cyclops: I saw that used once by a district manager when he refused to honor a customers best buy coupon, something i'd been doing for years. It was a lame excuse, but it worked.

benpopken: What would you tell someone thinking about shopping for a camera? Would you send them to Ritz?

cyclops: It depends. If you buy things online your best bet is to read a review at amazon, dpreview and cnet. then buy. I'd recommend B&H and adorama. If you're unsure about buying online, and there's a good chance you'll want to return it, Buy from ritz

benpopken: Just make sure you call customer service if they try to cut down your return price.

cyclops: Or if you have any problems for that matter. Let them know you'll call customer service if you don't get what you want. If you don't follow through, escalate! If you're in a store and you're not getting what you want, tell them you'll call customer service. If they still don't help you, call customer service. All employee's are required to give you their first name and associate number when requested. In some states, it's on their name badge.

benpopken: Escalation is always the key, most people don't realize that.

cyclops: Ritz takes upset customers seriously, to a point. Rather than figure out what caused the problem, they'll do anything they can to make it go away as fast as possible. Just give them whatever they want, so they'll leave the store.

I tried to correct this while i was there. I'd rather reward a customers patience than their tantrum, but i'm afriad i'm in the minority on that issue. They feel it's too combative and that customers when upset should just be given the keys to the store.

benpopken: There's gotta be a balance

cyclops: There are other problems plaguing the company, but they aren't of much concern to you. The photolabs are being seriously downsized, but that's another issue.

— BEN POPKEN

PREVIOUSLY: 8 Confessions Of A Ritz Camera Sales Employee

steve-o: i was looking for a summer job and wanted to get into marketing, i was answering a classified ad
benpopken: where was this? and what year?
steve-o: in Maryland, 2003 or 4
steve-o: These guys were a subsidiary of DS/Max, I forget the name they used
steve-o: the beauty of it, they said, is that you could really work your way up in the organization
steve-o: So I interviewed there, then they let me know that they don't accept many people but I had succeeded and should come in the next day
steve-o: on my way out I saw the chanting but didn't think much of it
benpopken: what were they chanting?
steve-o: I wish I remembered the exact phrasing. They said it was Latin