Rob's Rants

The other day I read an article asserting that Best Buy was doomed because of poor service and a failed business model. After my experience today trying to use their in-store pickup service, I am inclined to agree. What makes this even more amazing is how badly things have changed in just a few weeks, at least at my local store in Marlborough, MA.

In between Christmas and New Year’s I needed a USB sound card for my laptop. The Best Buy web ordering experience couldn’t have been better. I placed the order one evening and went to the store the next morning. Best Buy had a parking space near the door reserved for in-store pickup customers (which I didn’t use). Whe I walked through the door, the pickup desk was literally 5 feet inside. I walked up, handed the clerk a copy of my order e-mail, showed my ID and paid. The door guy wished me a good day and I was on my way. In and out in under 5 minutes.

Contrast that with today. I decided it was time to get the keyboard dock for my Asus Transformer TF101 tablet. I found it online for $25 less than the Best Buy price, but I was willing to pay the difference in order to have it today. I placed my order, and about 30 minutes later the confirmation e-mail arrived, so I headed to the store. That’s when I saw how much had changed in just a few weeks. When I walked in, the pickup desk was no longer conveniently right by the door. I asked the fat, greasy door guy in the terrible yellow polo shirt where the pickup window went. He told me pickups now had to go to customer service. So I walked over and got in line behind 4 other people carrying things they were cearly returning.

I don’t know who at Best Buy came up with this plan, but one of the first rules of retail is: when a customer wants to give you money, take it
! Do not make them wait in line behind 4 other people who are going to cost you money. As I was standing there wasting time, it occurred to me that it probably would have been faster to just walk to the computer department, find a keyboard, and go through the normal check out. But I figured I’d get a whole bunch of reminder messages that I didn’t want to deal with, so I stayed.

The line was slow. It didn’t help that one of the original clerks decided that it was time to answer phone calls and stop helping people in line. This is always a source of irritation for customers – your floor people should never be taking phone calls. I’ve taken the time to drive to your location – phone customers are still on the fence. See my previous rule: if I’m waiting in line to give you money, take it. Don’t blow me off to prospect with people on the phone.

So I finally make it to a clerk. Things start pretty well – I show him the confirmation e-mail on my phone, he locates the box, and things look OK. Then I realize that the seals on the box are broken. The ones that ASUS puts there which say, “Check contents if seal is broken.” The box itself was scuffed and the keyboard inside was wrapped in a plastic sleeve that was ripped as though it had been opened. I asked the clerk why it was open and he said I shouldn’t worry – it wasn’t a floor model or anything. I still asked him to replace it with an unopened box. With a couple of quick calls on the radio and a 5 minute wait, someone brought up a new one. I don’t blame the desk clerk – but I’m willing to be several people at Best Buy had their hands on this box and not a single one of them cared enough to point out that it was open and replace it with a new one. That says a lot about Best Buy’s culture of service.

So I finally had my keyboard and it was time for my final indignity. I know Best Buy has always placed an employee near the exit to harrass customers on their way out the door rather than invest in real security. That this is an acceptable practice to them when their main competition is the convenience of online shopping probably says all you need to know about their culture. I hate this – and I barely tolerate it on a normal day because I know that the Best Buy door guy has absolutely no power to stop you from leaving the store. Today I was already fed up with my experience and was in no mood to stop. So when I was offered a bag at checkout I declined and headed for the door with my receipt and box in plain view. Keep in mind that I could see the front doors the whole time so it’s not like I was coming from some back corner of the store.

Sure enough the door guy asks for my receipt. I stop and show him the receipt which I’m holding right on top of the box. Instead of quickly looking and letting me go – I mean I bought 1 single thing, which wasn’t in a bag, in plain view of his little desk, he instead says, “Just a second,” and turns to accost a family leaving with stuff in a bag. I can only assume they got his immediate attention because they were much darker than either he or I. He tells them he needs to see what’s in their bag, at which point my switch flipped. I simply announced, “I’m leaving now,” and started walking out the door hoping they would follow instead of letting some minimum wage sloth paw through their property. The door guy said, “Wait … I have to,” and before he could finish I said, “You know you can’t stop me.” All he could say was, “Really, Sir?” “Really,” I replied.

So at this point I agree 100% with Larry Downes – Besy Buy is doomed. And good riddance. It amazes me that Best Buy has abandoned the one thing that seperates them from their competition – good service. And I’m not talking about complex systems either. I mean basic service: allow your customers to spend money easily, pay attention to them while in the store, and don’t harrass them and treat them like criminals when they leave. I mean really, a door receipt checker? If you are worried about cashiers mis-checking items hire some better cashiers and put in some cameras to watch them, not me. I wouldn’t think of letting a random stranger in the parking lot touch something I just paid good money for, what makes you think it’s OK if it happens just inside the door?

See you Best Buy – it will be a cold day in Hell before I enter one of your stores again.

Over the holiday weekend my Dash 3G simply stopped connecting to the network. No data, no phone, no bars, no nothing. Don’t know exactly when it happened, but when I picked up my phone to go to work on Tuesday morning, I had nada for signal strength. And no matter how I tried to reboot, pull the battery, pull and reinstall the SIM, nothing helped. I began to suspect there was a widespread outage in the Northeast, but nope … it was just me.

I called T-Mobile to check and the phone tech was helpful. I was pleasantly surprised at their ability to troubleshoot a Windows Mobile phone. We tried to reset the network settings, but nothing helped. The phone tech was the one who suggested that perhaps the SIM had failed. This had never happened to me before – a bad SIM? A SIM failing for no apparent reason? I mean, it’s not like I remove it from my phone. I hadn’t opened the back in months – how the hell could it just fail?

I didn’t believe it. I searched the web and one of the first hits to come up was a thread on XDA-Developers by a couple of people running the same 3VOlution modified ROM that I am … uh-oh. Maybe a ROM problem? But the ROM shouldn’t affect the radio I reasoned – those are separate programs. But you never know … So like an idiot I hard-reset my phone and wiped everything to go back to a fresh ROM installation. It didn’t help.

When my wife returned home that night I finally got to test the SIM theory. Sure enough, my SIM was bad. If I swapped my wife’s SIM for mine (she has a Dash 3G also) she had no bars and my phone was fine. So I put them back and resigned myself to getting a new SIM first thing this morning.

When I got off the train I dropped into the T-Mobile store on Lincoln Street on Boston (near South Station). I walked in and someone asked if they could help. I told them I needed a new SIM. He asked if I was sure, I said yes, and he asked for my phone number and ID. Then he took one out from behind the counter, put the number into the computer, and told me I was good to go. Total time took less than 2 minutes from when I walked in the door. And there was no charge. I plugged it in while in the store and sure enough, my signal came right back.

After spending a couple of hours rebuilding my phone (because I had reset it like an idiot) I did notice one improvement. It seems that I now get a better signal in many places than I did. I’m not saying that I get a dramatic improvement in strength, just that I am able to hold a 3G signal in places where I used to drop to EDGE speeds. On my train ride home (thered to my MacBook where I am writing this) I’d say I’m seeing a 30% improvement. I drop out of 3G coverage less than I did. Who knew that the SIM itself could have such an effect on signal.

Anyway, T-Mobile Customer Service was very good to me again, reminding me why I stay with them as a carrier. And I’m glad my Dash is working again, even if I did have dreams of getting a new My Touch or HD2 if it was my phone that was dead. But I’m happy I saved the money.

Thanks T-Mobile.

I got stuck at South Station this evening as my train sat on the tracks not moving for twenty minutes past its scheduled departure time. It seemed that the MBCR couldn’t tell me why. My guess is that it had something to with President Obama’s unannounced visit to the MEMA Bunker in Framingham. The T-alert’s e-mail said the delay was because of a Police Action. If that’s the case then there is one seriously paranoid security idiot in charge, because by my calculation the tracks pass only within 2 miles of the bunker and it’s not like someone is going to divert the train. Plus, IT’S A HARDENED NUCLEAR BUNKER. But I’m missing my main point.

This incident got me thinking about how the T handles incidents like this and commuting in general. And they are really bad. So I thought I’d clearly lay out several demands. I thought about declaring this a T-rider’s Bill of Rights, but that seemed a little too extreme. So I guess this my list of minimally reasonable expectations.

The MBTA/MBCR Rider’s List of Reasonable Expectations

1. I expect to be told the reason for a delayed train. Someone knows the reason, and the crew has radios. Put the two together and the result is informed passengers.
2. I expect immediate compensation for a severely delayed train. The current system of filling out a form and waiting for some arbitrary decision to get a tiny little ticket for a free ride is unacceptable. And it doesn’t do a thing for people who travel on a pass every month. When a train is late by more than fifteen minutes the crew should immediately issue refunds to all passengers. Not ride vouchers, not free tickets. Real cash refunds for people who just bought tickets and a convertible-to-cash voucher for people with monthly or 12-ride passes.
3. I expect to be able to change my plans when informed of a delay. This means you open the doors and let me off, even if I’m on a subway. Yes that’s right. There was the story of a Red Line train stopped on the bridge just after the Charles/MGH stop. People sat on the train for 40 minutes. Unacceptable. And I don’t want to hear about any safety issues either, because if you can’t evacuate me safely from a broken train then you can’t do it from a burning one either, and that is a serious problem. If any train is stuck for more than 15 minutes at any point in the system I demand the choice of evacuation so I can walk to where I need to be if necessary.
4. I expect to exit my train at the closest door. Not the closest door you’ve arbitrarily decided to staff today, but the closest door. Open all the doors at all the stops, period. If you have a staffing problem, fix it. Bust your union if you need to or fix your pension problem … but staff the train and open the doors.
5. I expect to board my train when it’s ready, not at some arbitrary time. It is simply ridiculous that passengers are forced to stand in a giant herd at South Station for ten or more minutes until some designated time comes, only to board a train which has been sitting in front of them the whole time. Do us all a favor and just post the track number as soon as the train is empty from the previous run.

Five simple steps to competent service. Post your ideas in the comments.

Like most commuters, I’m pretty hard on the MBTA. So I figured I should write about an incident resulting from my own stupidity and incompenence, where the MBTA’s systems worked well and saved me a bunch of hassle and money.

Basically, a few weeks ago, on one of the first cold days this fall, I grabbed a jacket as I headed out for work. This was the first day of the year that I needed a jacket… I’d like to think this contributed to my boneheaded move on the way home.

I caught the normal Commuter Rail train to Worcester in the afternoon and sat in my normal place in the vestibule of a double-decker car. I threw my jacket on the overhead rack above my head and rode all the way to Grafton. We were 20 minutes late BTW … Anyway, when we stopped a young man who clearly hadn’t ridden the train before slid open the door to the stairs and then looked back at me in a panic – the stairs leading down led only to the chain link fence in between tracks – we had been switched to a different track than normal and the conductor hadn’t adjusted the stairs in our car. So I pointed to the far end of the car where people were getting off and we walked all the way down and made it off the train. I bet you see where this is going … As the train started ro roll out I realized that my jacket was still on the overhead rack. Great.

As I reached the top of the stairs to the parking lot I also realized that my house and car keys were in the pocket of the jacket. Shit.

I called my wife and she agreed to strap our 4 1/2 year-old into the car seat and come rescue me with a spare key to my car. And I started down an MBTA Customer Support odessy that actually worked. Here’s what happened:

1. I got on my cellphone web browser and searched MBTA Customer Service. I found an 800 number and called. (This was at 7:45 PM BTW). I navigated the voicemail and got to “lost items.” A nice woman answered the phone (at almost 8 PM — a real person) and I explained my situation. Good thing #1: real people answered the phone at night.
2. The woman explained that items left on the train, if turned in or found by a conductor would be taken to Lost and Found at South Station. I didn’t believe this, thinking that they must check the train at Worcester, but it turns out that she was absolutely right. She also gave me the phone number and said that if I called and left them a description they would call me back if it was turned in. Good thing #2: the late night Customer Support person gave me correct information immediately.
3. I called the Lost and Found number the woman gave me and left a message as the recording instructed. But I didn’t believe I’d ever see my keys again.
4. Not believing the woman, I got the new keys from my wife and drove to Union Station to see if it might end up there. The night security guy said, “No — all that stuff goes to South Station. And the train already turned and went back to Boston.” So, basically, if I had just waited on the platform in Grafton, the train on which I left the jacket would have come back and I probably could have boarded and grabbed it — but anyway …
5. I went to Lost and Found the next morning at South Station. A very nice young lady helped me and looked to see if anything was turned in to match my description. It wasn’t. But she checked the “log” and lo and behold, my information from the message the previous night was logged. Good thing #3: the information was correct and the voicemail system worked as I was told. The woman also said that it wasn’t uncommon for something found on late night runs by the crew to be turned in late the following day — they often put the stuff in their lockers since Lost & Found was closed at night and turned it in when starting their shift the following day.
6. I didn’t hear from them all day and figured I’d never see my jacket again. On the way home I checked in person and was told that crews might have a day off and it would very likely turn up.
7. Still not hearing anything the next morning, I went and bought a new jacket. Now you know what’s coming right … the next morning I got a call from Lost and Found at South Station. My jacket and keys were turned in. Good thing #4: the honest people at the MBTA actually followed the system and I got my stuff back.

It turns out that the train had been 20 minutes late due to mechanical problems, so when the train made it back to South Station it was taken out of service. The delay in finding my jacket was because it was a maintenance worker who found my jacket after the repairs were done and who turned it in.

So there you go — something at the MBTA worked well. Everyone I spoke to was kind and courteous and gave me correct information. And the system worked to get me my stuff back. See — it’s not all bad!