I am an AT&T customer. I have been for many years. I have my family on AT&T Wireless, I have an AT&T landline at home, and my office has AT&T local/long distance plus DSL. All in all, I'm directly responsible for over $500 a month of revenue to AT&T. But after my experience today, I am actively looking for alternatives for every single service I have with them. Let me explain...
I was supposed to have AT&T's UVerse DSL installed at our new offices today. The ordeal to get this in was excruciating. I called almost 2 weeks ahead of time to set everything up and was assured everything would be ready before our move date. AT&T Customer Service told me that someone from the UVerse group would call me with the appointment date/time for installation. A few days go by and no contact. As I am busy with the move, I didn't realize this until we were a week away. I called customer service and was put through hold hell for about half an hour. Then when I reached someone they told me I missed the appointed time last week. Huh? I had no idea when the appointment was because nobody called me! No problem, mistakes happen. I asked them to please have someone out by Friday to get the install in before the employees show up on Monday. They said they'd make it happen. The technician shows up at the appointed time but they activated the UVerse DSL on someone else's phone number, not the ones in my suite. I have to call Customer Service back and beg them to switch it to the proper number. Their response? It may take up to three business days to occur. Basically, my employees are going to be unable to do their jobs from Monday to sometime Wednesday. AT&T Customer Service will cost me 3 days of productivity. 3 days of lost time is an eternity to a small business. I've included AT&T's Twitter reps in the hopes that they see this. This is your opportunity to step up and be heroes. Excellent customer service is not the absence of complaints but how you handle and solve them. I had an issue with our Ooma phones at the old office and was instantly met with one of the best customer service responses I've ever had. Trust me, if the new offices could accommodate data services faster than AT&T's pathetic DSL, I would have gone that route and dropped my AT&T local/long distance lines. Unfortunately, AT&T has a near monopoly on telecom services in our building and they are using it to bludgeon everyone with horrible products and even worse customer service.GazeHawk buys my coffee...
via gazehawk.com
GazeHawk is awesome. Heat maps like the one above used to cost thousands of dollars to commission. These guys have figured out an inexpensive way to do it using your laptop's webcam. Ingenious. The flip side of it is that they pay people to view websites and provide comments (in addition to your heat map) - about $4 for a good eye track or $2 if not. I've done dozens of these since they've gone live and will continue to do so. Spend a couple of minutes looking at a webpage to get a cup of coffee? Sounds good to me.
Don Perata is NOT the answer to Oakland's problems
During the interview, we were shocked by Perata's evasiveness, use of faulty facts, and ignorance of some of the major issues facing the city ... Regardless of his standing in the polls, we felt that Perata's poor knowledge of the issues, combined with his history of ethically questionable dealings, made him a poor choice for mayor.
Many newspapers in the Bay Area have chosen Rebecca Kaplan as their choice as Oakland's next mayor. Unfortunately, that's not always a good predictor of who will win the election.
Laptop thief backs up victim's data, mails it to him
... around a week later, the professor says he received an envelope. Inside was a USB stick ... The thief, it appears, took pity and spent perhaps hours making sure that the professor got all of his unbacked-up information back.
via news.cnet.com
As a victim of laptop theft, this is a confusingly heart warming story. Let me not beat you to death about this (of course, I will), but everyone should have a "set it and forget it" backup system in place. For those of you using Macs, go buy an Apple Time Capsule
For my PC brethren, go use a service like Mozy. It's great and stores all the data in the cloud so you don't physically have to be near your backup drive in order for the magic to happen. It's free for 2GB or $5 a month for UNLIMITED storage. Not a bad deal, if you ask me. The restore process isn't as seamless as the Time Capsule for Mac (and you'll have to reinstall your programs) but it's good enough.
But remember, if someone steals your laptop there is no way to recover your data. Stories like this one are the overwhelming exception to the rule.
Chickenshit and gutless political attack ad
I just received this political mail piece today. What a totally gutless and chickenshit tactic. The ad doesn't endorse anyone, instead just anonymously tells you to vote for anyone BUT Jean Quan because of her ties to Dellums. At least have the decency to step up and take credit for it.
It's pretty clear this came from Don Perata's camp. The polls currently have him in first, Quan in second and Rebecca Kaplan in third. The only person who benefits from this ad is Perata since none of the other 7 mayoral candidates are in striking distance. Kaplan doesn't have the resources to do a direct mail piece like this nor would she target Jean Quan (she'd be better off going after Perata). Plus I have yet to see one negative ad come from her camp. She'd rather focus on the issues and come up with potential solutions to Oakland's problems - go figure. For the record, I'm not voting for Quan and I think Dellums was an ineffective mayor. My vote is for Kaplan because I think Don Perata is actually more like Dellums than Quan is. Maybe not ideologically but I think he'll be just as effective as Dellums was in his time as mayor. Plus is this the type of mayor you want leading your city?