BillyStyle

So I have become a fan of complaining, or rather contacting businesses in hope of better service, online. Today’s case study is Netflix.com, the most well known online DVD rental company. I’ve been with them for seven months now and have enjoyed the service. I’ve seen a lot more movies that I’ve always wanted to watch than I would have with renting locally. My main complaint with the service is the ridiculously long shipping time.

I have friends and family on the service too and they tell me how fast they get their movies after they return them; usually two or three days from returning a DVD. I, on the other hand, usually see a 5-10 business day period of turnaround on movie shipment. Netflix sends an email when the new DVD ships, estimating when it will arrive in my mailbox. The projected date has only been hit one time in that seven month period, and has gone as far as three business days past the projected date. That is no good.

Tonight I asked my friend in Salt Lake City, Utah from where his movies are shipped. He told me they are shipped from Salt Lake, so now I know there is a shipping center there. My movies get shipped from San Jose, CA. Shipping from Salt Lake would easily cut the time in half. I now have an obvious solution to my problem, I have only to convince Netflix to make the switch for everybody in my area. It would result in much more happy customers.

So I emailed them. Following is the conversation. I will update this as it continues, which I don’t think will last too long.

My first email:

Subject: Issues with shipping length.
Hello there,

Here are the short and long of my problem:

Short: I’d like my movies to be shipped from Salt Lake City, Utah instead of San Jose, California so I get quicker turnaround. I am now waiting up to 2 weeks to get a new DVD.

Long: I live in St. George, Utah and enjoy your service. I got a friend, who lives in Salt Lake City, Utah, to sign up and he enjoys it as well. I asked him from where his movies ship, and he told me they come from Salt Lake City. He gets his DVDs two days after returning a DVD, that’s great!

Now, I have waited anywhere from five to ten business days to get a new DVD after putting a viewed one in the mail. I find it frustrating to get the email that tells me I’ll be getting a new DVD on Friday, only to wait til the following Tuesday or Wednesday to actually receive the DVD.

Please take this into consideration. I imagine everybody in St. George has this same problem. Salt Lake City is much closer to St. George than San Jose and it would improve the service here by leaps and bounds.

Thank you for your time,
Billy Park
[e-mail address]

Now for a glorius canned response, joy joy. They may have taken the time to put that first sentence in front of the canned response:

Hi Billy,

Thanks for your message.

Unfortunately, choosing the distribution center where your DVDs ship from is not an option.

Movies are sent by first class mail and usually arrive within about one business day following shipment. More than 90% of our subscribers live within one-day postal delivery zones from one of our distribution centers. We will send you an e-mail letting you know when we have shipped your DVD and when you can expect it to arrive. We do not ship on weekends or postal holidays.

Please allow extra delivery days for orders shipping to or from the following locations:

Alaska 2-3 extra days
Puerto Rico 2-3 extra days
Other U.S. territories 2-3 extra days
Military base addresses 3-4 extra days (APO/FPO)

At present our goal is to ship you the DVDs listed highest in your queue. Also, we currently try to ship you DVDs from the distribution center closest to you so that you get movies quickly. In certain instances, your top choice may not be available to you from your closest distribution center, which can sometimes cause a small delay.

Please be assured that Netflix delivery delays are very uncommon. If you’re experiencing repeated delays with returning DVDs, we would suggest mailing them from a different location such as the post office.

You may report any difficulties with shipments using the Report Shipping Problem page.

Here is how we process and ship our DVDs:

We receive rental returns Monday through Friday, except holidays. We process nearly 100% of returns the same day we receive them. When we check-in a return, an email is automatically and promptly sent to you to let you know that we have received your DVD. At present our goal is to ship you the DVDs listed highest in your Queue. Also, we currently try to ship you DVDs from the distribution center closest to you so that you get movies quickly.

Often, on the same day that we receive a DVD from you, we will ship the next available DVD from your Queue. In certain instances, your next available DVD will not ship until at least one business day following our receipt of your returned movie. This can occur, for example, when your top choices are not available to you from your closest distribution center or the number of shipments to be processed by the distribution center on that day has been exceeded. When this happens, your DVD will likely ship on the next business day and may come from an alternate distribution center.

In determining priority for shipping and inventory allocation, we give priority to those members who receive the fewest DVDs through our service. As a result, those members who receive the most movies may experience that (i) the shipment of their next available DVDs occurs at least one business day following return of their previously viewed movie, (ii) delivery takes longer, as the shipments may not be processed from their local distribution center and (iii) they receive movies lower in their Queue more often than our other members. By prioritizing in this way, we help assure a balanced experience for all our members. Those that rent a lot of movies get a great value and those with lighter viewing habits are able to count on our service to meet their limited needs.

When we ship you another DVD we automatically and promptly send you an email letting you know that it’s on the way and telling you the estimated arrival date.

You may review the Netflix terms of use by clicking on the following link:

http://www.netflix.com/TermsOfUse?hnjr=8

If you have any further questions or concerns, please feel free to contact us.

Thanks,
Nicole,
Netflix Customer Service .

Seeing that my e-mail was taken very lightly, I decided to throw a fit and see if that triggers a little more attention. Note: Here is the link to Google Maps mentioned below. The formatting on this quote didn’t work well with the long link:

Thanks for the canned response, it really warms the soul to know this issue bothers you enough to whip that bad boy out. It’s too bad I don’t have any affect on where my movies are shipped from. I essentially take the “Unfortunatlely, choosing the distribution center where your DVDs ship from is not an option” reply as a kick in the face and a “Unfortunately, we don’t appreciate customer feedback and we will continue to run our business however the hell we want, so just keep quiet, pop your bag of popcorn and watch your blasted movies you peon. Just keep your credit card active so we can cash in on it.”

Well, I guess I’ll just bend over and take it for now. I’ll hope to see a change in shipping speeds soon. I know you don’t care about one customer on the 2-a-month plan, so I will skip the part of the angry customer threatening to switch services.

Whoever picks what location movies ships from ought to have a sudden opening in their position, for they made the wrong choice in this case. Look at a map! Go to [Google Maps link here] and notice the direct, shorter route from Salt Lake City to Saint George as opposed to the very non-direct route to the further away San Jose. Nice picking there buddy.

Thanks for putting me in my place,
Billy Park
[e-mail address]

Now they offered me a free additional rental outside of my plan. This is at least an offering of something to make me, the customer, happy. I understand that. This does help cool me down, although it does nothing to help solve my problem. When trouble arises and you don’t want to deal with the problem, give them free stuff!

Dear Billy,

Thank you for contacting Netflix.com customer support!

We appreciate you taking the time to provide us with your feedback and comments. I sincerely apologize for the difficulties you’ve experienced. Please be assured that we are continually striving to improve our service.

As a courtesy I have issued a bonus disc voucher for you to use at your convenience. This voucher will allow for you to have 1 disc shipped, outside of your plan allotment, in the hope of accommodating you for the trouble you have experienced. Please keep in mind this is a temporary release of an additional title. Titles in transit do count towards the total number of titles checked out.

To redeem this voucher, log into your account and access your Rental Queue. Then click the button that states “Use The Bonus Rental”. At that time, your next available title will be processed for shipment. In order to fully take advantage of the bonus rental, please be sure to activate the button when you have all of your titles in your possession.

You may access your Rental Queue through the following link:

http://www.netflix.com/Queue?

If you have any further questions or concerns, please feel free to contact us.

Thanks,
Jennifer,
Netflix Customer Service .

I love bouncy balls. Not sure why, but I have probably 7 or 8 in my truck, probably 10 more in my house. I’ve got them all over. So, this is obviously instantly one of my favorite commercials of all time. Enjoy!

Sony BRAVIA

Update: The whole thing wasn’t digitally created, it was real! I thought it was all fake. That makes it even better I’d say. Check out the featurette.

Every year I have some friends who get a pool going on ESPN.com for the NCAA tourney. Now, I rarely watch any college games during the season, so usually my picks are pretty random, and based heavily on seed. This year I’ve done pretty bad, but still have some good hope. Of my elite 8 teams, seven remain. Only 10 of the Sweet 16 are teams I picked to win, so hopefully I picked the winners of this round.

Even though it’s only for a few weeks, I enjoy filling out a bracket online so I can easily keep track of points, and how my friends have done at picking winners. This year’s tourney has been pretty wild with an 11 and 13 seed making the Sweet 16.

For the record, I have Texas, UCLA, Connecticut, and Villanova in the Final Four. My Championship game has UConn beating UCLA with a score of 68-61. We’ll see how this works out.

Probably around a year ago, I figured out a way to easily increase my tolerance for pain. I imagine it’s been well documented before by some ancient spiritual guru or something, but it was new to me. I think it probably only works with minor to medium amounts of pain, as I haven’t had a great amount of pain since coming up with this method. It’s a little mind trick I play on myself with minor injuries such as stubbing a toe, burning a finger, or even getting a needle inserted into your skin.

Let’s take my most recent one, which is when I reached into the oven to quickly remove a pizza slice that had fallen to the bottom. I didn’t think it through too well and hit the heating iron with my finger which made me pull back right away and left a hot throbbing spot on my finger for a little while. The typical way I used to deal with burns like this is try to do anything to reduce the pain (cold water, ice, blowing on it, shaking it). The problem with doing that is I was focusing on the pain the whole time. Now what I do is focus on the rest of my body that feels just great.

So my trick is to take my mind off of the pain by focusing on my whole body. It’s cool how it works, and it’s pretty easy to do. I usually think of my chest and stomach, since it’s the biggest part of me, and that usually feels great. Then I think of my legs, arms, head, even the other fingers on that hand. When I realize that there’s less than one square inch of me that hurts, it really seems to make that pain seem rather trivial. Another thing I’ve been able to take advantage of is the fact that our bodies are symmetrical for the most part. So in this burnt finger case, I can focus on that same finger on my other hand, and it seems to lessen the pain even more.

It’s funny how this works. I like to observe certain circumstances and people’s reactions to them. Pain is certainly a great thing to observe. This practice lets me now observe the type of pain more than before. In the past, I would be so annoyed by the pain, I would only focus on trying to make it feel better. Now I kind of pay attention to the phases of the pain and what my body does in reaction to it. Sure, maybe I’m a demented freak, but I enjoy it.

As I said before, I haven’t really had any very painful experiences since I started doing this, but I have had a couple of headaches (I only get pretty minor headaches). I found it much more difficult to do this with the headaches. I imagine it’s because the head is pretty much the control center of the body. Perhaps I will get better at this as things go on, we’ll see. I don’t tend to get many headaches or stomach aches, which I imagine would be harder to deal with as well.

Leave some comments if you’ve tried this out, I’m curious to hear more.

Finally! I have been waiting for this concert to be released on DVD for many years. My Dad has it on Laserdisc (yep, he’s still got the player), and I’ve had it on VHS for a while. Finally, on DVD, I love it! Probably the greatest concert I’ve ever seen in person or on television.

This concert took place at Earl’s Court in London, England. The size of the stage, the elaborate lighting and theatrics of the show are unmatched by any other performance I’ve seen. There are moments in this concert that seem to be musical and performance perfection. I just can’t build it up enough. It runs a good three hours, so clear an evening to turn out all the lights, pop in the DVD, crank up the volume, and get taken away to the best concert performance ever…that will have to wait til this fall (release date is September 12, 2006) of course.

Go get it!

I’m weird. I realized around a year ago that I just don’t get offended by people. I am oft offended by their ignorance, stupidity, lack of tact, and other things along that line. The offended feeling I’m talking about is the kind that makes one harbor up feelings of personal sorrow or angst toward somebody due to something that person has said or done to you. I’m not too sure why that is the case. It isn’t something I’ve worked at and finally achieved. In fact, I can’t remember if I have ever been offended by someone. My best guess is because of my religious and family background. I am LDS and have a great family with great parents. One principle I was taught, but never thought too much about is to love my neighbor. Part of that was to be forgiving, realizing that everybody makes mistakes. I also never remember my parents outwardly displaying that they had been offended by anybody. I don’t know if these are the whole reasons, but they’re my best guesses at this moment.

Now, never being offended in this sense has its ups and downs. Ups, of course, are never having those feelings, being able to remain friends with anyone despite petty differences, and easily brushing aside differences that may have arisen just for a moment or short amount of time. The main down side is that I tend to expect others to act like me and take no personal offense to what I say or do. As you may notice in this blog, I am a very observant person. I like to pay close attention to how people react to certain things or situations, then discuss it with them. I do this more from a psychological standpoint than anything, but most people seem to think that I’m being very judgemental.

If I do something stupid, or something embarrassing, I’m usually the first person to talk about what in the world I was thinking and why I’m like that, I find it very interesting. Most people, I’ve found, are quite different than me. They like to avoid confronting any unusual things about themselves and just hope they go unnoticed. It’s something I have a hard time comprehending. This may go hand in hand with my indifference toward people’s opinion of me. I do care about what some people think about me, but for the majority of the masses, I really couldn’t care less about how they see me. I’ve heard other people proclaim to have the same outlook on life, but I seem to get in trouble for that attitude more than others I’ve seen.

Since I don’t care what most people think about me, I will say whatever is on my mind in many cases. Plenty of times this offends people, and I don’t really care that they are offended. I say I don’t care, because that is another of my weaknesses. I figure since I’ve never had a problem with being offended, others ought not as well. I obviously have some work to do on all this, I just thought it was an interesting trait, and have never met anyone else who shares the same attribute.

Good stuff here. Note the music from Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, one of the all time great movies.