Called your health insurance company lately? or your cell phone carrier? or your ISP?

The companies are so huge and the army of customer service reps likewise that no one is accountable anymore. They all seem to pound on computer keyboards, reading illogical and incomprehensible scripts, no one seems to understand how all the pieces of the computers sytem work together and as a result your account is in bad shape or you don’t get the benefit you paid for or they continue to bill you the wrong rate. But never do you actually speak to the same person twice and no one can really clear up the mess and get it right.

Let me not bother you with bad examples here. Let me talk about some great examples.

American Express employs a machine that figures out exactly what I most likely want and by talking to the machine I can mostly resolve my issues. Continental airways has a machine that now handles my check-in by phone and makes me avoid most of the irritating ground-staff that seems employed for the sole reason to keep you from getting to your flight on time. And State Farm has a little shack at the end of my street where a few ladies work and handle all my stuff. They know me, my family and my circumstances and as a result I never have to worry about the insurance stuff.

I pity those poor customer service reps who work day in day out on a computer system that they do not understand with little helpful training and hardly any resources to get the angry customer satisfied.

Oh and I have not talked about the phone trees yet…………..but that’s for another time.

In the US we first get the government to ease up the requirements to get mortgates so more people will be able to get them. Mind you not more people be able to AFFORD them but just more people to GET them. The finance wizzards figured out creative ways to sell the mortgages so their bonus plans would pay off the maximum possible and the issues would be postponed a few years. Sure enough after those few years it became clear to those who had received a mortgage but could actually not afford it in the  first place, that they now had to pay up or default on their loans. Well, that is what happened and the whole world economy tumbled in a vacuum because as mortgages didn’t get paid the banks lost money and went belly up, the housing market stagnated, so the building industry suffered so folks got unemployed, bought less and other industries started to suffer etc etc. you are all familiar with the picture.

So the next thing for the banks was to get back the homes that were not paid for, a process know as foreclosure.

To me it is mind-boggling that the banks yet again messed up and apparently couldn’t handle the paperwork the proper way so some of the foreclosures were not done properly. OK so what is the answer……. the banks are halting the foreclosures. So folks who got into a home with a mortgage they couldn’t pay in the first place, now will remain longer in that home because the bank is not able to process the paperwork the right way to get them out.

Who are the folks running these banks that could not figure out that their clients would never be able to repay these mortgages, and who are these folks running these banks that cannot process a pretty clear paper process???

Incompetence all the way, and no one is accountable.

After getting used to stacks of papers stuffed in my mail box with “pre-approvals” for all kind of thing under the sun and “thanks for your support, please give more” solicitations by charities, and after having given up on getting angry about the daily intrusions during dinner time from the “fraternal order of the local cops” Now I get “retargetted by shops that I have been foolish enough to visit online.

Mind you, I have NOT given them permission to follow me around, I have NOT signed up for receiving any kind of materials, I have NOT given my email or address but now they abuse my browser by placing a “cookie” to ensure I get advertisements on lots of totally unrelated websites.

See when I visit a baseball website I expect to see advertisements by google that are linked to the topic of the website. That technology I understand and appreciate because as I visit the baseball website I may want to see or buy more stuff related to baseball.

Now however I look at slippers at Zappos and the next thing you know is that on many of my newspaper sites I continue to see the same damn slippers!! Zappos will NOT see me back as a customer because I don’t like them following me around through the cyber world with their slipper advertisements. This is like visiting JC Penny and the next thing you know is that some sales guy keeps following you around the mall trying to sell you stuff.

crazy, sad, foolish and I’m sure I’ll find a techno way to block that stuff.

But today my newspapers bring me some good news:

The story of the 1960 baseball game recorded by folks hired by no one less than Bing Crosby! read about it here

Also the story about the fabulous win of a prison guard of $54 million dollar what a Joy!

Maybe we should have a newspaper dedicated to good news. Most of the good news papers and websites are really religious groups publishing, but I need a newspaper that will bring great good every day stuff. Well here is an opportunity for the entrepreneurs out there.

Some sr in Journalism school writes his Apple pr department for a quote for a project that she has been assigned. They do not respond so she leaves them about 10 voicemails and then emails to Jobs to complain about the not responding PR department. (find the story on Gawker)

Well Jobs comes out first with telling her that the goals from Apple do not include getting her a higher grade, next after she responds he tells her that they don’t respond to comments unless there is a problem and when she comes back again he tells her to “leave us alone”.

How refreshing! Have you had that? Some customer keeps coming back with requests and complaints and you’re not making a penny on it but it keeps your department busy. Or a client keeps asking question, not because they don’t understand the deal but because they don’t agree with it. Instead of straight telling you they don’t like the deal, they consume all of your time by writing lengthy pieces asking you to react on every sentence.

How refreshing to just tell them to leave you alone.

Rude too, I guess, and bad PR, and bad role model as CEO, and bad for business if you need every penny you can make and are NOT as big as mr Apple……………….. but refreshing too!

Related articles by Zemanta

• Journalism Student Won’t Leave Steve Jobs Alone (techcrunch.com)
• Steve Jobs In Email Pissing Match with College Journalism Student (AAPL) (businessinsider.com)
• Tweet of the Day: Steve Jobs Tells J-School Student to ‘Leave Us Alone’ (wired.com)
• Steve Jobs Teaches Journalism 101: Please Leave Us Alone (cultofmac.com)
• Steve Jobs In Email Pissing Match with College Journalism Student [Exclusive] (gawker.com)

Some are so stupid that it is embarrasing to watch and I feel for the actors who work in these commercials, they must really be hungry. Also some are so complicated that it is difficult for me to remember or figure out what product they actually endorse.

Well finally one company has a commercial that gives us some control over the content of their commercial.

Go check it out, it is the commercial from Tippex and it’s on You tube

Click here for the link and enjoy!

Do presidents learn from each other’s mistakes?

So how wise is president Obama to announce the end of the combat mission next week? One strategy could be ensuring that the combat mission is really over and then, when all soldiers are playing cards with the Iraqies the whole day, announce that it is time to ship them back. I don’t believe we are at this stage yet.

The only learning we see is that Obama won’t actually say “Mission Accomplished”. Whew…. that is a relief and that will certainly make all the difference.

Is there any military planning going on or are we just going from one tidbit in the media to the next without really looking at what in necessary to improve the world?

I’m not sure the word consumation has already been used for anything else but let me give you an example from today.

Yahoo travel reports on the list of the best and worst airports in the USA. OK, who cares? Am I really going to change my travel plans because Houston has a great airport? Is there really anyone who is going to reroute their itinerary based on the great TexMex you can sample at Bush?

Also, who says these are great airports anyway? The millions of travelers or the few hundred readers of some magazine, but I already digress because out of the flow of data pouring out of my laptop this morning, this is consumation, nice to snack on a tidbit but it really does not add or detract anything from my world this morning.

So is CNN consumation? Fox maybe? Well I guess that the major news channels all have real information to share up to some point and you can see clearly when real news starts running out. That is when reporters start interviewing reporters, the reruns of clips start and the next stage is a report about great or bad airports.

All to keep the audience tied to………….the advertisements that ensure you get the real news for virtually free flowing over your tv, radio, podcasts and the interwebs.