They talk about the power of the blog and I guess I just semi-proved that was true.
A few days ago I was going on (and on and on and on) in a post about some of the companies I used while I was traveling. Well, someone was watching. Hertz Rent A Car to be specific. I'm guessing someone at Hertz is smart enough to run a search on blog postings about their company. If the press is bad, a customer rep contacts the blogger and tries makes amends.
This is what I'm figuring, anyway, because a supervisor (and a very nice, well spoken one) sent me an e-mail telling me he was very sorry for "the situation described in your blog." He went on to answer all the questions I'd had about their Fuel Purchase Option (FPO) plan and was "concerned that our corporate office was unable to correctly answer your questions regarding the charges billed for your rental". Then he asked for the dates, times, and numbers I'd called to see if they could help retrain their agents on their service offerings.
Pretty much everything I wanted to hear.
He also credited my account for $57.40, which was the amount I paid for the Fuel Purchase Option (which is, essentially, buying gas in advance so you can return the car to Hertz empty).
I've already written him back, thanking him for the excellent customer service and telling him that the credit wasn't really necessary. I really just wanted to let them know I needed some more information
about their product and was unable to get it from their site or reps.
I'll let you know, it makes me a little uncomfortable getting a credit for something I used (in this case gas during my vacation) just because I was posting it on this blog. I hadn't filled out their customer satisfaction survey, so I have no
idea how this issue would have been resolved otherwise. Either way, the money will go into my favorite charity if and when it's posted to my account.
I do think it's interesting, though, that Hertz has taken an interest in fishing through blogs to find negative publicity. It does make me wonder if Heather Hamilton, over at her popular Microsoft blog, would have gotten as much attention from Alaska Airlines corporate had she blogged about her incident in 2007 instead of 2006. (Sorry to bring it up again, Heather!)
Here's the $57.40 question, should more companies (especially ones that deal with repeat customers) be paying attention to the blogosphere when they get negative press?
Even though we're heard a lot of talk about ethanol being a silver bullet for all our oil-bred woes (reliance on unstable countries for oil, rampant pollution), atmospheric chemist Mark Jacobson at Stanford University has been more than a little suspicious, knowing that air
quality got worse during Brazil's big ethanol push in the 1970s.
Turns out he should be.
According to his recent report (downloadable): "Switching to E85 blends (85% ethanol, 15% gasoline) could result in
slightly higher ozone-related mortality, hospitalization, and asthma
(9% higher in Los Angeles and 4% higher in the U.S. as a whole), the
study finds. Cancer rates would be similar for gasoline and E85."
Maybe we should slow down a bit before rushing into the Brave New World, huh?
And please don't think that guy driving around in her/his biodiesel Mercedes is saving the world, either. When Jacobson was on NPR's Science Friday he cited studies showing that all diesel vehicles are much dirtier than gasoline powered ones. Even the ones burning veggie oil.
No, I didn't mean to depress you so soon after Earth Day.
Would it help if I let you know that Jacobson's recommendation for alternately powering vehicles was by batteries charged via wind/solar energy?
Or that the best way to double your gas mileage is to carpool?
I leave you with this happy, green, and easy-to-do item:
If every US home replaced just one light bulb with a compact fluorescent one, "we would save enough energy to light more than 2.5 million homes for a
year and prevent greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions of nearly
800,000 cars." (source EnergyStar)
Police departments all over the US and Canada are placing wired, remote-controlled vehicles in theft hot spots, then are alerted the moment thieves break in and drive them away. The police then track the vehicles by GPS, pursue them, then knock out the engine by remote control. The whole thing is caught on videotape and used as evidence in court.
I stopped watching COPS years ago because I'm not crazy about watching the sordid lives of creepy people (which is the same reason I don't watch Dancing With the Stars).
And just as these kids below predicted, it was probably a really bad Christmas.
(Warning, this video contains drug use. And worse language than you may be used to. Depending on where you work.)
If you go over to YouTube and the Bait Car Web site, you can see tons of these. Probably the saddest, crazy one is this video with a meth addict stealing an SUV. It is crazy scary.
There are people who should embrace the most cutting edge technology/products and those who should just wait until they're available for general public.
Take the Beta version of any software. If you don't mind finding bugs and reporting them to Apple, Adobe, or the like, then go ahead, be the "test body". But, if like me, you're frustrated by the glitches whenever Apple rolls out their new OS (at work) and complain about the sluggishness of your new Windows Vista (at home), you should probably wait until the kinks are worked out.
There's a certain wow factor about having the first Prius, being the first person skating around on Rollerblades (if you can remember that long ago), or taking a picture with the camera implant in your eye, but it might not be worth the trouble.
Which is part of the reason I'm incredibly fascinated with SVO cars, that is, diesel cars which have been converted to run on Straight Vegetable Oil instead of diesel fuel, something Lovecraft Biofuels in LA has perfected and is taking nationwide. My friend Chris has one and it really amazes me that he can run it off old filtered vegetable oil he got from a Chinese food place.
But, as it turns out, you need to be a certain kind of person to own one of these cars.
The kind of person who likes to drive around in older cars that break down more often than newer cars (not me)
Someone who doesn't drive around with his/her tank almost at empty, because there are not Straight Vegetable Oil Stations on every corner (once, again, not me)
Someone who doesn't mind working out a business transaction for a car with a complete stranger who may, in fact, disappear the moment you hand them your money (yup, me again)
What probably brought this point home most strongly was that my Check Engine light in my VW Jetta came on, again,and it got me to thinking about the last time I checked the oil.
If you've never seen an oil dipstick cry, then I don't think you've lived.
The walk to Ralph's for 10W-40 actually gave me some time to think about this.
And make me consider that I should probably go back to riding my bike to work.
I see them nearly every day on my commute. The Los Angeles Traffic Cop-in-Training.
They stand at the middle of an incredibly busy intersection with their hands by their sides, watching cars go by. I'm not quite sure how this translates to training, but they stand there just the same.
Some days I point them out to my kids and indicate how helpful they are.
Now, wouldn't you think, as I see a Traffic Cop-in-Training almost every day of the week at one of the city's busiest intersections, that I would see him/her on the day when that light is out?
You would. But I didn't.
Fact is, I never see one there when that light is out (which is every time there is a wind storm or precipitation of any kind).
I guess I could call someone at the Dept. of Transportation ask why, but I'm afraid they would tell me that the answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind.
In a recent interview with Macworld, the new President and CEO of Quark, Ray Schiavone, said "he’s aware that the company has a strained
relationship with some customers and has a reputation for being
uncommunicative and unhelpful."
Wow.
I know Production Artists and Designers who swear (or swore) by QuarkXPress, but couldn't stand dealing with Quark the company. (As an example, think of your relationship with your cable company or that best friend your sister loved to hate.)
It's an honest approach and I have to applaud Schiavone for making it.
What remains, however, is how Quark is going to get their market share back.
Is the lesson here that no matter how fantastic your product may be, if you ignore/mistreat your customers, it's going to be easy for another company to draw them away?
You may have heard of my struggles with my Volkswagen (hope you'll excuse me, Emily). I've gotten terrible service from my local dealership as well as the VW USA. Case in point, my transmission went kaput at 50,500 miles and VW USA said the warranty only covered up to 50,000 miles. Wow, talk about your sticklers for numbers. While trying to repair the casing to the transmission, the local dealership told me it was taking 3 weeks to airship an odd-sized wrench to them. Either, a) they were airshipping it by blimp, b) VW doesn't trust local dealership with "odd-sized" objects or c) they were all suffering from Munchausen syndrome. (VW handled my complaint by sending it back to the dealership. Catch-22, anyone?)
When it comes time to buy a new car (or slightly abused one), will I ask around for a company that makes solid cars and backs them up with good service?
My friend once asked a writer who worked on Letterman's show why #2 was always funnier than #1. The writer told him they needed a not-so-funny #1 so they could go into commercial break quicker.
Now you know the secret.
Everyone has at least a Top 5 List, right? Those lists drawn up on notebooks during dull high school classes (Top 5 Classic Rock Ballads, Top 5 Vodka Drinks, Top 5 Most Boring Teachers). With the advent of blogs, MySpace, and Friendster, everyone who visits your site can know your Top 5.
But what about those people you'll never see again? Like the checker at Ralph's Supermarket. Wouldn't it be great if she knew you really, really enjoyed Faulkner's Light in August?
Now there's a company that can help you out with such things by putting them on a t-shirt for you! T-lists will help you put your Top 5 Films, Top 5 Overrated Bands, and the like on a sweatshop free T.
It's like free advertising for your brain!
By the way, any thoughts Top 5 Favorite Things about Autumn?
Fewer Tourists
End of White Slacks Season
Surly Teens Back in School
Heavily Discounted Spiral Notebooks
Slowly Gaining Back Winter Weight
Can't wait to see yours! (Either here or on your T-shirt. You pick.)
It's weird, sometimes you go into a store and you get surprised by the things they sell.
Case in point, the car wash on Santa Monica Blvd. that I pass every day. While getting my car washed and checking out their sunshades, iPod holders, etc., I couldn't help but notice these nice (and very realistic) BB handguns and shotguns:
The lucky kid who gets that last one won't have to be bothered by that pesky orange tip that alerts the police that it's not a real weapon.
I stopped taking pictures when I got to the 3-tier glass case full of knives, assorted pipes, and high-powered binoculars.
I mean, if this is just the stuff on display, what's the guy packing behind the counter?
Or anyone else in the place for that matter.
I wish I could tell you they did a great job on my car, but it was about the job you'd expect from a guy loaded down with knives, throwing stars, an Air Soft pistol, and assorted glass pipes.
"Minivans are sexy. If nothing else, they are proof positive that you
have had successful and productive congress with the opposite sex. Can
you say as much for a Corvette? I don't think so."
You may not be aware, but this week is the 12th Annual Bike to Work Week!
If you've been groaning about gas prices, maybe this is the week to try your biking skills out and save, save, SAVE at the pump!
If biking the rest of the week seems a tad ambitious, maybe you can celebrate Thursday's Bike to Work Day.
Why is there a Bike to Work Day in the middle of a Bike to Work Week? I really have no idea. Maybe the city's Graphic Designers liked to make posters, mugs, and T-shirts.
What I do know is that you can pledge to ride to work this Thursday and have a chance to win a commuter bike and other swag. And that there will be several pit stops around the city all morning. Plus, if you really feel you've bit off more than you can chew halfway through your ride, you can flag down an MTA bus, put your bike on front, and ride for free. (I used to do this all the time, riding only halfway into work but the whole way back home. It's not considered cheating, I swear.)
Before you decide to ride, though, a few words of advice:
Pack your bag carefully the night before. (Yeah, this is a biggie.)
Choose your route wisely. Pick out quiet streets instead of busy ones. Heck, you're only going 14 mph, you don't really need to be on Wilshire Blvd. with cars whizzing by you, right?
Give yourself time to decompress once you get into the office.
Don't forget snacks for work! (Reward yourself with chocolate, you just burned up a lot of calories.)
Who knows, you might bike to work more!
Then you'll be asking yourself stuff like, "If everyone loves the weather here so much, why the heck are they always in their cars?"
It's funny, four months ago it was hard to find anything to do with biodiesel or Greasecars in Los Angeles.
Turns out we just had to wait a little while.
Karin and her boyfriend have been driving by LoveCraft BioFuels on Sunset for months trying to figure out what it is. Sure enough, it's a place to "convert your diesel-powered vehicle to run on 100%
vegetable oil (new or waste), biodiesel, and/or regular diesel, in any
combination." They'll also have biodiesel and clean veggie oil pumps up and running soon.
Pretty cool, huh?
Unfortunately, after thinking about it awhile, I realized though I love the idea of having one of these cars, I'm not sure I'm the type of person who actually wants to deal with the issues associated with having one of them.
Like running out of gas and having to beg McDonald's for a gallon of used french fry oil.
I was having a particularly good drive in today (could it have been because I was listening to Imogen Heap sing Hide and Seek? Could be...) when something oddly wonderful happened. I saw someone during my commute pull a driving move that I love.
I mean it. They didn't pass me in the right turn lane and then pull over in front of me or did they conveniently forget to stop at the stop sign to my left so they can get where they're going faster.
This lone commuter swerved to the side of the road to simply splash through a puddle.
The water went into this huge five-foot arc and landed on the sidewalk with a splat. And then he just continued on his way.
It was just so funny and so unexpected at 7:55am when everyone else (including me) was frantically trying to get to work.
Which led me to wonder, are things like this going on all the time that we fail to notice, just because we're caught up in getting to Point B?
Wasn't it those Whos down in Whoville that sat on a large bike and played "noisy games like zoo-zinger-car-zay -- a roller skate kind of lacrosse
and croquet"?
If you like seeing words you've rarely seen before in action, then you should definitely check out LA Times' staff writer Dan Neil's column Rumble Seat.
The man is an enigma. Here he is writing about Audis, VWs, and Cadillacs with the level of an engineer and yet he is peppering his column with words like "pianissimo", "larder", and "blunderbuss". Heck, I've even seen him use "heliocentric" without batting an eye.
And more enigmatic? While not considered a full-blown environmentalist, he's probably the only newspaper/magazine auto critic who would stop in the middle of his review of Audi's gargantuan Q7 SUV with this aside: "This curious urge toward seven seats is an example of what might be
called contingency anxiety, which I believe is a huge psychic motivator
in the high-end SUV segment generally... Contingency anxiety is the reason so many people drive around in five times more vehicle than they really need."
And absolutely the only one who would tell people if they really felt strongly about doubling their current gas mileage, forget about purchasing a hybrid, just carpool to work.
They talk about the power of the blog and I guess I just semi-proved that was true.
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