Just thought I’d post a bit about Cool Ray, an Atlanta-based heating & air company. You can read the full story over on my SEO blog, but I thought I’d summarize it here.
Nothing extraordinary — just solid from start to finish. I bash on companies quite a bit on here, so I thought I’d toss this one out there to be nice. 
We go to the Atlanta Zoo quite a bit — I’d say 8-10 times/year. We have a season pass so that makes it quite affordable, and the girls have a good time.
I recently got a new GPS, so I thought I’d plug the zoo address in there. I fired up my iPhone, typed in their URL and got this:
Ahh, so pretty. 100% flash. Done. I ended up just waiting for the Garmin to find it though it’s POI database (sloooow, but effective).
The sad thing is, the site isn’t 100% flash. They’ve just got some weird flash-detect script that means that the Flash-less among us (like iPhones) are DOA. Stupid.
They’ve got a few other problems as well:
Don’t get me wrong — the zoo is great. We had a wonderful time there today. Too bad their site is such a mess.
I was flipping through a “Choice Savings” booklet that came in the mail. You know, the little half-sheet sized glossy-covered coupon book.
While going through it, I found an ad for “Frankie’s”, a local italian restaurant. We’ve been there before and it’s pretty decent, but the map really caught my eye. They didn’t screw it up in any major way, but the fact that they were able to get three things wrong in only nine words was quite impressive!
If you’re going to build a map with so little though behind it, why even use it? What does this sloppiness say about the rest of your business?
I’m rarely kind to Office Max. They fill a nice need I often have as a consumer, but they’re often idiots. My latest trip was no exception.
I needed a new roll of labels for my labelmaker. I’ve become a big fan of GTD (started a new blog about it, and love using Nozbe) and so I’ve been working on getting my files organized. My first roll of labels was about gone, so I stopped by Office Max while I was out. I had forgotten to write down the model number of my labelmaker before I went in, but I thought I could figure it out.
When I got to their labelmaker section, they didn’t carry mine (of course), but they had spare labels that I thought would work. I pulled out my iPhone, found my labelmaker in it, and checked to see if they were compatible. Based on the website and the box I thought they were, but I wasn’t positive, so I found an employee to help.
I showed him the phone and the box and asked what he thought, and he was stunned by the phone. “What IS that? It’s so cool! Is that a BlackBerry or something?”
I was kind of floored. This is a first-gen iPhone — certainly nothing special — and this is a technology-based store. How on earth could a late-20’s employee not recognize an iPhone. I don’t expect them to know every model of phone off the top of their head, especially considering they don’t sell them, but how can an Office Max employee be that out of touch with today’s technology?
I dunno, it just seemed very very odd to me…
Sometimes little things can make a big difference. It was time to get an oil change and tire rotation before our trip to Michigan later this week, so I looked the little decal in the corner of my windshield, got the local Goodyear number, called them up and came in.
The experience was great . They quoted me a price, promised a time, called when it was ready and gave me the quoted price. Nothing spectacular, but very solid.
However, look at the new sticker in my window:
I don’t know what “Kendall” is, but I don’t see my Goodyear phone number up there anymore. Next time I’ll need to look it up and call. The problem with Goodyear is that there are a ton of them and they all have their own name. I just want the one near me — I don’t give a rip whose name is on the door. It was very handy to have it right there in my car when I thought about it on my lunch hour yesterday, so that will be more of a hassle next time.
I realize this isn’t a big deal, but it just seems poorly thought-out. Some manager probably got a pat on the back for saving the company $1.63/year by not printing those themselves and just using the ones from a vendor. Lazy…
I’ve always been a pretty big fan of Micro Center. Their prices are decent, and their selection is excellent — especially for small parts that places like Best Buy would never carry. However, they’re starting to have some issues, and it’s getting worse every time.
It started a few months back. I went in there to purchase a video camera for a non-profit that I help out, and it went fairly smooth. The only change was that instead of walking up to a register and paying, you now have to walk down a low row of crap (50 feet?), make a u-turn at the end, walk halfway back, then “wait for the next available checkout”. They’re pushing the impulse items pretty hard. I used to really enjoy their fast checkout. All in all, though, it wasn’t a bad visit.
When my mother-in-law was in town a few weeks later, she said she wanted to get a new video camera. I knew that Micro Center still had the good deal, so we went there. It took forever to get some help, and then the dude pushed and pushed (and pushed) for the extended warranty. We were going to politely decline, but we nearly had to tell him to STFU so we could just buy the thing. Then they gave her the whole “50 questions” when she was checking out. We finally told them to let it go, and just let us buy the camera.
The next visit may end up having been my last. Our church needed a video camera, so I went back for another one. I walked in with a credit card in my hand and walked directly to the camera I wanted — and it took me over 30 minutes to get out!
Between waiting to find a salesperson, waiting for them to find the camera, then waiting in line for the check-out, it wasted a lot of time. I should have been their dream customer that day — walk in and pick up a $500 camera, ready to buy. Uggg.
I hope they’re making a lot of money by cutting staff and pushing the impulse items, because sales are going nowhere but down.
My wife and I received free tickets to a concert a few weeks back, so we got a babysitter and went out on a nice little date. We weren’t hungry, but thought a stop at Steak ‘n Shake might be fun.
We ordered a couple shakes, a coke, and an order of cheese fries to split. The fries took a long time to come out, but the delivery was very interesting.
“Here are your cheese fries, and here are a plate of fries that are still warm.”
What? Did he say what I thought he said? He was right, though — the cheese fries were stone cold. I’m still trying to comprehend the logic behind that.
We would have complained about it, but it took 10 minutes just to find the guy again, and by then we needed to get our check and go.
We often wish that there was a Steak ‘n Shake closer to our house, but maybe we’re ok without one.
As I dropped my daughter off at school this morning, I couldn’t help but notice the marquee out front. Check it out to the right.
“WORD OF THE MONTH: SPLOST III REFERENDUM”
Now, I can understand why the school is pushing SPLOST. It’s a proposed 1% tax to help give more money to the local schools. But is that really their “word of the month”?
In case they had mistakenly forgotten to remove the top line from the marquee or something, I checked the other side and it was exactly the same, so it seems to be intentional. I had expected the word of the month to be something like “respect” or “freedom”, but I guess I’ll be helping my five-year-old with “SPLOST III REFERENDUM”.
That’s pretty dumb.
This was pretty sad. I got an e-mail today from “messaging@medfusion.net”, with the subject line simply “Flu Vaccines”. Here is the complete body of the e-mail:
Flu season is coming and we wanted to let you know that we have flu shots and FluMist available now. FluMist is indicated for healthy individuals 2-49 years of age. We will offer parents of our patients FluMist this year. Please let us know when you schedule your childs appointment if you are interested. It is not recommended for people with asthma. Flu shots are indicated for individuals 6 months and older. Please call or send us an appointment request through our website to schedule your appointment. Thank you and we look forward to seeing you at your next visit.
Please log into your account, go to the My Patient Page, choose My Preferences, and select No Communication to opt out of future commnuications.
If you do not wish to receive this kind of communication from East Cobb Pediatrics, you can choose to opt out of it by logging in here (was linked) to change your preferences.
I thought it was missing some very key pieces. To start, I had no idea who it was from until I saw the opt-out info at the bottom. I’ve certainly never heard of “medfusion.net” before. Also, it mentions that we should “call us or send us an appointment request through our website…”, but doesn’t provide the phone number or website URL. Granted, I can look those up if I need them, but that’s just silly not to include them.
I thought it might be helpful to suggest some changes for future e-mails. I hit “reply” and sent them a short message with some thoughts. It bounced right back. Apparently “messaging@medfusion.net” is just a dead address.
We’re big fans on ECP. They take great care of our kids and they do a nice job. They just might want to work on their e-mail skills.
The picture to the right says it all. The consumerist has a post today showing the actual size of the product vs. the image shown on the box. I know that all of those things are exaggerated a little bit, but this is crazy!
We buy these kinds of things from time to time, but this is one that we’ll certainly avoid.
