Overseas Chinese Web Guide

Category: Business

  • Costco Roadshow: Yamaha Pianos

    Big fan of Costco. Occasionally, the local Costco will stage a roadshow featuring some interesting product. If I don’t buy that very day, I sometimes have to find another local Costco (but further away) that will be hosting the same roadshow. It always takes me a few minutes to track down the roadshow calendar through Google. On the Costco website, roadshows are called Special Events. Pick a region to see what is coming to your local store.

    I’m passively looking for a piano and spotted a Yamaha roadshow recently. Here’s the model numbers and pricing. The model numbers are indecipherable. Can someone really explain the difference between all the models in a 30 second pitch? Not sure. Had to jot everything down and look them up on the Yamaha website.

    Yamaha CLP 220 1,199.99
    Yamaha CLP 240M 2,150.99
    Yamaha GB1 PE 7,790.99
    Yamaha 48 U1 PE 6,999.99
    Yamaha 48 T121 PE 5,899.99
    Yamaha 46 T118 PE 3,499.99

  • Credit Card Offers

    Credit Card OfferMade me look, but was that really the point? Everyone receives credit card offers. People with excellent credit. People with horrible credit. Maybe even people who have previously declared bankruptcy. Everyone gets credit card offers. So, what can the marketing department at a credit card company do to make their offer stand out? Well, one company decided to send me a padded envelope: a large manila envelope that contained the usual gibberish plus a small sheet of bubble wrap.

    Made me look. But, then again, I always open the envelopes because I shred the pre-filled applications just in case. If the bubble wrap was protecting a free pen, pencil, key chain or letter opener, I wouldn’t be annoyed. However, the bubble wrap was just there to make me look and annoy me. To reciprocate the friendly gesture, I mailed back the Walgreens circular from this week protected by the bubble wrap. At least I’m sending them something useful. I hope the coupons are good wherever their processing center is located.

  • Costco Playing Both Sides

    I love Costco. The store offers high-quality merchandise at low prices. This weekend, I joined the mad holiday rush and made a quick dash into the local warehouse store. Near the entrance, the Mountain View Costco was selling exercise equipment: treadmills, stationary bikes, etc. Just in time for New Year. I guess their members need something to help them burn off all the calories from the gigantic boxes of chocolate truffles and other sweets that Costco plies in the run-up to Christmas.

  • AT&T FamilyTalk Plan is Not Family Friendly

    “Your World. Delivered.” Or, so they say. Anyone try to get a FamilyTalk plan that includes cell phones with phone numbers from different area codes? I think this can be done, but after spending 50 minutes talking to various customer service people within AT&T, I have run out of patience. I don’t need this that badly. I don’t think there’s a technical reason it cannot be done, just a marketing excuse. And that is the lamest reason to turn down a cash-paying customer.

    For some reason, the telecommunications industry is locked into a bizarre old world mentality. Tell me how does forcing an established customer to surrender a long-held phone number breed customer loyalty? It doesn’t. It just reminds me how behind the times your business practices and perspectives are. Sure, AT&T forced us to all have phone numbers from the same area code now, but every time I’m dialing that phone, it reminds me that my world wasn’t delivered. AT&T probably spent some big bucks to come up with their marketing slogan. Instead, I just wished they had hit a few keystrokes (which is probably all it would have taken) to let all of us be on the same FamilyTalk plan with our original phone numbers, even if they were from different area codes.

  • Blame China

    Bloomberg.com: Chinese-Made Cribs Recalled After Three Children Die. The maker of Graco and Simplicity cribs recalled 1 million Chinese-made cribs after three children died.

    Another China scandal right? Or so the headlines would lead you to believe. However, if you delve deeper into the news story, it reports that “[t]he problem with the recalled cribs was caused in part by design flaws.” I’m guessing that the design work was the crib was done in America, not China. Why mention that the cribs were Chinese-made? It fits into the current hysteria around shoddily-manufactured Chinese goods.

    That’s not reporting. That’s propaganda. American-Designed Cribs Recalled After Three Children Die should have been the headline.

  • Stop Clogging Our Bank Branches

    San Francisco Chronicle: BofA squeezes another buck out of noncustomers. Bank of America is leading the way, pushing up its ATM charge for noncustomers to $3 from $2 at 10,700 of its cash machines across the country as of last July. Other big banks are expected to follow suit.

    The “money” quote is that Bank of America “argued that higher fees benefit its customers by driving away noncustomers who might clog up its branches.” How much does Bank of America spend on advertising and marketing to lure new customers? And, the moment a prospect walks into a branch, the Bank turns around and tries to nickel-and-dime them to drive them away and prevent them from clogging up their branches? How about wowing them with excellent service? If I was running B of A, I would want all these people to walk away thinking “Damn, my bank doesn’t treat me this well. I really should move my account here.” If you don’t like customers, you shouldn’t be in the customer service business.

  • $4 Million is the New Million

    New York Times: In Silicon Valley, Millionaires Who Don’t Feel Rich. By almost any definition — except his own and perhaps those of his neighbors here in Silicon Valley — Hal Steger has made it. Mr. Steger, 51, a self-described geek, has banked more than $2 million.

    A million just ain’t what it used to be. If Mr. Steger had dreams of being a millionaire when he was 18 (back in 1974), to reach that goal in today’s dollars would require $4.2 million according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. So, even though he has banked $2 million, he’s less than half way there.

    If you are targeting to save a million by the time you reach retirement, you may want to recalibrate your goals to account for inflation. When everyone’s a millionaire, being a millionaire won’t be anything special anymore.

  • Gas Station User Interface

    Considering the prevalence of credit and debit cards in everyday commerce, you would think that the someone has already figured out the ideal layout for all the various keys needed to process a transaction. I see some version of this keypad at ATM machines, supermarkets, retail stores, wholesale supply stores, gas stations, etc. But, none of them are exactly like this one. Surprisingly, the gas station preserved the layout of the basic 0–9 keys for punching in PIN numbers and ZIP codes. Whew! However, they managed to violate every other convention.

    Rule No. 1—Group Related Items. So, this gas station has three buttons for payment types: Pay Inside, Pay Here Credit and Pay Here Debit. But the pay inside button was yellow, and the other payment buttons were green. Additionally, if you wanted to pay inside, wouldn’t you go to the attendant and pay with your cash or card first? Who’s going to go to the pump, press the pay inside button and then head to the attendant?

    Rule No. 2—Follow Standard Color Conventions. Green means go; red means stop. Why didn’t the designer follow this universal convention? Here, the gas station has two green buttons and two red buttons. The green buttons are for payment and the red buttons are for help and cancel. Because color has a different meaning at this gas station, all users must spend a few seconds reading all the buttons to find the one they are looking for. All these seconds add up.

    Rules No. 3—Simplify, Simplify, Simplify. The designer should have made Yes and Enter the same button and coded it green. Cancel, no and clear should have been integrated into one button and have been coded red. Get rid of the Pay Inside button. Change the color of the Help button to Yellow. Change the Pay Here Credit and Pay Here Debit buttons to blue. Also, simplify the text to just Credit and Debit. I think most people will figure out what that means and having Credit and Debit appear larger will make it easier to read.

  • Public or Private?

    New York Times: China Finds Poor Quality on Its Store Shelves. China said on Wednesday that nearly a fifth of the food and consumer products that it checked in a nationwide survey this year were found to be substandard or tainted, underscoring the risk faced by its own consumers even as the country’s exports come under greater scrutiny overseas.

    No question. China has been getting pounded by the press as of late for all kinds of safety lapses. Unfortunately, we no longer live in an era where environmental, health and safety problems in China are “their” problems. Because we breathe the same air and use the same manufactured products, “their” problem is “our” problem as well.

    So far, our government does not have a solution to this crisis and neither does the Chinese government. While the politicians can pontificate and legislate all they want, ultimately this will boil down to an enforcement issue. How can we “trust but verify” that Made in China products are safe?

    The answer will probably come from the private sector. Whichever company can step into the void by offering a solution to test the safety of Chinese products can act as a gatekeeper to all of China’s imports—and collect a treasure in tolls along the way. The cost of testing will be paid by Chinese manufacturers who must earn the trust of the world market now that the safety of their products is tainted. So, who will it be?

  • Damned if You Do…

    Palo Alto Online reported that the city utility will be raising water rates.

    The commission also recommended raising water rates by 10 percent to generate $2.2 million. A fixed charge of $5 per residence and more for businesses would also be added that is not based on water usage, according to a staff report. Additional money is needed because less water is being used due to efficiency and the loss of large customers. Supply, operating and staff costs continue to increase, however, according to the staff report.

    So, if you use a lot of water, your rates will go up. And, if you conserve water, your rates will still go up. Either way, you’ll end up paying more. So, the next time they send you a flyer about conservation, you know where to file it.