Security vs. customer service?

I want to close a Fidelity mutual fund account and put the funds in an Ameritrade account.  In this day and age one would think it would only involve a a few minutes of typing on each company’s website.  It sure would beat having a check mailed (3 days minimum), taking the check to a bank, and writing another check to the other company.

One, Fidelity would not recognize the routing and account numbers of my local bank account.  Although Fidelity would allow a transfer to another brokerage, it wanted a routing number.  I could find no routing number for Ameritrade.  Of course, using Google I found it as I was writing this paragraph.  The Google summary gives the routing number.

Two, Ameritrade wanted me to print out a form and fill it in by hand.  And of course, include a copy of my latest statement.  Given all that paper, I would probably take it to the Post Office to get the correct postage.

Three, I went back to the “horse and buggy days” and asked Fidelity to mail me a check.  When the check arrives, I’ll take it to my bank.  When the check clears than I will send the fund electronically to Ameritrade.

So, I could have saved myself much time and hair pulling if I had gone with plan three instead.

And some people have the gall to complain about government inefficiency.  Many government organizations are far more efficient than many corporations.  The government will get the check to me quite well, thank you.

Corporate accuracy?

I've been fiddling around with synchronization problems.  Notes on one device are not being updated on other devices.  While working on this problem, I've had to give a password.  Of course, I used the wrong password.

As part of resetting the password, I've been told by Apple that someone has been using another device to reset my password from such and such location.  On one device, I was told that the location was near St. Cloud MN.  I'm in Duluth MN.  Later, on a different device, the location was near Chicago IL.

Gosh!  What if I lose my iPhone?  Will Find My Phone tell me its in Chicago?

This is corporate accuracy or efficiency???

What corporate efficiency?

“Free marketers” laud the efficiency of corporations over the inefficiency of government.  I think there is no difference between the forms.  What it depends on is management.  A good mayor or governor can get some great things done.  A lousy CEO or low-level corporate manager can make a real mess of things, such a mess as to cause death or injury.

What follows are my notes in trying to navigate vanguard.com to find a report that I was told today was available.

Vanguard site navigation

You sent me email that I had a report for Vanguard High-Yield Corporate Fund Admiral Shares Report, but you provide no direct link to it.  I finally reread the message and find that there is a link to Fund Reports.

I clicked on that but did not find Vanguard High-Yield Corporate Fund Admiral Shares listed!

Oh, there is a little drop-down box in the upper right corner that toggles between regular and admiral shares.

I toggle to admiral and then I get "Please wait".  I waited!  I went downstairs to get a snack!  I came back!  The "Please wait" box was still present.  I did something or another and got a page that asked me to log in.  But I already had a page up that had me logged in!  I am using that page, without logging in again, to send this message.

Off to try to get back to where I was ten or fifteen minutes ago.

Comment in satisfaction form

Recd msg today, 2016-09-20 of fund report for High Yield Corp Admiral.  No link given in msg.  Finally found my way to page with list of reports.  Latest report is 2016-07-xx!?!?

Also added in another part of satisfaction request: hire some good human interface people.

Follow up after signing off ins satisfaction.

Downloaded report, but Vanguard was unhappy with my Adobe Reader XI.  Report would not open, damaged.  Version is 11.0.17, undated.  Finder gives date modified as 2016Aug 5.  Checking for updates gives “Already up to date”.

End of notes.

Who does “snail mail”?

For almost three decades it has been “cool” to refer to postal mail as snail mail.  I’ve always thought that this was unfair, because in most cases the U.S. Postal Service was getting mail in 1-3 days between any two points in the United States and less than a week to foreign countries.

Today I had a case where “snail mail” beat email.  I ordered some merchandise last Thursday.  It was shipped Friday.  I received it about nine this morning.  I received an email after three this afternoon with the tracking number.  The message was sent by a “fourth party” on the request of the shipper.

Even the supposed “instantaneous” email is not so swift.  I often receive a notice of sent email five or even fifteen minutes after it was sent.

But the worst case is an auto dealer that sends needed service notices after I have the service done.  Almost two weeks ago I took my car in for an oil change.  After noon today I received an email that I was due for an oil change!  Come on!  I didn’t drive 3,000 miles in two weeks.  What’s this about corporate efficiency over government inefficiency?

Quick correction of corporate mistakes

This noon I tried reading the eEdition of the Star Tribune.  Safari on my iPod said it couldn’t the load the page because of “too many redirects”.  No matter how many times in how many different ways, I kept getting the same result.

Come on, folks, don’t deprive me of my comics fix.  They are not as readily available as in the eEdition, the screen equivalent of the actual printed page.

I sent email to the digital access address of the paper.  Then I tried calling, but there was a wait.  Ah ha!  I’m not alone.

This was about noon today.  By sometime around three, if not before, the problem was fixed and I could read the comics again.

I did send a thank-you email.

Government efficiency

I am working on my taxes and wanted to find the Minnesota state forms online.  The main page had a link for business taxes but not individual taxes.  I sent a message to the help desk and received a response within two hours.

I had a problem with some commercial software about ten days ago.  I received an acknowledgment within two hours, but I have yet to receive anything further.  Sometimes I receive a good response from companies; sometimes I receive inadequate responses; and sometimes I receive no response.  Ditto government offices.

Efficiency does not depend on the form of the organization; it depends on the leadership of the organization.

See also "Excessive Corporate Inefficiency".

Excessive Corporate Inefficiency

This afternoon I got a call from the Essentia Health Fitness Center that I have not made the annual payment for use of the facility.  We never received any notice that this was due.  Last year we were told at the reception desk, and we were able to pay there.

This year, the phone call was my first notice from anyone, Essentia, Medica, or Silver&Fit.  The administrator said we had to pay Silver&Fit directly.

Now the fun begins.

I called the 800 number for Silver&Fit.  I was told by the pleasant recorded voice that there was a very long wait.  Have you seen anything in the papers about this like you’ve seen about MNSure’s wait times?

I went to the Silver&Fit website.  When I began the registration process, it knew my address and phone number just from my name, but then efficiency disappeared.

I had to enter my birthdate in a specific format; the format was not described next to the box. I was asked to select a security question and give the answer.  I clicked “Next” and then I was told how to enter my birthdate.  But then it would not go any further until I selected a security question again.  It showed my answer, but it wouldn’t show the drop-down list again.  It said I needed to select a security question??

I gave up and started a new session.  I ran into similar problems again.  On the third try I found the form for paying by money order.  No form for check or page for using a credit card.

I gave up on that and sent an email of dissatisfaction.  At least there was a link to do so.

I went to the Medica website and managed to find a form for paying by check.

So we each filled out a form, wrote our checks, and put them in a single envelope.  That will probably screw things up at Silver&Fit.  One of us will be credited with another year’s membership and the other not.

With Congress screwing up the Postal Service, it will probably take more than three days to arrive at Silver&Fit, two more days to get to a clerk to open the envelopes, and two more days for Silver&Fit to notify Essentia Health.

It is not the form of an organization, it’s the personnel and management.  Good and bad of these are found in both government and corporations.

BTW I went to St. Louis County Auditor’s License office last week to renew my driver’s license.  The longest part was filling out the form.  Somebody waited on me right away, had me sign the form, took my money, gave me a copy, and asked me to step over to the eye exam device and the camera.  It took me longer to take off my coat than to have my picture taken.  And all this was done with cheer and courtesy.

If we have smaller government…

...will smaller corporations follow?

I thought a recent article in the New York Times had a headline linking Jeb Bush and “small government”.  At the time, I only saved the link.  When I revisited the link, the article didn’t have that headline but one about his emails as Governor of Florida.  (“Emails from tenure as governor of Florida show Jeb Bush’s agenda and goals”, 2014-12-25).

He did campaign on promising to make Florida state government smaller. He did set a goal of cutting the number of state employees in half.  “And while he did not slash the number of state employees by half, he did privatize thousands of public jobs.”

The problem with promises of smaller government is that often little discrimination is made between what government services are important and what services are superfluous.  It reminds me of Senator Rudy Boschwitz and his call for “across the board cuts”.  Are we going to cut understaffed court systems as well as grants to the arts?  Many people will step in with increased donations to the arts, but how many are willing to donate to the court systems?

What services did Gov. Bush cut?  Could these cuts have resulted in longer wait time for developmentally disabled individuals to receive assistance?  Did he cut law enforcement?  Would this have resulted in more traffic crashes because irresponsible drivers had more chances to hurt other people?

What about the privatizing of public services?  Who are these companies responsible to: the people or the shareholders?  If prisons are privatized, do the companies have an incentive to help inmates re-integrate with society?  Or do they have an incentive to maximize profits and feed and house prisoners at the lowest possible cost without any concern about recidivism?

What is it that makes some people automatically assume corporations will always do better than government?  Have they considered that both corporations and governments are run by people?  And what do people do too often?  Make mistakes.

Deadly mistakes like air bags that kill people and brakes that don’t work.

People lie too often.  Government officials tell us about weapons that don’t exist.  Corporations tell us that their projects will create jobs and will not harm people or the environment.

Two of the favorite punching bags of government critics are the Departments of Motor Vehicles and the Postal Service.  Sorry, but my experiences with either have been almost always positive.  Sure, I have to wait in line sometimes, but I console myself that the clerks will treat me as if I were the only customer.  And the last words of a postal clerk are “Anything else?”  Our usual postal carrier trudges through the snow and cold, and she can still greet us with a cheery smile.

Most of my interactions with large companies are generally positive, but the number of things that go wrong is far too many.

I have accounts with several corporations for various services from online newspapers to cell phone service.  I make payments to many of these by automatic payment through my credit card. Some of these have been sending me emails that my card has expired!

This was beginning in December and into this month.  Strange!  My card has an expiration date of 01/15!  My bank verified that means 1/31/15.  I’ve called or emailed a few about this.  I said I would probably not receive a new card until mid-January.  How can I update it without an updated card?

My new card arrived this past week!  Hurray, I won’t be receiving these messages for another three years.

But…

I spent half a morning updating half the auto-pay accounts.  I wrote some of this while waiting for Virgin Mobile to give me the next page of ???  I lost count.  Each took over a minute to load.  This is corporate efficiency?

Ah, Virgin Mobile accepted my card.  No, it did not!  It doesn’t like the old card number that is displayed with mostly asterisks.  I replaced that with 16 digits all jammed together.  It didn’t like that.  I can’t remember all that happened but finally I had a screen that had the updated info.  Except my choices now are to cancel or pay now.  I would pay automatically on the due date.  I cancelled.  When the next page finally came up it looked like I was all set, but the expiration date wasn’t included.  Then I was waiting  for the page “Edit info”.  The expiration date was NOT updated.

Then I was watching the wait circle go round-and-round for “Contact Us”.  Ah, it finally loaded.

I received an email from Virgin Mobile a couple of hours later.  The representative listed five straight-forward steps.  Why didn’t I see the first step?  Did I go off to another page where that step was not shown?  I don’t know, and I’m not going to double check now.  I do know that all was not peaches and cream.

“Terms and agreement” had a check-box for acceptance, but it was not obvious.  It was partially hidden by text.  I finally got all the steps done, and was told that it would take fifteen minutes to reflect the change in my account.  I bet it wouldn’t take them fifteen minutes to notify me if I had run over the limit on my credit card.

I could rant on about some of the other problems of two days updating only a few accounts.  Some went smoothly; other were almost as bad as the Virgin Mobile experience.

I do know some people who would not even attempt this task.  They would find an expert to do it for them.  With all the research in the last thirty years that has gone into human interface and ease of use, one would think that large corporations with their “efficiency” would be experts in this field.

Mel wonders if there is a Moore’s law for software bugs: every 18 months, the percentage of errors doubles.

The spinning beach ball and private enterprise

If private enterprise is so efficient, why does it waste so much of my time?

As computers have gotten faster they seem to have longer response time.  I wrote somewhere Magree’s Law:

As computers become more powerful, the software expands to meet or even exceed the capacity of the fastest computers available to run it.

So many times I watch the spinning beach ball or the non-moving progress bar.  It seems Excel takes over a minute to open, even Apple’s Numbers takes time to open.  To start my iPad I have to watch the white apple for more than a minute.

Too often I try to load a page and all I get to see is the spinning gear in Firefox.  Too often nothing happens until I click the x in the URL bar and then click the circular arrow again.  Many, many times, the desired page comes up immediately.  What was the page waiting for before?

Too often, the software designers change the rules without warning.  In February or March I downloaded several IRS PDF forms.  I wanted some of the directions on my iPad so that I effectively had two screens as I updated my income tax spreadsheet.  In iTunes I clicked on “Add to Library” under the File menu, a finder window opened, I navigated to the folder I wanted,  selected the file I wanted, and clicked “Open”.  Poof! The file was in my book list.

Yesterday I tried that with the PDF of a magazine article.  Nothing happened after I clicked “Open”.  The file list was not in my library!!!  I was finally able to load the file via iBooks instead.

Was this the doing of the latest OS, Mavericks, or the latest iTunes, 11.1.5?  I don’t know.

The directions I was following are in the iPad…  Oops! I was using the iPad iOS 6 manual.  I checked the iPhone iOS 7 manual and it says to download the manual from iBooks.  I downloaded the iPad User Guide for iOS 7.1 and it states:

“Read PDFs
Sync a PDF. In iTunes on your computer, choose File > Add to Library and select the PDF. Then sync.”

That ain’t the way it works!

The manual writers aren’t keeping up with the programmers or the programmers aren’t telling the manual writers what they have changed.  Sounds like bureaucracy is not limited to government.

Enough wasting of your time with my gripes (and mine writing this).

Disorganized organizations

There are too many bloviators who claim that government stands in the way of corporations, corporations who can nothing wrong.

There are too many alarmists who think that corporations are taking over the world and the 99% will be the worse for it.

As with all human endeavors, the truth lies in the squishy middle.  Or is that the muddled middle?
My dozen regular readers are probably tired of these rants, but then there are all the drop-ins who stumble on this blog because I managed to put in keywords that gives an entry a high search ranking.  Try "duluth minnesota billionaire".

This blog entry is a result of some frustrations that I've had recently.

Because I've been doing so much snow shoveling and snow blowing, my Christmas planning keeps getting pushed back.

I keep getting emails from the Pretty Good Goods catalog because I contribute to Minnesota Public Radio.  OK, our family's tradition has been to give T-shirts or books.  What interesting T-shirts can I find for some on my list?

But when I try using the Pretty Good Goods catalog, I'm told I don't have an account.  What, my MPR ID and password aren't the same.  So, I create an account and place an order.  I received most of the items rather quickly, but one item has been "drop sent" whatever that means.  My credit card has already been charged for that item.  Pretty Good Goods has not responded to my query about this, but then I should give them slack because they are overwhelmed.

Meanwhile, I keep getting emails from Pretty Good Goods at the email address I want to drop.  If I try to use the unsubscribe, I'm told that I don't have an account.  How can I not have an account when I just ordered stuff?  Please excuse me if I'm inaccurate on the details.  Lots of this is becoming a blur.

Geek Squad, owned by Best Buy, sent me a notice that the warranty was running out on my wife's iPad.  The notice offered an extension.  Given all the hazards that were covered, I thought it was a good deal.  I went to the Geek Squad page and requested the extension.

While I was at it, I changed my email address to that which we plan to use over an older one.  That went through without problem.

And then I received one of the many-times-per-week emails from Best Buy at the old email address.  I went to the site and tried to login and change my email address.  I don't have an account at Best Buy!  What?  What about the Geek Squad account?  What about the rewards program account?

After searching some old messages, I found that I had to go, not to bestbuy.com but to my.bestbuy.com!?!?  The email address and password I had in my head worked.  Hey, folks, you work for the same company, and customers use all of your websites.  According to some, corporations are efficient, more efficient than government.  Sorry, I have had government communications that have gone far better than this.

My iPhone was getting low on power and I tried to sync it on my Mac.  "Sync could not complete" or some such.  What the heck!  This has never happened before.  Well, not to me, but certainly many others.  I found an answer in the Apple Community rather quickly.  The first answers were rather complicated and didn't seem to fit my OS level.  But then I found one about shutting off the iPhone, quitting iTunes, and then restarting both.  Voila!  It worked.

I have over fifty years of computer problem solving and can often find the right keywords to get a solution proposed by somebody else (or as in "Helpless help desks revisited" doing it myself).

And of course there are the dozens and dozens of problems that I just give up on.

It's sort of like my last straw of the day.  Some bolts on my snow blower gave way on the speed setting mechanism.  Rather than go to the equipment store to get the exact bolts, I went to a hardware store and got off-the-shelf bolts for 44 cents (and $20 for a ceramic knife for someone on my Christmas list).  When I returned home, I tried replacing the bolts.  Let's just say the positioning is awkward.  Using my bare hands and wrenches (not a good idea when it's well before freezing), I was able to get two bolts in and secured.  But the third was in a very awkward position such as I could not easily get the lock nut started on the bolt.

There is a time that discretion is the better part of valor.  I gave up and went back to the house with a bent back after being bent over so long.  Finishing the fix will have to wait until another day.  I just hope I can get it done before the next snow dump!

BYOD and corporate efficiency

"Call it a movement of sorts, but employees are increasingly ditching their company issued computers and smartphones in favor of using their own devices to get work done. One big reason: Their company's tech is, well, terrible."
- "BYOD or bust: How bad tech hurts companies", Cadie Thompson, CNBC, 2013-10-24.

However, read the full article about all the complexities companies face when employees use their own devices.

Efficiency is not dependent on organizational form

I emailed the following to the Reader Weekly 2013-10-10.  They published it on 2013-10-17 as "People make mistakes!  All the time.  Everyday."  It is also available at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2013/10/17/2270_party_of_one-1.

Some people are using the glitches in the Affordable Care Act exchanges as proof that government is inefficient.  Duh, how often have you updated software on your devices with version x.0 and then within a week or two received a notice of the release of version x.0.1?

Government is run by people.  Corporations are run by people.  People make mistakes!  All the time.  Everyday.  In every way.  Government screws up.  Corporations screw up.

For examples of corporate screw-ups and non-response to customer complaints, take a look at the customer “support” message boards.  All the support comes from other customers who spent hours trying to figure out how a product really worked.  If they are lucky, other users mark their responses as helpful and they get “points”, whatever those are worth.

I’ve seen some issues go on for two or more years.

Let me give you a short summary of some customer service issues I’ve had this year.

I think it was late spring when we had several days of windy, rainy weather.  Our DSL service was erratic.  It would be slow then normal then nothing at all.  The DSL light on our modem would go out.  I called CenturyLink and spoke with a tech in Idaho.  She said that our service had been throttled back from the nominal 7Mbps to 3Mbps.  She did some resetting and things were better.

The bad weather continued and our DSL service became erratic again.  I made a call and sent some emails, but this time I was told that it was my modem and that I should buy a new modem.  I checked online for the current CenturyLink modem, and guess what!  One customer had left a message that he bought that new modem and was having the exact same problems as we were!  Two months before my search!

I didn’t buy a modem and a few weeks later our modem was doing just fine.  Our service now runs about 6Mbps.  Could it be that CenturyLink had some line problems that customer support was not told about?

I bought a solar light for the outhouse at our cabin.  It worked fine and then it would not turn on until it had been off for about an hour.  I sent email to the customer support and received back a request for my address, phone number, date of purchase, and a scanned copy of the receipt.  I said “Phooey” and figured out that I had drained the batteries by leaving the light on.  Replacing the batteries improved the performance.  It looks like the first line of customer support is only screeners who have no access to problems and solutions.  Now this dumb customer left the light on again and it wouldn’t turn on again.

We replaced our cabin landline with a wireless home phone base.  The answering machine now gave a time an hour later than the time of call.  Consumer Cellular replied it was my answering machine.  With a bit of web searching, I found out that the wireless home phone base is passing the wrong information and that a firmware upgrade fixes the problem.  The upgrade is available only from the original manufacturer and only can be installed with Windows software.  When I relayed this information back to Consumer Cellular, they replied they could not help me and implied it wasn’t even their responsibility!  This from a company that is rated highly in customer service.

The keyboard and keypad on my laptop would not respond.  I tried the various reset tricks from Apple support boards but none worked for long.  I took my laptop back to Best Buy where I bought it, but everything worked fine for the Geek Squad.  It worked fine for a while at home and then… “Dead” again.  I figured out that it was Microsoft Outlook that I always have on that was the problem.  The techs had closed all my apps before their tests.  I reorganized Outlook's database and the keyboard has been working fine since.  If only I could make the fingers hitting the keys work as well!

But we should also look on the bright side.  Corporations have done a great job of making our cars more reliable and comfortable.  If we take some reasonable precautions they start every time and get us where we want to go safely.  We have all kinds of extras that weren’t on my first car, a 1940 Chevy.  Turn signals, windshield washers, side view mirrors, power steering, power brakes, anti-skid, ABS, air-conditioning, and accurate speedometers.

Ah! Accurate speedometers!  I had a 1969 Fiat that said I was going 70mph when I was actually going 63.  I had a Ford Escort that said I was going 55mph when I was actually going 47 mph!  The Ford dealer blamed it on the tires and wouldn’t do anything about it.  I found it was a wide-spread problem; when I compensated for the error I passed many Ford Escorts driving well under the speed limit.

If the dealer was right about the problem, the tires would have to be about 15 percent smaller than “standard” to have that speed disparity.  For a tire that was about two feet in diameter, that would work out to over an inch of tread wear.  The grooves on a auto tire are not even that deep!  What was it that Adam Smith said?  “Those who live by profit deceive and oppress the public.”

In the favor of those who live by profit, our latest cars do much better on speedometer accuracy – 30 mph on the speedometer at 30 mph and 71 mph at 70 mph! Oh, and we have one domestic car and one foreign car.

Efficiency (or inefficiency) - generalizations do not apply

This morning I called Consumer Cellular about replacing the landline at our cabin with a Wireless Home Phone Base.  Ezekiel answered before the automated message was done.  He took time to listen and he provided full information to all my questions.

Last week I called the local Sears store to check if they had the Phone Base in stock.  First, I got an automatic response about the purpose of my call.  Eventually I was asked what department I wanted.  I finally got a person; but that person was not in the store, he was who knows how far away.  He didn't think it was available, but before he checked, he wanted my first and last name!  What does my name have to do with my request for information?  I said this is taking too long and hung up.  Once upon a time, one got a store operator who pleasantly asked (generally) some variant of "How may I direct your call?"  She transferred you to that department, and if a clerk was not serving other customers, answered the phone and gave a simple yes, no, or "I'll check" answer.

This morning I also called Gopher State One Call http://www.gopherstateonecall.org, a non-profit that dispatches utilities to locate underground pipes and cables before an excavation.  We want to plant a tree close to a buried gas line.  I had to wait for several minutes to talk to Gabe, but he was thorough and friendly about getting all the information that he needed to dispatch someone.  He said it should be done within 48 hours.

This afternoon I looked out the front door and noticed a yellow line and a small yellow flag in our front yard.  Comfort Systems, our water and gas utility, had already marked the location of the buried pipe.  Comfort Systems is part of the City of Duluth's Public Works and Utilities Department.

On the other hand, after many weeks and many calls, our internet connection with CenturyLink is now stable and staying above 75% of the "up to 7Mbps" speed.  One of the round and round discussions I had was about getting a new modem.  We still are using our eight-year-old or so modem.  It seems something was done in our area that none of the customer service people were made privy to.  The customer service was all over the map as far as ability goes.  See "Round robin service robbin' my time".

I'm still waiting for a local store to respond to a question I emailed them a couple weeks ago.

Again, it is not the financial form of an organization, for-profit corporation, non-profit corporation, or government agency, that determines the level of customer service; it is the people and leadership of an organization that determines these.  If customer service is an organization's priority, revenue will follow.  If the bottom-line is an organization's priority, customer service will suffer.  Unfortunately, in the latter case, there are often not enough choices for customers to easily switch to another organization.

Let's all praise government workers

A favorite sport of too many people is to bash government as inefficient.

Let us consider the many ways that we should be thankful to government.

Let's start with the rather prosaic in Minnesota.  We have had a lot of snow in Minnesota this month.  Schools have been closed and events cancelled.  But the plow operators were out clearing streets and alleys at all hours.  Major streets were opened almost immediately, other streets within a few hours, and alleys within a few hours more.  The plow operators are union city workers that are doing their best to battle nature without damaging parked cars.  Are they greedy union workers or are they people requesting just compensation for the difficult work they do?

A favorite target of many anti-government people is the U.S. Postal Service.  Sometime after nine I got busy on the walkway around our house.  I wanted to make sure our carrier didn't have much difficulty.  I saw her park almost in front of our house rather than down the street, just about on her usual schedule. Before I could even get to the front walk, Sara came trudging up the steps in nine-inch drifts.  She said that if she hadn't seen me, she would have waited until tomorrow to deliver our mail, none of it urgent.  Maybe regulations don't cover her discretion, but she was making a very good effort at delivering important mail in a timely fashion for all on her route.

Then there is the big government operation in Boston.  It is just amazing how the federal, state, and local criminal investigation bureaucracies worked through thousands of pieces of information to determine who the prime suspects were, locate them, and fatally wound one of them.  As I write this, the other is apparently cornered in a boat in somebody's yard.  All of this in less than a week.

Health care or wealth snare

The following are notes I took this morning on a presentation on health care fraud titled "Lifting the veil:  The Citizens Federation’s discoveries of financial mischief by insurance executives and regulators".  It was given by Buddy Robinson of the Citizens Federation at the Lake Superior Freethinkers meeting.

His talk was based on "Who Is Minding the Store", a report by the Citizens Federation.

Added up numbers and found that non-profits took profits.  Put into reserves which became excessive – twice the safe amount and four times the required amount.

Reserves went into investments which in turn increased reserves.  Insurance companies didn't report this to Minnesota legislature.

Several Minnesota counties are dealing directly with the state for employees' health care.  Some are now considering opening to public.

Strange things found about financial reporting.  CEO compensation reported at half actual - Health Partners

Money from state increased at greater rate than payments to providers.

Overpayment reimbursement not in contracts but if fraud involved then overpayments can be recovered.

Insurance companies don't want to divulge payments to providers.

State allowed companies to police themselves.

Motivation?  Medica contracts with former parent UHC, giving it 2/3 of income.

Insurance companies use government money to subsidize commercial policy losses.

Private insurance was to save money; it wound up costing a lot more.

Are HMOs too big to fail or jail?

End of my meeting notes.

So much for the efficiency of private enterprise.  Efficiency (sometimes) in lining corporate management pockets!

I gave as my comment Adam Smith's "The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order…"  See "The Invisible Adam Smith".

Bring on the sequester

I really would rather not say so, but I think the sequester might be a good idea in the long term.  It might really put an end to the arguments about smaller government.

Think about it.  If the number of air traffic controllers and checkin security people are cut back, it might make air travel by business people even longer.  If the amount of money allocated to states to clear the Interstate system of snow was reduced, it might make shipping by truck more expensive.  If the number of FDA inspectors were cut back, it might cut into the sales and profits of food processing companies.  If the number of customs agents were cut back, it would reduce the volume of imported goods that so many merchants depend on.  If the number of patent examiners were cut back, it would take even longer for companies to get patents.  If the number of Federal court employees were cut back, it would take even longer for companies to make their billion-dollar suits against their competitors.

Too many people ignore all the important services that government provides for people and corporations alike.  A sequester might lead to rude awakening that we can't do without government.

Efficiency vs. effectiveness - a pair of similes

Too often we see "efficiency" required of government, meaning government spends more money than the writer thinks appropriate.  We rarely see "effective" applied, meaning that the government did something with the desired results.

This morning's Duluth News Tribune's "Our View" used "efficiency" and "effective" in the same sentence with regard to a study to be commissioned to compare a few cities' expenses and services.  It can be a difficult task because of several variables, like hilly and narrow vs. flat and compact.  See "Our View: Collect data but get proper perspective, too".

While thinking about the article, I came up with a pair of simile's regarding automobiles.  A car sitting in the garage is efficient but not effective.  It doesn't use any fuel at all, but it is not taking anyone anywhere.  A four-wheel drive vehicle plowing through snow is effective but it is very inefficient.  It gets people to their destination but it uses a lot more fuel than it would normally.

Another inefficient corporation

When I bought my iPhone in September, I cancelled my Verizon Wireless account in favor of Virgin Mobile.  I was told at the time by the Best Buy representative that I would have a cancellation fee of around $80 from Verizon.

When Verizon notified me in early October that I had an online statement, I thought I would pay that cancellation fee.  Ha!  Even though the statement showed an outstanding balance of $89.46, in the "Pay Bill" section, the amount was $0!  The site wouldn't even let me pay the true balance online with my debit card.  The site did say I would get a paper statement.

The due date was October 23, and so I had plenty of time to get the paper bill and write a check. And the paper bill did not come, and it did not come.  Finally, about October 22, I looked up the phone number for "Contact Us".  The woman that responded said that I could pay at such and such URL.

Surprise, at that URL I could pay, and I could pay with a debit card.  I did and the payment has cleared my bank.

Yesterday, October 29, six days after the payment had been due, I received the paper bill.  The paper bill states that I owe $89.46!

From my posts about Netflix, you know the Postal Service can provide next day service.  If the sending post office is not within a day's drive of Duluth, Netflix states a DVD will be delivered within 3-5 days.  If memory serves me right, the actual delivery is 2-3 days.

The Verizon bill was dated September 28.  The only mail that takes over a week to arrive is mail that gets mis-delivered, stuck in a crevice somewhere, or is never sent promptly by the sender.  I will go with the last.  Is this a deceptive practice to hit me with a late payment fee or is this extreme inefficiency.  I think the latter.  Of course, if I were actually late with a regular payment, Verizon or many other vendors would promptly charge me with a late payment charge.

Thank you to Netflix, Best Buy, and many others for giving me counter-examples that show corporations can provide efficient customer service.  It just goes to show that the management/ownership form of any organization doesn't predict its efficiency or effectiveness; the real guide is the kind of people in the organization – from top to bottom!

Corporate Whimsy

Facebook, that time gobbler that so many can't do without and so many hate, is at it again changing the way it works.

Yesterday I posted a picture on Flickr and then wrote a note on Facebook with a link to the picture.  When I clicked return, the picture was showing on my message list.  A few friends commented on it and I saw the picture above their comments.

Today as I scrolled through my list of messages, the picture was gone but the text remained.  I left a comment about it, and one friend said she hadn't seen it before and now she did.

One of the first rules of good human interface is consistency.  If I do a certain thing in a certain set of circumstances, I should be able to get a similar result each and every time.

Facebook is not alone in inconsistent user interfaces.  Microsoft, Apple, and many others confuse users time after time.

Through iTunes I download Wisconsin Public Radio's "To the Best of Our Knowledge" podcasts, receiving two each week.  Suddenly, about four weeks ago I was getting only one.  Last week I got none.  This week I got one.  With a little email help from the TTBOOK host, Jim Fleming, I figured out that iTunes or somebody has decided that I don't need podcasts that I've already downloaded, even if they were from two or more years ago.  TTBOOK does rebroadcast programs and thus republishes the podcasts.  But shouldn't I be the one to decide that I don't want to listen to an old program again?

Microsoft Office 2004 for the Mac had programmable macros with an extensive, easily used description for each available function.  Microsoft decided to take macros out in Office 2008.  They said users should write AppleScripts instead.  I'll just say that AppleScript is a byzantine programming language.  Microsoft decided to put macros back in Office 2011, but many old macros don't work or only work erratically.  And the descriptions of the functions are often incomplete.

I'm sure many readers have their own tales of frustration about how software, computers, cars, and customer service departments work.  So many of what we depend on may be produced efficiently, but do we get effective results using them?

What is slower than the Postal Service?

Electronic fund transfers!  From one corporation to another!  In days, not hours!

On Tuesday I asked online for the cash balance of my brokerage account and the sales of some mutual fund shares, the proceeds of each to be transferred to my local checking account.  Neither transaction was confirmed until Wednesday afternoon.  My bank account did not show the deposits until eight o'clock Thursday.  About 46 hours after I had made my request, I saw the result.

Two days is what it takes to send in one Netflix DVD and receive the next!  In fact, the time from pickup to confirmation is less than 16 hours.  I am notified of the shipment of the next DVD about noon and receive it before 10 the next morning.  Hm!  With a 12:30 pickup and a 10:00 delivery, that's less than 46 hours!  A two-way transaction is faster than a one-way transaction!

The first is done completely by computers.  The second is done by a lot of hard-working people, both government and corporate.

Oh, yes, the last two DVDs have been from southwestern Wisconsin, not from Duluth.  Unbelievable, a Postal Service truck is faster than corporate computers!