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.

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.

Why do I know more than tech support?

Well, not in all cases.  Probably more often tech support knows far more than I do about a given problem.

In too many cases, I get advice that is way off-base or misleading.

We are going to “cut the cord” soon and go completely wireless.  Among other things, we have to change how we use our wireless printer.  Rather than go through our modem/router, we will have to use a cable and switch the cable between computers.

I looked and looked at the manual for where the connections were.  I found mention of using USB or Ethernet cables, but I could find no diagram showing where the connections were.

I sent email to tech support of the manufacturer and received a reply in less than 12 hours.

As usual, the flowery answer didn’t really answer the question.  On first blush!  The answer contained a diagram of the back of the printer.  The diagram labeled the connections.  Way in the middle of the side farthest from me were a USB port and a LAN port.

The USB port takes a connector different from the flat connector most of us are used to.

What’s a LAN port?  I should know the answer but don’t.  Look it up: Local Area Network!  The cable for a LAN is an Ethernet cable!  Smack me upside the head!  I knew that!  But, the directions never use the two terms together.  What are poor non-techies to do with such a gap.

Before I got the answer from tech support, I tried printing with the modem’s phone line disconnected.  It worked!  Ah ha!  The modem is the router, not the Apple Time Machine.  So, we have to keep the modem when we “cut the cord”.  However, if the modem conks out, then I know how to use the Ethernet cable.

What amazes me is that nobody would hire me in my 60s for this problem solving ability.  Now in my 70s, I too often know more than tech support!

What amazes me even more is the people who complain about government inefficiency never consider the rampant inefficiency in too many corporations.

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.

Voting choices

As I was balancing my checkbook, I noticed that a payment that I had sent last week had not been debited to my account.  I wondered if it was corporate slowness on the part of the recipient or a less efficient postal service.  That led me to think how too many Republicans are trying to make the postal service inefficient.

From that I thought about the voter mantra of “choosing the lesser of two evils”.   Isn’t that a bit harsh?  Shouldn’t it be “choosing the lesser of two incompetents”?

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.

More examples of corporate inefficiency

I know and you know that many corporations are not perfect; after all, they are run by imperfect people.  I know and you know that many governments are not perfect; after all…  However, because there are so many commentators who forcefully state the second statement and deny the first, I feel the urge to provide examples of the first.

In addition to the "Star Tribune can't live within its means", I found that the Star Tribune is very inefficient in collecting its money.  Over two weeks after raising its price 33-1/3 percent, it still has not fixed its boxes to reflect the price increase.

Every morning I go out with seven quarters for the Duluth News Tribune (still 75 cents for its few sheets) and for the Star Tribune.  Every morning I come back with one of the quarters because the Star Tribune box still says 75 cents and still opens when I put in 75 cents.

Hewlett-Packard, with its multi-million dollar CEOs (see "Talk about boards with conflict of interest"), can't seem to write documentation that matches its products.

For years, my printer periodically makes horrible ratcheting sounds as it feeds paper.  For years, I've looked in vain on the HP site for a solution.  The only references are a cleaning kit for PCs (not Macs) and pictures and directions that don't look like my printer.

Today I gave another try at finding a solution.  Yay!  I found a page that tells about using the HP Utility for OS 10.5 and 10.6.  It lists:

Paper Feed Cleaning : If the product is not picking paper correctly, this procedure cleans components inside the product to improve paper picking.




http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c02019145&cc=us&dlc=en&lc=en&jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN

Boo! "Paper Feed Cleaning" is not in the items displayed in the HP Utility window on my computer!

Ah!  The fine print at the bottom of the web page says, "NOTE: The availability of these features depends on the product model."

But, I found this page by searching the Hewlett-Packard website with the model number of my printer.

Go figure!

Government inefficient, business efficient? Hah!

The following is the second message that I've sent in the last two days to Wells Fargo; Wells Fargo manages shareholder reinvestment accounts for Allete.

Once again you are emailing me that "A new Allete, Inc. tax form has been posted to your account", and once again that form is for the 2009 tax year, identical to the one I received a year ago, and at least twice this past few weeks.

The 2010 Form 1099 should have a larger amount than the 2009 form because I have the dividends reinvested.

I think I'll post this business inefficiency to my blog: http://magree.blogspot.com

Isn't Wells Fargo one of the banks involved in improper foreclosures?  A Google search for "wells fargo foreclosures" yields "Judge Rejects Wells Fargo Foreclosure Documents Again", Daily Finance, Abigail Field, 2010-12-10.

I'm glad that I long ago paid off my truck loan with Northwestern Bank (now Wells Fargo).  At least they couldn't repossess it from me for some obscure technicality; I sold it.

More corporate inefficiencies

Yesterday's blog on bureaucracy, "Government has no corner on bureaucracy", was getting rather long, and so I stopped before I thought of too many more. Here are three of those.

Very early on, before downsizing became a big buzzword, I counted 21 levels of management above me - supervisor, x manager, manager of a, y group manager, group manager of b, z director, director of c, and so on. If every manager had five people reporting to him, then they could organize the whole world and beyond.

At one location it was a standing joke that if you wanted to mail something outside the building you should take it to the public mail box outside. It would get there at least a day faster than if it went through the company mail room.

Years later in another location an accountant wondered why so many companies leasing equipment weren't making payments. He discovered that our company wasn't sending out invoices.

Government has no corner on bureaucracy

I ordered some ink cartridges from Hewlett-Packard and selected 5-7 business days for shipping. Here is the FedEx tracking log for the package.


Since this is ground delivery, for Sep 8 to Sep 11 the periods at each stop and the time between stops are to be expected. The package waits for the next truck to go from one distribution center to another and it takes time to drive from one center to the next.

The mystery is why the package took three and a half days to go the 150 miles between Brooklyn Park and Duluth. Part is that the package was put in a truck Brooklyn Park on Friday night. Did the truck stay in Brooklyn Park until Monday? Did the truck arrive in Duluth late Friday and then was parked without unloading? Where was it parked? At a FedEx or a USPS facility? In either case, why is the next login for the package at 4:11 Tuesday morning? Is that when it arrived at the Post Office, or when somebody in the Post Office got around to logging it into FedEx's system?

Whatever the case, the last stage, from the Post Office to our door was done as fast as possible. It was left at our door around 9:00 this morning, the time we usually get our mail.

Now some will jump on the Friday-Tuesday delay as an example of government inefficiency. Others will say the Tuesday morning arrival and delivery shows how efficient the government can be. We just don't know the full situation. What we can say is that the whole chain is an example of public-private co-operation.

It's a toss-up on who is more efficient on interstate and intercity delivery – the Post Office or the package companies. However, the Post Office is more efficient with its house by house delivery over the package companies block by block delivery.

We have also had a recent situation that would have the believers that government is inefficient feeling vindicated. We had some mandatory sewer work done that cost us more than we would have liked to have spent. After we had paid our bill to the contractor, a grant was made to the city to reimburse home-owners for a part of the cost.

We made a beeline to the Public Works department and left all the papers we thought would be relevant. Nothing happened. We called the Public Works and were told it would checked on. Somebody came to our house to get signatures on some papers we thought we had filed and about some other possible loose ends. No check. My wife called again and was told it should have been mailed. No check. I called today and was told that it was found in the office and we should have it within a week.

Given that there are several steps that are required to process payment in any large organization, it easy to see how something can get stacked up on somebody's desk and even put in a wrong pile. See "One of the many hidden costs of health care" http://magree.blogspot.com/2009/08/one-of-many-hidden-costs-of-healthcare.html on how long it takes to bill me for a non-covered expense.

However, unnecessary steps or misdirected activities are not a monopoly of government organizations. I've seen many in large corporations. I was working in a regional headquarters for Univac in Rome, when a call came on behalf of the president of the company that somebody should go to Switzerland to see the executives of a customer; there apparently was some serious problem that needed immediate attention.

When the high-level manager arrived at the customer site, he was asked why he was there. He replied that the president of our company had said there was a problem. They pondered a bit and said that they had mentioned the problem to the president at a conference some months ago. The problem had long since been resolved!!

Another high-level manager loved to tell about the executive request he received while visiting a customer in South Africa; "While you're in the neighborhood, would you go to Australia?"