On hold waiting to cancel XM Radio

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I’m writing this while on hold for an XM Radio “customer service” representative. My first call was answered by a gentleman who could not figure out how to pull up my account. I gave him everything but my gene sequence. We finally gave up and I called back later.

This time I spoke with a lady who is progressing very nicely with her English lessons. I explained that I wanted to cancel my service. Nothing wrong with it, I’m just not using it enough to justify the $13/month. I told her to check the iPod box on her screen.

She insisted she couldn’t deactivate my account. I would need to speak with XM’s “Deactivation Department” (can’t be good when you have a special department). That was 15 minutes ago and I’m still listening to some depressing jazz channel.

For the record, I tried to cancel on the XM website. Never found a page or link for that little chore. Which makes me conclude you can tell a lot more about a company or service by how easy they make it cancel, than by ease of sign-up.

Wouldn’t it make more sense to quickly route calls like mine to someone with enough savvy (and English) to save the subscription? Maybe offer a cheaper or better plan? Or just fix a problem if there is one?

UPDATE: After more than two hours (over three calls) of Hold Hell, I went to Plan B. Canceled the MasterCard XM hits every three months. I got the card for just this eventuality. A little hassle updating the few services I had on that card but well worth it. PS: Seems like I’m not the only one getting this little dance.

If anyone at XM Radio is reading this… I probably owe you for a few days or weeks service. Since the card is cancelled your best bet is to call my Customer Service number (1-800-FUCKYOU). We’re experiencing unusually long hold times because we don’t give a shit how long you have to hold. But the wait will be pleasant because I’ve plugged in my iPod and set it to shuffle.

UPDATE: So I post my little rant on my lunch hour and it’s now 3 p.m. Just did a Google Blog Search for “xm radio” and there it is. #3 of 135,000+ results.

Blogsearch

UPDATE: 2/16/09 – Following a number of comments on this post, I went back to the XM website to look for the number some say they found there. And found it with one click under YOUR ACCOUNT. I can’t swear I didn’t miss that during the half hour I searched the site. But I’d wager $100 if there were a way to do so.

Seth’s Nine Steps to Powerpoint Magic

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A must-read/file/review on presentation voodoo by the master. It’s all good but these ideas jumped on my face like the Alien monster:

  • Don’t use Powerpoint at all. Most of the time, it’s not necessary. It’s underkill. Powerpoint distracts you from what you really need to do… look people in the eye, tell a story, tell the truth. Do it in your own words, without artifice and with clarity. There are times Powerpoint is helpful, but choose them carefully.
  • Check to make sure you brought your big idea with you. It’s not worth doing a presentation for a small idea, or for a budget, or to give a quarterly update. That’s what memos are for. Presentations involve putting on a show, standing up and performing. So, what’s your big idea? Is it big enough? Really?
  • The minute you put bullets on the screen, you are announcing, “write this down, but don’t really pay attention now.”) People don’t take notes when they go to the opera.
  • Ten minutes of breathtaking big ideas with big pictures and big type and few words and scary thoughts and startling insights. And then, and then, spend the rest of your time just talking to me. Interacting. Answering questions. Leading a discussion.

Life is too short to waste a precious minute watching a lame-ass ppt presentation by the the clueless and lazy. If it looks like I’m not paying attention, I’m not.

“…words belong in memos. Powerpoint is for ideas.”

“Like watching Gidget address the Reichstag”

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[Alert: McCainiacs and Palinistas can skip this post. You won’t appreciate Matt Taibbi’s biting wit or pithy rage. Go watch a Sean Hannity re-run. And I’ve had some email reminding me I had said I wasn’t going to write about politics anymore. I believe what I said was, I would no longer ‘discuss’ politics.]

My favorite political writer, Matt Taibbi has outdone himself with his column  on Sarah Palin. When interstellar archeologists dig through the rubble of what was once the U.S.A. and wonder what the fuck happened, I hope they stumble across Mr. Taibbi’s column. Every line is a gem but I’ll share just a few of my favorites:

“Four-chinned delegates from places like Arkansas and Georgia are pouring joyously out the gates (of the GOP convention) in search of bars where they can load up on Zombies and Scorpion Bowls and other “wild” drinks and extramaritally grope their turkey-necked female companions in bathroom stalls as part of the “unbelievable time” they will inevitably report to their pals back home.

Only 21st-century Americans can pass through a metal detector six times in an hour and still think they’re at a party.

Here’s the thing about Americans. You can send their kids off by the thousands to get their balls blown off in foreign lands for no reason at all, saddle them with billions in debt year after congressional year while they spend their winters cheerfully watching game shows and football, pull the rug out from under their mortgages, and leave them living off their credit cards and their Wal-Mart salaries while you move their jobs to China and Bangalore.

But Americans like politicians who hate books and see the face of Jesus in every tree stump. They like them stupid and mean and ignorant of the rules.”

And we love Sarah.

Moosehunting with Aden Nak

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Aden Nak doesn’t understand why it’s taboo to say someone is too dumb to be president. He somehow managed to get his hands on the flow chart used to prep Governor Palin for last night’s debate.

“The truth is that Palin didn’t answer any questions she didn’t want to tonight, and she said she’d do exactly that at the start of the debate. She had a hand full of index cards and a brain full of buzz words, and it was her job to say them all in front of the camera. Actually, it was her job to say them while looking at Joe Biden for five seconds, then looking at the camera for five seconds, and then looking back at Biden to start over again. It was like she was on a timer. One of the many things she’d probably been coached on after the whole flap about McCain not looking Obama in the eyes.”

New look for Mizzou website

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MuoasBranden Miller tweets the new look for MUTigers.com, the website of the Missouri Tigers. Mizzou is one of the universities with which Learfield Sports works, but I have nothing to do with the websites.

But I’ve always thought most of them were cramped, too busy and impossible to navigate. This new design is a huge improvement. I haven’t poked around on the new site yet but plan to later today.

I hope similar make-overs are planned for our other properties.

Snow Crash: CIC database

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From Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, published in 1976. 22 years before Google; 29 years before YouTube; 32 years before the Bail Out/Melt Down.

“The business is a simple one. Hiro gets information. It may be gossip, videotape, audiotape, a fragment of a computer disk, a xerox of a document. It can even be a joke based on the latest highly publicized disaster.

He uploads it to the CIC database — the Library, formerly the Library of Congress, but no one calls it that anymore. Most people are not entirely clear on what the word “congress” means. And even the word “library is getting hazy. It used to be a place full of books, mostly old one. Then they began to include videotapes, records, and magazines. Then all of the information got converted into machine-readable form, which is to say, ones and zeros. And as the number of media grew, the material became more up to date, and the methods for searching the Library became more and more sophisticated, it approached the point where there was no substantive difference between the Library of Congress and the Central Intelligence Agency. Fortuitously, this happened just as the government was falling apart anyway. So they merged and kicked out a big fat stock offering.

Millions of other CIC stringers are uploading millions of other fragments at the same time. CIC’s clients, mostly large corporations and Sovereigns, rifle through the Library looking for useful information, and if they find a use for something that Hiro put into it, Hiro gets paid.”

Should your company blog?

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Matt Dickman (Techno//Marketer) is Vice President, Digital Marketing at Fleishman-Hillard in Cleveland, Ohio, and he says the answer to the question above depends on how you answer the following questions (Hint: the answer has to be ‘yes’):

  1. Are you listening to your online community? – Are you spending a minimum of two hours a day searching, reading Google alerts or using a monitoring tool like Radian6?
  2. Do you have something unique to say?
    – How will you differentiate yourself from other blogs and other
    companies? This could be your people, the information you publish or
    other forms of thought leadership.
  3. Are you willing and able to say it? – Can you talk about your industry and are you willing to put it out there?
  4. Are you willing to be challenged and criticized? – This goes with the turf. You have to be able to facilitate conversation in a respectful manner to grow a community.
  5. Are you willing and able to dedicate the resources to succeed?
    – People always underestimate this one. A good rule for this to succeed
    is to have one person dedicated to the success of your strategy for a
    minimum of 4 hours per day (2 hours of which is listening and
    commenting). That is one half of a full time person’s week. Have
    staffing plans in place as you grow and start realizing your success.

Matt has even provided a decision tree to help his more visual clients with these questions.

The two hour committment referenced in #1 sounds like a lot but I really don’t know how a company could get the most out their blog without the primary blogger investing that much time. You can’t be a naturalist if you don’t go in the forrest. Thanks to David for finding and sharing.

Box Turtle

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We see lots of adult Box Turtles in our neighborhood but rarely (never?) see the babies. Rick Thom –long time employee of the Missouri Department of Natural Resources– lives just down the hill from us and called a couple of days ago to report finding one of the little guys. Video runs 3 1/2 min.

Death by manure spreader

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I came across a story submitted to one of our networks yesterday, about an 81-year-old man was killed when he became caught in the manure spreader he was operating. This just struck me as a bad way to go.

Which started me thinking about “good” ways and “bad” ways. When was the last time you heard or read a story about someone dying in their sleep? Okay, that probably isn’t much of story.

Or about some old guy dying in flagrante delicto, which I think means “in the saddle.” I assume those stories are hard to report. And the deceased is usually found alone in a hotel room with his shoes on the wrong feet.

While there are few “good” ways to go, some are just a damn site worse than others. So I’ve set up a little blog where we can post these stores and be glad they weren’t about us.

If you spot one of these, please send them my way (Steve Mays at Gmail.com) with “Bad Way” in the subject line. Let me know if I can use your name.

I’ve registered BadWaytoGo.com but it isn’t hot yet.