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Turn Twitter Pink

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month

Today is the start of breast cancer awareness month. During the month of October you are likely to see more information about breast cancer than you may have seen all year. The difference is that you can help spread the word by focusing on the topic for at least one month. It’s easy. All you have to do is stumble, delicious, digg, reddit, kirtsy whatever article you see related to increasing awareness.

Help increase the flow of the topic on the web and help save the tatas.

Oh and one more thing you can do.  Turn Twiiter Pink.  Do you remember Green Friday, the ode to @gregboser?

Just imagine it looking like this…

So step up and go pink!

Blogs and RSS Buttons

In my industry  everyone knows what an RSS button is for.  Outside…in the real world…most people don’t have a clue.  In fact, it’s confusing and clicking on it could be a catastrophe to someone that is not computer savvy. My thoughts on this though is too bad. Teach your users what it is and let them decide whether or not they want to use it.

Here’s my scenario…I volunteered to build a site for our local pop warner football association.  It turned into adding sites for track and cheer as well. All of these were built on our Wordpress platform (the one that kicks ass).  Anyway, I had a GoTo meeting to do some training with the moms that had volunteered to run the sites.  Hands down, they hated the RSS button.  They wanted it gone and didn’t care that it offered a feature to users that subscribe to feeds.  They said that they had received phone calls from parents complaining because "they clicked on it and ended up on another site, then they couldn’t figure out how to get back".

So fine, we took it off.

This really frustrated me because I enjoy teaching people about the internet and 99% of the time everyone is very receptive to the learning.  So when a group puts up the hand to one of the best things to come out of Web 2.0 it blows me away.  Whatever.

The way I see it the button should be displayed prominently at the top of your blog kinda like how it is on mine:) I can’t stand it when I spend 10-30 seconds trying to find an RSS button. 

The worst are the blogs that have it in a text link at the very bottom where you can barely see it like this:

 

I’ve built a few feeds in my day and trying to find the feed button is very difficult most of the time.  I have found blogs that are actually SEM blogs and they don’t have a button at all.

So please, if you have a blog display your RSS button at the top so it’s easy for your visitors to subscribe.   Just slap it up there and who knows, you may be pleased at the results.

 

Digg Algo Stirs the Pot Again

If you are a top submitter on Digg have you noticed the need for more Diggs to get your story to the FP.   I know I have.  It was a few months back when they made their change to the shout system that I seem to remember having gone through this, then things settled down a bit.  Having 151 diggs and not hitting the front page is lame and frustrating.  At least Digg is being fair though…see the last story.  Even Kevin Rose isn’t hitting home with 120 diggs.  Ya think they did that on purpose to try and give the impression that everybody is equal and what’s good for Mr. Rose is good for everyone else?  

 

I’m a Computer Pack Rat

Over the holiday break Greg cleaned up both my laptop and desktop.  Apparently I am a computer pack rat, based on all the "OMG, you still have emails from 2005" and "OMG, haven’t you ever emptied your recycle bin"?

Yes.  It’s true. Whenever I save something I think I’m going to use in the near future I save it to my desktop.  I do save every email that is sent to me, even all the ones telling me that somebody wrote on my Facebook wall.  The recycle bin has not been touched in well over a year and when Outlook asks me to archive, I close the window.  There… it’s out, I said it and I’m not going to do it anymore.

Funny thing is that with everything else I am not that way.  I give things away, shred documents I don’t need and throw things out regularly.  I hate clutter.  For whatever reason though, I like having 100 icons on my desktop to have a click away.  I don’t mind it at all and I know where everything is.  Or should I say, I knew where everything was.  Greg was nice enough to organize and delete things for me and what do you know, my computer runs so much faster now. 

So the only New Years resolution I made this year is to stay on top of my recycle bin,  archive my email and file away my docs and spreadsheets. 

Am I the only one that does this or are there other computer pack rats out there?

 

Travelocity and AA.com - Worst Customer Service

It’s Friday morning and this time of the year is always a busy and stressful time for me.  As I’m sure everyone does, I have way more going on at this time of the year than any other month.  That said, I don’t need any more stress or snags in my plans or schedule.  Wednesday night I came across a huge snag, error, disappointment…whatever you want to call it.  I was up until 1:45am all thanks to Travelocity and American Airlines and their customer service (or lack thereof).

I actually wrote the following while I was on hold with these two companies on and off for over 3 hours and since I was so upset that evening, I decided not to publish it because I wanted to give them the opportunity to address this with me, but It’s now Friday morning and I have yet to hear from the customer relations department, so I figure I want to share my experience with all of my internet friends and maybe someone from Travelocity will respond to the letter I faxed to them at 1:30am on 12/13.

Here goes… 

I have been sitting on hold trying to use a flight credit that was issued to my daughter this past July.  At about 9:30pm I logged in to Travelocity to search for flights for a trip we are taking to Oregon.  I figured it wouldn’t be too big of a deal.  After all, I have a trip ID number, cancellation number, credit number and the name of the person I spoke with back on July 23rd. 

It’s now 11:43pm (yes, over 2 hours later) During this time I have been on the phone with Travelocity three times and American Airlines twice.  Currently I am sitting on hold with Travelocity waiting for a manager to pick up the phone.  I called them at 11:21 and have been on hold hating Travelocity and hating the person that originally processed my credit and made some lame error that has resulted in this enormous waste of my time.

Here’s what’s happening…

I called Travelocity the first time because when I went to check out online, there was no option for me to use a flight credit.  I spoke with a representative who transferred me to another representative who informed me that their system was down and I should call American Airlines to use my credit anyway.  Fine.

I went to American’s site and found the ame flight for $20 less.  Super.  Same thing happened, at check out, there is no place for me to enter my credit code.  So I called American, who transferred me to aa.com.  That was pretty quick, so whatever.  The rep at aa.com informed me that my credit code was coming up as UNK (Unknown) and I’d have to take it up with Travelocity.

Frustrated, but I understand that shit happens so I called Travelocity back and explained the problem, the rep there seemed to be investigating it  and got back on the phone with me to tell me that it had to be processed through aa.com.  She had called aa.com and told me she had an aa rep on the phone that said she could take care of me.  Sounds easy, the two ladies spoke and one told the other my information and the other said she could help me.  After holding with the aa rep while she investigated further, she got back on the line and told me the credit number I had isn’t really a credit number, it’s an itinerary number and it appears to be blank, so there is nothing she can do.  She told me I had to call Travelocity to get this resolved.

At this point I’m extremely pissed.  The tone I’m getting from the reps is insinuating to me that I don’t have a credit at all and at one point the woman implied that my daughter did use her ticket.

So it’s now 11:53, I’m still on hold with Travelocity from when I called them at 11:21 and asked to speak with a manager.  Good to know managers keep customers on hold for 30 minutes.

The likelihood that I’ll use Travelocity again is zero seeing as this is the 2nd most horrible customer service experience I’ve ever had.  The first (btw) was with my cable company a few years back when they shut our cable off after I called to cancel the internet.  Our cable was off for almost a week with two young kids. No Nickelodeon, no Rugrats.  It was horrible.  The cable company at least gave me 3 months of free cable to compensate me.  It’s doubtful that Travelocity will do anything, but we’ll see if the gnome makes appearance and takes care of me.  So far no gnome in sight.

Now 11:59, hanging up and calling Travelocity back…again.

Now on hold again (12:10) talking to Travelocity rep ‘Marcus’ sounds like there is progress in sight. Bad news.  Marcus came back and repeated the same thing the other Travelocity reps said, that I have to call aa.com to use the credit. I asked Marcus to please conference call with aa.com so I could avoid the he said she said fiasco.  He was able to connect with Derik from aa.com who (with an ‘I don’t give a crap’) attitude told me he didn’t show the ticket at all and there was nothing he could do. 

Marcus is now saying Travelocity cannot re-issue the ticket and that I’ll have to take it up with their customer relations department.  He was kind enough to give me the Fax # 800-944-0005.  Rather than writing a lengthy letter, maybe I’ll just copy and paste this blog post.

What I don’t get is that this credit is for about $700 or so.  Travelocity is a multi-million dollar company that has left a customer of over 10 years lost in between a conflict between them and aa.com.  Travelocity says they cannot re-issue the ticket and aa.com says they can’t find the credit.  So were is my credit?  Maybe the gnome took it?

It’s now 12:48pm, before I publish this article I’m going to give the Travelocity consumer relations department the benefit of the doubt and see if they can resolve by tomorrow.

Updated 12/20

Last night I received a survey to take about my recent experience with Travelocity’s customer service.  Of course the review I gave was horrible.  Today I received this via email:

RE: Credit for the cancel reservation

Dear Barbara,

We have received your fax. We are in the process of assigning your issue to the appropriate representative. 

The assigned representative will be in contact with you to further investigate your situation and may contact you by e-mail, telephone or mail to advise you of the status within 3 to 4 weeks. In most cases, you can expect a resolution of your issue within this time frame.

Should you have additional information or documentation to submit, please send it to this e-mail address or you may also submit the information to the address provided below. 

We appreciate your business and the opportunity to address your concerns.

Sincerely,
Shirley P.
Travelocity Consumer Relations

Note to self…it takes 1 week for Travelocity’s consumer relations to respond to their customers so they must be VERY busy!