(Ft. Worth, TX, USA)

aubreyturner.org

Thursday, September 03, 2009

A Plea On Naming

Please, people, stop naming your girls Aubrey. 

As noted in the above linked Wikipedia entry, it’s a traditionally male name that, unfortunately, is also used for girls in the United States. 

Of Teutonic origin, “Aubrey” means “Fair Ruler of the Little People”, or “King of the Elves” [1]. The name Alberich is a more common Germanic variant, with the syllable ‘Alb’ translating as “Elf” and ‘Ric’ representing “power”. In the twelfth century, a Christian saint and abbot named St. Aubrey founded the Cistercian Order, seeking to operate under the Rule of St. Benedict, continuing Benedict of Nursia’s tradition of solitary scholarship in a community of monasticism.

The name is traditionally male, but is also used as a feminine name in the United States. It was the 69th most popular name given to girls born in the United States in 2007. It was last ranked among the top 1,000 most common names for boys in the United States in 2002. It was the 479th most common name for all males in the United States in the 1990 census.[2] “Aubrey” can also be spelled “Aubre”,or “Aubrie”.

It’s not too late to stop, though.  If we stop the madness now, in a generation or two things will be less confusing for those who come after us.

It will also mean I don’t have to share a name with a complete and total moron.

Meditations On The Ways In Which XM Radio “Customer Service” Doth Suck

I received an email last night from XM Radio reminding me that the credit card I’m using with them is expiring.  This also reminded me that I needed to cancel the second radio on my account, since I’d taken that radio out of my home entertainment center a while back and had forgotten about it (and with automatic payments every quarter, it was easy for it to get lost in the noise).

Since I wanted to do two things, I decided to give their phone service a try, hoping against hope that it would be better than the last time I tried to use it.  When I called I got one of those obnoxious voice systems that expects you to talk to it.  I loathe these things with a passion.  First, I feel silly talking to a computer.  But more importantly, I have so little trust in customer service computer systems in the first place that putting a voice recognition system in front of it that half the time doesn’t understand what I’m saying feels like a recipe for disaster to me.  Finally, I know that most companies won’t let you cancel any kind of service without talking to a person, so why not skip the nonsense and get right to the person?

This system asked me for my phone number, and fortunately allowed me to key it in, along with my zip code.  Then it said that my credit card had expired and demanded that I say “yes” or “no” to the question of whether I wanted to update it now.  I simply hit zero, to see if it would break out and let me talk to a person.  I was pleasantly surprised that it worked.  At least at first.  Because it immediately put me on hold, and then dropped the line after about 30 seconds.  Since I’m a glutton for punishment, I tried this three or four more times and got the same result each time.

XM phone FAIL!

So, I went to xmradio.com and was bombarded with a landing page that used Flash video with sound.  This is what I consider a major sin of web design and a major irritant.

XM web design FAIL!

Once I got past that and onto the main XM page I logged into my account and was dumped into the account information page with a pop up that informed me that I needed to update my credit card info to continue.  However, the credit card info was inactive (grayed out) and I saw no obvious way to change it, so I clicked the “Change Info” button at the bottom of the page.  This turns out to be a major tactical blunder, as the system interpreted this as me wanting to save the data.  With a properly designed system this wouldn’t be a problem, but XM’s system LOCKS YOUR ACCOUNT FOR 10 MINUTES while it “updates.”  This means if you try to do anything but look at the account summary during that time you get a pop up that tells you the account is “being updated” and to wait for 10 minutes. 

XM system design FAIL!

So, after stewing for 10 minutes I went back into the account info page and finally saw the “Change” link above the credit card info which activated the data fields (and made some new ones visible).  I was able to enter the new expiration date and save the data.  Which was good.  But it locked the account again for another 10 minutes. 

After duly waiting ten minutes (actually, after impatiently hitting “Radios & Subscription” about 10 times), I was able to see the list of radios on the account.  But there is no way to cancel a radio from the website (I was afraid this would be the case, as it was this way the last time I tried to use their brain-dead site a couple of years ago; I was just hoping that they might have seen the error of their ways in the interim and that I might be able to avoid going back to XM phone hell). 

XM user experience FAIL!

As a parting gift, I discovered a bug with their caching/session code when I clicked back to the account summary page and I got another pop up informing me that my credit card had expired.  This did not inspire confidence, so just to be sure I logged out, closed the window, and logged in from another window to confirm that the changes had indeed been made (which means I had to go through the stupid Flash video landing page again, etc).

XM session caching FAIL!

At this point I’m already a bit annoyed and frustrated with them, and not very happy about having to go back to the phones.  But I’m nothing if not persistent.  So, once more into the breach, dear friends…

I dialed their 800 number and I got the phone company’s ‘unable to complete this call as dialed’ message.  WTF?  I checked the number and tried again.  Same result.  Hmm…

Waited a few minutes and tried again (counting the first attempts and the uncompleted calls, this is attempt number 8).  This time I got an actual person instead of Chatty Cathy the Computer.  He had a faint Indian accent, but was otherwise understandable.  Could this be an improvement?  Alas, this was not to be…

The person was nice enough, and took down the radio ID and looked up my account.  When he did he tried to confirm the information, which was weird because his computer showed my old phone number in Denton, which I hadn’t used since 2003 (this didn’t give exactly give me the warm fuzzies about their systems, since I was still on the website which showed my current phone number in the account summary; further, Chatty Cathy the Computer was able to look up my account using my current number earlier).

XM multiple system synchronization FAIL!

Whatever the issue, he updated the number (which scares me deep down in the dark chambers of my IT Architect heart) and said he’d have to transfer me to the right department and for me to stay on the line.  *Groan*  Knowing where this was going, but not having much choice, I stayed on the line.  For all of about 30 seconds, at which point the background hiss turns to silence, which means I’ve been dropped.  Again.

XM phone transfer FAIL!

Call number 9.  Get another friendly person who asks all the same questions as the first and then transfers me to the other department.  Another drop. 

XM phone transfer FAIL!

Did I mention that like the Monty Python Monks, I’m a glutton for punishment?  I decide to give it another try (Thank you, sir.  May I have another?). 

Call number 10.  Got another friendly person with a faint Indian accent who asked the same questions again.  This time I ask if perhaps there’s some way for her to stay on the line as I’ve been dropped numerous times.  She agrees, but I still hear the familiar click as she puts me on hold. 

After about 30 seconds, just as I was fearing that I was going to be dropped again, I heard a very low voice.  It was so low that I thought at first that it might be cross-talk from another line, but after it paused and said something again, I tried talking to it (afraid I might be talking to myself) and it responded!  I cranked up the volume on my headset to STUN and although every single little background sound in my office was now reverberating through my skull I was actually able to converse with this person.  Amazingly I’d finally made it through to the almost mythical XM cancellation department!

She asked me all of the same questions as the other people (doesn’t anyone share info in these damn callcenters?  I know it’s possible, since I’ve worked on systems in the past that did it) and canceled the second radio.  Or at least she said so.  I’m not at all confident that it actually worked and I fully expect to have to call them again in a few weeks when the quarterly billing goes through. 

Why does this have to be so damn hard?  Why do companies insist on treating their customers so shabbily?  Something as simple as updating credit card info and canceling a single radio on an account shouldn’t take two hours and a multitude of web site visits and phone calls.  Someone at XM has seriously dropped the ball when it comes to prioritizing their customer service operation. 

XM customer experience FAIL!

Update: As a final stick in the eye, I received the following email after updating my credit card expiration date in the system:

Thank you for your recent payment to XM Satellite Radio.  Please allow two (2)
days for your payment to be posted to your XM account. 

This confirms that you have authorized recurring payments for your XM
Satellite Radio service.  The payments will be automatically debited from the
account or debit card you provided to us.  The timing of payments will be
based on the payment plan associated with each individual radio on your
account.  Please contact us at 1-800-XM-RADIO if you have any questions
regarding your account.

Thank you for using XM Satellite Radio. 

This, once again, doesn’t fill me with confidence in their system, as I didn’t make a payment.  I simply updated some billing information. 

XM appropriate update message FAIL!

Tuesday, September 01, 2009

Sneaky and Underhanded

I received a replacement for my old, worn-out, Chase debit card in the mail today.  They issue them for three year periods and the old one had been swiped so many times that it was fraying on the edges and the numbers were nearly unreadable.

Anyhow, the first thing that annoyed me was when I called the number to activate the card.  Their system took a total of three minutes to “activate” the card, of which 2.5 minutes was devoted to trying to sell me their identity theft protection (and you were not allowed to ignore the offer, as you had to select ‘2’ on the phone to get past it). 

But I discovered the really sneaky and underhanded thing when I started looking into their “Free Debit Rewards Program.”  The new debit card included an insert for the rewards program that said I could get points for using the card and that enrolling was “EASY—AND FREE!”  This triggered my TANSTAAFL sensors, as there has to be some kind of catch (i.e. someone is paying for these “free rewards”).  The main trick appears to be that you have to use the debit card as a credit card (i.e. don’t use a PIN), which I think triggers fees for the merchant.  But the other trick is that there is a $25.00 annual fee.  Which is pretty underhanded, because all of their brochures and *all* of their FAQ answers stress that it is free to enroll.  It’s only in the Terms And Conditions that you learn about the “annual fee.”  After parsing that for a minute I realized that they were legally correct, but morally bankrupt.    It’s free to enroll.  It just costs money to stay in the program.

What the FAQ promises…

... is taken away by the T’s and C’s:

That said, the program may still be worth it, especially since I use the card so often.  But the way they hid the fee bothers me enough that I am going to pass on the program.  In the interest of full disclosure they should have had at least one FAQ answer that covers the fact that there is an annual fee (and I skimmed *every* FAQ just to be sure; I could find no mention of it there, only in the T’s and C’s).