Ordering

Please make it easy for me to buy your products...  Is anyone listening? 

Many years ago, back in the golden age of boxy cars guaranteed to fall apart shortly after purchase, I worked as an engineer at GM.  (Another story for another blog.)  One of the reasons Detroit cars sucked was that all of the executives at GM had access to free cars that were serviced on a daily basis. Failures were examined from an accounting point-of-view -- how much did it cost GM to fix the part compared to how much it would have cost to use a better part to start with? Failure was built-in so long as it wasn't expensive for them. The executives completely failed to understand that a breakdown, stranded at the side of the road, was traumatic for their customers, and at a minimum, when the car didn't start, someone had to rearrange their schedule to deal with getting the car fixed.

Similarly, everyone throughout the company had access to cars at a fixed, subsidized price. It was one of the perks of the jobs. But it meant that nobody working at the company ever had to negotiate with a dealer, and had no idea how unpleasant the experience could be.

It feels like the cell phone industry has some of the same problems.  Has an executive at AT&T ever called for help ordering their product? Have they ever tried to buy something from their store?  When they make me president of AT&T, the first thing I'm going to do is say, no free phones for you and your family. You go to the store today and buy one yourself, then you make sure your customers have a better experience than you just did.

Okay, enough negativity.  It actually wasn't quite that bad, though when we get to the activation it gets worse, at least for AT&T.

First, the iPhone.  They didn't have an iPhone at the AT&T store, nor anyone who seemed to know much, so I went online.   When I completed the ordering, it said the phone would ship in 10-14 days. So I tried the Apple store. They said 3 weeks.  Hmmm.  I assumed 10-14 days was calendar days, but maybe that was a sneaky way of saying 3 weeks. In any case, my wife needed the phone for a trip we were leaving on in a week or so, and I didn't want the phone sitting out on the sidewalk in front of our home for a week while we were gone. I also wanted to know why I was being charged $60 in sales tax on a $200 phone purchase. So I decided to call.  It went something like this...

me: "Why does the form show $60 in sales tax?"
at&T: "California tax rate is high."
me: "Yup.  Sure is. 9.75% in LA.  But that's more like $20, not $60."
at&t: "We charge sales tax on the retail price."
me: "Yes, the listed retail price shown is $199."
at&T: "We charge the correct sales tax in each state."
me: "Is this something special in California in how sales tax is calculated?"
at&t: "We charge the correct sales tax in each state."
me: "Okay.  How do you calculate the correct sales tax on a $199 purchase?"
at&t: "We charge the correct sales tax in each state."

Okay, I get the idea.  Subsequently, a web search showed that California charges sales tax based on the supposed unsubsidized price rather than the sale price. Not AT&T's fault, but they really should be able to explain to customers why we're getting charged this crazy sales tax amount.

The shipping question ran about the same:

me: "If I complete the order now, when will I get the phone."
at&t: "7-10 days."
me: "Is that business days or calendar days?"
at&t: "It's 7-10 days."
me: "The Apple store says 3 weeks. Are you under-reporting, are they sandbagging, or do you get the phones before Apple?"
at&t: (Yeah, I had no hope of a real answer on this one.) "7 to 10 days."

Since that would be just about smack in the middle of the time when we'd be out of town, I held off for a week before ordering.  And of course, the phone arrived in a week, the day after we left town, and sat outside on the walkway next to the sprinkler.