DHL Strikes Out

I just started a network of blogs about three months ago. It's time consuming to find authors etc - I am not certain exactly how people are going to scale this to a business model but you can bet since Weblogs Inc has been sold, you are going to see a ton of these blogging businesses starting up. Well to monetize the blogs I used everyone's favorite contextual advertising, Adsense. I recently passed the threshold for payment and eagerly awaited my Google check. Google in it infinite and computational correct wisdom mailed my check to my my AdWords Account mailing address. This was undoubtedly part of the Great Google migration to a Unified Field Theory of logins. (Google had users that had seperate logins consolidate them). This meant the check was going to an address that no longer existed ;-)

So I requested a new check. Google gladly shipped a new check immediately. They did so using the world class shipper DHL! DHL a company which has only recently entered the consumer shipping space. Previously they were a business to business shipper which is where I think they should have stayed. I waited roughly one month for payment. Then I thought maybe I should write Google. I did so and here's what I got back.

Hello Brian,

Thank you for your email.

After reviewing our records, I can confirm that your reissued September payment was mailed on Oct 11, 2005. For reference, your DHL tracking number is 9683572813. Please visit www.dhl.ie to track the package.

So I go to DHL.com and look it up

10/24/2005 6:03 pm Returned to shipper. Santa Fe, NM
10/12/2005 1:04 pm Delivery Attempted.
Please Call 1-888-273-8876. Santa Fe, NM
8:49 am Arrived at DHL facility. Santa Fe, NM
2:38 am In transit. Los Angeles, CA
10/11/2005 10:19 pm Arrived at DHL facility. Los Angeles, CA
11:53 am In transit. London, United Kingdom
8:35 am Arrived at DHL facility. London, United Kingdom
4:39 am In transit. East Midlands, United Kingdom
10/10/2005 10:19 pm Arrived at DHL facility. East Midlands, United Kingdom
8:14 pm Departing origin. Dublin, Ireland
4:03 pm Picked Up by DHL.

So apparently DHL attempted delivery on the 12th and shipped it back on the 24th. I called DHL to find out what happened. I know I was in for a rough time for it when the DHL customer service rep said this

"Sir, we held the package for thirty days in Santa Fe. The address was incorrect."

Here's a basic customer service problem. I have access to online tracking information. I can read a computer screen as well as the next guy. Doing simple math I can see that DHL received the package on 10/10/2005 and it arrived in Santa Fe on 10/11/2005. So by any sort of math we are looking at 13-14 days, certainly not thirty. I then pointed this particular fact to the rep on phone, she then said "The address was incorrect." I then confirmed the address with her and not surprisingly it was absolutely correct.

This is strange. Why would a customer service rep lie directly to me? She knows I can view the tracking data to see that the package was held for 13 days, not 30 as she stated. This is what I like to call the "deny all wrongdoing" method of customer service. This has grown more common. With companies' lawyers increasing providing input of every aspect business process, it has become easier to simply lie to customer than to provide customer service. By lieing or misdirecting the customer the company is hoping to lessen any exposed liability by failure to perform. It seems like since Iran Contra, the mantras of "I don't remember" and out and out lieing are becoming all too familar.

I then requested if they could send the package back to me, perhaps via US Mail. They said they could not and requested I contact the shipper. So off to email Google I went. I got the following response from Google on November 15, 2005.

Hello Brian,

I have just spoken with DHL and the shipment will be rerouted to you. They unfortunately could not explain why they only attempted delivery once before returning the package. The should leave a note when they attempt delivery and try a couple more times.

So the package arrived safe and sound on my doorstep the next day? Nope. Instead DHL holds on the package and then redelivers to the wrong department at Google. Eventually the right department finds the check and mails it via UPS. It arrives the next day after two months of attempted delivery by DHL.

Clearly DHL dropped the ball as well as Google. But what actually happened, I don't know but here's my guess. Las Vegas, NM is roughly 61 miles from Santa Fe or 122 round trip. The DHL driver in Santa Fe saw the address on this slim letter envelope and then said, "I will wait until I have more going to Las Vegas." When nothing materialized he then sent the package back rather than actually deliver it.

Here's a note DHL. If you are going to be in the consumer shipping business, you don't actually get to decide what packages are important and which are not. As far as customer service goes, more transparency is better than none. Simply telling obvious and easily disproved lies, has the opposite effect on the customer you may think it has.

If you don't want to deliver a package, don't accept a contract to do so. Or just stick the big container shipping that was your previous business model.

Dell Customer Service Strikes Again; DHL Strikes Out

This post is about customer service or rather the complete lack of customer service that I have continued to notice with many companies. I have had such a horrific experience over the last week that you can expect a whole series of posts about this issue about a Dell, DHL, Godaddy (and that's why I haven't posted in nearly a week). Last week I had a Dell 750 power supply drop dead. Of course it was the machine I had taken out of the cluster and doing mail service as well as some web hosting. (All of my current blogs EXCEPT this one were on the machine). Naturally I called the data center to request a re-boot, at first I assumed Apache had hung. The technician at the data center noticed that the machine didn't come back on nor did the panel lights come on. I had him quickly check wiring and everything seemed alright. So I called Dell. As you might imagine this is where things begin to go south.

After wading through the voice mail prompts, a pleasant Bangalore voice tells me I have dialed the wrong number for customer support. I check the web site again. Nope it's the right number, it's just the wrong number for support. So Dell's customer service number was wrong on the web site. After being transferred again and then again I actually speaking with a customer service representative.

Here's the first part of the conversation.

"Are you in front of the machine sir?"

Well no. This machine was purchased by me and then delivered to the data center by a Dell technician. I am not sure why Dell doesn't understand that.

Here's my response,

"No it was delivered to my data center in Los Angeles. I have had the local technician attempt a re-boot. He checked the cables and the panel lights have not come on."

"Could you have him give us a call from the machine?"

"Why?"

"Because we would like him to take the machine apart and reseat the cards."

"Well I had him check the wiring, the machine isn't booting and the panel lights aren't coming on. I think it's the power supply."

"Well we need to check the cards to be sure."

This is Dell hiding it's unwillingness to respond as a response. It's pretty passive aggressive. It's a rackmounted server in a data center, installed by a Dell technician. If the cards aren't properly seated in the machine, isn't the manufacturer's error? Why should I troubleshoot the problem? Because Dell doesn't want to respond to the contract I signed with them. Rackmounted machines

So I told them I would call them back after the technician had done the requested action. I waited ten minutes and called them back.

"No Dice. What now?"

"We will dispatch parts tomorrow. We have missed our shipping window for today."

"Ok great."

See I have a next day service contract with Dell which is what I thought would be sufficient response time. At the time the machine was part of a cluster so a single machine failing wouldn't be too big of a deal. My mistake when pulling it out to host blogs and mail - I would pay for it in lost revenue.

So I called Dell bright and early the next morning. This is the real kicker. Dell had shipped parts but they wouldn't arrive until tomorrow. This takes my next day response had makes it a two day response.

I called Dell pretty livid. In that conversation I found out the following.

1. Dell uses a just in time model for service. In short they stock NO parts in Los Angeles. That's right. One of the largest computer markets on the West Coast and Dell doesn't stock parts locally.

2. The shipping of the part is the triggering event for the service tech. NOT the original call to customer support. So I should have demanded the tech ship the parts that day. However I didn't know that they didn't stock power supplies for Dell Poweredge 750s locally nor that the shipping of the part was the triggering of the service technician. Dell's next day service response is actually next day after the part has shipped from Texas. So not next day service but rather

3. The shipping cutoff is 4:30 Central Time. This means my service call placed at 5:36 Mountain, 4:36 Pacific (where the machines are actually located) doesn't actually count. Doesn't it make sense that you should keep the same hours as your customers for a company of Dell's size? Shouldn't customers in California expect when you place a service call for next day response DURING normal business hours that you will get next day response.

After this little fiasco (the technician arrived and guess what? It was the power supply) I decided to up my service contract with Dell. So I called their service contracts division. This is also very revealing. Ordering an additional service contract will void my current contract with Dell. This contract which runs through 2007 would essentially be money thrown away. The new contract would run one year. It would actually be cheaper to buy a brand new machine with a new service contract.

I guess that highlights Dell's actual intention =-> sell more machines. Here's a better idea Dell. If you wanna sell more machines, how about a two pack with heartbeat running in the bios? You would sell two servers instead of one, get fewer customer services calls due to higher availablilty and your customers would be happier.

This post is getting too long so next time DHL strikes out.

Web 2.0 - Google Adsense's role

Well the buzz about Web 2.0 has gotten deafening at this point. In Silicon Valley hundreds of start-ups have Web 2.0 plastered repeatedly in their business plans. Sadly though most of these start ups will end up in the same bin with many of the dot coms. The process will take longer as the start-ups are much smaller, much more agile and more likely to become on going concerns but a lot less likely to become the home runs that VCs want. A lot of people have focused on AJAX, XML and open based standards as the factor in releasing the flood gates of innovation. I would argue another important (and obviously over looked) factor is the Google Adsense program.

Google Adsense allows a small group of developers to develop a cool web application, launch it and not worry about how to monetize the application. If this seems perfectly normal, let's go back to the mid nineties and remember how advertsing was sold on the web. If you were a start-up that had a media focus such as an online magazine (now we call them blogs or even just web sites) you needed to build into the site a spot for advertising. You then needed to put together an advertising sales teams who would sell ads for that slot. Congratulations! You have just added $1,000,000 in salary and benefit costs for a five person sales team to your previously small start-up.

This meant that you needed to chase VC or angel funding in order to generate revenue. Later you could outsource this ad sales function to someone like Double Click which was costly also. It also meant that a start-up spent a lot of time chasing deals. During the Dot Com heyday, advertsing revenue deals occurred left and right and were announced with much fanfare.

In many ways the chase for revenue skewed the business activity of the start-up. A ton of time was spent chasing revenue or VC dollars in order to buy ads to generate or chase more dollars. As a result too little time was spent on product development. I realize this a BIG generalization but why else didn't Geocities, AngelFire and the other free hosting providers evolve into blogs? I mean they were in the web publishing business. Why? Because all those providers were to busy cutting deals to jam more ads into their web application without actually paying attention to what their customers (ie the people setting up those free web pages) wanted.

In a start-up dollars are limited every dollar that is going into sales isn't going into product development. With the advent of Google Adsense, developers can begin generating revenue from the initial launch of the product from the very beginning. While this revenue might not cover salaries or the costs of hosting the application initially, they can certainly function as seed capital for developers. Furthermore as the Adsense network can be seamlessly added to site, it means that developers who are working on their own time or part time can spend more time with the application. There is no need to add expensive and largely unproductive sales staff. Google handles the entire process. In many regards Google Adsense IS AN OUTSOURCED AD SALES FUNCTION.

This allows a small team of developers to focus on product development, without the distraction of a sales team. And that's a key factor in the growth of web application start-ups.

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SCO final puts up

It's taken 2.5 years and a ton of posturing in the press but SCO has finally submitted to the court a document purporting to list what copyrighted material that was lifted SCO Unix and placed into Linux. The five page document and another placed under seal which contains the full detail of the 217 seperate violations. I don't doubt that Linux and SCO Unix have code in common. Both are based in part on BSD - certain components such as the X-Windows system are provided under a BSD license which means that SCO undoubtedly has exactly the some code as Linux. This is taken from their own filing as their attorneys state,

"Some of these wrongful disclosures include areas such as an entire file management system; others are communications by IBM personnel working on Linux that resulted in enhancing Linux functionality by disclosing a method or concept from Unix technology," SCO said. "The numerosity and substantiality of the disclosures reflects the pervasive extent and sustained degree as to which IBM disclosed methods, concepts, and in many places, literal code, from Unix-derived technologies in order to enhance the ability of Linux to be used as a scalable and reliable operating system for business and as an alternative to proprietary Unix systems such as those licensed by SCO and others."

The key quote here is "from Unix derived" technologies. SCO is once again asserting a rather strange copyright claim, namely that any work inspired by AT&T Unix is theirs. This dubious legal theory seems quite strange considering these issues were resolved in the case. UNIX Systems Laboratories against Berkeley Software Design. In order for SCO to claim these copyrights, they are going to have to overturn this settlement. For a while that was their legal strategy but apparently their attempts have fallen on deaf ears. By December 22, 2005 IBM will have a response to the sealed motion. I suspect that this is going to go as well as the SCO VS DaimlerChrysler