Observe Business

Wal-Mart and its cohorts are the most tempting, tantalizing, mouthwatering target for US trial lawyers. WM has a lot of money, does business in every state, and is a very labor-and-movement intensive business.

So, here comes along this article (or here or here) that talks in detail about how hundreds of thousands of truckers and bus drivers are still on the road despite being qualified for full federal disability payments.

That means someone who is so physically sick that the government is willing to pay them to sit at home, is going around your town driving a 5000 lb (2.5 ton) vehicle.

So, what business advice would I provide? If I was WM or a big shipper, I would put in a program to weed out all bad apples, trucker or driver or otherwise. If we do not do this, then WM is on the hook for a lot of money, should an accident happen. Just imagine the plaintiff attorney getting up and saying “WalMart let this bad trucker stay on the road, and he killed my client’s loved one”.

It’d be cheaper and much safer to implement your own safety and checks program.

Most supermarkets in the US now have some sort of frequent shopper card, where you swipe the card to get special deals. If you don’t have your card, you can enter your phone number. So, I always enter 310-555-1212. I get the discount and don’t have to give up my info. I wonder when they will catch on.

Here is an interesting story about how a database glitch intruded on a couple’s relationship. Someone modified a woman’s frequent shopper account to display a purchase of a pack of condoms. This purchase had never been made. She logged in, saw the condom purchase, and thought boyfriend was cheating on her. The couple have now made up and the supermarket company sent the couple a gift certificate to say sorry. Paradoxically, the company received a lot of of free publicity. The fact that she is 40 and he is 29, and the photo of them shows the stark difference in age, have also contribued to the story’s popularity.

What I want to know is:

What type of QA is this company doing on their processes?

What other mistakes have slipped under the radar? It is one thing for condoms to be added, but maybe they added a meat purchase to a vegan’s account?

The USA is a very litiguous society, I don’t know about the UK. Could she have sued Tesco for damages for “pain & suffering”?

In the midst of all the salacious and sensational details, there is a real story begging to be told.

The Sphinx in Egypt is one of the world’s premier tourist spots. Here is how it looks in a typical tourist photo:

Makes you want to visit, doesn’t it?

And here is another pic of what you are more likely to see:

What a difference. It is between expecting to see a wonder of the world and but seeing a barely maintained slab of stone while sitting in baking heat, being accosted by hawkers and wondering why you ever came all the way to Egypt to see the sphinx when you could have see a nicer version in Las Vegas:

So where is the business angle in all this? Simple. If Egypt wants to make attract more tourists, they  have to take better care of their monuments. Otherwise people will start to think the Las Vegas version is the real version. I have already heard anecdotes about people who have visited Vegas and then visited Paris remark on how ‘large the French Eiffel tower is’. They take the Vegas copy as the reference point.

Ramada Inn Encore London West website

I am traveling soon to London, so went through a harrowing night of trying to find accomodation. More on the problems of London accomodation later. But for now, here is a decent hotel that can’t its website right. The Ramada Inn Encore in West London has a nicely designed website. But, why don’t they add up the total amount? I have to use the calculator to add it all up. And, what is with the dates on the top left not matching up with the dates I entered?

So here we are at cheaptickets.com, where Virgin Atlantic has a special offer going on. Virgin flies from some major airports in the USA to London. So, since this webpage is a special Virgin offer, when you click on Airport Codes, you would expect to see the cities that Virgin flies from right?

But here is what we see:

Small things….this popup should only show airports Virgin flies from!

On this webpage we see a flight from Washington DC to the desert kingdom of Dubai. The flight a direct flight taking over 12 hours.

So why does United show a section towards the end of the page that says that “This flight may be operated by xxx airlines”? These airlines will not provide this service. Why display information that is not relevant?

It blows my mind how companies that can manage 500-airplane fleets and price every seat down to the penny leave gaping holes in design like this.

Times are hard right now…everyone holding back, trying to save a few nickels. Spending is down. Everyone wants to hunker down and ride out the storm with a safe (and hopefully cushy) job.

So here comes Business Week with some advice…20 jobs to help you ride out the storm. Sounds nice, right?

Except that EVERY job they list requires lots and lots of study or training. By the time you finish training to be a nurse, or become a database administrator, happy days should be here again. And if they are not, that’s too bad, because you will have this shiny degree, loads of debt and no job. Plus, some of the jobs they talk about, especially those related to computers, are headed overseas anyway.

What Business Week should have done is talk about how you can pick up jobs that require little to no training, such as security guard, truck driver, or hot dog vendor. The St. Petersburg time has a great article on how there is a boom going on in hot dog carts.

There is also a nice business to be done in serving gourmet food from a truck, a step up from the ‘roach coaches’ of yore. A good example is this Belgian waffle guy in New York or these gourmet taco trucks in Houston.

St. Pete Times 1, BusinessWeek 0.

I signed up for automatic payment on SoCal gas company and I received this reminder.

Look at the area circled red.

Instead of making me think whether I have to sign in and pay or whether it will be automatically taken out of my checking account, why not just tell me whether I am signed up for automatic payments?

Much has been said about the Segway. The WSJ just wrote about how Segway sales are booming.

I am curious as to why the price has stayed at 5,000 since 2001. The basic materials cost of the Segway are quite low. Beyond having some fancy gyroscopes the Segway is just a few pounds of metal, a bit of rubber, some computer chips, software and two tires. Perhaps the Segway company has a lot of R&D they need to amortize before they can start to drop the price.

There is a guy who even built a copy of Segway, and he has an excellent website to show how he did it. At the end of his webpage there are some very good links. He even built a self-balancing unicycle.

So back to the price staying steady: a laptop that cost $2000 in 2001 is available at $200 now. TV’s are so much cheaper, as is wiring, hard drives, etc., etc. Basically, all the electronic components that make up the Segway magic are now cheaper.

So, why has the price of the Segway not dropped?

I hope Segway is not following the Apple pricing model. That pricing nearly killed Apple. Apple had a lot of things to recommend their computers other than being a productivity machine. Cool factor, music, reliability, ease of use, etc. There is not much you can do with a Segway other than ride it around, meaning there are no other drivers to making a Segway sale.

Imagine how many Segways would sell if the price were to come down to $3000 or even $1,999.

OK, that is overstating it. I missed the whole ‘locavore’ thing, which is where people try to eat what is grown locally. The word ‘locavore’ got so much traction in 2007 that it was named the Oxford Word of the Year for 2007. The locavore movement was a big thing in San Francisco, which is where a lot of trends start.

Locavore is one of those situations that works on a case-by-case basis. Some places are better for local growing, others are better off importing. Different crops have vastly different economics. And as for meat, well, that is a whole new ballgame.

The best part of the locavore movement is that it made people think about their food supply.