Corporate carpetbaggers

Eight years ago. the city of New London, Conn., lured drug giant Pfizer to town by offering them a 10-year, 80% break on normal property taxes. The city even created an economic development corporation to expropriate houses near the Pfizer complex for a proposed new "urban village" of hotels, shops and condos that would better suit the new biggest employer in town.

Some local residents fought back on behalf of their neighborhood. The dispute went all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled 5 to 4 in 2005 that municipalities indeed have the right to expropriate private homes for vague redevelopment plans.

Last week, Pfizer announced that in two years' time (about the time their tax holiday ends), they will be moving out of New London and consolidating operations at their campus in nearby Groton. New London will lose 1400 jobs - and any chance of seeing that "urban village" it fought so hard for.

As the New York Times reported, local residents now see Pfizer "as a corporate carpetbagger that took public money, in the form of big tax breaks, and now wants to run."

A spokesman for the landowners told the Times that Pfizer’s announcement “really shows the folly of these plans that use massive corporate welfare and abuse eminent domain for private development.”

The only good news is that 43 states have since moved to strengthen private property laws to prevent money-hungry municipalities from taking people's homes.

Which is worse? Overzealous bureaucrats, or corporate welfare bums?

Read the gruesome details here.

"Big companies are always doing stupid things"

You've heard about Pepsi's Amp energy drink, and its "Before You Score" iPhone application aimed at helping young men to objectify, stalk and bed young women?

Lots of great commentary all over the Web as marketing experts debate whether this is sheer genius ("they understand their target market!") or sheer stupidity ("Let's boycott everything Pepsi makes!").

I rather liked this comment on Linked-In by Keith Thirgood, Partner with Capstone Communications Group in Toronto. He puts Pepsi's stupidity into context.

"As far as a backlashes go, big companies are always doing stupid things with their ad campaigns and they survive. It's the small companies who attempt to emulate the big guys who really suffer, because they don't realize that big guys botch these things more often than they succeed. Big companies breeze through these mistakes because of their size and momentum. Small companies are really hurt by emulating the bad marketing moves the big guys make."

Weird key, wrong chain

I've stayed lately in two Best Western hotels: the lovely, dated Sands by the Sea in Vancouver, and the newly modernized Lamplighter in London, Ont.

No complaints about either place (despite the growth of high-rises across the street, the Sands' balconies still have a slight sightline on the harbour). But my room "keycard" at the Lamplighter came bearing an unusual graphic: a photo of another company's hotel. With a terrible editing job that can only be called Early Photoshop.

What gremlin accentuated the roofline with a Sharpie? And whose idea was it to put the Banff Springs Hotel, crown jewel of the Fairmont chain, on a Best Western keycard?

New management wanted.
As well as a reason to go to Banff this winter.

They messed up, then dissed the competition

I just transferred a URL I bought years ago to GoDaddy.com, a domain company that manages most of my other domain names. Yes, it's an American company, with a silly name and annoyingly sexist advertising, but its prices are cheap and its customer service is outstanding.

(Example: A year ago, one of their Customer Service reps noticed that I had never got around to using a monthly hosting service I had bought and paid for - so he offered me a refund on the spot. No one else, in any business, has ever offered to do that for me. Just yesterday, I realized I had bought another service I didn't need, and GoDaddy's CSR helpfully showed me how to cancel it and get my money back.)

But this is a blog about stupid business, so let's look at the company I no longer wanted to deal with: Misk.com. It inherited my account when it bought a previous company I had registered with, so I had no loyalty to it - or any problem with it either.

But Misk annoyed me with its poor online customer service documentation. I couldn't find the way to renew the URL. And when I dialled the help number on their website, I learned that their hotline is for faxes only. All other inquiries must come via email.

So a week ago I emailed Misk for help, and didn't hear back. I sent a second email saying this issue was important to me, and asking for a response within 24 hours. Nada.

I finally heard from them late last night - four and a half days after my second email. (Meantime, the transfer had gone through, thank goodness.) Here's what the service rep said:

"We apologize for the delay in responding to you. Due to a technical issue with our ticketing system, your email was misdirected and not yet answered." An online company that loses customers' email? Heads should roll.

But here's the kicker. The service rep said this: "Ca domains are much different than others and clearly your new registrar doesn't have much experience with .CA domains (GoDaddy) only recently starting registering these. You may want to pick another more experienced and ethical registrar."

Wow. What are they trying to say here? In my opinion, GoDaddy's ethics are better than most, and its support teams very experienced and knowledgeable. GoDaddy is now by far the largest domain registrar in the world, so of course there have been controversies, but no deep ethical problems that a competitor should be pointing out.

For its poor service and weirdly inappropriate bad-mouthing of the competition, Misk.com definitely deserves our mantra: New Management Welcome.

Management Fail!

Failblog.org is a site that mixes irony and humour with everyday glimpses, primarily through photographs, of places and things that are just wrong. It chronicles the failures and foibles of individuals, but also the dysfunction of organizations.

Just for fun, here are a few recent photos from the site that prove that way too many businesses and organizations are in desperate need of New Management.

You can check out more Fail photos at Failblog.org

Closing the Door on BookCloseouts.com

I was just browsing this month's scratch-and-dent sale at http://www.bookcloseouts.com/. My first time on the site.

I saw a book I liked and clicked on the "Add to cart" button. You know what I got? A screen that said, "Your shopping cart is empty." So I went back and clicked again. My shopping cart was still empty.

Perhaps I should have registered and logged in first. Well, why didn't they say that early on? And why don't they give me that option now? Why not make things dead easy for first timers?

Instead they gave me a nonsensical warning and no clear path to do anything about it.

I think I'll take my business to a website that understands customer care.
New Management Welcome.

United Airlines: Breaker of Guitars, and Hearts

Note to big companies, and UAL baggage handlers in particular: Don't piss off Halifax musician Dave Carroll. He's liable to write a song about it, and that could go viral...

Note to smart marketers: Sure, Dave is angry that they busted his guitar. But he's even more upset at the airline's inability to take any responsibilty - or even just show remorse. What's so wrong with saying, "Sorry"?

UPDATE: United seems to be paying attention. Sure, now they're willing to talk...
Click here for the story.