TechMaven

AT&T Hangs Up on Customers

Literally. I travel frequently for business, and now I’m traveling to London at least once every six weeks. This means that my overused BlackBerry 8800 and its unlimited data plan need to come with me so I stay connected. No problem right? Just call in and make sure that everything can be ported over, enabled, provisioned, configured, synchronized, whatever words the usually friendly tech wants to use to describe the process. 

 So I am on hold. Its 8:45pm CST. I’m on hold for a while. One thing that’s interesting, is that the first person I spoke with and figured out I needed their “international provisioning group” actually waited on hold with me until it took more than ten minutes, then she announced she’d be ducking off the call as well. Seems like a waste of human power to have her wait with me, but that’s not the point of this post.

At 9pm their regular hours are over at AT&T service, because technical issues stick to a strict schedule of business hours only. Always. But I’m already waiting, have been for at least 15 minutes. At 9:01pm CST a polite but terse recorded announcement tells me they’re closed, their regular hours are blah blah blah, and then hangs up on me. 

 Just a simple post to AT&T if they’re reading (they should be, google makes it super easy to find this stuff and technorati makes it even easier) – try not to hang up on your customers. Its rude, counter productive (I was actually trying to give you MORE money by going international with my data plan), and creates bad word of mouth.

 UPDATED: Want to know the best part? It didn’t work. I arrived, and the phone still didn’t work. After 10 minutes (and like $20 US worth of credit card calling to AT&T) it was working, just like last time. Argh. Figure it out.

iPhone Demonstrates Word-of-Mouth and Spells Doom for Newspapers

I just saw a blog entry on Techcrunch for Engadget's amazing traffic on the day of the iPhone announcement.  The best part was this quote:

With massive numbers of readers flocking to blogs when big news is announced, it’s hard to say that mainstream audiences aren’t paying attention. Just about everyone that cares knew exactly what was being announced at MacWorld just moments after it was said, and they got the news from Engadget or another blog. Pictures and video were available real time as well. By the time television and newspapers got to the story, the really interested readers were already on to the next thing.

This last line is what is spelling doom for newspapers and magazines.  Time magazine is rumored to be cutting back offline staff and moving efforts (and money) online.  If you're not already a bit of a conspiricist about Google then make sure to watch this as well: Googlezon.  The idea here is that because the web now provides anyone that wants to know anything multiple ways to know that thing immediately, print media is dead.  I remember in Ghostbusters, when Egon is asked by Jeanine if he reads a lot, he replies "print is dead."  That was 1984.

Whether its electronic paper or just browsers, this year will continue to be a declining one for print media subscriptions and circulation.  Digitize or die.

Update: Time Magazine is offering 6 issues for $1.99.  That's not a good sign.