Real shares dropped 21% and Napster dropped 26.8% on Wednesday after the release of the new Yahoo music service:

Yahoo’s new service, unveiled Wednesday, is coming in at a bargain price. Subscribers can get unlimited access to a library of 1 million songs for as little as $4.99 per month, or about $60 annually. Subscribers who don’t want to make a one-year commitment can pay a rental fee of $6.99 per month.

A comparison chart between Y! Music Unlimited, Naspter and Rhapsody puts Y! on top with burnable downloads at 79 cents instead of .99 (Napster) and .89 (Rhapsody), 120+ preprogrammed stations and the ability to share music with friends using Yahoo! Messenger.

Recently I signed up my son for Napster, but unless I’m missing something significant here (help me out, readers), we’ll be switching. 60 bones a year sounds better to me than 120 to listen to mostly the same songs on competing services.

The death of PDAs to be replaced by smartphones, presumably, may have been overstated — at least for the time being — according to the first quarter (Q1) sales results compiled by Gartenberg (via Computerworld):

The figures, which revealed a year-on-year increase of 25% to 3.4 million units, run counter to widespread predictions that the handheld computer sector is set for a slow and loss-making death.

PDAs are cool, I’ve got two of them (Palm VIIx and an iPAQ). I use my iPAQ every day, but have since given the Palm VIIx to my oldest son. I still would rather carry one device instead of two when going out. Ultimately, I believe that will be the thing that drives people to some sort of phone/PDA hybrid, but the dark horse is VOIP. If VOIP continues to take off in strong numbers, why the need to have a cell phone? Instead, a device that has EV-DO or similar technology and uses Skype could replace.

However, the quality and connectivity has to be there for this scenario to become a reality. VOIP degrades horribly during bandwidth drains whereas cell phones and regular telephones are not. And as for connectivity? Technology like EV-DO is not widespread yet.

It’s good to see that our local paper, The Tacoma News Tribune cares about how consumers are being treated by giant corporations.

Tonight I received a call from Kim at the Tacoma News Tribune (TNT). I don’t know absolutely for certain that it was from the TNT because the caller ID was blocked but Kim sounded authentic, anyway. And she seems to have done some thorough reporting on the story.

If she is bogus, then I’m going to have some egg on my face, but hey, I’m going to run this out and see where it goes.

Apparently I owe the CompUSA sales manager, Ian, a major apology and retraction because according to Kim, the TNT contacted the CompUSA Human Resources departement to verify that I spoke to Ian and he was not working on Thursday when I called.

To keep the information accurate on this blog, I went back to part 1 and struck — not removed — Ian’s name and added a bolded statement that apparently I was in error about speaking to him. However, before anybody starts calling me a liar, this doesn’t change the rest of the story at all, just remove one person’s name and insert another under the hat of “manager” (or assistant manager, etc) because I don’t know which manager I spoke to precisely. The call lasted three minutes, it wasn’t a long discussion. I didn’t ask for a name, but a name was given and I thought “Ian” sounded correct when Nancy asked me the next day, and that’s the name that I went with in this story. I’ve learned through this that I’l be much more careful about names actually used in the future unless I am absolutely certain the name of the person. My bad there, Ian, please accept my apology.

As for the person who I did speak to.

He was a younger adult male (I’d say in his twenties by the tone and timbre of his voice), that much I can confirm from memory with precision. The name? Well, that’s a bit more difficult because I didn’t think to write it down when having a three minute brief conversation (keep reading).

I will probably never learn who I actually spoke to on Thursday, but I just pulled my Vonage VoIP records to see what time precisely that I called and I can narrow that down, see below:

You’ll note that I actually called three different times. This was because I was having some trouble figuring out how exactly to get to the store manager on duty and not talk to somebody across the country. These corporation phone systems suck for customers and are not convenient, what idiot designed them and thought they were customer-friendly? The customer wants to pick up a phone and call a local store, not call somebody online from across the country or play a video game on their phone to get to the store. The number for the local store should lead to the local store. Duh.

The reporter, Kim, also seemed to misunderstand the tone of the article as me being angry toward the Tacoma CompUSA store.

No, no, no.

No, that’s wrong. Let me be clear about this: I am not angry now nor was I then with the actual Tacoma CompUSA store or the employee, Nancy, that dealt with me on Friday. Nancy was very polite, courteous and professional and deserves a raise, not admonishment of any kind, for her treatment of me. I was not being an irrational customer or screaming and being an idiot, but I was doing my best begging and she was a real trooper. She tried her best to help me but we were both DENIED.

Look, she even wrote down and signed a piece of paper to indicate they refused to set aside or earmark a copy of TIGER. The exact quote is: ” can not pay for TIGER and pick it up at 6:00 PM” and you can clearly see the paper and signature pictured at the beginning of this blog entry above.

My prior “InCompetence” references — and the anger I felt — comes from the misinformation I was given on Thursday by whomever was working at 2:33pm PST when I called and was given totally bogus information. And got worse when I rearranged my schedule, drove the 20+ miles to get to the store — in a hard rain — only to be turned away. I had much better things to do then to waste $7+ in gas, not to mention my time which seemed to have been totally devalued in the situation.

This situation was futher irritated by the unprofessional conduct of Reggie who is Dick Winters secretary. Reggie was about as uncooperative and uncaring about the situation as could be. He wanted to make it very clear that there was nothing CompUSA would do about their mistake and even questioned whether they had even made any kind of mistake.

Yeah, Reggie, call your customers stupid. That’s the ticket.

That’s wrong, IMO, if that’s the position of the company. But I refused to believe that this was the position of the company. So I did the rational thing: took the situation to a higher power.

When I got back to my office, however, I still waited for a little while before contacting the CompUSA corporate office. If Reggie or somebody from the local Tacoma store would have just called me and said: “we are setting aside a copy of Tiger for you, so you don’t have to worry” then I probably would not have even called the corporate office. As for writing the story here? Well, it was too late to stop that train.

Where does this leave things now?

It sounds like the Tacoma News Tribune is going to possibly run this story in an upcoming business section, so those who are local may get to hear their view as reported from both sides. I’m not sure when it will happen and the reporter did say it had to be run past a manager first so that person may decide to kill the story.

I hope if they do print the story that they do clearly represent the key issues correctly and that they put the blame on Apple and their draconian business contracts (which stupidly handcuff the retail outlets and can actually create conflicts like this) and this utterly silly timed launch as well as the CompUSA regional office customer NO service.

And what about that customer NO service?

I still haven’t heard back from the Corporate CompUSA office. Not a word. Here’s my case #1-150-886-707. Maybe some MakeYouGoHmm reader will have better luck at getting somebody up there to contact this customer — me — about this inexcusable treatment by their regional office employee. Maybe the regional office manager, Dick Winters will call me, someday. The reporter indicated to me that even the newspaper had had trouble reaching him in past correspondences. How about that?! Not even the local newspaper can reach this guy? How important is he? Is he some kind of superstar or something? Did I miss this guy on the last American Idol or something?

Bottom line
The store was polite and professional, save for the misinformation given me on Thursday, but I believe they did what they were able to do thanks to an overly-anal Apple contract on Friday. As for the CompUSA corporate office? Dottie was very polite, courteous and professional and promised to “get my issue resolved” but that was Friday and when I called back all I found out was that the corporate office was closed for the weekend. Reggie? He should get a severe write-up for his conduct. I don’t want Reggie to lose his job, but if he ever treats another customer the way he treated me than he should be cut loose — and fast. Somebody please remind Reggie that internet exists and any number he refuses to give customers they can find in about 10 seonds without his help.

Oh, and it wouldn’t hurt for someone to remind Reggie who actually pays his salary. It’s not CompUSA, that’s just the name on the check. It’s people like me driving through the rain for 20+ miles to buy products and services from their stores.

We do business with Best Buy to the tune of about $6,000 a year. My money will spend good elsewhere, so it’s their perogative to blow of this customer — me. Or heck, I can do the business online. The choice is mine and I can vote with my feet.

The corporate office may not care about calling me back over a $129 Tiger purchase, but each day that goes by without that call makes every CompUSA competitor look more appealing.

And again, it’s not the actual store’s fault, even though they are being punished. I don’t blame the store, I blame the corporation because the fish stinks at the head. Stinky fish who are too busy to deal with and/or talk to customers.

Sometimes all the customer needs to know is that somebody cares and hear a meaningful apology. It sure helps if that apology comes from the top and not just the bottom. People like Dick Winters who are too busy to come out and talk to customers should find jobs where they aren’t responsible for customers.

And to end on a positive note: I was excited to hear from the TNT reporter, Kim, tonight. Thank you, Tacoma News Tribune and Kim for following this blog and I look forward to reading the story, if you should, indeed, decide to publish it.

This story (part 1, part 2) started to take a slight turn for the better when I got back to my office and called the InCompetenceUSA corporate office (1-800-266-7872). I reached Dottie who logged my complaint about the regional office and assigned a case number. Unfortunately, I would never hear from Dottie, the corporate office, the regional office, or the local Tacoma store before the 6pm Tiger launch time. I tried calling after both my radio shows and received a message that the corporate support was now closed.

Great.

So it was 4:41pm and time to decide to head to a store. My wife thought I should check out the Apple store instead of InCompetentUSA and that made sense, but after all the drama yesterday, I felt I needed to play this out; I needed to see if I would be one of the lucky 24 to snag a copy of Tiger from that store. Maybe it’s the accident scene mentality where you slow down to see if there is any carnage.

Also, I didn’t know with traffic if that would further be putting the squeeze on my meeting with WebTalkRadio. I felt like I was impolitely inconveniencing them as it already is because I was supposed to be there at 5:30pm and I asked on the day of the event to move it ahead for the Tiger launch. Again, they didn’t seem to mind at all.

I climbed into my Saturn Relay with OnStar and made the trek toward InCompetenceUSA for the second time this day. Along the way I had some thoughts and decided to call my Skype voicemail and leave them. A call first at 9:17AM, then later (the 2nd trip) 5:12pm and again right in front of the store at 5:37pm where I took the picture shown below.

I wasn’t the only nerd loitering around the Mac section of the store. An older guy who seemed pretty experienced was telling me about the different books that could be purchased. That reminded me of Nancy’s earlier statement about how they couldn’t even show us the box until 6pm. Please. When they would roll out a shopping cart twenty minutes later, the mystical box was nothing special to look at.

One of the funny things I found about the situation was how people would come up and ask about Tiger and the sales rep kept looking at the clock as if even being one second early would bring down the wrath of Steve Jobs. It’s absurd even thinking that you could buy entire books with screenshots of the guts of Tiger and step-by-step how to do things in Tiger, but they couldn’t display the box or even turn on the system running Tiger until the clock struck 6pm?

A musician was there, he totally dug Apple. All in all, there were about 15 of us waiting. There would be no problem on getting a copy. I didn’t tell them my name or anything. Nobody asked.

I did ask the rep to confirm the number of copies: “So I heard you have like 24 copies, huh?”
“Is that what they told you? No, you should be fine. We’ve got 90.”
90 copies! Not 24 copies as the sales manager had told me on Thursday and Nancy the clerk had confirmed when the store first opened. Nearly four times the copies they told me they had.

I was starting to get Mac fever talking with the other Macheads in attendence. 14 minutes, 12 minutes … 7 minutes. A couple of guys told me the shocker with about three minutes to go.

“Hey, did you know Tiger only comes in DVD format?”
My heart froze. Only DVD format? What? I have an eMac that doesn’t have a DVD drive. So I was going to be able to get Tiger but have no way to install it. Oh, man, say it isn’t so.

I verified with the clerk that the information was correct: “Is this only in DVD format?”
“Yes.”
“What about if you have an eMac? Can you just use a Firewire or USB DVD drive?”
“If it’s bootable, yes.”

Why did I get a sinking feeling that my weekend was going to be spent trying to run down an external Firewire DVD drive that was bootable so that I could install Tiger?

Somebody cried out that it was 6pm and where was Tiger? The clerk looked at his watch and seemed to agree finally that the magic hour had come. He went into the back and unceremoniously wheeled out a cart full of Tiger boxes.

The Box That Couldn’t Be Seen was essentially the same black box with blue-gray X features on their website the past couple days and a small white Apple logo. Talk about major anti-climax.

So InCompetenceUSA may never have called me back in time for the launch, but they successfully delivered the product on time and I was able to purchase a copy. That’s not too incompetent, I guess. The customer no service stuff explained mostly in part 1 and 2 sucks, but I received what I was hoping for: Tiger. Even though I can’t install it yet on my system, but at least I have The Box.

Tomorrow I’m going to begin the search for an external DVD firewire drive that is bootable as the clerk told me. I’m not very Mac experienced so if any Mac veterans managed to get this far, perhaps they can point me in the right direction? I think I’ll be hitting the Apple store at the mall later today.

I will continue this discussion at my Mac Blog, so if you want to know all about what I actually find inside The Box, then please head on over there and subscribe to the RSS. Warning: the design used there sucks in IE. Looks great in Safari though. I’ll post pictures of me with The Box too.

Oh, and one last thing, my webmaster friend FranciscoIV is pointed out that TigerDirect is suing Apple over the use of the word Tiger. We talked about this on Webtalk Radio a bit yesterday.

Hey, this story had a happy ending … if I were to write Part 4 and stay with the Trekish motiff, it would be: The Voyage Home (the one where they go back in time and get humpback whales). My voyage home isn’t quite complete though because I have one more journey: finding/buying the external DVD drive with firewire that’s bootable in Mac.

I do wonder if I’ll ever hear from anybody at CompUSA. I’ll write about how that turns out if/when I do. For those who came along for all three parts of this story, thank you for reading. For those that I burned out on this long, winding tale, ok, I’ll get back to the regular stuff now.

Yeah, it’s pretty darn obvious when you look at the Apple site that Tiger will not be available for sale until 6pm today. I’ve heard of launches at 12:01pmAM, but never a launch in the early evening. Is this the first ever wordwide launch at a specific time? Admittedly, I don’t follow the Apple stuff as closely as I follow the Windows and Linux-related stuff, but I am an Apple customer. I own the eMac.

Continuing the story …

So as I’m driving away, denied from buying Tiger, thinking: Hmm, what do I do next? The m0st logical thing seemed to be to contact Rob Greenlee to see if there was any way I could record the Webtalk Radio show after I stopped by InCompetenceUSA to hopefully be one of the lucky 24 people to get their hands on Tiger.

Rob was good-natured about the situation. The last time I was on their show, it was launch day for the PSP. Dana and he are aware of my passion for/on launch days. He said, no problem, come over after you get Tiger. Rob and Dana are nice people, that’s so cool that they didn’t mind being inconvenienced by me, Apple and InCompetenceUSA.

But there was still absolutely no guarantee that I’d actually be able to purchase Tiger at 6pm since the store had refused to set aside a copy with my name on it for me. Now what?

In my hand was the piece of paper that I had obtained from Nancy with Region #12 Regional Manager, Dick Winters office number on it. 1-800-865-4574. Call it yourself if you like and maybe Reggie will answer the phone. Tell him he’s starring on MakeYouGoHmm. I’m sure he will not be happy that I’m writing about this, but at least it gives him the chance to rebuke whether or not my description of the events that follows is accurate.

I asked to speak to Mr. Winters, the regional manager, and Reggie said that Mr. Winters was not available, but that he could get a message to him. And then Reggie asked what this was regarding and maybe he could help because he was Mr. Winter’s administrative assistant.

I started to explain the situation and Reggie cut me off about two minutes into my explanation:

“Oh, are you the guy who was just at the Tacoma store trying to buy Tiger before the launch time?” Reggie said, somewhat shortly.
“Yes, but I was told by your store manager yesterday that if I showed up before noon I’d be able to buy a copy.”
Reggie informed me that the store could not sell Tiger before 6pm. That was Apple’s policy and InCompetenceUSA would get in trouble if they violated that agreement. They could lose their contract with Apple.

“I understand that, Reggie.” I said, trying to remain patient, but definitely annoyed. “And at this point I’m not expecting your store to sell it to me early. I had plans this morning and I have plans this evening and I was concerned that when I am able to return to your store later tonight the supply will be gone.”

Reggie had a very unprofesssional attitude about the situation and at one point said: “hey, this is all over the place that it’s not available until six.”

Reggie is right that Apple was having a Worldwide Launch at 6pm tonight. See the text screenshot above. I had blogged about this launch yesterday, I already knew about what the Apple stores were doing. What I didn’t realize was that you couldn’t actually buy Tiger before 6pm from any store anywhere. I’ve never heard of such a time sensitive launch. Anybody else?

Apparently neither had the InCompetenceUSA store manager either. This might explain why he gave me the bogus info that as long as I stopped by before noon today I could purchase a copy.

Unfortunately, Reggie seemed totally disinterested in the fact that one of their store managers had given me misinformation. I wanted to know what Mr. Winters was going to do about it because I figured he was one of the few people up the corporate chain that make something happen.

“Reggie. Do you know how much gas costs right now? What about this and my time?” I asked.
“Yes,” He replied. “But we will not be reimbursing you for your gas or time. We do not do that.”
“Ok, so let me get this straight: you won’t let me talk to Mr. Winters.”
“Mr. Winters is a busy man. He has lots of trips and a busy schedule. He probably won’t be able to talk to you.”
“Then who is Mr. Winter’s boss? I’d like to speak to him. I’ll go as far up the chain as I need to, Reggie, to get somebody to talk to me about this situation.”
“I can’t give you that information.”
“You can’t tell me who Mr. Winter’s boss is?”
“I am not authorized to give you that information.”

Here I’m thinking: not a huge deal because when I get back to my office I’ll just go to their corporate website and get the information that Reggie refused to give me over the phone. The power of information on the internet! Thanks Reggie, your boss might be named Dick, but you actually are one.

It still miffed me that this guy was being so totally unhelpful and discourteous to a customer with a legitimate complaint. The store help was much more courteous but equally unhelpful. So, I repeated my request:

“I would like to speak Mr. Winters to discuss this situation, Reggie.”
“I told you that I would leave him a message, but he’s probably not going to have time to get back with you. He isn’t going to do anything for you.”
“Mr. Winters doesn’t have time to talk to a customer?”
“He is a busy man. I said that I would get him the message.”

Too busy to talk to a customer is all that I heard. Too busy. The conversation between Reggie and I escalated to the point to where I didn’t think anybody would believe that I was being treated so poorly. So I told Reggie that I was recording the conversation. This was my mistake because I wasn’t actually recording the conversation, but I had my Pocket PC nearby and thought that I could pull over to the side of the road, fire that up and record him telling me that Mr. Winters was too busy to talk to his customer. I figured Reggie would provide an excellent soundbite for his boss when he denied ever telling me that.

But Reggie lost it with me. He said I was breaking the law for recording a conversation without his permission and he had nothing further to say to me. He then hung up on me.

I waited a minute and then called Reggie back. He answered on the second ring and I repeated who I was and said to him: “Reggie, I was not actually recording any of our conversation, I was ABOUT TO record our conversation.”
“That’s not what you said! I don’t trust that you aren’t recording this conversation right now!”

Frankly, I wish I had recorded the conversation so that I could play it on my show, but Washington has two party consent recording laws and before the tape rolls you do need both parties permission. Breaking the law for a sound bite wasn’t worth it. I didn’t have Reggie’s permission and I obviously went about it all wrong attempting to get his permission. My bad there. Anyway, there’s no tape, sorry. No recording of our conversation to share. My description of the events will have to suffice.

Now before Reggie made me eat dialtone again, I said: “Reggie, Reggie, please, I’m not recording our conversation. I don’t think you understand what I’m asking for here. I would like to speak to Mr. Winters.”
“I already told you I will give him the message.”
“I don’t think you understand what my problem is with this situation, Reggie. All I hear from people at CompUSA this morning is how you can’t do this and can’t do that. I called you in advance yesterday, talked to your manager about purchasing a product today, found out what time your store opened, adjusted my schedule and was there shortly after the time you opened as I said I would be and my business was turned away.”

Then Reggie said something that totally blew me away.
“I am not sure you ever had that conversation, sir.” Reggie said.

Now I was starting to lose my temper. This administrative assistant of Dick’s was insinuating that I lied about the conversation? What’s up with that?

“Wait a minute, Reggie. If I didn’t call yesterday then please tell me how I know exactly how many copies of Tiger you have in the back of your store? The manager was very specific that there were two boxes with a total of 24 copies.”
“I don’t know for sure that this information is correct.”
“Reggie, I asked them if this was correct this morning when I was there and they said it was correct.”

Reggie still wasn’t buying it, but at last he agreed to do the one thing I wanted done from the beginning: “I will call the store and ask them to set aside a copy of Tiger with your name on it so that you can pick it up later.”
“Thank you, Reggie. Now can I get the information for Mr. Winter’s boss. I would still like to talk to somebody.”
“I can’t give that information to you.”

Through this heated exchange, Reggie never bothered to collect my phone number so that he could in fact call me back once he called the store. Instead, he kept insisting that “there was no way you will be compensated for your gas and time” and the strong likelihood that Mr. Winters would ever call me back.

The thing about this was if they had thrown me any kind of bone like: “Hey we’ll give you a coupon or discount for your time and trouble. It was our mistake.” I would have been happy with that, but when they call me a liar (not in so many words) then it’s time to take this all the way up the corporate ladder until I find somebody that does give a damn about the customer. But instead this administrative assistant, the gatekeeper, was treating me like I did something wrong. It was my ignorance that I didn’t know they couldn’t sell the product until 6pm and I should have known better even though the store sales manager told me otherwise!

I was upset that nobody seemed to be taking any responsibility for giving me bad information and that it took me basically insulting Reggie to get any sort of action. I’m not so certain that if I had spoken to Mr Winters that I wouldn’t have been given the runaround that his secretary was giving me.

Eventually the conversation descended into Reggie hanging up on me — a second time because he resented my one-time use of the word “secretary” to describe his position underneath Dick Winters.

It’s a cold winter at regional office #12. I couldn’t script the names of these characters any better. Too bad it’s real!

So Reggie hung up, refusing to give me the information for Dick Winters boss. No way was I going to let this go now.

I called back — a third time — five minutes later and Reggie didn’t answer. Perhaps he was call screening? I left a message on the machine with my name and business phone number so that Mr. Winters could call me back. This is one of the most ironic parts. Isn’t one of the functions of an adminstrative assistant supposed to be actually taking messages? I had to call three times to be able to leave my contact information — on a machine!

I sure hope that Reggie is better at taking messages from others than he was with me. That message was left several hours ago now and when I hadn’t heard back from Mr. Winters or anybody else from InCompetenceUSA, I decided to go find the corporate contact information.

Now as I write this my radio show starts — live — in less than 30 minutes. This could get real interesting as I don’t know how I’ll be able to take the call on the business line while I’m live on the air doing the show (we take callers and have guests on the radio show).

Yeah, this could get real interesting.

This story is far from over yet. I still don’t have Tiger of course — it’s not 6pm yet, nor do I have confirmation that InCompetenceUSA is holding a copy of it for me because of their sales manager’s mistake (that would be the right thing to do). Readers will be able to see a teaser of part three at Blog Event. Oh, yes, there’s more, because I did get in touch with somebody at the corporate office …

Before telling this story, let me admit up front that I clearly didn’t investigate this Wordwide Apple Premier launch tonight of Tiger OS X 10.4 very well. Tonight at 6pm PST they are actually launching Tiger, you cannot buy it before then. Don’t listen to what retail store managers, employees, anybody who doesn’t have their hands actually on the boxes in front of you, because us customers are not supposed to be able buy it before then.

At least that’s what I’m being told. Now let me explain in detail:

I’ve been planning to talk about Tiger on my Script School and Webmaster Cookbook Radio show today. Tiger is supposed to 200+ features which would give a lot to talk about. The plan was to document the trip to the store — complete with audio taken from the car trip — over. The problem: I didn’t preorder Tiger so I had no idea if I’d even be able to get a copy of it on launch day.

So I called the closest store that sells Apple products: CompUSA in Tacoma, Washington. I spoke to the manager there, Ian

(this is inaccurate, I would learn on Monday evening May 2, thanks to a reporter from the Tacoma News Tribune, I did not speak to Ian — sorry Ian for wrongly fingering you. Ian wasn’t even working that day. I simply pressed the number to speak to a “manager.” I will write a new entry with more on this conversation with the reporter in a new entry. Try to call the number yourself and get to a manager for the Tacoma store. The automated phone system is a bit convoluted.)

… who informed me that yes, they had Tiger in stock and that they had two boxes — totalling 24 copies of Tiger OS X 10.4. I asked him how early I should get there to have a chance at being able to buy one of those copies.

“As long as you get here by noon, you should be ok.” Ian, CompUSA manager told me.
“What time do you open?” I asked.
“Nine o’clock.”
“Ok, I’ll be there at opening time.”

So I re-arranged my morning schedule so that I could leave and be there at the Tacoma CompUSA store around 9 o’clock. I even blogged about it right before I left this morning. Also, last night I wrote about how I’d be writing more now that I was (hopefully) getting a copy of Tiger over on my Mac blog. I indicated in that post that I knew about the World Premiere.

On my way over to IncompetenceUSA this morning, I called via OnStar hands-free phone back to my Vonage voice mail to talk about my excitement of the experience driving to the store. Later today on the Script School Radio show I’ll be playing this audio. I also tried calling my new Skype voicemail from OnStar. I realized something new while doing this: since there is no numeric keypad I couldn’t press star (*) to record/review the message.

(Sidenote: I called the always-friendly OnStar and they said that they are working on something with this and hopefully there will be a way to “upgrade” service so that you can press numbers for automated phone systems).

The picture above clearly shows the type of morning: hard, miserable rain. At one point in the trip I was two car lengths behind a police officer who apparently didn’t like that I was even that close (I was travelling five miles beneath the speed limit) and he flashed his lights briefly at me. I slowed down to make it three car lengths … and then another motorist cut between us anyway.

With the rain I arrived about fifteen minutes after the store opened. I was delighted to see that they had the exit doors wide open so I could walk in through that way as opposed to walking around the outside of the store in the downpour. That is pretty much the only right thing that happened from this moment forward.

As I walked toward the back of the store I saw the familiar black Panther OS X 10.3 boxes lined up in the distance. I didn’t see anything Tiger-related. Nothing. Nadda. Zippo.

A sinking feeling crept over me. I saw a clerk milling about near the Mac section of the store and I asked him: “Excuse me, what about Tiger?”
“That isn’t available until 6pm.” The clerk said politely.
I clenched my teeth and forced a smile, thinking: So I just drove approximately 20 miles on the advice of the store manager to get here before noon and I should “be ok” and they couldn’t even sell it to me until 6pm?

I moved around for a minute, gathering my thoughts and trying not to lose my cool. It wasn’t the clerk’s fault that their manager had apparently given me bogus information. Toward the back of the store another woman named Nancy asked if she could help me. I explained to Nancy that I’d called and spoken to the store manager yesterday and he told me I could purchase a copy of Tiger before noon.

Nancy went into a backroom and consulted with a higher power while I waited. About a minute or so she came back and said, “Sorry, we can’t sell that before 6pm. It’s a corporate policy. A deal with Apple.”

After grousing a bit about the situation, next I tried to negotiate with Nancy to find out if since I had come all this way I could pay for Tiger then and just pick it up later after the launch time. Tonight at 5:30pm I already had a scheduled committment to be recording a WebTalk Radio show and I wouldn’t be able to be at their store until well after 6pm PST. I was worried if I came back at say 7 or 7:30pm then the 24 copies they had would be gone. So then I’d have wasted two trips worth of gas and time to be DENIED both times.

She said there was nothing they could do. They couldn’t take my credit card info and hold it, then charge the order at 6pm and then let me return later and pick it up. Nothing they could — or would do — to even earmark a copy for me. Yes, I asked, but it didn’t matter how many times I asked or how politely I asked — no deal. Nancy was pleasant about it, as if understanding why I was frustrated. I wasn’t expecting them to break a corporate agreement with Apple, but I was worried that by the time I came back later tonight I’d be too late. If the manager hadn’t told me that I could buy it this morning, I never would have come to the store.

I started walking to the exit and Nancy walked along with me. I kept pleading with her to please try again and see if there was any way they could like layaway one copy of Tiger so that I could be sure to have a copy later this evening after the 6pm time. If she’d have told me: pay us an extra $20 USD I would have glady done that. I was still very much in the negotiation mode.

Nancy stopped, smiled and went back into that office in the back to give it “one more try.” She consulted with someone, or somebody, and came back out shortly with a disappointed look.

“Sorry. Nothing we can do. We aren’t even supposed to show you the box.”

Huh? Not even supposed to show me the box? So is Apple paranoid about people seeing the fricking packaging or what?

It was obvious that I wasn’t going to have any luck with the store so I decided to go up the chain of authority and asked who the district/regional manager was for the Tacoma store and for their contact information. The minute you ask for the bosses number the air of tension in a room increases. They did give me the information, but somewhat reluctanctly. I had to basically insist.

Also, as I’ll show you a little later, I had Nancy actually write down on a piece of paper that they couldn’t sell me a copy and then let me pick it up after 6pm. She signed it. On that same piece of paper is the name of the region #12 manager, Dick Winters.

I was thinking maybe this Mr. Winters could contact the store manager and see that one copy of Tiger was set aside with my name on it? Again, I wasn’t expecting the store to violate their agreement with Apple, but at the same time I felt that because the store manager (not an employee who might not have known better, mind you, a manager) gave a customer bad information they should try to do something to make the situation right. I also was annoyed about the gas and time wasted.

Now let me sound off for a minute about how utterly stupid and anti-customer a 6pm launch time. I understand launch days, they make good marketing sense, but launch times? What the hell is Apple thinking? What’s next? 4:20 launch times, complete with bong sale? When customers want to buy, you sell, Apple, what is your problem? This is horrible marketing in my opinion. You never want to send customers with money in hand packing.

Of course if I had pre-ordered I wouldn’t have anything to bitch about. Well, here’s the problem with pre-ordering: where’s the fun in that? Part of the fun of buying something on launch day is the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat (when everybody else has already bought all the copies). To me, this is like Christmas day, I look forward to launch days.

I don’t look forward to launch hours.

Now this story isn’t over yet. It gets better. Much. I’ll cover that in part 2: contacting the InCompetenceUSA regional office #12 …

I first came into contact with Skype in September 2003 and this is the 75th Skype-related entry. Way back then they talked about ways to make money and how certain future features would cost money. They now have over 105 million downloads and today I was happy to do a little business with them. Yes, I just decided that 30 euros a year ($39 USD and some change) was worth it for a SkypeIN account with voicemail.

Looking through my contact list I see roughly 5% of the people have SkypeIN activated. Now my voicemail is set too … hmm, wonder who will leave me the first (non-family member ) voicemail? (253) 843-6283.

Update: Forgot to mention, they are accepting Visa and MC now, not just PayPal only. A week ago when I checked it was only PayPal and Moneybookers.

Just added some dynamic area graphs to the finance category. Currently these are tracking the activity of the four stocks S & P put a buy signal on last month: Ask Jeeves (ASKJ), Google (GOOG), Value Click (VCLK) and Yahoo (YHOO) as well as Apple (APPL). These should update every 30 minutes during trading days.

GasBuddy.com helps users find and share cheaper gas prices in their local areas. I noticed that in our area there was Seattle, Spokane, Tacoma and Washington (state) listed as the actual content websites. GasBuddy is just a portal that leads to other websites for the details (and detailed ad targeting, I presume). Spokane is across the state and Seattle, though close, is not exactly near our area, so I chose the closest: Tacoma (which led to the content site: tacomagasprices.com) and found listings for Puyallup (pictured above). Prices listed were a good 5-10 cents per gallon cheaper than what we’ve been paying for regular unleaded lately. I didn’t verify the accuracy of the data provided.

The website has some pesky overlay ads that you see some of the news sites using these days, but hey it’s a free service so can’t complain too much there.

Users earn points by entering gas prices, voting in the opinion poll, post messages on the message forum etc.. These points can be used to participate in raffles to earn “valuable prizes.” I registered, though I don’t know how much I’d ever report back gas prices (seems like they are always high wherever we are) and saw that I received 100 GasBuddy points just for joining. Here’s their request once you get registered:

We rely on individual consumers like you to submit gas prices to the web site. Now that you are a member, you can help everyone find low priced gas prices. Next time you’re out, make a note of the gas prices that you pass on your daily route and post them to the web site for everyone to see.

They also list other things you can do on their website like seeing where gas prices have been with historical gas price charts, keep track of fuel expenses and fuel economy in a fuel logbook (smart!), view the tax rates in your state or across the country, receive gas conservation tips, vote in weekly polls and more. I tried clicking the link to put real-time gas prices on our website and ended up at a server error page. Looks like the backend is: Microsoft .NET Framework Version:1.1.4322.2032; ASP.NET Version:1.1.4322.2032

Check out their Conduct Regulations:

Members who abuse the web site by posting erroneous prices, use vulgar language or degrade the web site in any other way will immediately have their membership suspended.

So no posting: “Hey man, I just got gas for a buck a gallon!” You have to know they’ve got some lamers working that angle. GasBuddy is a good idea and seeme pretty well executed from my limited review. Grade: B

When S & P Equity Research recommened buying four stocks last month, I decided to run an experiment. One of those stocks already appears in question. Marketwatch is reporting:

Amid the rush by investors on Friday to snatch up shares of Google after its better-than-expected earnings, Wall Street was also making a larger statement: Sell Yahoo.

Sell? But I just bought it. Oddly enough, I bought Apple a few days ago and that’s been on the downward spiral. Hopefully with Tiger coming out this Friday that will help a bounce take effect. Overall though the portfolio of these four stocks is performing well.

Yahoo has been active recently, particularly with their API, which IMO is one of the most generous APIs out there. I’m curious about what Yahoo continues to do on this front. They seem the most open to API interacation so far, even though Google has had an API for awhile and MSN? Well, they desperately need to release at least some kind of API. Maybe this is one of the things in the pipe?