I had to get up early to take care of baby Jenna. The ritual of trying to get the volume down so I don’t wake up the wife while turning to CNBC is always a struggle (why does the TV return to previous volume anyway?)

Jenna required that I do my TV adjustments, and write this blog, one-handed. This has led to a very unfortunate event of the tube landing on HipHop Harry at full volume. If you haven’t seen it (and why would you have) it’s basically Barney in the hood. Except that the hood is full of suburban Maine (or Utah) kids who have had too many coffees.

I don’t know what I could really say about the show except..”Man am I old”

We put a grand into this  comparison shopping engine to try to get some more of you wonderful customers. It became clear that this was just a waste of money for us. The bounce rate (% of customers that leave upon arrival) was far higher than any other source we use. And every week or so they demand that you reload your database … who has time for that?

No problem, you try something it does’t work, you stop and cut your losses.  Not so with these guys.. they wont give me back my $531 we still have left in our account.   We either use it or lose it.  I guess we could fight with my CC company, no way this can be legit.  But we’re too busy running a business we don’t have time to fight.

Of course every business has their own unique target audience and advertising that works for one business may not work for all, but id suggest you go to one of the other engines who don’t hold your money ransom.

I do not understand how the US functions. I would say that 50% of all transactions we deal with are done incorrectly. This is true with every company across every line of business. I think what separates the bad companies from the good companies is how they handle their mistakes.

Good companies will accept ownership of the problem and look for a solution rather than looking for the blame. Very good companies will accept ownership and limit the error rate to a much more manageable rate.

Excellent companies are few and far between and simply don’t make mistakes ro make them so rarely that you are shocked when they happen.

We deal with hundreds of companies and I just riffled through the folders and the only one I could come up with that falls into this definition of excellence is “The Ski and Snowboard News” a small local paper. Jon says the vending machine next door always works, but I’m not giving anyone props for that.

As for us, well we strive for excellence but we are admittedly not there yet. I definitely think we are a very good company. So if you do run into a problem you won’t find us blaming you.