Making sense of air travel fees:

6 07 2009

JetBlue now charges $7 for a pillow and blanket that air travelers can keep. Delta will charge you an extra $25 to book a ticket by phone. Northwest charges $3 for a headset.

If all these extra airline charges have you confused, you might want to visit USA Today’s website for a recent story that details the way airlines are offsetting rising fuel costs with surcharges that sometimes come close to doubling the price of the ticket itself. Their story also features a nifty chart that compares the price of booking tickets by phone, getting a preferred seat, checking up to three bags, ordering drinks, and bringing your pet along.

In a related story, marketing guru Seth Godin recently blogged about an odd experience he had flying Air Canada where he learned that an oversized duffel bag would cost an extra $80 to bring on board, unless it contained hockey gear.


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Categories : customer service, other mentions, resources + tools, travel, trends, water cooler

Erasing permanent marker from a white board:

4 07 2009
Markers and White Boards

Here’s another cool office trick I saw this weekend that I simply had to pass on.

How do you erase permanent marker from a white board?

Easy. Cover the markings that were accidentally made with a permanent marker, with new markings from a dry erase marker. Make sure to trace and add an outline to what you want to erase, and use a dry erase marker of the same, or darker color.

Then wipe it all away the way you would normally do.


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Categories : how to, office macgyver, other mentions

A positive spin on (undeserved) bad reviews:

2 07 2009

Thinking PositivelyThey say when life gives you lemons you should make lemonade. San Francisco’s Pizzeria Delfina has taken that idea a step further.

When the restaurant noticed it was a getting a few surprisingly negative reviews on yelp (a website that allows consumers to review restaurants, retail outlets, night life, and service companies) they decided to take action. No, they didn’t bombard yelp with positive reviews about its delicious New York-style thin-crust pies or artisanal salume (salami). They decided to laugh off any negative publicity they received with an ingenious in-store marketing campaign instead.

The restaurant made a number of t-shirts for its staff to wear that feature some of the more negative one-star reviews they have received:

  • This place sucks.
  • The pizza was soooo greasy. I am assuming this was in part due to the pig fat.
  • We got some pizza that was a joke – it had very little sauce, a light layer of cheese, and a mere four basil leaves for the six slices. How chintzy
  • A four year old could do better by pouring some tomato sauce on a piece of bread.

While one might laugh at a business that routinely offered poor customer service if they took this kind of approach, this pizza place’s reviews are overwhelming positive – less then three percent of the people reviewing them gave them a one-star review – so their reaction is more than justified. What’s more, their regular, loyal customers are laughing right along with them.


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Categories : customer service, other mentions, small business, trends, water cooler

Take a plane trip by Kayak:

30 06 2009

If you’re looking for a mini getaway this summer, and you’re hoping to find a deal on airfare, you might want to give Kayak a try.

This site is a lot like the many other travel websites out there that compare airfare, but it does them one better – it pulls data from the major airlines and competing travel sites (like Expedia, Travelocity and Priceline), making this a sort of one-stop shop to finding the best deals online.

Kayak also lets you pick your flight times, aircraft type, and layover duration, and in the case of hotels, the number of stars, hotel brands and amenities.


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Categories : other mentions, resources + tools, travel, websites

Despair and demotivation:

29 06 2009

Despair

If a pretty poster and a cute saying are all it takes to motivate you, you probably have an easy job. The kind robots will be doing soon.

That’s the philosophy you’ll find at Despair, an online store that specializes in making a mockery of the motivation industry. Their unique line of acerbic but funny posters, calendars, and mugs, parody the inspirational posters some companies hang as art.

If you can relate to the humor found on NBC’s The Office, then you’ll be laughing yourself silly at their “demotivators” and the tongue-in-cheek tone of their website.

What’s more, Despair has recently added a Corporate Spin section on their site that features some “instructional” videos about the “art of demotivation”.

One such film addresses the problem of employee complaints, and shows you how to “delegitimize” them by creating an “it can be worse” program:

“It’s one thing to be unhappy with your headset, it’s another to lose your job,” says the executive in this parody of a management training video, as he accidentally drops a fake brochure for a call center in India that specializes in outsourcing, hoping this will scare his staff and stop their complaining.


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Categories : other mentions, trends, water cooler, websites

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