Customer Service and Product Knowledge

Were you speaking in Mandarin or Cantonese? It makes a difference.

--Winston

Sorry about that. I guess I like to kick up a little dust every once in a while. Maybe just left over angst from trying to mark half of 6

23.4/64" off of my Starrett rule... I think there's still some sweat left on the garage floor.

Economics prevailed in observing that TV sets are less costly to make outside the US, no? Economics is objective, not subjective like fiscal policy.

I largely agree with, and worry about, the observations you made above. Somebody must be tabulating all of this somewhere..

I took a good look the NoteSHADES? You would suggest that I, *moi?*, worry too much? ; ) j/k--I can see that NoteSHADES has it's place!

Hmm. Freakonomics appears to be an interesting collections of truths that would sadden me but not surprise me. Thanks for mentioning it.

Gosh the other book looks good too. I put in on my favorites list in case I can collect it sometime.

(...)

_Freakonomics_, _SuperFreakonomics_ and _Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion_ are all very good.

I read Cialdini's _Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion_ I found it glaringly obvious when someone was attempting to use one of the Six "Weapons of Influence" on me. Very useful, that was.

I also really like _Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds_

--Winston

Is that so?

6 = half dozen.

Yeah, the gov't, the unions, and the corporations. Who helped shove mfg offshore by taxation? Who overpriced labor until our public wouldn't buy local products? And who took all that into consideration and said "Fuck it. We'll produce it overseas where neither of those major stumbling blocks exists."

They were of much more value on the old b/w and early color screens. What's the reference to worry, though? You lost me.

Yeah, interesting book. I'm about 1/3 of the way thorugh it now, after finishing _Who Moved My Cheese?_. Next up is Martin's _Tabletop Machining_.

It's an amazing book. One tip from it might save your life. If you're ever in a major disaster/car wreck, whatever, and you can't move, don't look up and see a crowd and yell "Somebody help me." They probably won't do it. But if you look one person straight in the eyes and say "You, in the blue jacket! Please help me!", chances are good that they'll not only help you, they'll get others to come to your rescue, too. Chapter: Social Proof.

-- The whole life of man is but a point of time; let us enjoy it. -- Plutarch

Yes, it is handy knowledge. Have you ever asked them, right then, "How is old Bob Cialdini, anyway?" Oh, the looks that'll get you!

Sad!

I picked up _Predictably Irrational_ after hearing about it here (or on the Wreck?) last year but still haven't read it. I keep putting other books on top of it in my stack. (My stack is now off the floor, taking up all 5 shelves on a 3'x7' bookshelf.)

-- The whole life of man is but a point of time; let us enjoy it. -- Plutarch

Well, I thought that their main purpose was to keep someone else's eyes off of your laptop screen. I guess it just depends what you wish to use them for.

(...)

I would be surprised if any of these sales guys would understand the reference. I suspect they are directed from a sales script. :)

--Winston

They're still perfect for airplane travel privacy.

-- The whole life of man is but a point of time; let us enjoy it. -- Plutarch

I forgot to say that I developed them for an attorney client of mine who wanted to use her laptop in the park in the sun while watching her little girl play on the swings and monkey bars. They did the job very well for that so I made and started selling them.

-- The whole life of man is but a point of time; let us enjoy it. -- Plutarch

Yeah, prolly, but hope springs eternal.

-- The whole life of man is but a point of time; let us enjoy it. -- Plutarch

=============== All economists wish this were the case, and many believe it. However, IMNSHO, much of economics is based on unproven, indeed unprovable, assumptions and asseverations, and as such is on a par with theology and numerology.

If you take the time to try to read economic papers, you will find such gems as "assuming perfect knowledge,"assuming costless transfers/transactions," and "assuming a rational buyer." The last assumption is particularly egregious as even the economists making/stating this assumption know that even their buying and other decisions are not made fully on economic grounds but include many other factors such as social status or ethnic bias.

Economics is *HIGHLY* subjective, and much of the work is slanted depending on who is paying for it, i.e. the customer is always right, or the ideology of the economist. Compare and contrast the findings of Marxist economists, Keynesian economists, and libertarian/Austrian/Chicago School economists when they consider the current economic situation.

If you were talking to the guy at the local store, he probably could have answered the question. It sounds to me like you were talking to someone that only has a computer screen in front of them and no training. If the phone number for the local store is not listed on the web page, try the phone directory or next time you are in the neighborhood stop in and get the phone number.

I went through crap like this when I called the phone company. Instead of talking to the local business office, I was talking to a sales department in Minnesota. When I asked for the local number so I could get a hold of the installer if I needed to. It was an impossibility, cant do it, Not allowed. Funny thing was when the installer did show up he gave me his card with his cell phone number, the local office number, and his personal e-mail and direct line at the office. When I told him that the folks on the other end of the line in Minnesota could not give me his number he laughed and said he had no clue why that would be, he is happy to take calls as it makes his scheduling so much easier.

ceteris paribus.

The last assumption is particularly egregious as

I think you are getting your economics mixed up with your fiscal policy. Economics has absolutely nothing to do with "who is paying for it". I may not have read as many economic papers as you, but it's possible as I majored in econ as an undergraduate. I still have a non-professional interest. It appears you may be one of the majority who were forced to take a course in it, or you are letting politics cloud your vision.

I think there are several issues here:

1 - Call centers are often separate from the inventory location. Very often the person taking the call cannot just walk back to the shelf and cast an eye upon the merchandise. In many cases the warehousing function is outsourced to a company that handles is for several disparate wholesaleres 2 - Many sellers today are nothing more than shells, with fulfillment agreements in place with distributors or manufacturers who could be in Newark or Shanghai. They never see nor touch the merchandise, and often know little about the subject. 3 - It's much cheaper to invest in a superior ecatalog than to hire people who know something. And when you do hire someone with a real depth of knowledge, 90% of them inject some BS when they get beyond their real knowledge. That gets you in trouble.

In my experience, the best buying experience comes from small, closely held firms where the owner/entrepreneur opens up every morning. Once they grow to multiple locations only a very few CEOs have the capability of extending the business culture beyond the original location. I appreciate those who can do it, I was never one who could.

=============== You and others that are following this subthread should find the following of interest:

Are Wall Street mega-banks so powerful and sprawling that they threaten our entire capitalist system? That's the claim being made by one top Federal Reserve official.

In a speech at New York University Monday (pdf), Thomas Hoenig, the president of the Kansas City Fed, argued that the biggest and most complex banks are "fundamentally inconsistent with capitalism." His remarks came just two days after global banking regulators agreed to require big banks to hold onto extra capital in order to reduce the risk of bank failures like those that occurred during the financial crisis of 2008.

"So long as the concept of a [systemically important financial institution, or SIFI] exists, and there are institutions so powerful and considered so important that they require special support and different rules," declared Hoenig, who is known as a hawk on monetary policy, "the future of capitalism is at risk and our market economy is in peril."

That's because, he argued, the existence of banks that are understood to be "too big to fail" distorts the functioning of the free market. "For capitalism to work, businesses, including financial firms, must be allowed, or compelled, to compete freely and openly and must be held accountable for their failures," Hoenig said. "Only under these conditions do markets objectively allocate credit to those businesses that provide the highest value."

The speech:

Why?

>

If you say that enough, you start to believe it.

"Americans make more =93stuff=92=92 than any other nation on earth, and by = a wide margin. According to the United Nations=92 comprehensive database of international economic data, America=92s manufacturing output in 2009 (expressed in constant 2005 dollars) was $2.15 trillion. That surpassed China=92s output of $1.48 trillion by nearly 46 percent. China=92s industries may be booming, but the United States still accounted for 20 percent of the world=92s manufacturing output in 2009 =97 only a hair below its 1990 share of 21 percent."

Gunner Asch on Wed, 29 Jun 2011 14:57:43 -0700 typed in rec.crafts.metalworking the following:

And some came back. Shipping and handling, customs, quality control issues. More is likely to come back as the Chinese workers start not only demanding more pay, but getting it.

... averaging 5.4 major corporate "disinvestment events" a week so far this year. Which are estimated to be about 20% of the actual "disinvestment events" actually occurring.

Note that this is coming from the main voice of the Radical Center -- the New America Foundation. I find that interesting, because this is not a new idea.

Those old enough to remember will recognize this set of suggestions from the period 1975 - 1985. Japan was cleaning our clock and there were calls from labor, academia, and labor-oriented Democrats for a national industrial policy. Conservatives, led by Milton Friedman and the Reagan Administration, were opposed, for some reasons that sounded good and that proved to have some merit, after Japan got itself into some very expensive jams as a result of their own industrial policy (the jams were mostly a matter of being late, or overcommitted, to various semiconductor and computer technologies).

However, we're still in the same fix, while Germany is running a positive balance of trade, and while the cure that the conservatives had predicted didn't come to pass. That is (and this came from the Chicago School -- Friedman and his cohorts), the prediction was that a negative balance of trade would automatically restore itself to something close to a zero balance because the deficit country (the US) would see its currency devalued on world currency markets and prices of imports would correspondingly go up, while our exports would get cheaper. Everyone is happy; harmony is restored; world without end, amen.

Only it didn't happen, for various reasons, of which China's intentional devaluation is only a small part.

Anyway, looking for ways to fix it, Hindery has hit on something that's rarely talked about in the consumer press, but which is another example of the US bending over for the rest of the world, in the name of ideological purity. We don't do countertrade.

"According to an official US statement, 'The U.S. Government generally views countertrade, including barter, as contrary to an open, free trading system and, in the long run, not in the interest of the U.S. business community. However, as a matter of policy the U.S. Government will not oppose U.S. companies' participation in countertrade arrangements unless such action could have a negative impact on national security.'" (Office of Management and Budget; "Impact of Offsets in Defense-related Exports," December, 1985).

I wrote a lengthy article on trade in military goods back around 2003 or so, and I nearly fell off my chair when I found out how much of it goes on, particularly in the form of offsets. Boeing can't sell a freaking 737 to another country, military or not, without agreeing to nearly 100% or MORE -- up to 125% -- in offsets. That means that for $1,000,000 worth of airplane sold to, say, Italy, an aircraft company has to buy $1,250,000 worth of goods from Italy. In general, although I can't speak specifically for Boeing, much of that is stuff that the US manufacturing company will purchase through trading companies and never take possession of. The trading company will turn around and sell it -- car parts, men's suits, whatever -- on the US consumer market. Often, this takes the form of requiring huge amounts of "domestic" content for the product being sold. Boeing has to make a lot of parts for a 767 in China, or China will buy from Airbus, who will be perfectly happy to make parts in China.

We don't do much in the way of tariffs, which probably is a very good thing. We don't do much with quotas anymore, which is a less-good thing. And we don't do countertrade, which is a very stupid thing.

The Japanese couldn't figure out why we don't "protect ourselves," as they put it. Neither can I. It isn't just developing countries that do it. France does it. Germany does it. That's a significant part of how they keep their trade from going into deficit.

Back to the question of industrial policy: It runs up against the pure form of neoclassical (conservative) economics, which says not to put any restrictions on trade. But are conservatives ready to spring for such a policy now? I haven't kept up with the conservative catechism, so maybe someone else knows.