Zappos, Spirit Airlines and the BoSox

Business Blog Consulting had a nice post last week about the awesome customer service of Zappos, and the horrid customer service of Spirit Airlines. Now I have never used either of these companies, I don’t fly much and I buy all my clothes (OK, not all, but most) from Ross. Actually bought a way cool pair of Rocket Dog shoes for $13 last week on clearance at Ross – way cheaper than Zappos.

Regardless, if Zappos customer service is as good as it sounds, YOU should probably buy from them.

On a completely unrelated note, the Boston Red Sox swept our Colorado Rockies in the World Series last night. I guess The Lisa was right about her beloved baseball team. Grrr…

Thoughts on self-employment

One thing just struck me this week. After six months of self employment I made a realization.

For my whole work life, my normal day was spent watching the clock. This isn’t to say that I didn’t have a good work ethic and my employers weren’t happy with my work, but every day was a timed event.

These days I find that work is much different. I still work a fairly normal 8-5 work day, of course with much more flexibility, but I gauge my day much more on the tasks that are in my inbox. I often find myself working on things late into the night, or on the weekends. The days seem to flow together much differently than they used to.

ecommerce software

So, anyone out there know what the killer online store software is?

Currently I’m working with creloaded, and am NOT impressed. It’s buggy, requires a tremendous amount of code editing for proper installation, has a limited feature set like no support for local (city/county) tax zones, poorly documented and just hard to use overall – and I bought the ‘pro’ version.

If anyone has thoughts or reviews on store software, please let me know.

Don’t make your Compass Bank payment early

A little over a year ago I moved my bank account to Compass Bank. Everything has been excellent since then… until today.

Today, I was checking my bank account online and I found that there was a late charge on my Credit Card statement. This seemed odd to me since I have made regular payments. The Compass Credit Card statement comes in the mail, not electronically, and isn’t even visible through the online interface. Since I can’t see the statements online, I typically just pay more than the minimum amount monthly and don’t worry about the actual due dates. This hasn’t ever been a problem until this month.

Between June 20 and August 10th I made three payments, all about three times the monthly payment. Unfortunately, the second payment, made in the first week of July, was ONE DAY before the actual date of the statement.

Looking at my account, I assumed this was the issue, so I called the Compass credit card people. After entering my credit card number into the phone four times, going through several levels of menus, explaining the situation multiple times to the young woman that finally answered and being on hold for about 20 minutes, she explained the situation. The payment was early (which I already assumed), so she couldn’t refund the late payment fee.

Just to clarify, I was penalized by the Compass Bank credit card division for making a payment a day early. Insane.

YouTube sued by ‘indie’ music publisher?

Read this article today about YouTube’s defense of the lawsuit brought by Viacom and other copyright holders.

One thing that caught my eye was

…lawsuits brought against YouTube by Viacom International Inc., England’s top soccer league — The Football Association Premier League Ltd. — and indie music publisher Bourne Co.

I thought to myself, “Wow, an Indie music publisher is suing YouTube?”. So I decided to do some research.

First, for those of you not really acquainted with the indie music and film scene, there is a certain connotation that goes along with the term indie (short for independant).

Wikipedia defines indie like this:

The term indie is short for “independent” and refers to artistic creations outside the commercial mainstream, without the support of a major record label, major movie studio, or other source of a large budget.

So, I did some research on this so called indie music publisher, Bourne Co.

BOURNE CO., one of the largest independent international music publishers, has since its founding in 1919, never lost its passion for the art of song writing or its deep respect for the creative processes involved in that art

So, they are one of the largest publishers of sheet music in the world. In this context, independant means ‘privately owned’, not ‘outside the commercial mainstream’. It really sounds to me like either the author of the article, Viacom or the AP is trying to spin this and make it sound like indie musicians are against YouTube, and that is just not the case. In reality it’s just a bunch of large companies (Viacom, Bourne Co., Football Association Premier League) angry because YouTube is making money off content they ‘own’. In reality, these publishers should be suing the individuals that actually post the copyrighted content to YouTube, but as the RIAA has shown us, that’s not a great PR move.

The Lisa

Lisa Barone at Bruce Clay, INC recently discussed positioning and branding. I find this interesting for two reasons. One because I am working hard to position my own company e-Marketing Partner, and two because I am currently reading

The Lisa comments on the sights and smells of Starbucks – a company who has mastered the art of branding and positioning. Starbucks has made their name synonymous with coffee and turned what used to be a 25 cent beverage into a multi-billion dollar empire. Their achievement is admirable and very difficult to achieve. The real goal here, when it comes to branding, is finding your niche. You have to put your product in the forefront of the public’s mind, above other bloggers, coffe shops, whatever. Unfortunately, most businesses out there don’t even have the focus to know what their niche is, let alone exploit it.

If you are trying to establish yourself out in the world, take Lisa’s advice. Find your brand DNA, focus it, develop it and put it out there for the world to find. With enough work you could be the next Starbucks.