Category: Observed (Page 17 of 24)

Call Continental Airlines customer service, and recorded and live representatives make it a point to state, “We know you have a choice with your air travel, and we appreciate your choosing Continental.” Ironic, then, that they don’t treat their customers that way.

This spring, I flew domestic and international Continental flights and booked a forthcoming trip with frequent flyer miles. Some of what I’ve experienced:

– Each and every time I called Continental, the customer service rep asked, “And will you be needing a rental car on that trip?” This was posed even when I was going places where their rental car partners don’t have a presence (Prague) or called to ask questions about flights I had yet to book.

– When I called to lodge a complaint about a delayed flight, a representative told me that only 75 minutes of my 150-minute wait was “Continental’s responsibility.” As a result, she refused to consider my flight “significantly delayed,” placing my complaint below the two-hour qualifying threshold for compensation. When I asked to be transferred to a supervisor the representative flat-out refused. (A supervisor called me two days later, apologetic, and as an apology sent me “gift certificate vouchers” that I haven’t yet figured out how to use.)

– On one trip, a flight attendant glowered at me and muttered under his breath when I asked for a can of soda rather than a half-full plastic cup.

– Having flown a variety of airlines over the past 12 months (American, Delta, JetBlue, Virgin Atlantic, EasyJet), Continental has the least amount of coach-class legroom.

– And the real kicker, in my book: following the safety instructions on my international flight, the airplane’s media system showed three minutes of commercials complete with loud audio accompaniment.

Compare these experiences to the generally superior legroom on American, the way JetBlue flight attendants give you extra snacks with a wink when you can’t decide what you want, the Virgin Atlantic representative who gave me her full name and extension so I could ask for her on return calls, and the time a friendly JetBlue gate attendant placed a block on the seat next to me so I could sprawl on an overnight flight. There’s no contest.

I may be a captive audience once my ticket is purchased, but airline travel from New York City is a highly competitive market, and it will be a while before I choose to fly Continental again.

1. Try and combine two frequent flyer accounts, two reward points programs, purchase-by-the-thousand mileage rewards, cash allotments and mileage gifting to purchase two tickets to fly halfway across the world, linking the accounts despite different outbound itineraries, spanning the Thanksgiving holiday. Business class.

Want the perfect New York dessert? Head to the east side of Manhattan, grab the uptown 4/5/6 subway, take it to 86th Street, walk east to First Avenue, hang a left, go one block up the east side of the avenue, cross 87th Street, stroll past the Radio Shack and turn right. There you’ll find Glaser’s, a great, century-old neighborhood bakery, where the Glaser family continues to make the best black and white cookies in New York City. They’re baked fresh daily and worth the trip.

I’ve been eating black and white cookies my whole life and Glaser’s are the quintessential example. Glaser’s makes excellent chocolate chip cookies, too, and challah every Friday. Every once in a while I wish I still lived in the neighborhood.

(cross-posted on kottke.org)

The scene: Barnacle Bill’s miniature golf down the Jersey shore, waiting at the 12th hole for a father and his 5-year-old daughter to play. The hole has a half-loop that leads to a raised green.

The daughter swings wildly and misses the ball entirely. She tries again, and makes contact; her ball flies into the air, hits the side of the raised green, and ricochets onto the lower part of the hole.

Father steps onto the hole and hits his daughter’s ball through the loop. As she watches, he reaches up to the raised green, taps her ball into the hole, and declares triumphantly: “Hole in one for Becky!” Becky raises her arms in triumph.

If commoditization has brought the price of wireless broadband routers under $50, why is Apple still charging $249 for an Airport base station?

AT&T Wireless, despite having lost me as a customer last week, sent me my free phone upgrade yesterday.

Want it?

The city is cold and wet this morning, the snow a stark turnaround from the mild weather of the previous week. But the rhythms of the city are unchanged, the general tenor of the subways no more aggravated than any other Monday.

The newspaper salesman on 15th and Park has retreated from his usual corner to a dry spot by the subway staircase. He takes my $10 bill without complaint. “See you tomorrow,” he says with a genuine smile, recognizing me, expecting my return, even though I only buy from him one or two days per week.

The breakfast cart on 33rd and 9th has a big cooler atop its front wheels, filled with juices and water on ice. I buy a Tropicana and a buttered egg roll; I don’t usually buy juice from a cart, so I have to ask, “How much?” The two people inside grin and say, “First time shopping here?” I say yes, and one says, “Oh! Then take a donut, on us, any one you like. Welcome!” I decline the pastry—”Get out of here, you’re gonna make me fat”—and the other vendor gives me a free banana instead. “See you soon!” they say as I depart, sheepishly, breakfast and freebie in hand. And indeed they will.

The snow has stopped and the clouds are lightening. At lunch I will try and become a regular at the local deli.

The masses are chattering: both Slashdot and Engadget are discussing the AT&T “upgrade” of the Sony Ericsson T68i.

The Engadget article unearths some useful news, too: the T68i was only using half of AT&T Wireless’s network capacity, which is prompting their switch. Of course, the marketing folks at AT&T Wireless would rather downgrade my phone than admit that yes, the poor reception I’ve experienced is real, not perceptive.

But without this knowledge, I simply came to believe my cell phone service stunk. I switched to Verizon Wireless Tuesday and am thrilled with my reception thus far. So much for my free phone.

I received a postcard in the mail Monday telling me that Sony Ericsson and AT&T were sending me a free phone, a brand-new T226. Great news! My T68i is a year and a half old and is starting to fall apart.

Something felt fishy, though. My T68i was a $200 investment, and this new phone isn’t costing me a penny. So I went to the Sony Ericsson T68i Upgrade Web Site to find out more.

Impressively, Sony Ericsson is not shy about the upgrade specs; a big link on the home page goes to a comparison page. Unimpressively, the new phone is a major downgrade.

A list of what my new phone won’t have that my old one does:

– worldwide operability

– a calendar

– 7-field phone book listings (the T226 has 3 fields)

– voice-activated dialing

– Bluetooth and infrared (no more linking to friends)

– a modem (no more Web access)

– shortcuts (no more typing 7-8-4-2 to play solitaire)

These are not minor issues. I used my phone overseas and want to do so again this year. I used four and five fields for my contacts quite often, and I relied on my shortcuts.

And that’s just the features I use. The T226 also has no voice-activated dialing, no PC synchronization, half the memory and less picture and personalization features. It does have polyphonic ringtones and a more colorful display.

The Sony Ericsson T226 is the free-with-contract phone for customers who sign up for new plans. That I am expected to consider it an upgrade from my expensive T68i is wholly unimpressive.

I thought the new phone might keep me on AT&T Wireless for a few more months before I ported myself to Verizon and away from AT&T Wireless’s poor suburban GSM reception. But I doubt it.

The fuss about George Bush attemping to ban gay marriage with a Constitutional amendment saddens and disgusts me on multiple levels.

Bush is only making noise about it to deflect discussion of more pressing, damaging issues that could undermine his re-election campaign (note the timing of his amendment announcement on the same day as the grilling of the director of the CIA on Iraqi intelligence). Even worse, he is turning a personal issue into a political one. Notice how Dick Cheney doesn’t say a word about gay marriage since his family’s opinion would undermine the election campaign. I suspect that deep down Cheney thinks the issue is none of his boss’s business.

Worst of all, though, is how Bush wishes to insert a restrictive clause into a set of Constitutional amendments that for the past two centuries has increased personal freedoms, not diminished them. He aims to place marriage in a straitjacket alongside a long list of proud American freedoms. (This Metafilter post nicely frames the amendments: “20 out of 27 deal directly with giving people more rights and only one [prohibition, later repealed] took away rights. If passed, 28 would be the only standing amendment to limit rights of citizens.”)

What happened in San Francisco last week, with thousands of gay and lesbian couples lining up for legal marriages, will someday be hailed as a watershed moment in American liberties, much like Susan B. Anthony’s work and Rosa Parks’s stand before them. Women and minorities had to fight for decades against persecution, prejudice and political rhetoric before making their way into a (mostly) equal and accepting society. Homosexuality, sadly, is going to have the same fight.

Thirty years from now we will look back at this era and wonder how so much of the country was so stubborn and wrong. In the meantime, one can only shake one’s head and hope wiser judgment prevails against fear and intimidation.