Yeah, they should get a little extra “love” for this tin-eared beauty…so tweet away…

PB

You’re so right here, and I see this type of drivel more and more in the marketplace — companies trying to disguise higher charges and less services with the “new and improved!” label. My local newspaper, and not coincidentally, my former employer, has been doing this on a regular basis in over the past few years as it cuts staff, reduces coverages, replaces locally generated content with canned copy and tops it all off with a letter from the publisher or editor telling readers about the “great new services” the paper is now (not) providing.

As you so aptly put it, it insults the intelligence of the reader and, I believe, adds to the growing cynicism in our society. It also makes the job harder for those of us trying to play it straight.

Joe

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/342347/Crossing_the_Skills_Gap

Seems CIOs have four big complaints about new IT grads, including:

1. Inadequate Grip on Business Realities

and

3. Social Networking Skills but Wobbly Relational Skills

Some customers will even doublethink the whole event. They know they used to get free phone support, but believe the ad that says “free” phone support is new. Maybe they think there was a glitch on their account, so they weren’t billed.

And for the record, we’ve always been at war with East Asia and Eurasia has always been our ally.

You’ve probably blown most of this dross out of your system by now, but I’ll add my two cents, for whatever it is worth.

If this ploy is IT originated, that explains everything as far as I’m concerned. With few exceptions, IT people are sociopathic morons. They are insular, cold, and lazy, preferring to pursue their nerdy interests, and the last thing they want to do is to interact with the human race. They lack interpersonal skills.

So it is easy for me to imagine them generating such a shallow and smarmy piece of correspondence, to send to their client base, whom they loathe. Yes, IT loathes flesh and blood human beings, that is, those who possess a soul.

In some quarters, organizations are offering interpersonal skills classes for their IT people. In a survey given to IT people, they were asked how they viewed themselves. In general, they said they felt they were superior to non-IT people, and felt unappreciated by non-IT people. They don’t understand why people don’t like them! Duh.

I don’t have a link to this information. It’s just something I ran across not too long ago, and has corroborated my own experiences and subsequent conclusions, derived from dealing with them in one capacity or another.

That would be silly.

Color me swayed. Granted, I’m at the other end of the telescope, but when Sonia Simone sent me a link to her affiliate page for 1shoppingcart my immediate reaction was: no, thankyouverymuch.

Mark

I think you’re absolutely right. To those who’ve sensibly suggested I tell them to take a hike and go find another company, I’m afraid it’s just not that easy. When you have over three years invested with a company and ALL the data, and products and downloads, you’re entrenched with them. It’s not a matter of being able to just easily switch to another shopping-cart system. So, I’m guessing they absolutely feel they can get away with it, which is crummy. AND, actually, not very smart in a big sense, that being, people like me are saying some pretty bad things about them, which could definitely sway someone who’s looking at different systems. Unless they know that most companies are the same and they won’t get much better service (i.e., more fully-featured) with another company. Crummy, but more understandable in that context.

PB

P.S. And Apryl, I have seen the video by the band about United Airlines. It as actually excellent, musically! Check it out here.

It’s arrogance, it’s a statement of great faith that they won’t lose sales over it, in the stickiness of their general operation. I’m not familiar with the specific industry in question, but, it seems to be the case that when most people have contracted a businesses services for for an extended period of time, it takes something pretty goddamn awful to motivate them to go through the hassle of shopping for another supplier. I know plenty of businsess operators for who, a poorly worded letter probably wouldn’t do it. The fact that tech support for the service disappeared, yes, but not necessarily the way it was represented, regardless of how disrespectful it may be. They’d just mutter jerks” and throw the letter in the bin, and get on with things.