Tuesday, December 16, 2008

E*Trade vs. Disney Investor Services: FIGHT

I used to work for The Mouse. Yes, I used to work for the Walt Disney Company. This is probably why I am so fixated on customer (ahem, 'Guest') service. They brainwash you into eating, breathing and sleeping customer service ... assuming it is making a tidy profit along the way.

While I was working for Mickey, I was participating in the Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP). When I left, there was no way to keep the stock with Disney, so I transferred it to my E*Trade account.

This was years ago. Several things have happened since then.
  • Disney now has its own brokerage arm -- Disney Investor Services (DIS) -- to handle purchasing, selling and reinvesting Disney Stock
  • My parents bought me 100 shares of Disney stock as a gift, being held with DIS
  • E*trade decided to impose HUGE quarterly fees on those of us who don't trade much
  • My friend who works at E*trade told me that there are security holes in the 'secure' code big enough to fly an airplane through.
All of this combined together to make me decide it was time to close up my E*Trade account. But instead of selling my Disney stock, I wanted to transfer it to DIS. Seems straightforward, right?

NO. It was not straightforward. In fact, as of 5 minutes ago, I declared FAILURE, gave up, and sold my stock. (Gee, I can't wait to figure out the cost basis of stock that was bought fractions at a time, each week, for 7 years, ha-ha-ha.)

I went back and forth with each of them multiple times, and just sat in despair in the middle as they pointed to each other.
  1. Emailed Disney and asked 'How do I transfer the stock from E*trade to you?' Answer: E*Trade must initiate as they currently hold the stock. Give them all your info and they will initiate.
  2. Called E*Trade. Their response: No, Disney is wrong. The receiving end must initiate. Call them back. Here is the info you need.
  3. Called Disney. Their response: No, E*trade is wrong. Call them back.
  4. Called E*trade. Their response: Disney is totally wrong. How could they be more wrong? Call them back. Tell them how totally and utterly wrong they are and give them your account info.
  5. Called Disney. Their response: E*trade is wrong. They are absolute total idiots. Get them on the phone with us and we'll tell them how stupid they are. Then, once we are done telling them how dumb they are, we'll do the transfer with them.
  6. Called E*trade. Their response: Disney is crazy. The SEC has a LAW that says that the receiving end MUST initiate the transfer. Also, E*trade doesn't have the capability to do 3-way calling so sadly there is no way for us to listen to them tell us how dumb we are while we tell them how totally ignorant they are.
I told E*trade how FURIOUS I was, thought about calling Disney to do the same but decided it would waste too much time, then put in an order to sell all of my damned E*Trade stock.

Disney and E*trade: you both get a customer service rating of F from me this week. But I imagine you don't really care.

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

What the hell is wrong with Christmas Lights?


I'm going to file all modern Christmas Lights under the category of "they don't make 'em like they used to."

My parents used the same strands of lights year after year after year. The old ones with the big bulbs that heated up to a zillion degrees and melted the snow for mile in every direction. Ah, the good ol' days.

Those good ol' days are GONE. Here is the saga of our lights ...

When we put our lights away last year, neatly packed in a labeled box, all 4 strands worked. When we took them out of the box last week, they were ALL BROKEN. Not one strand would light. What the hell happened to them? Did the evil Christmas light gremlins get them?

So, I went to Giant (gad) to get more. I bought 4 strands of clear lights. Of these 4 strands, one was broken out of the box, two were actually colored (even though the box said they were clear) and ONE actually worked. So, I went BACK to Giant and exchanged three of them for three more. Of these 3 new ones, only 2 worked. But we had enough to do the front steps. More or less.

Then, we decided to try some of the new LED lights on our big, outside tree. They all worked out of the box. Groovy. So we spent the time to put them on our big pine tree. They all lit up, and it looked great. For 5 minutes. Then the middle strand died. We have no time or energy to pull them all off, so I confess that our tree looks quite odd.

As I'm sure that these will all be dead by next year, I am starting to think ahead. Our ARC (Architectural Review Creatures) have decreed that all decorations must be "colonial in tone and nature" so I am thinking that next year we'll just decorate with candles and be done with it ... at least until the house burns down.

Monday, December 8, 2008

Chronicles of the New Giant: Scan It!

The Giant Food Store near me unveiled self-scanning this week ... a concept they are calling Scan It! When I say 'self-scanning', I don't mean self check-out. I mean you have a hand-held scanner and you scan items as you add them to your cart.

I've had a lot of people ask me about my experience with this new technology, including my peeps over at the Food Marketing Institute, so here is the full, objective scoop on how it works as well as my highly subjective opinion of it.

How it Works


  1. Walk into Giant and right up to a huge wall of self-scanners, manufactured by Motorola. They are all locked into place in slots on this wall.
  2. Scan your Giant Bonus Card, which unlocks one of the scanners. It flashes to let you know which one is yours.
  3. Pick up your scanner and also some bags if you want to bag your groceries (or you can of course bring your own bags
  4. Scan packaged goods by simply holding down on the scan button and scanning the UPC code. Place in bag in your cart.
  5. Scan produce by inputting the PLU code into an electronic scale, weighing the item, printing a bar code, and then scanning the code. Place in bag in your cart.
  6. If you make a mistake, click the Remove button and rescan the item to remove it and then place it back on the shelf.
  7. When done, go to any aisle to check out
  8. Scan a final UPC code to 'close' the electronic cart.
  9. Scan your bonus card again, choose a payment method, pay and go.

My 2-Cents on this whole process
  • Produce is a challenge. It takes a decent amount of concentration to work those scales, get the bar code, stick it to something, and scan it.
  • Bagging as you go sounds easy, but it isn't. The stores aren't laid out from heaviest items to lightest items, so it is hard. If I was going to do this a lot, I might just bring boxes with me, as they won't flop over in the carts.
  • It is very hard to juggle holding the scanner in one hand and pushing the cart with the other hand. If you happen to have a 10-month old baby in the cart who keeps dropping his pacifier, it all triples in difficulty. They need to add some type of 'holster' to the side of the carts to hold the scanner.
  • Self-scanning ads more time in the store, so it is absolutely critical that there be a pay-off at checkout. i.e. All of us trying the scanners thought there would be a dedicated check-out aisle where we just would pay and go. NO, THERE WAS NOT. After spending all that extra time to scan and bag in the aisles, we had to wait in line behind people slowly scanning their own groceries and bagging at checkout.
This last bullet is the key for me. Without dedicated checkout lanes, there is absolutely no motivation for me to self-scan. None. It will always be faster to toss a few things in a basket and go to a self-checkout line than go through the process of unlocking a scanner, scanning each item, then waiting in line, again. I asked one of the cashiers when they'd be creating dedicated Scan-It lanes for those using the hand-held scanners and the answer was NEVER. So when will I 'Scan-It' again? NEVER.