We recently returned home from a two-week trip to find that, once again, our LA Times subscription had failed to restart from the vacation hold I set before we left. Because the message on the Times’ toll-free line urges you to handle your account online, I went to its Web site to report the missing papers.

But the site wouldn’t let me. Because I was trying reporting the missing papers after the Times’ “cut off” time for providing replacements, the online system wouldn’t even accept my complaint.

I didn’t necessarily need to get a paper that day–I could read it online. So by refusing to allow me to submit my problem, the Times managed to do three things: waste my time, tick me off, and remind me that I’m getting less and less attached to its product (at least in its paper version). In these days of shrinking circulation and upheaval, that’s probably not the message the Times wants to give its remaining loyal subscribers.

I’m guilty, too. It was only in the last few weeks that I added a search function to my own Web site. Folks who didn’t know how to make a site-specific Google search (using site:sitename.com, plus a space and the topic word, thus: site:asklizweston.com credit scores) often couldn’t find what they were looking for. Now (hopefully), it’s easier.

So, how are you irritating your customers (or your vendors, or your bosses)? What complaints have you heard more than once that have yet to be fixed…and more importantly, what can you do today to start to fix them?

TAGS: Customer service, fixing mistakes, loyalty

To listen to the spin the media is putting on it, Silda Spitzer is one weak sister for standing by her cheating husband, Eliot.  The pundits were out in mass today asking how any woman with an ounce of self-respect could put up with a philandering husband — even going so far as to suggest money, power, or security must be at the core of such a decision.  You know, one of the things I like about women is that we don’t desert people at the first hint of scandal or problems in the relationship whether that relationship is  marriage, friendship, or familial.  Unlike many men who bolt or stray when the wife becomes terminally ill, a child is born with a disability, or the wife (God forbid) gains weight, women are loyal — at times to a fault.  I’m not saying Ms. Spitzer should stay with the governor — nor am I saying she should leave.  All I’m saying is that women who provide support to others when they need it most, then make longer-term decisions later after much thought, deliberation, fact-finding or counseling, should be lauded not ridiculed.  They are wonderful examples to their daughters (and sons) for how to handle relationship crises.  Let those among us who are without sin cast the first stone. 

TAGS: Eliot Spitzer, loyalty, Silda Spitzer, stand by your man, women role models