Off Topic: The Death of Customer Service

Rare non-sports post here.

I recently cancelled a service contract for my AC/Heater which called for semi-annual inspections.  After a couple of years having them perform my "free check-ups" I noticed a trend. The technician salesman would come over, rummage around, and then tell me that my $10K unit needed an additional $1K in upgrades. First it was surge protectors, now it's a unit filter that they will install at 15% off if I just sign here.

At no point did they actually do any maintenance on my unit.

Now, I've cancelled, and the company still calls my cell phone every day trying to get the "one last heating unit inspection" that "I've already paid for".  But why, if this is a maintenance call, are they so anxious to come out?

After a recent stay at a hotel/casino I started receiving e-mails asking me to complete a survey about my recent stay. Because there were some problems with the stay (no hot water, problems with the plumbing in the room, shoddy housekeeping) I obliged. I gave them good marks where warranted (check-in was smooth and efficient, the bed was comfy, etc.) I listed my issues that we had with the room, how we tried to resolve them and what was the result (hint: nothing happened). I then closed with a short missive on customer service and how a smile by the staff would go a long way to making guests feel more welcome.

The response?  I'm still waiting.

This from a chain where I've seen the CEO on TV stating that "guests are everything".  Except when they're not staying in suites I'm guessing.

For a recent service call on my Internet/TV service I received 14 text messages from the company "reminding" me of both the service, and other great offers I could take advantage of.  When the tech had finished setting everything up I got one text asking me to rate his service.  I replied, and received nothing in return.

In the retail environment now you usually feel as if you're bugging their customer service personnel when you ask a question.

Restaurants will openly challenge you if there's a problem with your meal. There was a time when a manager visited every table, and how to properly wait on tables is almost a lost service skill.

It seems that the more we rely on technology to handle customer service the worse and worse it gets. Granted, part of this is on us, the consumer.  I've been shopping at a brick-and-mortar retail shop and on many occasions witnessed a poor staffer try to give good customer service only to be treated rudely by customers.

If you're talking on your cell-phone during check-out, you're part of the problem. If you talk down to or treat customer service agents/waiters/bus-boys or any service person with disdain then you're part of the problem. In fact, we should all go out of our way to praise the ones that are still trying.

Customer service is more than just texts, e-mails and sales calls. The companies that do it the worse tend to rely mostly on these tools however. Not every interaction should, or need, be about extracting more dollars from people.  Certainly, there's a time to sell, but there's a time to listen as well, and to answer questions honestly. Just as there are times for acknowledgement and being thankful that someone took the time to fill out your insipid online survey.

Until more companies realize this it's going to get worse before it gets better.

A computer kiosk cannot smile.

The Super Bowl: Are you excited?

A professional football game will be played on Sunday, the last one of the 2017-2018 season. It's called the "Super Bowl" and it will feature teams from Philadelphia and Boston (New England), the Eagles vs. The Patriots (-6  O/U 47.5) with a halftime show starring one Justin Timberlake.

It will be the most watched television event of the year.

And I could care less.

It's not that I dislike the two teams playing in the game, it's that I'm 100% ambivalent about both of them.

If Tom Brady and Bill Bellicheck win the game my excitement quotient will not be affected one iota. The same goes if the Eagles win. I don't care if the two teams play the most exciting NFL game EVER.

Because it will pale in comparison to Oklahoma v. Georgia in the Rose Bowl.

What the NFL has managed to do is suck all of the fun out of a fun game by attempting to micro-manage the game through perfect rule making, by removing the focus from the field, and by taking steps to rid the game of heroes and villains.  What the NFL has become is a faceless, gormless version of itself, dominated by a commissioner that no one likes, a style of play that rewards being too conservative and by courting a 'fan' base that could honestly care less.

It also hurts that they're playing in a stadium that has to be the early front-runner for worst translation of the atmosphere to television of them all.  Every game that I've seen played at the Wart (admit it, it looks like a wart) is overly dark, muted and joyless.  Even the College Football Playoff National Championship looked more at home in a funeral procession than in a championship game.  The lighting is terrible, the seats are too far away from the action and the 'roof' is a confusing morass of steel girders that looks like the opening for V-GER in the original Star Wars movie.

Anyone have any doubt that the commercials will suck?

As far as the game goes, I won't be playing much attention to it being played but here's how I see it.

Bellicheck and Brady will spend the first half figuring out what works, and then will execute a halftime plan just well enough to win the game. Gronkowski will be healthy and will play, and will present match-up nightmares for what is a pretty good Philly defense.

Prediction:  Philadelphia 21 New England 27.

In other words, I think the line is pretty close to correct and I wouldn't bet it either way.  You've just as good of odds betting on the coin flip.

Maybe halftime will be OK. I'll probably be tuned to another station shortly after that anyway.

The 2nd half commercials are never any good.

College Football: Let's make the 8-team playoff work.

Despite 3 of the 4 games being interesting, this year's College Football Playoff process exposed several weaknesses in the current system which need to be addressed.

 - The CFP Selection Committee is awful. 

They change the criteria every year to get the teams they think will bring in the best ratings, they're exclusionary, and they don't always pick the "best 4" teams.

 - There are reserved seats for certain schools

They'll deny it, but blue-blood schools have an "in".  They always have and they always will under the current rules.

 - Too many good teams are getting excluded

No one will admit it, but UCF/Clemson would have been a much better game than Alabama/Clemson was.  That's not soap boxing for small schools. it's just true.


The problem is that when you're thinking about expanding to an eight team playoff there are problems.  First, the number of games players are being asked to play.  This is a real problem because these are, without a doubt, free laborers for the respective schools. They're ostensibly there to get an education, as long as we keep up that fallacy, it has to be addressed in any plan.  Second, how do you do this without hurting the existing bowl system?  I would argue that this is not much of a concern, more on that later.  Third, there will still be teams left out.  On this you will get no argument, but I'd much rather be arguing about the 9th and 10th best teams than the 5th who, in many cases, could run the table and win the whole thing. (see: Ohio State in year 1 and Alabama THIS year).

So there is a lot of ground to cover and a lot of things that need to be addressed.  Let's get to it.

1. Keep the selection committee out of it (for the most part).

If you're a Power 5 school and win your championship, you're in. Period. End of story. This year that would have meant that USC, Clemson, Ohio State, Georgia and Oklahoma would be the first five.

If you're the top Group of 5 School (and a conference champion) you're in.  Normally this is a pretty easy determination.  If it's fuzzy, go to the polls. The highest rated Group of 5 Conference Champion (AP poll, keep the sports information directors out of it) gets the nod. This year that would be UCF. (in fact, in MOST years the decision would not be all that tough).

Now, here's where the Selection committee comes in.  The CFP Selection committee would have the job of selecting seeds 7&8. They would be the two most-deserving schools who did not win their respective conference championship. This year I would imagine the decision came down to Alabama, Auburn and Ohio State. Trying to ignore what actually happened I would pick Alabama and Wisconsin.. Auburn would certainly get a strong look, but those two losses cannot be ignored.

So the seeding would be as follows:

1. Clemson
2. Oklahoma
3. Georgia
4. UCF
5. Ohio State
6. Alabama
7. USC
8. Wisconsin

Not a horrible playoff.

2. This could mean up to 16 games for the eventual championship opponents.

That's way too many.  The solution to this is pretty simple.  Return the regular season limit to 11 games.  That way IF a team played in all the possible games, they would still be limited to 15.  This will be pretty easy for the SEC teams to accomplish, just cancel your FCS games fellas.

Another way to ensure teams aren't dropping good teams off of their schedule are to discount any wins against FCS opponents.  If the SEC wants to play buy games against the FCS for an extra home game, so be it, but it will be considered an exhibition and the win will not count.  The loss however could be cause for pushing you out of the playoff all together. So these become very, very high risk games, with no reward.

3. What about the existing Bowls?

You still have them.  The existing CFP bowl structure wouldn't even need to expand.  You already have the New Year's Six.  Four of the six become quarterfinals while two are semi-finals and the Championship Game is an entity unto itself. This year (2018) you play the quarterfinals on December 22nd, the Semi-finals on December 29th and the Championship Game on January 5th, 2019.  On a SATURDAY, when it should be played.

Also, to make it fair, since there are less bowl slots, increase bowl eligibility to 7-5. Award every team that finishes with that record or better the allotted extra practices whether they get selected or no.  If slots need filling, then 6-6 teams will be considered according to existing rules, and all 6-6 teams that qualify but are not selected receive the extra practices as well.  For teams not in the CFP those extra days working are the real benefit to bowl season anyway.

4. Recruiting.

Get rid of the early signing period.  Just do it. Now that you have more teams, big name teams, playing in bowl games during this it will make teams think twice about it.  Just end this practice.



There was a time when I was an advocate for a 16-team playoff which included all of the conference champions and 6 at-large teams. I no longer feel that way as I believe that in every year taking the top 8 teams will guarantee that the vast majority of teams with a chance to win it will be included. The obvious exception this year might have been Auburn, but they sort-of proved their pretender status with their loss to UCF.  And while I hear the arguments of Auburn fans that "UCF wouldn't have beaten us at home" that's a false argument. UCF beat you on a neutral field, not at UCF. I would imagine that Auburn would struggle in the Bounce House as well.  Most teams would.

To finish this up: A dose of reality.

Any further expansion of the CFP is not going to happen for many years.  The current contract runs through 2022 and there will be little onus to change it, UNLESS a school such as Alabama or Ohio State gets an obvious snub.  Given the logical gymnastics that the CFP Selection Committee takes each year to assure this doesn't happen I don't think it ever will.

We're still left with an invitational designed not to determine a true national champion, but to drive ratings, advertising dollars and money for the participating schools.  In short, we still don't have a true National Champion in college football, but we never really did.

College Football: Roll Tide! (This is why we can't have nice things)

And just like that.   It's over.

After stumbling around on offense in the first half the Tide of St. Nicholas Saban corrected themselves, inserted one Tua Tagovailoa into the game, discovered what their offense looked like with the threat of the downfield pass, and won yet another CFP Championship.

Adding up all of the B(C)S and CFP titles that makes 4 for St. Nick, tying the late, great Bear Bryant and ensuring another round of S-E-C!!!! chants from schools such as Texas A&M and Mississippi State.

Before all of that however, the game was a snooze fest.

Georgia, oddly, started off by calling seven pass plays, in a game where it was obvious their best early bet was to feed the ball to Sony Michele, and save bowling ball Nick Chubb for the latter stages of the game.  Michele is a quicker back and was always going to be more effective than Chubb against a fresh, fast Alabama defense.  They would need quarterback Jake Fromm to make some plays, but more sparingly than they first thought.

Meanwhile Alabama starting QB Jalen Hurts proved what I had written about him earlier. He severely limits Alabama's offense through his inability to throw anything other than a screen pass, or a heave downfield.  Normally Alabama can overcome this by running the ball very effectively against lesser athletes, against Georgia however it wasn't working, at all.

But then Tagovailoa came in, Georgia suddenly forgot how to play winning football (hint: Don't try and run a kick-off out of the end-zone against Bama kids) and the rest was history.

Not a "game for the ages" as some are trying to say, but a close game as far as these things go and one that heads to overtime is always going to be overhyped in the short-term, especially by sports journalists who cannot figure out how to assemble a hot dog.

If, like many (including me), you find yourself waking up with Alabama fatigue I have some bad news for you.  The Crimson Tide are not going anywhere, and we're going to be stuck with them being players in the College Football Playoff as long as Saban decides to keep coaching.

Yes, his game plan is boring and NFL-level tedious.  Yes, the fans are only slightly less annoying than a hang-nail. And yes, SEC fans and pundits are among the worst bits of humanity.

But they win.  And Saban wins, and he's spent a decade now propping up an elevated vision of the SEC that's only accurate at the tip of the conference pyramid.  The relatively weak middle and bottom of that pyramid allows the apex predators (such as Bama and Georgia) to gorge annually.

Was the SEC the best conference this year?  I have no idea.  But I do know that you can't tell based on bowl games, or games played a full month after the season ended, nor can you make a determination when 7 conferences had no chance to say otherwise.

Going forward the only option is going to be to eventually expand the playoffs to an 8-team format.

Fortunately, I've some ideas on how to make that happen without a.) ruining the regular season (which the current format does) b.) adding a significant amount of games and c.) ruining the existing bowl season. I'll share these later in a separate post.

Until then.....Congratulations to the evil empire Crimson Tide for their CFP Championship.

Pro Football: Less people are watching, for a variety of reasons.

I did not watch any of the NFL playoff games last weekend. I saw a few minutes of the first half of the Saints/Titans, and nothing after that. On Saturday night the wife and I went to the inaugural game for the Houston Sabercats the first professional rugby game in Houston. We were not disappointed.

On Sunday I went shopping with the wife, then I put a bad old Dean Martin movie (The Ambushers, you should watch it just for the humor of it all) on and caught up on the Grand Tour.

At no point in the weekend did I ever feel like I was missing out on anything. Based on a recent poll, it sounds as if many people felt the same way, for many different reasons. (side note: more are watching the college game however.)

I want to be clear here, I am NOT boycotting the league for reasons having anything to do with Colin Kaepernick, or concussions, or any of that. I'm boycotting the league because the on-field product is B-O-R-I-N-G.  Mind numbingly boring.  Watching an NFL game is akin to water torture. It's a slow drip of the same 8 plays called over and over with risk-averse coaches making risk-averse decisions.

In short, NFL games suck.

Tonight that suck is going to bleed into college football, where Georgia and Alabama will do their level best to try and turn the CFP Championship into an NFL game.  I might make it to halftime.

The reasons for this is that I'm starting to find more productive ways to spend my time. I wake up early on weekdays and head to the gym before going to work. Since I'm going into the office later, I stay later. Then I get home, cook and eat dinner, do a little bit of writing and what do you know? It's time for bed and I haven't even turned the TV on.

On weekends I'm cleaning/working around the house with horse racing (or, increasingly, soccer, rugby or college basketball) on in the background. I'm also spending more time with my wife (a big football fan as well FWIW, who has also cooled on the NFL product) actually out doing things.

Sure, I still follow (and occasionally wager on) sports, but I can get what I need to see watching some highlights, reviewing stats etc. I don't NEED to watch the games to have an opinion on them, I quit fantasy football (the best decision I ever made) and I don't like just sitting in front of the TV so now I only watch sporting events when I WANT to.

This has left the NFL out in the cold.

I understand, reading articles on sites such as SB Nation Awful Announcing and various others (I boycott Barstool sports because of their poor track record in treating women) that the games were, for the most part awful anyway.  Especially awful was the Jaguars and Bills, and anything involving the #BillsMafia has me feeling......disinterested. I also disagree with the idea that the "home team" has to be "my" team. Just because a private company has their headquarters in Houston doesn't mean that I'm obligated as a fan to root for them. (Sorry Houston Texans).  As a 49ers fan the season ended for me a week ago.

Still, I will probably watch the Super Bowl because it will be the only thing on, but I've a feeling I won't be paying much attention to the games leading up to it.  This upcoming weekend I'll be traveling, and the weekend after that I'll be in Lake Charles getting some casino therapy after the New Year (and, as an accountant, year-end close).

Of course, none of this matters anyway, because New England's going to win it all and UCF are the true National Champions.  Don't "@" me.

College Football: It's Bowl Season!!!!! (Part IX) [UPDATED]

Well, we've made it.

39 bowl games down and one to go.

Unfortunately after all of this mess we're left with what is basically the SEC Championship game part II, between two teams that play exactly the same style in a match-up no one outside the SEC really wants to see.

Yes, Paul Finebaum is happy, as is the CFP Committee, CBS and ESPN, their prime TV property once again shows up as their invitational intended.  What we're left with is a mess of a playoff where the one remaining undefeated team wasn't even given a chance to try and match up with the invited teams.

Yes, the apologists will tell you that UCF's bowl win over Auburn was meaningless, that all of the SEC losses in bowls mean nothing EXCEPT in the games in which they won.  Those bowls meant something.  Because their wins were in the playoff games, and against teams such as Michigan where they were obviously interested in playing.  OF COURSE Mississippi State wanted to beat Louisville, but LSU didn't care what happened against Notre Dame.

The B1G? Well, they just got good match ups you see.

And that's the thing about bowl season, it IS largely meaningless in determining conference strength, even the playoff games that matter, because you're talking about a single game played over a month after the regular season ends. The participants are selected by a secretive cabal whose prime goal is to be a gatekeeper of the system for a select few blue-blood teams and provide TV something they think people will want to see.

Why do SEC teams get preferential treatment?  Because they draw a lot of eyes to the TV screen.

Were both SEC teams good enough to be in the playoffs?  Obviously yes, because both won their semi-final games and they will meet in the final.

Did both SEC teams "deserve" to be in the playoff?  Of course not. But the CFP isn't about "deserve" it's about right and privilege. Especially the privilege of certain power 5 conferences over another.

All of that is moot now that the games have been played, because what you're left with is a rather unappealing match up between two teams who play the exact same style of football, with one head coach being the former defensive coordinator for the other.  Stop me if you've seen this story before.

On a quick aside, since we last spoke I had a horrific 6-12 run which lowers my overall bowl record to 35-33.  I missed badly on both CFP semi-final games and had a generally rotten New Year's Day.

Now, to the game:

CFP Championship Presented by AT&T. 8:00PM. ET. Monday, Jan 8th.

[12-1]Alabama vs. [12-1] Georgia. (-3.5) T: 46

It's Saban vs. a former assistant, which typically doesn't work out well for the former assistant. Here's the thing about Alabama, they are not a great team. Their quarterback, Jalen Hurts, is a terrible passer of the football. This severely limits what Alabama is able to do offensively.  But (and there's always a but) what they can do they do very, very well. They also play some vicious defense and will be one of the better run stopping teams that Georgia has seen this year.

Georgia is more talented offensively, but they have a frustrating habit of going away from what they do really, REALLY well, which is running the ball.  Freshman QB Fromm showed some poise against Oklahoma, but the Sooner defense is nowhere near the quality of the Tide defense. If Georgia wants to have a chance they're going to have to do two things:  1. Run the ball early and often with success. 2. Use their excellent speed at Linebacker to slow down Alabama's screen passing attack.

The hype men are going to promise us a better game than we're going to end up having. It will be a snooze-fest on Monday and another data point in the "evil always wins" ledger.

Pick: Alabama to cover +3.5 and UNDER.

Amazingly, this line has completely flipped toward Georgia.  I'm loving Alabama +3.5 here although I'll admit that I probably won't make it past halftime actually watching the game.

Alabama 17  Georgia 9