A Look At Other Business

It’s always fascinating to see how different businesses handle problems. Within the last couple of months, I’ve had problems with two businesses. One involved a significant amount of money, and the other one, not so much.

In late December, I had taken my Montero over to Peruzzi Mitsubishi, which was the closest factory authorized repair facility. I needed some scheduled maintenance, but there was a strange noise that was clearly related to the transmission that needed attention. To keep the story at a reasonable length, I felt that Peruzzi did not do right by me, and I complained. The Service Manager offered me a token amount of “free” service back at Peruzzi. The situation was such that I was never going to do business with them again, so that offer was worthless. When I went up the chain to the owner/GM, I received a reply from their lawyer instead, more or less repeating the offer that the Service Manager had made.

The existential question: what kind of business, when receiving a detailed, written complaint from a customer, replies through lawyers? Nothing they could have done would have better reinforced my decision to never do business with them again. There are lots of places to deal with in the automotive world, and I’d recommend anyone in the lower Bucks County area to find another facility.

When I travel, I usually fly out of the Philadelphia airport. I usually use the Aampco off-airport parking lot, and they’ve recently been bought out by PreFlight Parking. Recently, I had a problem with their service and I wrote out a detailed complaint to their General Manager. He responded with an apology, an offer of a complimentary service, and an invitation to try them again. They were, after all, in the midst of a change-over.

About two weeks ago, I tried the service again. For the longest time, as a frequent parker, I had the charges go directly to a credit card. Earlier this year, I followed their instructions and changed credit cards. That change didn’t make it into their system, leading to another problem as I was leaving their lot –at about 1am. I’d stayed six or seven days, and the charge was under $85.00.

I wrote an email to the GM, telling him about my experience, how I’d gone back to them without asking for any special consideration, and how it didn’t work out. He apologized again, asked me to try their service, and offered a refund of the last charge.

So here were two businesses where I encountered problems. One business, where I spent over $3000.00 on one transaction, made me feel like they didn’t care at all about my business, and came across like they were doing me a favor. Another business, where the transaction was under $100.00, (and I’d never spent more than maybe $300.00/year there), actively campaigned to keep my business, and made me feel like my business was valued.

NAB Wrap Up

That week went by incredibly fast. It was an outstanding week for The 4EVER Group, as we met with many vendors and made plans for their participation in our events and activities. We saw old friends throughout the week, and made new ones as well. We even got to watch as vendors punked each other during their presentations.

Let’s start with a couple of random sports notes. Tony Gwynn was at the Sony booth on Monday, autographing baseballs and posing for pictures. Tony was pretty much mobbed during the time he was there. One of our well-known presenters, Randy Stubbs, is a huge Padres fan, so I was able to get an extra autographed ball for him. Last night, we saw Pete Rose at a table in a memorabilia shop. Other than the store employees who were having their picture taken with him, Pete was all alone. It made for an interesting contrast.

Clearly, The 4EVER Group has made an impact with the vendors. Going into our third year, we’ve been sought out by some, and others could not have been more willing to get on board with us. Keep an eye out for those new developments within the next few weeks.

The continuing growth in the relationships we have with the vendors is the best result from this conference. My business card pile is probably smaller than in years past, but it was very targeted: Adobe, Anton/Bauer, Apple, Audio-Technica, Avid Blackmagic Design, Canon, Grass Valley, JVC, NewBay Media, Panasonic, Sennheiser, Sony, the Vitec Group and Zylight were among the many vendors we met with. We can’t count on all of them participating in every part of The 4EVER Group’s programming, we’ll certainly see them involved at some level.

So it’s an afternoon flight home, to be followed by a weekend of catching up on stuff at home. I’m hoping that the airport lines are back to what passes for normal today.

NAB, Chapter 2

What are the odds? On the shuttle ride from the Las Vegas airport to the hotel, I was talking with the guy sitting behind me. It turned out that he and I graduated from the same high school, although he was a few years younger than me. Today, I was preparing to conduct an interview with a representative of Adobe Systems. During that time, we were making small talk. It developed that he graduated from the school I attended during 9th grade, and we were in the same graduating class. I have to figure that, being this far from home, the odds were pretty long on that.

Today was a combination of meetings and sessions. There was a 90-minute session on venture capital that wasn’t all that informative. The keynote speaker was Bob Pittman, who was CEO of AOL back when that actually meant something. He had a key point about product development, using cell phones and microwave ovens as examples. Cell phone reception is nothing like that of a land line, and a microwave doesn’t cook as well as a conventional oven. However, both products offer convenience. That was the message for product developers: offer more convenience to the consumer. “Better” works when it’s combined with convenience.

One of the big projects we have here at NAB is presenting Product Innovation Awards. You can read about them at www.4EVERGroup.org. Of all the award-winning products, I thought Zylight’s was the most amazing. It was a camera-mountable video light that has the full color spectrum of filters built in. The product demo was just plain cool.

NAB is also the time to catch up with videographer friends, among many others. We’ve run into videographer friends from across the country, and quite a few vendors have sought us out. The 4EVER Group programming will get a big boost from this show. And we still have more important meetings on the agenda for tomorrow.

NAB in Las Vegas

I’m currently in Las Vegas with more than 100,000 industry associates for the National Association of Broadcasters convention. It’s the best opportunity in our industry to meet the people we need, to see the gear that’s new, and to have some fun with old friends from everywhere.

Before I go further, a quick note about the awful shootings at Virginia Tech. With a son in college, it hits close to home. Although I haven’t been able to take in enough of the coverage to develop any conclusions, our thoughts and prayers go out to the Virginia Tech community.

Back here in Vegas, I’ve already gotten to see some really cool new tools. NewTek unveiled a production switcher that has built-in virtual sets. That piece will be shipping by the summer. Sony introduced a camera that records to a flash card, priced for our market. Sony says the camera will be available late this year. Adobe continued to show its new CS3 suite, which is an amazing editing solution that’s been used in major motion pictures (The Departed) and TV commercials (the Chevrolet ads with the flying trucks).

We’re staying at the Sahara. I won tickets to see The Amazing Jonathan the other night, and he’s still very funny. The Sahara itself has seen better days.

Today will be all about meetings, starting with one at 9am (what was I thinking?). I even have a couple of podcast interviews scheduled for the afternoon. I guess that means I need to get out of here. Stay tuned for more from Las Vegas.

Bad Things Do Happen Sometimes

Early this morning I received an email with the subject line “Rudy’s House”. The circumstances were such that it clearly was not going to be good news. It turned out that a good friend’s house burned down overnight. Rudy, his wife, and their four daughters (all under 10) got out safely. The house was pretty much a total loss, and he’s not yet sure how much business material he lost as well.

It seemed that a wiring problem with a bathroom fan sparked the fire, which started around 3am. The smoke detectors worked, and they woke my friend and his wife. Each of them grabbed one daughter, and a policeman grabbed the other two. The fire was on the local news (Boston area), and it was pretty surreal to watch the video.

Although the smoke detectors did work, none of the kids woke up. Apparently, that situation is not uncommon. So please check your smoke detectors to make sure they work, and that they are loud enough (and located appropriately) to wake adults. Go ahead and check now; I’ll wait here.

So what do you do for a friend who has lost everything to a fire? Between family and the Red Cross, their basic needs were covered. But we’ve been friends for years, and we’ve traveled together for business many times. Given the business we’re in, the answer was obvious. I was going to enlist everyone else in our inner circle to reprint as many pictures as we could, and copy as many videos as possible. When you speculate about what you’d grab in the event of a fire, pictures and home videos are usually on the list right after people and pets. From there, we’ll see about their needs. For now, it’s something positive.

Adobe Product Launch

The 4EVER Group has built an excellent relationship with Adobe Systems over the nearly three years that we've been active. That relationship led to a pretty cool invitation for me. Yesterday, in what was billed as the largest new product launch in the 25-year history of Adobe, I was among an elite group of 200 at the live roll-out in New York City.

Although I don’t edit video anymore, it was clear that the product upgrades were significant. Adobe also created better ways to maneuver between programs within the editing suite (called ‘bridge’). The one piece of Adobe software that I do use is PhotoShop, and they’ve improved that as well, by significantly reducing the time needed to load the program. As a non-editor, one of the cooler features of the product demo was showing how the program allows you to remove stray audio from a scene. It was like taking an eraser to the audio wave-form.

The product roll-out was simulcast on the Adobe web site. And, as can happen, about half-way through the demo, they experienced an equipment failure. The software was working fine, but the hardware—not so much. In the end, they had to stop the demo for about a half hour, while they made repairs.

Everyone in the room had experienced something similar, at some point in their careers. Stuff does happen. And while I would not have wanted to be one of the team on headsets, trying to trouble-shoot, I did enjoy being part of the audience, because that was when they opened up the bars, and started butlering some specialty drinks. Key lime martini? They were tasty.

In the end, the launch was successful. Adobe has some cool new tools for people in our trade, and everyone in attendance has a new story to tell.

Meeting in Houston

So I took a trip to Houston the other day. I had a presentation scheduled for March 14, to the Houston Professional Videographers Association. As usual, I took an early flight. This allows me to (mostly) miss rush-hour traffic, and allows for some wiggle-room in the challenging world of air travel. I’d been using a particular off-airport parking lot, so I also have to allow a few extra minutes for all that that entails.

The EZ Pass-style frequent parker system they have in place wasn’t working, so I had to use the regular ticket system. No big deal. The transfer was pretty smooth, and I was off to the airport. Since I was flying USAir Express, I went off to Terminal F. Turns out that my flight was in Terminal C. I passed through security in F, where I had to wait behind one person, and took a shuttle over to C, where the security line was considerably longer.

In Houston, I stayed at the airport hotel. Since I was being picked up for the trip to the meeting, staying at that hotel made sense. Shortly before I was picked up, however, rainstorms of Biblical proportions started. The storms raged on and off for 3-4 hours, making numerous freeways and surface roads close to impassable, due to the high water. I really did think we were going to have to swim to the meeting.

My presentation was “Do the Math”, which produced the same surprised reactions that it always does. What was a surprise to me was that there were three MBA-holders in the audience, which is three more than usually attend videographers meetings.

After the meeting, roughly half of the group went out to eat at a restaurant (I’ve forgotten the name) that had a giant, mirrored armadillo out front. Now, under normal circumstances, I seem to be a bad service magnet. With a group of 20 people, this was way beyond normal bad service. The waitress was nice enough, but the place was pretty much understaffed. And, being a bar-restaurant in Texas, people were free to smoke inside.

At least the rain had subsided, and the standing water had mostly drained off, making the ride back to the airport relatively easy. It became a very late night, however, due to the slow service at the restaurant.

This is a good time for me to thank the Houston PVA for inviting me to speak before their group. I'll be back there in October with another program, and I look forward to that. I also want to thank Sandy Buller for being my driver, which was made all the more challenging by the weather.

The next day, I was able to catch an earlier flight back to Philadelphia. USAirways was kind enough to only charge me $25.00 for making that change. But since I slept through the middle of the flight, I missed my bag of deluxe mini-pretzels. There was barely enough room to read a book in the seat, so sleeping seemed like a good use of my time.

There were issues with the jetway operation in Houston. I’m not really sure what happened, but the in-bound flight spent about 20 minutes at the gate while they tried to figure out how to operate the jetway. All that made our flight arrive a bit late to Philadelphia. That fact, however, didn’t mean that our gate was clear. We sat on the plane for over 20 minutes, waiting for the gate to clear. Given the troubles that other airlines have had, 20 minutes is nothing, right?

But the final indignity was at the parking lot. Using the ticket system, as a transient, one-time user, my fee would have been $19.90. My AAA membership saved me $2.00 off that. When I compared that to the trip I took in January, which was almost the exact same amount of time in the lot, using my frequent-parker discount, I actually paid more as a frequent parker, $23.90 vs. $17.90. That seemed a little absurd to me. By then, it was after normal business hours, so I couldn’t call to complain. I sent an email to the general manager, who has yet to reply. I will give him some slack, since it was the weekend. Meanwhile, I’m looking at other parking lots for future trips.

And there will be future trips, as I’ve been working on a variety of programming for The 4EVER Group (www.4EVERGroup.org) that will mean more road trips in the next few months. NAB (Vegas) is coming up next month, and there will be others. I plan on having pictures available for some of those trips.