Sprint DSL sucks, but mainly only because nearly all DSL services suck.

Sprint’s phone-support people are knowledgeable and friendly, but the company doesn’t seem to take their DSL product very seriously.

Lileks encounters difficulty ordering food at McDonald’s.

Just how clueless can these people be? Every time I think they’ve hit some kind of plateau, it’s down into the abyss once more.

McDonald’s charges me extra for pickles, and in doing so offers up an illustration of Customer Service Rule #17 — though maybe it’s just a failure of their bad IT rather than a deliberate new policy.

Shipping sucks.

Tino goes to the mall, and finds it an unrewarding experience.

The Gap’s website debacle continues

A taste of Earthlink Wireless customer service. Verdict: not bad at all, but it could be better with very little effort.

Rob Griffiths has a customer-service-rules-eque post up, concerning his recent experiences with Cingular and LaCie tech support.

Circuit city gets the big 382-5968 from me.

Circuit City, if anything, seems to be getting worse. The mind boggles.

Caveat venditor

Going to the movies generally sucks these days, and the movie and exhibition businesses don’t seem to notice, much less care.

Audible.com fails the customer service test by 1) not living up to its obligations, and 2) keeping its customers in the dark about that

The Westin Great Southern Hotel in Columbus, Ohio is Not Recommended. (Update: the Westin people have refunded our money. Or something. Details of the Expedia-related C.F. in the comments.

Airline crews need silence to do their work safely, it seems. Uh-oh.

So I’m at the Panera Bread in Reston again, and guess what’s not working?

The air conditioning. It’s over 90 degrees outside, too.

Also the network. Luckily I gave up on the Panera network a while back and bought a Verizon BroadbandAccess card.

Most of the staff are watching a customer-service training video of all things in the back of the place.

We over-use and over-venerate the term 'professional'. The resulting societal attitude is not helping.

Maybe your experience is different, but I find grocery shopping pretty frustrating. Very, very rarely — if ever — can we get through a full shopping trip without at least one item on the list — usually more — being out of stock.

McDonald’s ordering process is screwy, and emblematic of a lot of bad socio-retail engineering.

You are increasingly asked to jump through hoops in order to be allowed to hand over money.

The Kimpton Hotel Allegro Chicago is found to be disappointing.

The terms of Western Digital's rebate require the customer to send in a UPC barcode. Trouble is, there's no UPC barcode on the box. This is, of course, the customer's problem.

Attempting to buy things online is unnecessarily frustrating.

Sears has rejiggered its 119-year-old customer satisfaction guarantee, to the at least nominal disadvantage of the customer. This does not bode particularly well.

Little elements of daily American life seem to be getting more and more unpredictable. This likely exacts quite a large toll, one that we seem totally oblivious to.

Tino tries to spend $2,000 and fails. How do these companies expect to stay in business?
UPDATE: Tino eventually succeeds, but only by jumping through yet more hoops.
UPDATE 2: Sometimes things get better if you complain.

Others have been pointing out other problems with 'free' wireless networks.

DirecTV thinks that C-SPAN is pay-per-view this morning.

A particular McDonald’s does it right. Why can’t everyplace do it right?

T-Mobile pisses off someone with a soapbox.

Self-Service Till Shock Horror in Front Royal

Customer-experience consultants have finally figured it out.

The Tinotopia Rules For Retailers, or Customer Service Rules. If you are in any public-facing business, you should be aware of these.

It’s easy for employees in chain retail establishments to lose sight of the real reason they’re there.

Customer service still stinks, according to an article in the Washington Post. With examples.

Flight-attendant attitudes are dangerous in the War On Terrorism

There's an opportunity cost to keeping your intellectual property locked up, something that Time-Life illustrates with the handling of their photographic archive.

The problem isn't that jobs are being sent overseas; it's that they're being sent to overseas idiots.

SkyHigh Airlines, where a flight from Tulsa to Austin in 'bench' class takes 27 hours and 49 minutes, three connections, and $3,636,40.

A scene from an Adam Sandler movie, of all things, illustrates some common Tino complaints

The NYT identifies another problem of automated tills: they don't allow employees to tell off customers. That's right, they consider this a problem, not a benefit.

THe K-Mart here has decommissioned their terrible self-service tills

Universal Pictures forces buyers of some of its DVDs to sit through ads before being able to use the product they've paid for. This practice has cost them much of Tino's business for the foreseeable future.

The phones are out here, and the phone company doesn't want to hear about it.

A Washington Post article outlines some bad customer-service experiences

Retailers could stand to learn something from the U.S. Marine Corps.

Two more rules to follow when making customer-service decisions.

Companies adopt the facade of interpersonal relationships to plaster over their customer-service failures.

The Mexican-food chain's employees take care of their own needs first, and only then worry about customers.

Complain about constant balloon explosions, get told to not come on balloon night. Brilliant customer service.

A number of rules for people and companies in direct and frequent contact with their customers.

We made one of our rare ventures out of the house tonight, and saw Ocean’s Eleven. The movie was good, but the overall experience was, well, not.

Vintage Tino!

Vintage Tino! Why you should never eat at Fuddrucker's: one of a few restaurant reviews.