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October 20, 2006
To Send an Ear-Shattering Scream, Press Two
With Congress often suggesting ridiculous bills to satisfy those who contribute oodles of money, I often wonder why they don't extend this ridiculousness to bills that would simplify life for ordinary human beings.
Imagine if there were federal regulations about phone recordings that ask you to press 1 for this, 2 for that, 3 for this, 4 for that, then when you select an option you get five or six new options. As you weave through these options, you become more despairing as nothing seems to match exactly what you want to ask. You choose the closest thing you hear, then wait for 20 minutes or so (if you are lucky, less than half an hour) only to have to introduce yourself with,
"Hi, I'm not sure I pressed the right number...this is what I need"
It then varies as to what will happen to you. In the worst cases, you are given yet another "customer service" number to call (and I use "customer service" very loosely here).
Credit card companies and banks are probably some of the worst offenders. You must navigate baffling choices only to be put on music-hold to wait and find out if this person can indeed help you.
Savvier callers have figured out that if you hit zero or just refuse to make a choice, some companies will let you through to a real person. But those financial institutions learn quickly to eliminate even this options - as they find out how clever their customers can be at getting around the maze of numbers, they must sit down in their little cabals and say, "How can we make it even harder for them to actually get through to a human being."
In fact, today I wanted to talk to Capital One about consolidating a couple of cards and getting a better deal with a travel rewards card. The closest choice I had was, get this, cancel your card. LOL!
There must be some way to make these phone mazes - and their customers' lives - a little easier! And why not let that poor haggard caller desperately trying to figure out what number to push get through to a human being at some point!
Posted by smashmonster at 02:34 PM | Comments (0)
October 13, 2006
How Much Is That Condo in the Window? The One with the Wobblely Price.
San Diego housing prices are now down over 8% from the top of its market a year ago. ssssssssss. What is that sound? The sound of the air going out of the balloon?
And prices have fallen for the third straight month in a row in the OC.
Posted by smashmonster at 10:15 PM | Comments (0)
Florida Update or The nth Circle of Hell at Tampa General Hospital
My father is now starting his fourth week of hospitalization and it looks like he will be discharged tomorrow or Sunday. He is thrilled to be going home to say the least. For 1 week after his surgery he was allowed no food or drink. Can you imagine not even being able to sip water for a whole week?!! You have never seen someone so excited about a bowl of clear broth - and I don't blame him.
It has been an interesting experience at Tampa General Hospital - especially in comparison to the medical experiences I've had with my Aunt Vera in Boston (Mass General).
My father was first at Morton Plant Hospital in Clearwater - which is the hospital he worked in for many years - it's a wonderful place with pleasant staff and amazing customer service.
Tampa General does have great doctors and nurses, but they have serious customer service problems with some of their staff. I call it a customer service problem because anytime staff acts in such a way that is negative for the patient (customer), it is essentially poor customer service. I believe any company or institution that approaches the culture of their organization from a customer service perspective can solve a myriad of problems, including the potential for lawsuits.
My father reported to us a number of stories of staff swearing at each other in the hallways - this seemed awfully unprofessional so I figured it was maybe an isolated event. Then one day while visiting I experience this completely unprofessional behavior. An assistant or tech of some sort in the hallway said, "I'm not disconnecting nothing - that's not my job, that's BULLSHIT!" She then proceeded to complain for a few minutes in a hostile tone with all sorts of vulgarities tossed in.
My dad looked at me and nodded and said, "That's what I'm talking about. It goes on all the time." I was shocked!
I immediately knew what the problem was: the insitution's culture. All entities - whether it be a mega-corporation, a nonprofit, or a hospital - has a culture. You can think of it as a micro-society. Culture is influenced by many things - such as the rules of the "society," the positive reinforcement for following those rules, the extra reward for going above and beyond the "society's" expectations, and negative consequences when you defy the rules.
Essentially, customer service works from the inside out - if you have a negative internal culture, it seeps out to the "visiting foreigners" (in this setting, the patient), either by how they are treated (from impatient to downright hostile) or what they are subjected to (angry employees yelling bullshit in the hallways while you are trying to heal).
When you expect employees to treat each other with respect, and create incentives to treat each other with dignity (and help out when needed even if it ain't your job), they become that culture - and they naturally treat their customers/patients with this same respect and dignity.
Case in point:
My father did not understand the alarm cord in the bathroom - he though you pulled it and it would do something - so he pulled it a few times thinking it wasn't working.
Now if you had this happen and were a healthcare professional - you might think - whoah! Is someone in serious trouble? But not in this case - the woman came barrelling in furious - basically angry he pulled it more than once. Whoah, Nelly! That is no way to treat someone who has had life-saving surgery and is feeling weak and vulnerable. But this "professional" was used to treating her fellow employees poorly with inpugnity - the obvious extension of that is to treat all people in her work environment poorly. My father said even when he apologized she simply would not accept it - he pissed her off and that was that. Yikes! That is not someone who belongs in a hospital full of sick, vulnerable people!
Tampa General Hospital is in desperate need of what is traditionally called "Internal Customer Service" - a set of guidelines that helps employees know what is expected of them and gives them ways to reward EACH OTHER when they feel someone has shown exceptional customer service toward another employee. The company I work for uses "scratcher cards" - which you hand to a fellow employee to thank them for being especially helpful or positive. They scratch off a gold seal and see points or some reward which they can redeem in the company store. The feeling of good will this elicits is really wonderful - and the interesting thing is that it feels better to give than receive. It feels great to walk up to a fellow employee and say, "You really were great today - you took care of that request so quickly and really helped me out, so I'd like to give you a token of my appreciation."
The feeling you get from recognizing your fellow workers starts to permeate the workplace, and soon the idea of saying, 'That's bullshit - I'm not doing that." goes against your grain. You have created a positive customer service culture.
Various things can be used to remind people of this culture - from posters to games to pep rallies of a sort. It takes about a year for the culture to start to show significant changes. Usually the negative people feel more and more marginalized and eventually no longer feel comfortable - they either leave the culture by quitting or find ways to change and be part of the culture.
Tampa General would do well by its staff and its patients if it created an internal customer service initiative to deal with the high level of negative employee behavior in its hospital corridors. The benefits are great - it becomes a nice place to work so you get far less turnover of healthy employees and you also are less likely to get sued. Face it - it is a lot harder to sue people you like than a faceless hospital with nasty and hostile employees!
Posted by smashmonster at 09:07 PM | Comments (1)
October 04, 2006
What Can You Get for About Half a Million Dollars?
I thought it would be fun to compare what you can get for half a mill and change in various areas - then look back at this again a year from now to see what's what. I searched for homes around 550 K or near that general overpriced area.
Culver City (where I live)
MLS ID#: 06-131979
2 bedroom, 1 bath - they neglect to mention square footage, which is often conveniently left out of ads when the number is laughably low - I'm going to guess this is under 900 square feet. Purdy huh? Bring your bucket o' money or your toxic loan!
If you put down $110,000 (20%) your monthly payment will be around $2700.
Austin Texas - 5 br, 4 bath, 4200 sq feet. Also 550K. Hmmm, but you do have to live in Texas...but then Austin is an artsy community and much more blue than the rest of the state. You can fit four and a half of the Culver City houses in this one. And it's much purdier I must say.
Clearwater Florida (near where I grew up). 4 br, 3 ba - 2787 sq feet. Also 550 K. A bit McMansiony, and it's in Feather Sound. If I recall correctly that's an evacuation zone for hurricanes - low ground - so homeowner's is gonna run you about 5K a year.
Wait, there's more...
Wilmington Massachusetts (where my roommate grew up). 5 bedroom, 2 and a half bath. Funky style, but big.
Katy, Texas, one of the most underpriced areas (suburb of Houston) gets you over 5000 square feet of McMansion for $535,000 (couldn't find anything for 550K exactly).
Phoenix, Arizona gets you a 4 br, 3 bath WITH A POOL.
This sweetie is over 3000 square feet on more than 1 1/2 acres of land in Asheville, North Carolina. Asheville is an artsy town - very pretty area. And you get a mountain view!
Chicago gets you a 5 br, 3 ba with cathedral ceilings and a hot tub to boot. Quite a few listings at this price are two-unit buildings - so you could earn rent on the second unit to help pay the ungodly mortgage.
Taos New Mexico gets you an acre of land and a very authentically adobeish 2500 sq feet (3 br, 2 ba) on an acre of land - and you are near great winter skiing. A little barren for my tastes, but this is supposed to be a pretty hot, artsy town to live around.
If cozy is more your taste check out this steal:
In San Francisco, an inviting 608 square feet, 1 bedroom, 1 bath with a "rustic" feel for $550K.
Are you laughing as hard as I did when I saw this?
NYC not as bad as I thought - you can actual get a separate bedroom in the 550K range ;-)
It's a one bedroom, 1 bath, 700 sq feet and the West End Ave location isn't bad (except the haul to the subways on Broadway and the brutal winter breezes coming off the Hudson).
In sunny South Florida - Boca Raton - you can get this 3 bedroom, 2 1/2 bath for 550K
Washington DC, Hillcrest, a 4 br, 3 1/2 bath for 550K
Cute place on Bainbridge Island - Seattle, WA for $545K, 2500 square feet. Shoot, when you live in California this sounds like a steal, but really WHO ARE ALL THESE PEOPLE who can afford $3000 mortgages?
Did a little search for Aspen, Colorado - nada between 500 and 550 - had to jump to 650K to find a listing here for a single family home. And look at this miserable pile of wood:
Next one up was $729K - sheesh. Of course, this a playground for the rich and famous, so I moved my search to Denver.
A 5 bedroom, 5 bath in the Columbine Valley gives you 3800 feet of living space.
Do you prefer the flashy life? For 550 K you can live on Flamingo Road in Las Vegas in this mega-tacky condo development that looks like something the Venetian puked up after a long night of drinking and gambling and rough sex with the Aladdin Hotel - 2 bedroom 2 bath, 1285 square feet.
San Diego is already showing big cracks in prices, so I wish I'd looked here earlier, but the fact they give a price RANGE, yes, you read that right, a RANGE, shows they want to be, well, flexible.
For 550K - 599K you can get this 2 bedroom, 1 bath (no square footage given, but it looks small - so maybe 800-900 square feet). Eeek.
Now 49K is a pretty wide range. Sign of times to come I'd say.
Posted by smashmonster at 05:44 PM | Comments (1)
Who Said There Are No Affordable Homes in Los Angeles?
A sweet little "bungalow" for $250K!
http://www.realtor.com/Prop/1064315477?lnksrc=00045
Perfect if you have always wanted to live like that kid who played the banjo in the movie Deliverance. Hell, there are two units - you can move your married cousins into the "rental" next door!
Be careful visiting the property as the ad clearly states the steps and landing are unsafe.
OK I'm on a housing rip this week. Can't help myself. I'm very mean spirited at times.
Posted by smashmonster at 05:29 PM | Comments (0)
Yes, You CAN Buy a Home in Marin County for Under 300K
http://marinpos.blogspot.com/2006/05/no-place-to-sleep-in-lagunitas-update.html
What a POS!
Posted by smashmonster at 05:18 PM | Comments (0)
Bubbleishisly Good Schadenfreude
There are a number of sites that take great glee in tracking the desperation of property flippers in California who are now bleeding cash. In some ways, I agree with their glee - many of these flippers artificially changed the market creating a false supply-and-demand atmosphere that has no basis in reality. The real losers will be ordinary people who thought they HAD TO BUY of they would be priced out forever - some are projecting that if you bought a condo after 2003 you will lose money. That's a long way to fall.
I am beginning to believe the price drop could be more than 40% over the next two years. Some of the stats on liar loans (made up numbers to qualify people for loans they can't afford) are frightening. If it falls out the way it appears it might - some of the behavior by brokers and the like seems downright criminal.
If you want to see the desperation, here are some great sites - these folks track prices, research outstanding loans amounts, and generally sniff out the most glaring examples of the crumbling that is occurring. Some point out the smell of desperation in ads for condos. Others even track outstanding loan amounts that are in foreclosure.
I noticed MLS put out a desperation ad last week in the LA TIMES - REALLY! Prices are going UP UP UP still!
Tracks specific properties. Some of the entries here and on other FF blogs (f**d flippers) also discuss how one desperate person will drag down other condos - if you see the desperate guy listing $50 K lower, you aren't going to buy the same unit for the higher price - so you negotiate them down or buy the cheaper unit.
Some have maps showing how many other places are for sale in the same area - and the signs of the coming mess are obvious.
Continue reading for more links...
Lists inventory and percent of listings where prices have been reduced.
Flippers in Trouble covers the Sacramento area. There are some shocking losses going on here!
Housing Bubble - links to lots of other sites tracking local pricing.
San Diego Death-by-Flipping Blog
Same concept - track specific properties - see how much they lost.
Wish I could find the NJ site I found last week - I'll keep looking - some real low balling going on there - and people are accepting offers more than 40% below original asking price. Eeek.
And always a good room with a view:
Real Estate Listing Results 1 - 25 of 35,068 (for the state of California - yikes)
Posted by smashmonster at 04:32 PM | Comments (0)
The Month That Would Not End
Ever noticed how all the crises in life like to crunch themselves into a compressed time period so you feel like a chicken, sans head, scurrying about?
I will be flying to Florida next Tuesday to help out - my father's surgery went well but it will be a long recovery.
I'm getting a second opinion on my ACL the day before I leave - probably will need to go back in again. They will need to use a cadaver for the ligament because they can't harvest it from my own leg a second time and I don't want them touching my other knee.
I am not looking forward to continuous motion machines and crutches again, but so be it - that's the way it goes sometimes!
Posted by smashmonster at 04:25 PM | Comments (0)