dubious.biz(ness)

After the terrible snafu with Best Buy, which pretty much ruined my time table and kept me from sleeping the night before I left, I was treated to a lovely flight via Virgin Atlantic. Virgin is awesome, totally awesome. I didn’t take advantage of the cocktails at the bar, but they did have a very good dinner as well as a huge list of movies, music, and tv in the seatback, so each person can select their own choices. The downside is that the flight is about 6 hours long and they don’t actually turn on the system until after they show you a bunch of ads and the news and feed you. Additionally you should be sleeping. I tried very hard but was unable to do so, and was rewarded with all the movies I could stomach. Yay.

On arrival I was quite surprised to learn that I was supposed to bring along some sort of paperwork confirming my entry for visa clearance. Having applied for and gotten the visa, I would have presumed that I had enough documentation to suffice. Apparently not. Neither I nor the person in front of me had the documentation, and the immigrations officer vented on me. “You americans,” he began. I was stunned. “Are the only people who don’t think you need anything, don’t you have any documentation that you’re a student at all? It is your responsibility to contact the embassy find out what you need to do…” at this point, fortunately he was cut off. His manager came up behind him and told him to take a break and have a cup of tea, his replacement seemed embarassed. I felt embarassed for not being prepared. Let me say this though: the British Embassy (actually the Consulate) is not very helpful. Any issues with Visas are directed to a 900 number that is $2.50/min. After having searched specifically for it, I do see that somewhere on the immigrations website it mentions that you should bring documentation of your student-ness. I will certainly bring it next time.

The rest of the trip was uneventful, mainly a long bus ride that seemed longer than last year, despite being appreciably shorter. I still did not sleep. I arrived at Wolfson, got my smart card, loaded it with funds, got my computer access sorted out, had a tour, and unpacked. I dined with an Indian doing a second degree in economics and a Canadian doing a PhD in international studies. I am mainly absorbing a ton of information and trying to aclimate quickly.

It is already very apparent to me that travelling is not like moving. Planning to stay somewhere drastically changes your perspective on how you feel about your surroundings. My room which was reasonably sized when I was at interviews is now a bit small. The food was, well, bizzare (although I think that may have been unique to the circumstances). I have noted that I only have two outlets in my room. It is difficult to find stores because they are sprawled out on a tangle of streets.

Of course, I can already recognize that a lot of these problems are like culture shock, and they will be over with soon. It will be nearly a week before classes start, but my hurried mentality wants to crush together all the things I need to do, making me feel pressed for time. It has been a long time since I have only had one thing to do, and getting used to that is going to take some time. Today will be my first full day in Cambridge, and I’m doing my best to relax. I will have an orientation and I’ll probably get a bike today as well. I cannot wait for my english breakfast :-).

What a terrible joke Best Buy has become. In general, Best Buy performs one function: housing several million dollars of high-dollar high-tech hardware and selling it to consumers at close to Internet prices. Of course while in the store don’t expect anyone to help, and if they do help, don’t expect them to be knowledgable about the department that they work in. Best Buy Sux has years of excellent accounts of why the employees behave they do: corporate apathy.

However, Best Buy would desparately like to move up the chain, let’s not forget, Best Buy is getting hammered and hasn’t done well financially since the bubble burst. Best Buy would love to extend it’s careless attitude into all sorts of related businesses, namely warranty and PC service like the recent “Geek Squad” and their “Performance Service Plan.” Of course, there are no Geeks in the Geek squad, and it’s less of a “Squad” than a bunch of the same pimply teens that worked in sales before that happened to know enough about PCs to get recruited into the “Squad.” Likewise, there is no Performance nor Service in the Performance Service Plan, just a huge upfront fee and a “we’ll fix it when we get to it” attitude where you must mail off most equipment for repair and it is serviced at an outsourced service center.

Or in my case, it isn’t serviced at all. In the beginning of September my laptop started pressing several keys at the same time. The keys weren’t physically sticking together, they were both contacted when the keys were touched. Along with that, my battery has slowly fallen to 0. So I sent the laptop off for service to their service center. This was supposed to arrive back on 9/21. I frowned when I was told this, the “Geek” said it would be back by 9/21. It wasn’t. I have been visiting them every other day since the day before it was supposed to arrive. Every day, no one has done anything. ZERO. I ask where it is, they type my phone number in, look at the screen for a moment, and they say that it is being shipped. Finally, today, the day before I leave (which for my own safety I have been saying was the day I leave), a best buy employee had the initiative to stand up, walk back twenty paces to the cages the recently delivered PCs sit in, and actually look for my computer. Look, there it is. Who knows how long it has been there.

Immediately, I notice the battery is still the same. Not cool. I can’t turn it on, because of course the battery doesn’t work. I ask how to get the battery replaced. They point the finger to 888-BEST-BUY. I start to call them in the store, I decide against it after the robot attendent tells me that it will be 10 minutes until a human talks to me. I leave, take the laptop back to nicholasville, turn it on, and guess what: IT’S STILL BROKEN. They did not repair anything. I drive back to Best Buy. At this point, I am leaving. I cannot have another three week wait while the laptop is in someone else’s hands not getting fixed, it has to come with me to England. I walk in, I say it’s broken. They take this in stride. Things are broken here, all the time. The entire place is broken, and they are the broken cogs that make the broken machine grind.

I mention that this is a more serious problem. I just sent it off, it’s still broken. They don’t care, it’s not in the manual how to deal with this, so they do fairly poorly. Immediately a teenager wearing a name tag identifying her as a Customer Service Manager comes out. She says it must be sent off. The geeks shirk back from confrontation. The pimply teenager has clearly asserted her dominance over them by being able to say no with total apathy, a trait that apparently results in promotion in Best Buy. Apathy abounds as she claims that she can help. She suggests that I buy a keyboard. She suggests I send the laptop off. I ask her if I should buy a ticket home so I can pick it up so I can get it back when it’s “serviced” again. I ask to talk to her manager. Like a very very smart manager, she blocks. However, her intelligence goes only so far, she claims that she’s the general manager. I laugh at her. She is offended. I laugh again but more seriously. I ask if she signs the checks. She tells me that there is a corporate office. I said I’d love to speak to them. 888-BEST-BUY. Thank god for that. She pivots her heals and disappears into the back where she can do as little for Best Buy as she has done for me.

I make the “Geek” that called her out dial the number and get the “Corporate Office” on the phone. Not that I care, and of course I know where I am going: nowhere. I talk to them, getting annoyed. Apparently I’m talking to customer care. They’re logging the call. He listens, does nothing, repeats the Best Buy line. He does zero. He insists it must be sent off. No one is willing to fix the laptop today.

So: the score is Best Buy: 7, Me: 0. I still have a broken laptop, I am leaving tomorrow, and they don’t care at all. I look around seeing aimless people and apathy around me, and realize that the entire store is probably staffed by 50-70 people, most of whom are involved with customer service, but in my sight I see 20-30 customers that aren’t helped and 20-30 employees doing their best to do nothing. Best Buy has made a lucrative business out of a huge inventory and no service, and they want to make a lucrative business out of service but are missing the key component: service. It’s a break the no one can fix. I will never shop there again, certainly not for anything that might break, and I couldn’t recommend them to my worst enemy.

Later that night, I am forced to comply with Best Buy and send off my laptop again, and have my parents deal with it. I buy a new laptop. From CompUSA. Once bitten, twice shy they say.

On a little reflection the real problems with Best Buy are simple: Apathy, Hierarchy, and Low Margin. There is no motivation to be customer oriented at any level. This leads to apathy. Hierarchy means that any given Best Buy employee from bottom to top can point fingers without reasonable accountability. Those in charge aren’t (as we can see by the CSM who suddenly runs the store), and those underneath have more underneath them (such as an outsourced repair center that can’t repair). Low margins are really the keystone in Best Buy, the reason that Best Buy is going to sink under it’s own weight as the market moves away from retail stores, big or small. Low margins mean that Best Buy can’t afford to provide service, you are trading service for price. And when you have low margins, you have no choice but to keep inventory turns high and deemphasize customer satisfaction in your staff. Eventually, fortunately for all of us, Best Buy will crush under it’s own weight. The one thing that you can’t yet move out of the market is service, and they’ve beaten themselves at their own game. The Geek Squad is a key business initiative to try to move away from falling margins in retailing that has already fallen flat on its face because the customer service infrastructure within the company is staffed by thousands of apathetic teens and twenty somethings who are either disabled from authority or incapable of solid judgements on when customers need a real resolution.

There was a particular server at our office. It was everyone’s stepchild because it was huge and crappy, a dual 300Mhz coffee table sized IBM server that was heavy as hell. It ran a few office gimp programs and was up until I bought the mini, home of dubious.biz. Talk about a downsizing. The server had been sitting forever until having to leave finally got my ass in gear to bury it properly. With guns. Just like Scarface, this server was going to get what it had coming all along.

So we took it out to just south of the Kentucky River and shot at it with all the guns we owned. Namely a .357 Magnum double-action revolver loaded with .38s (not as much fun but better practice), a .22 semi-auto rifle, and a .300 Winn Mag bolt action big game rifle with a scope. The .357 holds 7 crime stoppers, the .22 holds 15 peas, and the .300 holds 3 massive jacketed bullets.

Of course we also took photos and video. The video is here, the photos will come when Best Buy decides to ship my laptop back. The last shot is certainly the fatal one, it is directly through both processors, the old Slot 1 type that lined up perfectly with the scope. The second of the two heatsinks can be found on display at the office, along with a shot hard drive and a blown processor. The one part I didn’t think to shoot was the power supply.

First Second Third Fourth Fifth

I just realized, I will be leaving in two weeks. holy crap. holy holy crap.

Honestly I’m using these status updates as an way to review them for myself moreso than for anyone else. Oh the miracle of the multipurpose blog.

• Miata left yesterday. It is on its way to AZ to live in the desert with the navajo. In it’s honor, I will have a vision quest.
• Loans are all in place and to be disbursed at reasonable dates.
• Visa is in my hands. It is basically a sticker which takes up an entire page of my passport. What ever happened to stamps? Every page in the passport book is supposed to be big enough to fit two arrivals and two departures, aka two trips. But if everyone (being Indonesia and the UK’s student visa) uses two pages, I’ve got half the space. However, one of my stated goals is to use up the entire book before it expires in 2014, so perhaps I shouldn’t complain.
• Accomodation is, as of today, gotten. I will be sleeping in Category 4. That means the cheapest.
• Ticket is also gotten. I will be flying virgin, and returning continential. You figure out the symbolism. Veggies are arranged in both directions.
• Debts are all repaid and my finances are clearing up. I will pass this year’s hurdle without fairly well.
• Shots have all be shot. Into my arm. I will know on wednesday if I have TB. Isn’t that ridiculous?

What is left to be done? Well, packing. I still have not dealt with the issue of banking in the UK, although that will be the first thing to be dealt with when I arrive. As far as I can remember, that’s it. Perhaps it is time to go through a few of the books I have to check those out. It might also be a good idea if I were to start writing more on studyawayuk.com, as this was really supposed to be part of it. It’s hard to keep objectivity while in the midst of doing something. At any rate, things are getting progressively more reasonable as time goes on.

The most fun state to spell. Spell it with me: em-eye-es-es-eye-es-es-eye-pee-pee-eye. Not only can you spell it, you can count with it: 1 mississippi, 2 mississippi, 3 mississippi… in fact, if you type it enough it’s a right mess. Anyway, I could say lame bloggy things about how terrible the hurricane was, but honestly, we know how terrible it was: people are dead, houses, neighborhoods, and cities are ruined… It’s a disaster, act of god, just plain bad.

But, my dad, who is perhaps as crazy as me in his own way, has decided to take it upon himself to go down to Mississippi, the other state hit by the hurricane (and just as hard) to help people file unemployment and get jobs. The ADD, whom he works for, owns a bus packed full of computers and connected to the Internet via satellite. The bus’s normal life is driving to new factories and taking applications, or to closing factories to help Kentuckians file unemployment, make resumes, and look for work. So essentially, it is going to be doing the same job in a disaster zone.

My dad bought a hand gun. A .357 Magnum. My father was an policeman in the Air Force and carried a service revolver for many years. Probably every other member of my family on my dad’s side owns a gun. But not dad. He has always said he didn’t feel comfortable around guns. Therefore, I didn’t feel comfortable around guns. Even when I’ve shot rifles and handguns, they were not what you’d call, “comfortable” to me. You might even say I have a mild fear of guns. But, dad bought a gun. Because he’d need to secure his vehicle against possible looting. It makes perfect sense, and dad’s the type of guy that would go buy a gun if he needed one. But I am looking at this gun and holding it with the sort of fascination that one would expect from a ten year old.

The gun is really of mild consequence, but I hadn’t ever realized that guns were that foreign to me. Eventually, I want to know how to own and care for a gun. Just because it seems ridiculouslous to me that I would be so interested in a (relatively) cheap (relatively) low-tech (relatively) primitive weapon.

So the other work for me was to do a few “upgrades” to the bus. Since the bus is basically a mobile computer lab that connects via satellite, it’s really a big toy to me, so it’s more fun than work. The bus received a GPS and wireless router and might soon get VoIP.

Of course the really impressive part is that dad is hauling the bus and himself down to Mississippi to help people, which is really noble and really cool at the same time. It makes me realize that dad and I are really similar: we both want to help people and we both want adventure. We’ve both done a lot of both and it’s pretty interesting to see how the sense of adventure and the urge to help those in need manifests itself in each of us.

Well, after spending about two weeks panicking, things seem to be falling into place. My car is sold, to a guy in AZ who will probably have enough to care and feed it in next stage of life. My visa is coming back, I’ve been officially accepted, ticket is bought, the room forms are being sent back now. In fact, looking at the list I put on the site last week, it would appear I have nothing left to panic about.

Other than paying for school and doing well in school. So now begins a new list of things to panic about…