An Open Letter To Corporate America...

I, along with a great many people, work hard and when I go to spend the money that I've worked hard to earn I want it to be a pleasant experience and all too often it's not.  In fact, far more often than it should be, it's just that it's not a pleasant experience - it's simply an (often very) unpleasant experience.  So, I thought I'd share a few thoughts here on how I'd fix some things with some companies.  Not that anybody who matters will ever read them, but I'll feel better having said them.

• White Castle - Growing up you were one of my favorite restaurants, even more than McDonald's.  Your food was fairly cheap, the service was fast, the restaurants spotless - what more could I ask for?  Now - not so much.  So how would I fix things?  For starters, get rid of a good 50-75% of your menu and go back to basics.  That would greatly improve your speed of service among other things.  I'd also look into dropping your prices somewhat.  Look, your burgers are very good - when they are FRESH - but all all too often they aren't fresh anymore and the quality suffers far more than many other fast food restaurants when your burgers aren't fresh.  But regardless of how good they are, I'm hard pressed to spend (currently) 69 cents on one White Castle when I can go many other places and get a full sized burger in the range of $1-$2.  Maybe I'm wrong, but it sure seems to me that you were built on lower margins and higher quantities and you've tried to improve margins by adding to the menu and I just don't think it works for you.
• Charter Communications - I'm not even sure where to begin with you.  We've had your phone and Internet for a long time now and for the most part we're happy with the service; but last year when you convinced us to add cable - it was a disaster.  You missed two installation appointments completely; the tech that finally did show up didn't want to install since we insisted he run his own wires as we were keeping our DirecTV for the time being (and it's a good thing we did); the cost you quoted us - well you never managed to send us a bill for that - and it went up three times in six months; you disconnected my second phone line at one point by accident; and so on.  You could not have bungled our account worse if you had tried.  Look it's one thing for the Internet to quit working because you upgraded the system and neglected to replace my modem with one that could support the new 8 channel bonding - I can forgive that - but when you completely screw so many things up as you did over the cable - well we'll never go back to that.  So what do you do now?  You call us every 4-6 weeks trying to get us to get cable again.  Each time we do the same song and dance - you make promises that we both know you can't keep and waste both of our time with me telling you that we're done with your TV service.  And it's nice that you've upgraded Internet speeds for people, but considering you took those on the 30MB service to 100MB (which is what I had) and you've only given me a token bump to 125MB - why am I paying double what the lower tier is?  I hear promises that those of us on "Ultra" will see upgrades first, but I'm only going to wait so much longer until I downgrade the service.
• CenturyLink - You guys, almost as bad as Charter.  We had your phone and Internet when we moved in - FTTP - so we had 20MB down, but only 768KB up?  WTF, 768KB up on a 20MB down line?  Seriously?  And you wonder why we left.  And now when I call to see if you have any better offerings you try and tell me how fast and wonderful the same 20MB/768KB despite me telling you I had a 100MB/5MB connection from Charter.  You really think I'm going to find the 20MB/768KB you are offering fast?  Here I am trying to give money - two phones lines and Internet - and you can't offer anything faster here when we've had FTTP since we moved in?  I'm just boggled at that - those speeds were fine years ago when we did move in, but get with the program guys.  How about rolling out Prism (or whatever it's called) here?
• Netflix - Keep doing what you're doing, you're one of the few companies who makes it easy for me to spend money with you and lets me get what I feel I pay for (probably more than I pay for).  Your customer service has always been top notch, shows like House Of Cards and Orange Is The New Black help keep me coming back for more.  Other than the misguided attempt to split the company a while back, you guys just *get it* and I hope you keep on getting it.
• Best Buy - You know I read a quote the other day that rang so true in regards to you - it was something along the lines of "Best Buy - Amazon's show room"...  Sad but true and you have nobody but yourself to blame for it.  Too many rude and/or less than competent employees roaming the store for starters.  The in-store merchandising - it's often a joke.  Seriously, you've went from a store where I spent a large amount of money each year to one I simply try and avoid at all costs and that's sad.  I could go on and on, but why bother - I honestly see you going the route of Circuit City sooner rather than later and that's sad.
• QuikTrip - As with Netflix, keep doing what you're doing.  Your stores are clean, your people seem to work hard and get me in and out quickly.  Your new QT Kitchens in the store are great - although you could keep them open a bit later.  Your guarantee on gas is comforting - and I saw you stand behind it with my mother several years ago so I know you mean it.  Even your hot dogs and doughnuts are top notch.  We need more companies like you.
• DirecTV - You know a few years ago I probably would have had a lot of things to say about you, but not so much anymore.  I think you're a touch over priced, but I appreciate the stands you've been taking against some of these media companies the last few years and I will say despite some initial reservations - I do like the new Genie setup - although I am still a bit miffed that you brought me a HR-34 model that doesn't have optical out so it won't connect to my sound bar, but that aside, I'm actually fairly happy with you.
• Burger King - I have one simple thing to say to you - if you go through with your Tim Horton's "inversion" - well then I'm done with you completely.
• T-Mobile - Short of an incident just today where instead of upgrading our data you disconnected it, requiring a trip back to your store - well I have nothing but good things to say about you too.  And just so you know I still get a chuckle out of the fact that your CEO showed up at the AT&T event at CES earlier this year.  I really like his style and what he's done for you - I hope he keeps it up.

I could go on and on, but I think I've reached a stopping point, but I do have one last thing to say - probably more important than anything above - and this goes out to ALL COMPANIES:

QUIT LETTING MY CREDIT CARD DATA GET STOLEN.  Is it asking too much for me to trust you enough to use a credit card at your business?  There's absolutely no excuse for these things to still be happening in this day and age and I'm sick of it.  I'm to the point now that anybody who is breached - well I will simply no longer spend money there.  

- M