#50 - Obstacles of buying

As a Finn I am happy to have a local airline that carries me back to home by the evening (evening if I need to stretch the limit between evening and night when the home is in Tampere region). However, once I lost my nerves to the bad online service of the local airline.

Some time ago we decided to purchase flight tickets to our next vacation. Five persons from Helsinki to Miami and back. The date was agreed and flight selected, so only online shopping was left. We entered into Finnair online store and started to enter the required information. It was a tough job to enter in the details of five persons. First there were some minor complaints about typos in names and membership card numbers. However, once the right information was entered, the timer of the session was exceeded couple of times. There was no way to buy our tickets from the Finnair online store, even if we started six times from the beginning, used several different computers and tried at least two hours to complete the purchase. We solved the problem switching to Ebookers and the purchase of exactly the same flights was successfully completed in couple of minutes. This is a good example what can go wrong in online store, even if that plays a significant importance in the current business.

Lessons Learnt:

Consider customer’s obstacles of buying your product.

#49 - Almost never lost

Once again I was visiting Palo Alto, California. It was Saturday morning when I realized that San Jose Sharks was playing against Vancouver Canucks the same night. I went online and bought tickets to the game. At the evening I was heading to HP Pavillion, the home of Sharks. I knew the address of the arena, 525 West Santa Clara Street. Unfortunately the Herz Neverlost allowed me to enter only part of the address without specifying the Western part of the address. It was completely dark when I arrived, according to Neverlost. However, the place was a small bar, far from the arena. Nobody in the bar knew anything about ice hockey, San Jose Sharks, or anything else that was useful to me. Seems that there are only couple of fans who know ice hockey. Anyway, the game was supposed to start soon and I was lost far away from the place where I was supposed to be. As an innovative guy I was trying to figure out a solution how to get to the right place. Then I realized to check from a paper map the name of the street close by the ice hockey arena, entered that to the Neverlost and arrived just in time to the game. The arena was nice, even better than Hakametsä in Tampere. The audience was rather calm. However, when the first fight started, the audience started to get anxious. Also during the Canucks penalties the audience got anxious to eat the opponents like sharks.

Lessons learnt:

Technology is supposed to help you, but it often fails doing that.

Canucks vs  Sharks

#48 - Manual navigation at the digital era

We had rented a car without navigator, because all of us had good smartphones. There is one not-to-be-named brand selling smartphones with offline navigation capability. That is an excellent feature the competitors have not been able to offer. The plan was to use the offline navigation on our way from Orlando via Cape Canaveral to Miami International Airport. We were even half way when we arrived to Cape Canaveral with an empty battery. Seems that they guys have still some development to do.

NASA Space Center at the Cape Canaveral

Luckily we had also other mobile devices to use for the rest of the journey. Another not-to-be-named brand offered maps in their tablet that we can call “myPad”. However, no offline navigation and the device was not even able to show the current location in the offline mode. That company has a lot of development to do for their maps. Unfortunately another not-to-be-named famous search company had not yet released their map on the previously mentioned product. There we were driving dark roads towards Miami and my son was following the map intersection by intersection and giving me navigation guidance. Tedious job, but someone had to do it.

The next problem started when we were about 60 miles from Miami. The signs indicated that the road tolls from this point towards Miami operating only with prepaid systems like Sun Pass. I turned on the emergency radio channel that was repeating the same story. I tried to call to Alamo car rental service and Sun Pass service in order to activate the account, but no answers in the middle of the night. I knew that there will be plenty of road tolls before we would arrive at the airport and $100 fine for each of those did not sound promising.

Luckily we had the perfect map reader who found us a direct road through the cities. That was even shorter than the freeways. That’s the way to go. Unluckily there were at least a hundred intersections between us and the airport. Fortunately only half of those had read light, so the rest of the journey was delayed "only" two hours.

We were really tired when we arrived at the airport. The guy who was welcoming us at the rental car center confirmed immediately that all of their rental cars have Sun Pass activated automatically. Why the hell did they mention that two weeks ago. 

Lessons learned

It takes only one person to spoil the image of your company.

There is still room for product development.

Straightest way to the airport -
Unfortunately there were quite many traffic lights on the road

#47 - Straight through the road tolls

U.S.A. is a promised country of customer service. However, that is not always true. Some time ago I experienced very bad service while I was renting Alamo car at the Miami International airport. The car was paid already while the online booking was made. Despite of that the guy was trying to sell us a bigger car. He did not have time for customers, because most of the time he was discussing with his colleague about nonsense. Therefore he forgot to tell us most of the important facts about the car, for example the Miami road toll system.

I hate coins and therefore I always give my coins to my children. Because of the bad customer service, we paid all the road tolls manually in cash while the other cars drove full speed through the reduced price road toll gates with their wireless Sun pass system.

One night at 4:30 AM it was completely dark while I was driving alone towards Orlando airport. The streets were almost empty and the local radio was playing summer hit “I need your love” by Calvin Harris. I was feeling great. Soon I noticed the road toll at the freeway entrance with a sign “Exact coins 75 cents or Sun pass” Another sign was saying: “Fine $100 if breaking the law”. No kids, no coins in the car. I found one 25 cents coin and throw that to the road toll equipment. The gate did not open. While monitoring all the surveillance cameras and the spike strip in front of the car, I thought about all kind of options. Maybe hiding register plates would prevent recognition. I do not want to go to jail, I thought. Then I stepped on it and the car sped quickly over the spike strip. There I was on my way to the airport, but the good mood was gone. Next couple of weeks I was waiting a fine of $100 to arrive, but it never came.

Road toll in Miami

Lessons learned:

Sometimes you have to choose between the bad options.

What is done cannot be undone - Go on living.

#46 - The art of selling vs. the skill of buying

Sneaker Traveller at the Miami Beach

Some time ago I was spending a great vacation in Miami with my family. One day we went to the beautiful Miami Beach. It was nice to swim in the ocean and the water was really warm. Midday sun was shining and we got thirsty. Luckily we were close to Ocean drive, the most famous street full of nice restaurants and fancy sports cars. We were attracted by the Kitchen, because they offered huge Mojitos and other cool drinks. Probably one liter per drink and there was happy hour offer to pay one and get two drinks. We had a plan to go for drinks only, as we were going to have a nice dinner at the evening. However, the good smell of food changed our mind.

Miami Vice is a cool drink and there was plenty of it

We asked if the restaurant serve small snacks that could be shared by the family. Yes, we have, was the answer. Then the waitress asked us if we want this or that... The list of questions was long and at least I lost my control and understanding what we really ordered.

Drinks were tasty and the food was very good and there was enough of it for the whole family. However, that was only a starter. We were surprised when we got another portion. That was a huge main course of tasty fish, shrimps, lobsters, scallops, chicken, ribs, steak and so on. We tried to eat all of that, but could not finish it all. However, the waitress rewarded us by confirming that no-one before has been eating that much. Normally they take plenty of food back to home in a doggy bag.

Apetizer

Tasty lunch

It was a frightening moment to wait for the check. However $438 was chocking. Even the gratuity was more than the regular lunch for a family at home. This is one of the memories you do not easily forget. That night we skipped the dinner. None of us was against the change in the plans. I felt so happy when I stepped in a tourist bus with my fresh Mojito to enjoy. It was happy hour and I had almost forgotten that.

Check Please - Just a light lunch

Mojito doggy pack at the Ocean Drive

Lessons learned:

Everyone is not a natural sourcing professional.

The art of selling does not always match with the customer need.