Ideapad

December 14, 2006: New JetBlue Airplane Configuration. "JetBlue will offer at least 36-inch pitch in rows 1-11, and 34-inch pitch in rows 12-25." Me, commenting on del.icio.us: "Very nice, but what will happen to JetBlue's 'sit in back, get more legroom' come-on?"

March 19, 2008: JetBlue to Charge $10 to $20 for Legroom. "The new seats -- situated in rows two through five and in emergency exit rows 10 and 11 -- will provide 38 inches of pitch."

Between this and the airline's new refundable-business-fare policies, we have the answer: premium economy. (UpgradeTravel predicted this last year, and they're exactly right.)

The slippery slopes here are numerous. For one thing, JetBlue is getting more and more traditional; it's only a matter of time before they shoehorn an extra row or two back into the cabin, killing their industry-leading seat pitch. For another, those "$10-20" legroom seats will quickly cost $50 or more each way, in much the same manner as JetBlue's fares quickly went from low-cost-carrier range to $399-each-way-to-Florida-at-Christmas levels, sometimes costing more than American and Continental.

Once upon a time I was a JetBlue shareholder. I always enjoy the time I spend on their planes, particularly when compared with other domestic airlines. But it's hard to root for the clever underdog when the innovations are increasingly pulling them into the realm of same-old, same-old.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 12:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In November I began tracking, and unsubscribing from, the many unwanted catalogs that came to my home. Today I entered the first batch of 2008 catalogs I received, 10 in all in the past seven weeks. Among the offenders: two catalogs from which I've opted out which hit me again with a new customer ID number, requiring me to opt out all over again.

Catalogs, in a word, are spam: 100 glossy printed resource-wasting pieces of spam, each one worse than a thousand junk emails. The spam is filterable; the catalogs are wasteful long before I see them. Here's to hoping Catalog Choice does its job.

The original post is up to date and will continue to be updated.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 09:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

[updated Dec. 13]

I have been inundated with catalogs this holiday season. Big, tree-killing, mailbox-cluttering, useless, unwanted catalogs, from companies I haven't heard of selling products that are useless to me.

Something happened with my good name this year, either via my change of address card at the post office when I moved in April, or from agreeing to a few too many things as a consumer marketer at Clarins. The privacy-oriented environmentalist in me hates this. So I am diligently using Catalog Choice to opt out of these wasteful things.

Every one of these catalogs opted me into their lists without asking my permission. I figure turnabout is fair play. Below are the companies who harm the environment and invade my privacy in the hopes that I'll blow a few bucks on their products. I refuse to patronize them and urge you to do the same.

Update, Feb. 11, 2008: I keep receiving catalogs and I keep opting out of them on catalogchoice.org. So far only one unsubscribe has gone through; I will monitor them in the coming weeks to see if they do any better. The list below has been updated.

The offenders (those with an asterisk are companies who have my name from legitimate means, but from whom I never requested a catalog; those with two asterisks sent catalogs in 2008):

Back to Basics Toys
Brookstone (2X) *
Charles Keath **
Campmor (2X **) *
Coldwater Creek
Expressions **
Frontgate **
Grandinroad (2X **)
The Great Courses **
Harry & David *
Herrington (2X **)
HP * **
Lord & Taylor
Mohonk Mountain House * **
One Step Ahead **
Potpourri
Sensational Beginnings (2X)
Signals
Smith & Hawken
Smith+Noble
Victoria's Secret *
Victorian Trading Co.
Wireless

I will continue to update this list through Christmas 2007. I hope it doesn't get too long.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 11:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Sidenote to the two movie-centric posts prior to this one: With the Loews-AMC merger, AMC's MovieWatcher customer loyalty program arrived in New York City for the first time. I had a MovieWatcher account in high school, and not unlike my Blockbuster membership I held onto my card for years. So when AMC appeared in my neighborhood, I went digging into my old wallets, found my card, and tried it—online, no less. And what do you know! My account is valid and I'm still in the system.

The account balance was empty, but I felt remembered, and I got a good chuckle out of my card's longevity. I now use it every time I go to the movies and am once again partial to AMC theaters in my area.

Customers are as easily sated as they are angered. May as well aim high.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 03:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Blockbuster Video near my old apartment closed last fall. Not enough business in a land of early-adopting downtown Manhattan folks using VOD and Netflix, I guess. The missus and I liked renting DVDs every so often, but we learned to do without.

Now that we're uptown, we were pleased to discover that the Blockbuster in our new neck of the woods is still open and doing a brisk business. We were less pleased when the store said we had no Blockbuster accounts. The clerk made us fill out a new-customer form and hand over ID and a credit card to rent a movie.

Here's the thing. I've been a Blockbuster customer for approximately 17 years, since around the time I first got a driver's license. I was one of the first people to have their then-impressive "universal account," which amused me to no end when I used my Pennsylvania-issued replacement card in New Jersey. I was a happy customer when they let me start verifying my ID with my driver's license so I could stop carrying the Blockbuster card altogether, and my account followed me from New Jersey to Pa. back to Jersey and into New York, including an account merge when I got married. All without incident. Never a late fee, never a lost-video charge, just half a lifetime of contented membership.

Frustrating and ironic, then, that after all these years I have disappeared from their system. The only reason I can find is that they probably purge accounts after a year of inactivity. If it's been a year since I rented from Blockbuster, well, that's because they closed my local store. And when I became able to return to the chain, a slow and aggravating barrier existed, when in fact they should have welcomed me back with a smile, and perhaps a coupon to re-engage me. A company swinging from its heels like Blockbuster should know that. So much for loyalty.

("Breach," by the way, was interesting but only decent.)

Posted by David Wertheimer at 09:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)