Sometimes the most mundane products are hotbeds for marketing innovation. Take trash bags, for instance. Nobody pays much attention to them, and you only really think about them when you run out of bags or something goes wrong, like a bag tearing apart. Well, I recently stocked up on Glad trash bags for the kitchen, […]

My router broke over the weekend. After some trial and error, I determined the problem was the power adapter that plugs into the wall outlet. Since you can’t buy the power adapters separately, I was forced to buy a whole new router. So, I walked over to Staples and picked up a seemingly identical replacement […]

Several weeks ago, I returned a few holiday gifts and asked the retailer to exchange them for different products. The company was a little behind the times with their return process, so I had to enclose a letter explaining what I was returning and which products I wanted them to send me in exchange. However, […]

Earlier this week, my wife and I each tried to check the status of the same online order. In her case, the website said the order was in process, but didn’t provide any more details. But when I tried it about 30 seconds later, the tracking system showed there was an issue with one of […]

Here in Chicago, the Corner Bakery restaurant chain is fairly ubiquitous. They serve things like coffee, desserts, soups and sandwiches, and seem to attract a steady stream of customers. During the weekend, I walked by one of their larger locations, which takes up almost the whole first floor of a building. I’ve passed this location […]

Lately, I’ve seen some rather odd loyalty programs. Normally, you’d just sign up for free and start earning points. This is the model that airline frequent flyer programs made popular and it seems quite logical: you reward your best customers, and those who don’t spend enough with you don’t get anything in return. However, two […]

While shopping for an insurance policy over the weekend, I started with a basic set of requirements: strong financial strength, ability to get a quote online, etc. After narrowing down the field to five or six companies, I opened up their online quote pages and took a look at what they were asking and how […]

As I was looking through a list of tech support cases that I had opened within a particular web application, I noticed something strange. Most of the cases had the status of “expired”. What exactly does that mean? Maybe these cases were: – Abandoned by the customer – Ignored by the vendor’s tech support team […]

The combination of seeing a Chili’s commercial and buying some new glasses in the span of a few days jogged something in my memory. Many months ago, I was at an optometrist’s office and saw some truly bizarre frames for sale. Among them: a Chili’s-branded frame, which looked exactly like the others but with the […]

On Sunday, I went to the convenient (but incredibly overpriced) grocery store nearby to pick up a few random things. I only shop there a few times a year, because the prices for most things are outrageous, and the customer service is rather poor. During my recent visit, I was amazed by the high prices […]