Do any of these scenarios sound familiar? – A doctor makes patients pay in full even if they have insurance, leaving the patient to file all the claim forms afterwards. – A routine claim gets rejected for an illogical reason, but instead of resubmitting it with an appropriate note, the doctor just sends an invoice […]

If you live in Chicago, you probably know that the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) has been doing construction on the train lines north of downtown for what seems like years. Typically, this has meant fewer, more crowded trains, along with longer travel times. With this in mind, I was very pleased to see a prominent […]

The state income tax rate varies a lot across the US, from as little as 0% up to 10% or more. I live in Illinois, which has historically had one of the lowest personal income tax rates: 3%. However, the new governor insists they need to raise the income tax rate to 4.5% in order […]

I’ve been having an occasional problem with my TiVo, so I decided to research the issue online. A web search quickly brought me to the official forums at tivo.com, where numerous other people have experienced the same issue. Basically, the TiVo will sometimes record a gray screen instead of the program, and it doesn’t even […]

While waiting on hold with some random call center, I noticed something strange: I’ve actually become more patient over the past few months. Normally, I would have been rather annoyed with a 15 minute delay, but this time I didn’t mind. “They must be really overwhelmed,” I thought to myself, figuring that the company had […]

With all the recent fraud in the financial services and real estate sectors, it’s sometimes hard to believe the US has any reputable companies at all. Yet we have firms like Southwest, Trader Joe’s, and Amazon that seem to universally excel in treating customers and employees right, while still producing huge revenues. Why don’t we […]

I wonder if the way that an organization handles customer suggestions is a good predictor of its long-term success. Suggestions come in many forms: written on a comment card, sent via email, or just spoken verbally to an employee on the front lines. It can be a huge task to make sure that all of […]

Although online pioneers like Amazon provide very detailed emails after you complete a transaction, some companies are going the opposite route. Rather than telling you what took place, they just send an email with a generic message, e.g. “We completed your transaction — please log in to the website to view the transaction details.” This […]

Catching a taxi in the city is a fairly haphazard affair. You have to get the cab driver’s attention, make sure they take the payment method you want to use (e.g. credit card), and then verify that your trip isn’t too short or too long for where they’re willing to travel. To streamline this process, […]

During my trip to Vancouver, I stayed at a surprisingly nice Best Western hotel. Shortly after arriving, I was pleased to see two bottles of water right next to the in-room coffeemaker. At first, I was worried that they would charge some exorbitant hotel price if I so much as looked at the bottles. But […]