Are We Using The Better Business Bureau, or is it Crap?

I was reading the terrible reviews for Time Warner Cable on Yelp (there's a liveblog in there that's quite worth it), and someone mentioned reporting issues to the Better Business Bureau.

I decided to make a cursory glance at what the Better Business Bureau thinks of Time Warner Cable, and discovered that it thinks pretty highly of it. "A+" highly.

Considering the vitriol that has been heaped on Time Warner Cable in its time, and considering the fact that every single person I speak to has had some strange Kafkaesque nightmare scenario with Time Warner (mine lasted several weeks -- I'm starting to have one with the National Grid too, actually). So, why the A+?

Are we not using it? Is it blind to issues in the community? Is it symptomatic of some sort of corrupt influence? Are these rhetorical questions I have no ability to answer?

The answer to the last one is yes.

(Update: Consumer Reports appears to have many of the same questions.)

Airline Pricing, Extreme Couponing, And Ticket Prices (That Bear)

Ken Davenport has a conversation about ticket prices:

"NAMELESS PERSON," I said, "Can I ask you something?"

"Sure, Ken."

"Have you seen a movie in the last month?"

"Well, yes, I have."

"Have you seen more than one movie in the last month?"

"I've seen two."

"Ahhh, I see. But you can't afford the theater, right? You just spent at least $25 on movie tickets. You know about TDF, right? You know about 20at20, right, where you can see shows for $20?"

He didn't answer.

I could have pressed on . . . "Did you have popcorn when you were at the movies? Oh, and do you drink Starbucks? Watch Netflix?"

But the point wasn't to embarass him . . . the point was to demonstrate how the problem isn't price. The problem is value.

Or complexity.

Ken Davenport has at times cited airline pricing as a model ("You've heard me say before how closely related the theater industry is to the airline industry, right?" from that last post).

I've lived in this city five years now, and I still have yet to have seen a show on Broadway. Like Ken's nameless person, I am fully aware of some of those things (I have never heard of 20at20, admittedly, but I know about TDF and the TKTS booth and student rushes). But I'm just too tired to fight to get a discount.

Honestly, although I would never pay full price to see a show, I would probably pay $20 to see Bengal Tiger in the Baghdad Zoo. But I don't have the effort of mind to go figure out how I can do it most cheaply.

Since Ken likes Airlines, let me tell him the one thing that makes Airlines the worst is this incredible feeling that you have no idea what you're going to pay, and a sneaking, burning suspicion that you could have paid less.

I recently was looking at round trip flights to Prague, and the first time around I used Expedia to look for a round trip. $1200ish. Then I realized that if you put in "Flights" into Google with a date range, it lets you look the same flights up on five or six competitors. Suddenly the cheapest flight was $700.

Then I futzed around, and I saw a flight for $400. A round trip flight to Prague. $400.

Why was it so low? Because I had accidentally made the date range "Tonight." Meaning that airline tickets become about 66% off the day of the flight. At least, Turkish Airline tickets to Prague that connect for twelve hours in Istanbul...

These sites try to take the illusion and guesswork out of airline pricing tickets. But there's still confusion, not knowing how much you're going to pay. I also don't know if Turkish Airlines charges $9 for bathrooms, or $25 for every extra pound of fat on my body.

To return to theater pricing, we are comparing our pricing model to movies. Everyone knows exactly what a movie costs. You can roll up off the street, pay $12, spend two hours, and then roll out. No planning required. If it's sold out, there's probably another one directly after it.

Not so with theater! Shakespeare in the Park is free, but you have to basically commit a major part of a day to getting the ticket. It's like the people who buy out a music concert within minutes of it opening. They eat up the enthusiasm of the casual fan.

Now, to Ken's credit, he actually designed somewhat of a solution to this: an app called At The Booth. It does for Broadway what Expedia does for airlines. But like Expedia, it's not a perfect solution, and it may not be enough to overcome the psychological block of the audience.

(And trust me: the psychological block is incredible. I live off the Bedford stop of the L. I have a harder time convincing people who live in Manhattan to take ONE STOP across the river than I think I would have if I asked them to rob people...)

Instead, being able to guarantee low prices to everyone means that people won't be discouraged not to apply simply because they aren't "in" enough to know they can get it for cheaper.

Theater is entertainment, not extreme couponing.

Libya And the Other Intervention

Hey kids, did you know the International Community was actually also in the air and on the ground supporting rebels in another violent struggle in Africa? Except with helicopters instead of airstrikes, apparently:

The Ivory Coast Ambassador to the UN Youssoufou Bamba called Gbagbo a 'dictator who is killing his own people' and urged him to hand power to Allende Ouatarra, the presidential claimant who won convincingly in elections five months ago.

State TV broadcast footage of UN and French helicopters dropping troops onto a building in the capital city Abidjan.

Airstrikes began yesterday and today, after five months in power, the dictator is negotiating to step down.

Just an interesting counterpoint to this Libya thing.

Hamlet's Raspberry

To wit:

Sometimes, as with an old fart like Polonius or a bagman like Colin Powell in his notorious United Nations speech, the Bronx cheer is the only appropriate response.

I suggest reading the whole thing.

Live Performance in the Mainstream pt. 2

Also, an economics blog calls this "Wicked cool stuff":

Live Performance in the Mainstream

Every time I see an article like this one (where Andrew Sullivan quotes a eulogy for live performance), all I can think is, "Hey, someone noticed."

Closing Your Doors - The Good Way

The NY Times has an article about non-profits closing their doors for a good reason -- because they've accomplished their mission:

Out2Play, an organization started by Andrea Wenner in 2005, plans to close its doors next year. The group has put up roughly 120 playgrounds used by about 80,000 children in public elementary schools around New York City and is fast running out of locations, in part because the Bloomberg administration liked the idea so much that it took on some schools itself.

“When I first wrote the business plan, I thought about expanding it to other cities or into other types of institutions, like housing projects or hospitals, and we talked about those ideas and others when the board began seeing the end in sight,” Ms. Wenner said.

Ultimately, though, the board decided that the model worked best for the purpose it had served and that anything else would require more than a simple tweak.

“For example, in a housing project, you would still need someone to take kids to the playground and supervise them,” Ms. Wenner said.

In the end, said Robert Daum, chairman of Out2Play’s board, “we just decided to declare victory and go home. Money is a scarce resource, and there are lots of other good causes out there, so there is no point in hitting up our friends and contacts for gifts simply to perpetuate the organization.”

Works for some, but not for others.