I sent Bob Likely at Sherwood Volkswagen a note this morning, suggesting that he ask his service techs to return the driver’s seat to its owner’s position after a service call. This after having the Jetta’s 8000 km service done this morning, getting back into the car, and mungling my knees on the steering wheel.

I sent the letter only to be helpful, and because I’m pretty certain they’ll actually act on it. Since I’ve been dealing with them (largely at the recommendation of readers of this website), I’ve always found them both helpful and also responsive to feedback.

Sometimes when I wonder about why businesses don’t worry about these “little things” more, I have only to think of my own business.

I know that when things get action packed and stressful, the first things to go by the wayside are the little things: the call to a client just to see how they’re making out, the development of minor new features and conveniences in applications, never requested or even imagined by a client, but wonderful and time-saving when they see them.

It’s not that during these times I’m not offering my clients good service. It’s simply that I’m not offering them excellent, above and beyond the call of duty service. And that is the kind of service I aspire to offer. And indeed the kind of service that I hope everyone would aspire to offer.

And so a suggestion. Stop what you’re doing right now, and take 5 minutes and call one of your clients just to see how they’re making out. Ask them if there’s anything you can do to improve the service you’re offering them. Ask them how their business is making out. Ask them if there’s anything you’re not offering them that you could. Ask them how their kids are doing.

I guarantee that this will make you feel good, make your client feel great, and will probably teach you 3 or 4 things about your business that you didn’t know.

Snippet of NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre FAQ list:

Although I enjoy neither beer nor back bacon, I defy anyone to say that Take Off [4.3MB MP3], by Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas (aka Bob and Doug Mackenzie) and Geddy Lee is not a brilliant song by any standard. “It’s like it was sung by angels…”

No doubt by now you’ve seen the Foundation for a Better Life advertising, either on television or on billboards. It’s easy to confuse the TV ads with those of the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: they both run ads for apple pie concepts like truth, beauty and light.

An article in portland indymedia sheds some light on the big money behind this campaign.

By the way, if you’re interested in Mormonania, check out this movie about their vault in the middle of Granite Mountain.

Ironic given that I created the system that lets you do it online, but I have a perverse attraction to the annual trip to renew my car registration. It’s a rite of passage.

While in the USA this process is difficult enough to have become a stock item in the repertoire of most stand-up comedians, I must say that I’ve always found it goes quickly and painlessly here on the Island; the staff at the Access PEI centre in Charlottetown are pleasant and efficient and always a pleasure to deal with.

Indeed the entire Access PEI program looks to be working out very well, due in no small part to the efforts of Mark Belfry and his staff.

If you ever have a problem at an Access PEI site, or a suggestion as to how service can be improved, drop Mark a line; I’ve always found him receptive to any feedback.

Earlier this week I wrote about the limitations of PayPal. Interesting to read the following among PayPal’s SEC filings:

In late 2000, MasterCard indicated it would terminate PayPal’s ability to accept MasterCard cards for payment if we did not change some of our practices and procedures immediately. We and our credit card processor had a series of meetings with MasterCard to discuss how to bring our practices and procedures into compliance. As a result of those meetings, we made changes to our system that we believe resolved MasterCard’s concerns, but MasterCard has not communicated to us that its concerns have been fully resolved. In 2001, Visa informed our credit card processor that some of our practices violated its operating rules, and we made certain changes to our practices in response. In a letter dated January 25, 2002, Visa informed our credit card processor that three issues remain unresolved and, as a result, fined our processor $30,000. Our processor charged us for the full amount of the fine imposed on them. Specifically, Visa objected to our charging and immediately rebating international membership fees, and to our charging fees to international customers for payments that are funded using credit cards, but not for payments that are funded from balances in the PayPal system. Visa also objected to our practice of obtaining a card holder’s single up-front authorization, rather than authorization on a transaction by transaction basis, to charge that card holder’s Visa account if the card holder requests an ACH transfer and that transfer fails. We are continuing our efforts to resolve Visa’s concerns. Although Visa has not threatened to suspend, terminate or otherwise limit or restrict our ability to accept Visa cards, we have proposed to change our current practices to resolve these three outstanding issues. These changes include not rebating international membership fees, charging fees to recipients of cross-border payments rather than to international senders, and seeking authorization on a transaction by transaction basis to charge a card holder’s Visa account if a related ACH transfer fails. As is the case with any merchant that Visa believes is violating its operating rules, however, Visa could terminate our ability to accept Visa cards for payment or levy additional fines against us if we do not resolve Visa’s concerns.

Changes to card association rules and practices, or excessive charge-backs, could result in a termination of our ability to accept credit cards. If we are unable to accept credit cards, our competitive position would be damaged seriously.

We have limited experience in managing and accounting accurately for large amounts of customer funds. Our failure to manage these funds properly would harm our business.

We have a limited operating history, are not currently profitable and may not become profitable. If we never become profitable, our stock price would decline.

This venue is almost enough to make me up and move to Wayne, New Jersey. And I don’t even have any idea where Wayne, NJ is. Amazing.

I am a secretary.

In my case, I’m secretary to the Board of Directors of the L.M. Montgomery Land Trust. In that capacity I do just as the dictionary says:

A person employed to handle correspondence, keep files, and do clerical work for another person or an organization.

I don’t consider secretary to be a pejorative term, and I’ve always failed to see why others see it this way.

Which is why Administrative Professionals Day confuses me. For the unintiated, this is the new term for what used to be called Secretaries Day, and it’s celebrated this year on April 24, 2002.

While I can certainly understand the transition from stewardess to the gender-neutral flight attendant and the utility of their simply being actors, male and female, I can’t understand why a secretary is elevated somehow by applying this hackneyed new title.

While my own secretarial work involves only a few hours a week, I am the beneficiary of of the efforts of many other secretaries who are at it full time. They are, without exception, a hard working and invaluable lot.

So whether by secretary or administrative professional or administrative assistance or personal private executive chargé d’affaires, I salute you all.

I hate Government paperwork.

I never thought I would be the kind of libertarian “let’s get Government off the backs of the small businessperson and cut through red tape” kind of guy, but that’s what I’ve become. I hate the seemingly endless street of brown envelopes that come in the daily mail from some arm of the federal government: income tax, payroll tax, GST, mandatory StatsCan surveys. I simply don’t have the time. Not only the time to fill out the forms themselves, but to learn, each time anew, what each form means, when it is due, and so on.

And as a result I am often late with sending in forms. I blithely operate under the assumption that I “just sent that return in a couple of weeks ago” while months upon months of returns pile up on my desk.

This is how it came to pass that one of the businesses in my ouvre came to have twenty-one outstanding GST returns due.

Conventional wisdom would have it that this degree of tardiness would see the RCMP knocking down the door with battering rams, etc.

But in this case I simply got a call from a nice man named Leo Murphy at the GST office here in Charlottetown. He laid out the situation for me, and told me that if I emailed him the information that would have otherwise been sent in on the GST returns (basically how much we took in, and how much GST we collected), he would enter it directly into their system and that would be that.

He was helpful, pleasant, responded quickly to email, and was generally about as far from what we all imagine to be a GST enforcement guy to be like.

So, hats off to Leo Murphy. Thanks!

Most days the services of my local Credit Union work very well for moving around my money. There’s not much that I can’t do at the Credit Union that I could otherwise do at a bank, and the Credit Union has better hours, friendlier staff and more flexible policies than most banks (interesting sidenote: a Charlottetown businessman of my acquaintance told me he’s going to save more than a thousands dollars a year in fees by moving his business accounts to the Credit Union from a major bank).

There’s one thing that neither banks nor credit unions do particularly well, though, and that’s letting you easily move money beyond their institutional boundaries. Of course there are cheques (or “checks” as I’ve had to learn to spell this word for my U.S. customers), and regular old cash. But while it’s easy for me to transfer $100 from my own TD Bank account to my mother’s TD Bank account, it’s almost impossible for me to transfer $100 from my local credit union account to my brother’s local credit union account in British Columbia.

I say almost, because I was quoted a scheme whereby my local credit union could sent a message to Credit Union Central of PEI, which, in turn, would send a message to Credit Union Central of BC, which, in turn, would send a message to my brother’s credit union in BC. This would take several days, and I would never do it, if only on spiritual insanity grounds.

Enter PayPal.

I thought PayPal was going to solve this problem once and for all, especially once they appeared to do away with onerous fees applied to international transactions.

So we did a test. I opened up a PayPal business account, and sent $700 to my brother in BC using my MasterCard as the vehicle for getting money to PayPal. He opened up a PayPal account, and prepared to withdraw what I’d sent. This looked like it was going to work wonderfully, and only cost us 55 cents to boot.

Then, clang, the idea imploded when BC brother was told that he had to upgrade to a PayPal Premier account to be able to receive the money and, in doing so, would be subject to a 2.9% fee (or roughly $20).

So while PayPal might be good for many things, it’s not good for this. In other words, PayPal ain’t no replacement for Western Union (which is expensive in its own regard).

Eight years ago when we were doing e-cash experiments at the PEI Crafts Council, I imagined that this issue — how to throw cash digitally — would be solved by now. Alas it’s not, and so to fling money across the country still requires traditional banking contortions.

Someday.