Customer service warning for ballroom dancers: AVOID "www.dancerschoiceonline.com"

I ordered three pairs of shoes in mid-November.  On 11/18, the company informed me that one of the three pairs was out of stock, and that my refund would be "coming."  It's 12/4.  No refund yet.

One pair of shoes didn't fit.  It took six emails -- SIX -- to find out that returns went to the shoe manufacturer, not to Dancers' Choice.

The email response is spotty, painfully slow, and woefully incomplete.

No matter the temptation, stay away from this company.  It's got some of the worst customer service I've seen in a long time.

Radisson at LAX: best of times, worst of times (apologies to Dickens)

So I really like the California Star Ball--it's a fun competition with very generous scholarship money.  I also like the front desk staff of the Radisson @ LAX:  they're gracious and helpful, as is the bell desk and the BREAKFAST staff at the restaurant there. 

But seriously--the food service at lunch and dinner (and at the bar) is woefully short of decent.  30-45 minutes for a simple meal in an uncrowded room?  30-40 minutes for take-out?

Example:  last night, we finished dancing at around 9, and we wanted to get a to-go order at the restaurant so we could watch the rest of the competition.  (We tried seeing what was pre-made at the bar.  The pre-made case was completely bare.)  So we waited 5 minutes at the maître d’s station, only to be told that we should order take-out at the bar.  (Lunch takeout is at the maître d’s station.)  So we went to the bar.  After watching someone rinse wine glasses for another 5 minutes, we asked about how we could get a fast meal to go.  We explained that we just wanted to order the meal that would take the least time to prepare.  The person behind the bar (not the bartender, but someone else with a Radisson badge) snapped that anything would take 30-40 minutes.

Anything?  Sliced tomatoes with mozzarella would take 30-40 minutes?  A plain salad would take 30-40 minutes?

Yep.

Thank goodness for my roommate, who had the patience to stay.  I left, and Angela shared her meal (salad and fries) with me, after waiting 30 minutes for that order herself.

It's a shame that a basically nice hotel can have such a split personality when it comes to the restaurant.  I spoke to the hotel management, who told me that the restaurant isn't owned by the same people who own the hotel.  I also spoke to the restaurant's morning manager, who was (as always) very nice.  Everyone explained that no one had complained before.  Seriously?  No one?  Not even the person I'd seen complaining on Friday?

Here's the thing, Radisson:  I plan to make sure that I post a link to this comment on a lot of travel rating websites.  That old rule about customer service applies to me, too.  Do well, and I'll tell at least ten people.  Do poorly, and I'll make sure to tell many more people.

A fresh take on voting on Dancing With The Stars

I love DWTS, and I always have.  (I was able to go to a semi-final one year, thanks to my buddy Arnold Peter, who represents BBC America, among other clients).  And thanks to my buddy Jack Ayer, I can forward to you this NYT essay on how the voting really works (see here). 

Isn't it nice to understand arithmetic sometimes?

My newest guilty pleasure.

This blog:  here.

More evidence that law firms are looking at alternative ways of billing clients.

See here.

Best insurance agent--ever.

Recently, I had to make an insurance claim, and our agent, Perry Olson, did an exceptional job of dealing with some sticky issues of customer service (problems with a third-party appraiser).  We've had some good insurance agents before, but I have never seen customer service like Perry's.  He's wonderful!

Happy 235th birthday, Marines!

How many organizations do you know where you can count on the steadfastness of an entire group?  Where every member is trained to think of the honor of the members who came before him?  Where every member is trained to roll up his sleeves, "embrace the suck," and get the work done?

I know of one.

Happy birthday, Marines!

Rice University: still a bargain.

See here and here.

Stop it. Stop demonizing the other side.

It's a few days until Election Day, and I'm already cranky:  every time our home phone rings (a sure sign that the caller doesn't know us--our friends use our cell phone numbers to reach us), I've been answering it with "if this is a political call, please hang up now."  I'm tired of being asked for whom I've voted. 

But I'm far more tired of hearing both political parties call each other names.  I'm not "stupid" if I vote for someone you detest.  You're not stupid for voting for someone I detest.  We should realize that smart, goodhearted people can disagree without being disagreeable. 

Demonizing people for their thoughts is a bad way to go, and it betrays the foundations on which our country was founded.  Cut it out.

The New Yorker: GREAT magazine; HORRIBLE web customer service.

I keep trying to fix a login problem at The New Yorker's website.  The site now keeps putting me into infinite loop.  I love the articles in this magazine, but I cannot abide the lack of useful help that the website provides when there are login problems.

AARGH!

Brava, Michelle Rhee!

Still a fan.  See here.

Best disclaimer ever.

See here.  For the disclaimer that's a close second, see here.

Thanks, everyone!

I sure appreciate being in this group!

That McGowan-Burk article I mentioned is highlighted in the latest ABA Journal.

Just more proof that this article is both very good and very important.  See here for the ABA Journal link, and see here for my earlier post.

Michelle Rhee is my hero.

See here.

Thanks, Hank's!

We just got back home after a wonderful dinner at Hank's.  Delicious food, attentive staff, and a lovely surprise dessert.  All in all, a great evening.  Thanks, Hank's!

A great op-ed by Sharon Davies of Ohio State.

See here.  Brava, Sharon!

For those of you who like law review irony.

See here.  I especially liked the section on the right to bare claws, although the part about herd derivative suits was also classic.

Why our students at Boyd rock, part n.

See this post at the Law School Survival Manual blog (here).

New "good read" article.

My buddy Bernie Burk and his co-author, David McGowan, have just posted an article on SSRN (here):  Big But Brittle: Economic Perspectives on the Future of the Law Firm in the New Economy.  It's going to be published in the Columbia Business Law Review. 

I've read the piece (of course), and I think that Bernie and David make some really important points about how BigLaw firms are likely to evolve. 

Here's the abstract:

This Article addresses the deceptively simple questions why, up to the onset of the recent recession, law firms continued to grow at the rapid rate and in the unusual configuration that they have exhibited for over 40 years; and whether lawyers, clients, law students and law schools should expect familiar trends to reassert themselves as the economy improves. We show that the copious academic theorizing addressing these questions (focusing on such notions as diversification, asset specificity, “tournament” theory, and reputational and agency-cost concerns at the level of the firm as a whole) has proved ineffective at explaining or predicting actual events to date, and thus offers little guidance for the future.

We suggest two perspectives that appear more consistent with the available empirical evidence, and thus more likely to predict future trends. The first perspective shows that the core members of a professional service firm can mutually increase the value of one another’s connections and reputation in a manner that can increase the mutual gain with the size of the core group, and thus stimulate firm growth and help bind the firm together – though only somewhat loosely – as it grows. This perspective is new to the literature on law-firm economics, and helps explain why law firms have long continued to get larger despite ordinary diseconomies of scale, though with a certain brittleness reflected in the lateral mobility common in this day and age. The second perspective brings long-established economic principles concerning technological innovation and transaction costs to bear in the context of the elite law firm, where they have been largely overlooked in the commentary to date. We argue that reductions in particular transaction costs and in the cost of certain key inputs are helpful in explaining a number of the trends in the staffing and pricing of legal services documented in recent years.

We apply these perspectives to derive a range of predictions for law firms and law schools in the years to come. We conclude that, despite rumors of the “Death of Big Law,” the large firm is here to stay, but in an evolving configuration with profound implications for practicing and aspiring lawyers, as well as the law schools that prepare them for the increasingly competitive and increasingly global markets for their services.

Don't take their (or my) word for it.  Read it for yourself.