Tuesday, October 12, 2004

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Fighting Back Against Mindless "Reply All" Many, many people at my company have bad habits in regard to the Reply All button. I am on certain distribution lists, and sometimes I will get an email, as part of a Reply All, that says something like "John Doe is no longer with the company, please remove him from the distribution list". The person sending the email is too lazy to pay attention and figure out who the owner is, so they spam everybody. My slightly passive-aggressive form of "retaliation" is to send back an email with "???" as the only text. 10:52:36 PM    comment []

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Priceline vs. Hotwire These are both sites that offer the "really good deal but you don't get to specify your vendor" model. Priceline is better known, a famous son of the internet bubble. I never used it successfully before, and hand't used it in a while. I have used Hotwire once, with success, though some customer-service frustration. Anyway, this time I tried Priceline. What a joke. It compares very unfavorably to Hotwire. You have to give Priceline your credit card before you get pricing. Priceline doesn't just give you a price, it asks you to name your price (aka, bid). This is part of their gimmick, but it can only work to your disadvantage. Put in too low a price, and they reject it out-of-hand. Put in a higher price than the minimum that would be accepted, and you get to pay a higher price. If Priceline doesn't accept your bid, they come back with a "counter-offer" page that doesn't give you a specific opportunity to decline. I think I see the reason for the absence of a "No, Thanks" option. Simultanteously, I received an email from them saying "We have an answer for you", with a link. Clicking the link merely gets you the same counter-offer that was displayed before (at least, that's what it got me). If the new offer were better, I could countenance this practice, but to just show me the same deal I (would have if I could have) "rejected" it akin to spam. I do not think I will ever bother trying Priceline again, unless perhaps I am very desperate. 10:52:34 PM    comment []