The Tin Lizard

Lip Service To The Environment

In the recycling game, there are those who play seriously and those who give only lip service to the reduce-reuse-recycle mantra.

Amazon.com, for example, can be complimented for the packaging of their Kindle e-readers, consisting of minimal bulk and a 100% recyclable cardboard package.

Then there is the package below, a fairly typical bubble-pack-in-a-card arrangement.  This thing is about 9x14 inches; the content was a bluetooth telephone headset and a recharger.  It could be smaller, though the charger part is fairly bulky and admittedly, people do like to see the product they are buying. 

Worse is trying to extract the product from its prison:  There are two separate compartments that need to be cut into, and both need to be sliced from both sides of the package to get the goods out.  It's one of those exercises in frustration. 

When it comes to recycling, it gets worse.  The package labeling - "Enviroshell" packaging by "Winterborne Inc." - coyly advises you to recycle.  And all you have to do is separate the cardboard from the PET plastic.  Aha.  This is an extremely heavy cardboard - at least the thickness of an average shipping carton, but denser (very little corrugation) and slick-surfaced.  You can't just grab it and tear it open; you might try to separate the two layers of cardboard with a knife, and if you're careful, you may not slice up your fingers.

I announce proudly that I did separate the two different recyclable substances successfully.  But then, I habitually remove the plastic dispenser flap from an empty Kleenex box so I can recycle the box itself; and I always strip the steel cutting strip off an empty aluminum foil box, again so the box can be recycled.  I suspect I'm a little bit unusual in that regard.  How many people would really do that, and how many would ever take the trouble to separate Motorola's/Winterborne's heavy, slick board from the several plastic windows it encloses?  Few, no doubt. 

This is recycling in name only.  Thanks to the package design, very few people will ever bother to see it recycled.  "Enviroshell" is recyclable, maybe, in the same way an old car is:  All the materials can be recycled if you can just separate them from one another.  But who does that?  Who could? 

Does Penney's Have It Right?

The venerable J.C. Penney department store chain, according to its new CEO and its advertisements in my morning paper, is going to try a new tack with regard to "sales."  The idea isn't too well explained in print, but a television version makes it a little clearer.  Rather than having constant daily, weekly, and seasonal sales as certain other stores tend to do, Penney's is, they say, going to just put everything at its lowest price (40% off) all the time.

It sounds as if it could make sense, but even leaving aside the question I'm always suspicious of (40% off of what, exactly?), the new scheme already seems to offer some confusing variations.  They've said, for example, that there will be three different types of tags - the regular tag shows that 40%-off "rock bottom" price, but a second color of tag would indicate even lower prices on certain clearance items, while yet a third color tag would show prices on items that are offered on "seasonal" sales.  The seasonal part, in particular, would appear to put us right back in the frequent-sales game.

Time will tell.  One place where Penney's may make inroads is if all merchandise really is discounted.  One of the enervating experiences of shopping in some other department stores (competitor Macy's comes to mind) is that the discount coupon you got in the mail or online has such a long list of fine-print exceptions on brands and types of merchandise that it's really difficult to figure out what's truly on sale.  (Usually, not much!)    If Penney's can rid us of this practice, they will have done consumers a favor.

Helping The Customer Save A Tree

I've long espoused the notion that in roughly 9.8 of ten cases, when a business or government organization touts changes for the benefit of you, the customer, you'd best hold on to your wallet.   Most often, changes are made primarily for the advantage of the organization enacting them, and usually, they have to do with reducing costs - to the service provider, not to you.  If some real convenience or saving for consumers happens to be a by-product of changes, the perpetrators will gladly play them up.  If not, they'll invent some and present them as benefits anyway.  

This idea has recently been restated by Washington Post local columnist John Kelly; he says it well, so it's worth a read.  I liked this line in particular:

“Improvements” are what companies do when they want to save money. The word is synonymous with “to better serve you.” You know how that one goes: “In an effort to better serve you, we are burning your village, killing your livestock and sowing your fields with salt.”

Everyone has his/her own examples.  One of my favorites, because it's so widespread, is the push to have us all receive account statements and other financial documents electronically on line, rather than via paper in the mail.  In some cases it's convenience-neutral, but in many it's a serious hassle.  Have you tried, for example, to balance your credit card statement against your receipts and your own records in (say) Quicken?  The switching back and forth between windows takes me twice as long.  The bank's change may save them the cost of paper, envelope, and postage; it might in fact save trees (this is the way the bank presents it to me of course) but not if I ultimately print out a paper copy anyway to save time.  Presto, that cost of paper and ink (both more expensive to me than to the bank which buys it in bulk) has been transferred to me. 

I think the reason this works pretty well for the banks, though, is generational change.  I compare receipts, charges, and the like, from my credit card.  I'd guess that a high percentage of people in my age group probably still do.  But I know a high percentage of younger people who do not.  Call them the trust-but-don't-verify generation. 

 

A Crash In The Merge Lane - AT&T

How do I love it that the AT&T/T-Mobile merger seems doomed to disapproval?  Let me count the ways:

1.  The public interest will be served.  No sane and disinterested observer could look at this plan and harbor any doubt that it would constitute a serious reduction of competition.  AT&T is/was hoping to silence an annoying competitor by buying it, and not coincidentally as I understand, to acquire and monopolize spectrum.

2.  Consumers will be served.  It wasn't just the huge share of the cell-service market that the new entity would have had (effectively split only with its equally giant competitor, Verizon).  Among today's carriers, T-Mobile has been the innovator in cell phone services, offering new arrangements and lower prices that forced the "big guys" to sit up and take notice.  AT&T, by contrast, was the carrier that provided inferior services at high prices.  There is no doubt which of those business models would have had the upper hand in the planned merged company.    

3.  AT&T's arrogance may suffer a minor blow.  The company was insufferably cocky that its planned deal would go through, advertising as if it were a done deal, and chatting freely with business columnists about how it was certain of approval because of its lobbying influence.

4.  Lying was not rewarded.  Those ads the company was running were full of made-up statistics about creating 96,000 new jobs, a claim that has been largely debunked.  Most people recognize, I think, that mergers seldom if ever result in the creation of jobs; mass firings are far more likely.  AT&T also puffed up its chest with patriotic pride, claiming it would repatriate 5,000 offshore jobs because the U.S. is a great place to do business.  That wouldn't be a bad thing, and sounds as if it might have been doable; but there was that nagging question - if the company believed so strongly in the U.S. as a business environment, why were those jobs offshored in the first place?

All in all, the whole undertaking of the merger was hypocritical.  No one but AT&T execs need lament its failure (if indeed that is the final outcome).   If the merger doesn't go through, I would not be at all surprised to find that AT&T was out of the wirelesss business within a couple of years.   That might (or might not) reduce the number of players in the field, but at least it would have come about as the result of real competition.  (Ah, competition, a lass beloved and coveted by CEOs when seen from afar, yet unwelcome in their own beds.)       

Black Friday Gets Blacker

Once again big retailers are laying plans to get you to part with your dollars even earlier this year than last.  So naturally, the envelope on opening hours is being pushed, with some stores announcing they will open at midnight Thanksgiving Day, and one or two even breaking the Thanksgiving barrier, turning "Black Friday" into Black Thursday by opening at 10 pm on the holiday. 

To hell with a quiet family holiday (to a retailer, any holiday that's not a big sale is just a terrible waste, and Thanksgiving is the last now to be turned into a buying frenzy), or with the thousands of store employees nationwide who will have to work on the holiday (shouldn't they just be happy to have jobs at all?), or even the half-dozen or so unfortunates who will get trampled in the stampede (it's part of the FUN of the pursuit of a "deal"!).  

And I feel certain it's all quite unnecessary.  Ultimately, people will get out and buy their Christmas gifts, and whether they start an hour or two earlier is not likely to change what they spend by very much. 

So for those retailers who have decided that 6 am, or 5 am, or even 4 am on November 25 isn't early enough to open, I have just two words:  BOY! COTT!  Yup, you heard me:  Why not just refuse to buy in these stores?  Not just for that day.  Go for the entire Christmas season, or be ambitious and go for a year.   You won't miss them - they offer nothing you can't find in a dozen other stores.  But they'll miss you. 

Relax on Thanksgiving, stay far, far away from the madding crowd on Friday, and try going out Saturday for Small Business Saturday. 

Fire In The Volt

A GM Volt caught fire weeks after being tested for side-impact crash safety.  Regulators are now "scrutinizing" the fire risk of lithium-ion batteries.  I guess it's OK for them to "scrutinize," but let's hope they don't go too far worrying about this.

Instead, let's recognize that the automobile is an inherently dangerous machine.  It's heavy, it moves fast, it's mostly driven by idiots, and (until these new electric models came along) it's a rolling firebomb because it's loaded with gasoline.  We'd be fools to expect that it can be made completely "safe."

It's known that the batteries can catch fire if penetrated by steel.  But they're protected for that reason, and this test model flamed up only two weeks after the crash test in which it presumably was damaged.  If it catches fire, it will burn hot but won't explode.   So relatively speaking, shouldn't we just concede that fully electric cars, which contain batteries and not gasoline, are actually safer than the traditional combustion engine models, and leave it at that?

Jenn-Air: Make The Buyer Pay For Something He Doesn't Want

When we moved into our current house more than a decade ago, we found a kitchen range installed in a center-room island; and presumably because of that location, the range was a down-draft, specifically, a Jenn-Air downdraft.  We puzzled over finding that it had only two burners, with the left side of the stovetop occupied by a grill module in lieu of two more burners.   We found that this could be replaced by a different plug-in unit that provided to burners, so we bought one, wondering all along why anyone would choose to have only two burners (we often find ourselves using all four, for a large meal with guests coming); and why anyone would use a smoky indoor grill when every American home has probably two or three gas or charcoal grills around.

Now that we've decided to replace that range, we realize that in fact, our predecessors probably did not choose that arrangement.  This is Jenn-Air's dirty little secret; all, or nearly all, of their downdraft stoves come pre-equipped with that silly grill.  With our kitchen arrangement (center island, and not even a good way to vent an overhead hood), we are pretty much trapped into downdraft stoves.  Admittedly, Jenn-Air has the best selection of those, although a few other companies offer one or two. 

But if you want four burners, that's not an option.  Even though these units are interchangeable, you must buy the stove with the grill, and pay separately for the second unit if you want four burners -- these run about $275-300.  We asked the company if we couldn't get a stove with the burners in it, and if not why not; the answer was no, and the smarmy advice that "many people find they love the grill once they have it."  (We doubt this: Our appliance salesman said about 90% of people who get these stoves also buy the extra burners.  Also, the grill module from our old stove is still in the basement, never used even once.  Oh, and by the way, I suspect many people use the grill once or twice and give up: the downdraft exhaust is far from perfect; it doesn't capture all the smoke even from a low-edged frying pan; I doubt very much it works well on the billowing smoke from a grill!) 

So there you have it.  If you're in the market for a new kitchen range, keep this in mind:  A downdraft Jenn-Air is likely to cost you an extra $300 above the price you see listed.  And this: If they are shoving stuff you don't want down your throat on these models, you can bet they're doing it in other ways on other models too.  It would be so simple to offer the buyer an option:  WHY DON'T THEY? 

Those Pesky Door-To-Door Salesmen

Our parents used to have to deal in various ways with the door-to-door salesman, that pestiferous, insistent guy (usually guys, except for the Avon lady) pushing vacuum cleaners, encyclopedias, some cleaning product, or other household items.  The Fuller Brush Man was typical of the breed (though in my opinion, generally more useful and less obnoxious than most).  Once in a while we still get an itinerant roofer, or the guy who wants to sell us firewood; they, at least, represent themselves, not some faraway nationwide selling machine.  Otherwise, those door-to-door types are mostly gone now.

Taking their place, unfortunately, are the legions of people sitting in cubicles somewhere in the world who seem to believe that you must have a telephone, an e-mail address, and an internet connection only because you enjoy having your privacy or solitude interrupted, and/or are waiting breathlessly for an offer of a better mousetrap.  I got a new cell phone recently, and although my phone number is on the do-not-call list, I'm suddenly getting a lot of sales calls I didn't get before.  We're on the list that supposedly will prevent you from getting all those credit card offers in the mail, yet we continue to receive a lot of them.  Yes, we also signed up years ago with the Direct Mail Marketing Association to reduce the bulk of junk mail, but there's little sign that we're getting less of it, except to the extent that sellers find printing and mailing catalogs and other offerings is expensive, so they move toward cheaper ways to bug you.

Did you know that even when you specifically register your preference that your personal data not be shared, in most cases companies do not have to honor that?  Compliance is voluntary.  I understand that "Congress is considering" new regulations that strengthen privacy protections, perhaps even offering one central place where people could sign up to prevent the use of tracking cookies on their internet accounts.  It's a great idea, but realistically, in today's Congress, I suspect it has little chance of passing, or even being seriously considered.

 

The Set-Top Box

I'm pleased that someone besides me has begun to point out the tyranny (and the nothing-for-something" pricing structure) that the cable and satellite television companies, much to their profit, conveniently instituted a year or two ago:  Suddenly, we were being charged "rent" in perpetuity for a device -- the set-top box -- that at current rates, would easily be paid for within a year or two.   

Further, the device is completely unnecessary, except to provide a continuing flow of unearned profit to the likes of Verizon and Comcast.  It's as if automobile producers would only sell us a car if we agreed to take their brand of tires, and pay rent on them forever.

Although cable companies have long insisted that you have a "box" to control your TV, it was, until recently, still possible to turn down the STB and just hook your cable directly to your TV, which can perform exactly the same functions.  That's what we did.  Besides, the box was inconvenient, and ugly, but they didn't charge rent on it, it was a part of the service (though of course factored into the price you paid).  Why isn't it factored into prices now?  Because by charging separately for it, they can charge more and boost profits. 

The change in the costing of set-top boxes was introduced at a point when the service providers hoped it wouldn't be noticed -- when the country was switching from one broadcast standard to another to (a) catch up with the Europeans, who had had essentially the same thing for years and (b) to solve an issue involving the allocation of broadcast frequencies.  The deal for part (b), which involved giving the television "suppliers" a public good for use in their profit-making enterprise, ought to have forbidden the added insult of gouging the public for something they don't need.

May we hope that one day all this profit might make it possible for them to supply us a picture that isn't squashed, distorted, or clipped at the edges?  How about allowing us to select and pay for only the channels we want? 

 

Big Oil, Little Taxes

If I write often in criticism of the advertising sponsored by the "people of America's gas and oil companies," -- and I do! -- it's because they're so annoying.  In just a couple of hours of television, you can easily see these ads, whose message basically is "don't tax us," five or six times.  After a brief lull last year during the big Gulf oil spill, the "people's" mighty voice is back, more insistent than ever.  Beyond the frequency, though, it's gross to see so much money being spent on such a self-serving and self-ish message.

Now, why do you suppose the big fossil-purveying companies are so worried about taxes?  After all, we all know any tax increase will just be passed along to us as consumers.  So what's the big deal?  Is it because they are genuinely worried that you and I will have to pay more for gas?  Believe that if you want to, but ...

No, I think it's pretty obvious, really.  They're scared to death that increasing oil prices will lead to the same outcome that rising gasoline prices always produces:  People find ways to get by with less, and consider other options, like riding the bus, making fewer trips, or... alternative sources of energy!   And there you have it.  If people come anywhere near paying the real price of oil and gas, without the subsidies that now exist, there's a good chance that Big Oil's stranglehold on the energy market could be broken, and that popular opinion could shift away from fossil fuels.

After all, no one is really talking about new taxes on oil.  They're talking about taking away tax subsidies that already exist.  Businessmen like to talk about how subsidies distort market forces, except when it's their market.   This reality also lays bare another claim these same companies are making now in new anti-Obama ads (brought to you by your supreme court).  They say that if no "new taxes" are levied(which no one is doing), the oil industry would create 500,000 new jobs.  Cool!  Yet if no new taxes are levied, that means we're exactly in the situation we have now; which in turn means, we ought to be seeing those new jobs already, at least a few hundred thousand of them.  Where are they?

As we look for ways to reduce unnecessary government spending, we see a situation in which we subsidize oil and gas; then we subsidize other nascent forms of energy so that they can compete.  If all subsidies are stripped away, we save money, and the various forms of energy compete on a level playing field.