Upon complaining to the supervisor, we were told to send a fax, detailing the missing items. After repeated calls and letters over many weeks, they replied saying that they cannot look up 40 numbers because they do not have the time (seven minutes) for such things. Yet it seems that they had the time to take my money for a thousand 3-kilo bags at approximately $8 per bag, each carrying half a kilo; so I paid for 2.5 kilos that I never used (no doubt landing them a huge profit). On top of that, I purchased the additional ‘Registered’ service with insurance (which is nothing more than a sticker in terms of cost for Australia Post). In all, they made a packet. That added another $2000 or so to the expense, not counting the contents (books and videos) worth hundreds per parcel.

When it came time to query why they lost my important parcels, whose disappearance caused me to lose opportunities, they did not care. I escalated the matter to their managers (plural) and legal officers, who snubbed my company and our request. It took over one year of effort, because we started to fight the issue on principle.

Being a government instrumentality, they were under the assumption that I could not sue them. In truth, many lawyers with whom I spoke were also under this impression. Legal experts advised me that there was nothing I could do. I persisted and pursued legal avenues, and won, because it was essentially unethical and wrong. Australia Post made my case easier because they had sent a defence lawyer who did not know what he was talking about. I had previously given them every argument in the hope that they would see the error of their ways. No-one paid attention. It was arrogance in full flight. How sad.

During the hearing, the Australia Post lawyer had the gall to say that I was cheating the system because I had purchased a national 3 kg red bag, and used it to send parcels from Sydney to Perth. He estimated that if I were to send the parcels via regular post, I would have had to pay $9 instead of the $8 I paid per bag (plus $1.50 or so in registration). You can see why I was fighting on principle. A national bag, is a national bag. The fact that 10 out of the 1000 I purchased had gone from Sydney to Perth, was turned against me as if I am abusing the system. My reply reminded my friend that I would be happy to pay him the ten dollars difference if he, in turn, would pay me for 2.5 kg that I never used as part of the 1000 bags that I purchased. The bally cheek! Besides, he was comparing what it would have cost if I had used regular post from Sydney to Perth. The silly man should have known, had he read his brief, that 700 or so bags went to Sydney CBD and Metro areas. Using his logic, and using regular post, that would have cost me $5.70 for 20 kg. Yet I paid him $9.50 for half a kilo. How’s that for a lopsided argument. Who’s abusing who now?

Australia Post’s second argument was that they had lost the parcels, and they admitted to this, but they denied responsibility. Apparently, I was not supposed to have placed the ‘registration’ stickers onto the red bags. The Member hearing our case asked, ‘And how is a customer supposed to know that the registration stickers are not to be used in conjunction with the red bags, considering that the registration stickers are promoted as a service that can be used on any parcel?’ In response, and with contempt, the lawyer pulled out a massive legal binder and pointed to some gobbledygook like Statute 7s Subsection 5 of Clause b5a.2.3.6 of the Act of 1972 as amended 1987 with Parliamentary blah blah blah.

‘And are these legal binders available at point of sale, to warn customers of this rule?’ asked the Member. The lawyer replied, ‘No, but the statute is available on the Internet.’ To which the Member asked if an Internet connection and computer are made available at point of sale. The lawyer retreated and sat down.

All along, during the many months of correspondence, Australia Post kept insisting that the registration stickers cannot be used on the red bags. I would not be telling you this story if it were not for the recent innovation at Australia Post, which not only promotes the use of the stickers on the red bags, but has the impertinence to print this fact on the bag itself, and provides a rectangular area within which to place the sticker! Yet, all along, they made out that I was doing the wrong thing, despite taking my money and saying nothing about it! If the registration of 1000 red bags was null and void, perhaps I should have sued for a refund, due to their admitting that registration was not acknowledged, which means that I had paid for a service that they did not deliver. The bally cheek.

What can we learn from this? Don’t take money, promise a service, provide a phone number, keep people waiting ten minutes, and then say that you can’t help them. When a client escalates the matter to a supervisor, it would be a good idea to wonder why someone feels that the matter needs extra attention. When the client escalates the matter to the regional management team, it’s time to engage some brain cells. When a client enters into correspondence with your legal officers, and furnishes a thirty-page report, it’s time to sit up and pay attention. When the client sends you a summons to appear at a hearing, it’s time that someone reads the brief and nibs the jolly thing in the bud because the facts are plain for all to see. Pomposity and snobbery towards a client who is one of the largest clients in the district, does not augur well in front of an impartial judge who will only wonder how an organisation the size of Australia Post can treat customers so poorly, and wonder how the many layers of management could not make a decision to rectify an obvious failing. No-one begrudges Australia Post for losing some items (that’s if they were not stolen by unethical staff), but when the company mistreats its clients, who keep it in business, then it had better reconsider its statement of ethics, which says, ‘Australia Post is committed to conducting its business with integrity, honesty, fairness and in compliance with all relevant laws, regulations, codes, corporate policies and procedures.’

Click here for another article about Australia Post.

Despite all the globalisation and internationalisation, a traveller cannot make a phone call because a global phone company was so insular that it presumed that the whole world had zip codes that were similar to the US standard. How can programmers and executives be so myopic to presume that zip codes are the same, the world over? How can computers send a rover to Mars, yet can’t acknowledge that I am a bona fide customer? For that reason, I had to have an American card from the USA, using the US system. And so I ended up with a Platinum Card well before the Platinum Card was launched in Australia. The annual membership at the time was around $900, I think. I never did see the benefit in it. Despite the grand promises of great assistance and contacts, I was disappointed. For example, I was in New York and noticed a show called, ‘A funny thing happened on the way to the forum.’ I had once seen the old movie by that name. It was such a wonderful movie, that I arranged for people to call every video retailer and ask for it. There were so many calls being made about this movie, that it was later released in Australia, perhaps on the thrust of the perceived demand! The show in New York City seemed like the perfect one for me to see. The show was sponsored by American Express. How about that! The Platinum Concierge service boasted a world-class facility to obtain tickets to all the grand events of the world. Sadly, Amex could not secure a ticket for me. So what’s the point of being a member, if Amex can’t obtain tickets to an Amex-sponsored show? Useless. I walked up to the theatre and purchased a ticket as easy as pie.

Another time I needed to be in Minneapolis or thereabouts for a television interview. I simply could not find anyone who could book a hotel room for me. Not a five-star. Not a four-star. No star at all. Every hotel room was taken due to a convention boasting 80,000 delegates. No rooms at all. So I called Amex. No luck. I called Hilton Honours. No luck. I called Qantas Travel. No Luck. I called Internet Travel. No Luck. I called Starwood Club. No luck. I called Hyatt Gold Passport or whatever it was called in those days. No Luck. What’s the point of all that metallic membership when no-one could help me? So, after all that VIP nonsense, I consulted the Yellow Pages and telephoned the first hotel that caught my eye. It was the Hilton. I dialled the number directly. And within two minutes my room was booked and confirmed. It makes you wonder how I managed to secure a room after one phone call, while no other VIP centre was able to assist. After a while, I cancelled my Platinum. I never knew how to extract value from it. One of the benefits was a stunning leather diary. A perk of membership. The diary would arrive on my desk in May of each year. How can that be useful? Sure, it takes a long time in the post, and such are the disadvantages of living so far away. But the sad fact was that the diary was post-marked March, each year. Another feature of the Platinum card was the promise of two business-class tickets for the price of one. I could not see the big deal, given that the prices were inflated. I just ignored it, and switched to Gold. Some years later, a cheque arrived from the USA, along with a legal letter, saying that a Class Action had taken place in the USA and all members were being refunded their fees, by court order, due to a judge finding that the two-for-one scheme had been deceptive or misleading, or something like that.

Anyway, that is all history now, because after twenty years as a member, I cut my cards in half and sent them to the home of the CEO. To read about the straw that broke a twenty-year relationship, click here.

My letter to the CEO read:

When I transact with a company for twenty years, and I write to its CEO, I expect a response from the CEO. I have found Amex insulting in this way, even when I was trying to assist it for its own good.

You personally ignored me when I wrote to you on 12 October 2009 saying, ‘This letter is the final straw’. I meant it, and here are the cards.

I do not expect organisations to be perfect. However, I do not appreciate seeing dozens of Amex ads, touting slogans that I know are false. As a member since 1989, I see the ads as rhetoric.

One of your ads takes the cake. It says, ‘Daniel: We see you as a person, not a number’. I doubt that very much.

During the past several months, I have been using a Visa card, and spending more than ever. So anyone who had seen my declined Amex usage and assumed that it was all due to the financial crisis, would have been mistaken. There is more than meets the eye.

Wishing you well for the new year.

Jonar Nader

That letter was sent by courier. It was received and signed-for on the 14th of December 2009. Sadly, now one month later, I have received no response. Perhaps the CEO was away, or super busy. Or maybe that is the culture through and through. Fearing that American Express had still not registered my request to cancel the card, I phoned and spoke with one person, who transferred me to another who was keen to retain my business. He offered all sorts of financial incentives, which I declined. ‘What do we have to do to keep you as a member?’ he asked. I explained that I was calling to close the account, and was not interested in bargaining. However, one of my issues was that no-one at Amex knew how to engage their brain when talking to me. I had a specific concern about one of its merchants who, in my assessment, was running a scam. He replied, ‘Would you please give us one more chance and allow me to arrange for a senior person to contact you to discuss your concerns?’

I agreed, and waited. No calls came. I chased this up and was told that two attempts were made. Alas, no messages and no clues and their calls show up as ‘Withheld’ in my caller ID. I receive dozens of missed calls daily. If messages aren’t left, I would never know who called. Anyway, despite my reminder, still no calls. So today, I called this Amex agent for the third time. Finally, a senior person phoned me, and I might as well have been talking to a brick wall. Completely unwilling and unable and uninterested in anything outside the norm. I was trying to point out a merchant who was running a scam. I was told that merchants, like card members, are valued customers.

Why bother arranging for a senior person to call me, after all this nonsense, when the person was not only powerless to act, but also incapable of understanding my concerns?

After twenty years with Amex, I had reached the end of my tether. And to think that a letter to the CEO receives no response, makes me wonder why anyone would bother with Amex these days. I must say that it was always a challenge to use the Amex card. Most retailers shunned the idea. Many would lie about their terminal not working, just so that they could discourage me from using it. Most retail establishments blatantly asked me to use Visa or MasterCard. Even if the CEO did not want to communicate with me, he should have forwarded my letter to the cancellation department for administrative purposes. Anyway, today, while really really cancelling my card and falling silent on the phone, just listening to the diatribe and saying, ‘I have nothing to say’ whenever the senior person paused for a response, he told me that my Gold annual membership had been charged, and that he will reverse that charge (as well he should). I also told him that I was happy to forfeit any remaining reward points.

The lesson in all of this?

1) Corporations need not saturate the market with advertising until they first work out the reasons behind the issues that plague them. To have to emphasise that Amex treats people as a person, not a number, raises more questions than it answers. Why did they think that the public thought that Amex treats people as numbers? Why must this point be made? Why tell us about it? Just go and treat people well. No need to advertise it. Just do it. Why would a corporation spend millions to advertise something that should never be uttered. What’s next? Ads to say that Amex cares about staff and the Pututu Beetle of the Trundrjanian Forest? Or 600 billboard across the city to say that Amex pays all its taxes? Or a $2 million campaign to say that Amex staff never sexually abuse young employees? Do you see how it would raise more questions that it would answer!

2) If you are going to make a promise, you had better be able to deliver on it. If a 20-year member cannot ever get a CEO to respond to a query, then either the CEO is way too busy, or the CEO does not care. Or the mail filtration system keeps the CEO in the dark a la ‘Yes Minister’. Perhaps I should wake up to the fact that a customer like me is not important enough. Modesty prevents me from telling you how much I might have spent with Amex over that period, but I dare say that it was considerable. Irrespective of the amount, and whether it’s one thousand or one million dollars, weak is the person who treats clients differently, based on their spending capacity. If a company cannot deliver the same level of service to all its clients, then it is a ‘using-abusing’ kind of sycophantic company that scatters fake smiles and manipulated courtesies.

3) If your staff can only regurgitate policy hogwash without really understanding the question, you would be better-off running a recorded message and getting rid of the humans. At least customers would not blame a machine for being unable to listen or to think or to communicate.

4) If you are going to record calls ‘for quality and assurance purposes’, you had better run a live feed to all the senior managers’ desktop computer so that managers can hear what’s going on, in real time. By the way, some time ago, an Amex staff member was so bad, I felt it necessary to complain about him, so I asked him, ‘What is the name of your manager?’ He gave me a name. It turned out that it was his own name. He lied to me so that if I were to write the letter to complain, it would have gone to him, and not his real manager. How sneaky. I twigged after I hung up. Oh, the many frustrations I have had with that company.

5) The funniest of all my interactions with Amex in the past two weeks (as well as during the past three years) were the endless queries about my date of birth and my password and my address and phone number and postal address etc. I kept telling them, dozens of times, every time, not to call me and other clients and ask for such private information. It is insane to call people and say, ‘Hi we are from American Express and we first need to verify you for security purposes and we will not budge and we will not help you until you break the very rule that we have made you swear and sign never to break — namely to tell a stranger over the phone your vital password which you must never divulge but please divulge it to me!’ And I could never get through to them.

Insatiable insanity!

P.S. For more about my Platinum Amexperiences, click here.

And before you cheer on, ask yourself if you are a shareholder in any way, via any means. If you are, and you have never taken this level of interest, then sell your shares and stop being a mug!

I called Citibank, asking if I could open a US checking (cheque) account. They could not help me. ‘Try the US branch,’ they advised. So I went on-line and filled in their form. It’s simple. I am from Sydney, Australia, and I need a US account. What do I need to do? So a reply came back that might as well have been written by fifty monkeys in a room whose walls are padded with computer keyboards. Just give the monkeys some tennis balls, and see which keys hit, and which keys register. Then, every thirty seconds, some software program can just press send. And there you have your answer. How stupid can organisations get? I explained that I am from Sydney, Australia, etc, but they advised me that I need to have a US Social Security Number and live in the US. And if I do not have appropriate US ID, I can go to a branch and present myself in person. From where do these people rent their brain cells? That might well be the requirements. However, I was asking a different question, and their response proves that they did not read my questions. They saw the words ‘US’ and ‘account’ and sent me the standard template. This is not called communications. Why ask so many questions when in the end, all I should have done was send them a three-word e-mail. ‘Hello, US account.’

By the way, in case anyone from Citibank is reading this, and you wish to look into this so that you can either sue me or serve me, here is the reference number you generated for me:

&392556B78E4060263C09082576A9000C7C593888ZSUNZDJUJ0NZDJUJECT&

The person writing to me was ‘Sincerely, MyCiti Online Customer Service’. Fancy that. That’s what I get in response to their questions, such as, ‘What is your name and your mother’s maiden name and your shoe size?’ They want to know everything about me, but when it comes to contacting me, they are nameless, while I remain:

&392556B78E4060263C09082576A9000C7C593888ZSUNZDJUJ0NZDJUJECT&

So I wrote back by pressing reply, which went to: autoreply.iewa@citicorp.com. It did not say NoReply, so I thought that there was some hope. Alas not. Within seconds, they wrote back saying: ‘Thank you for contacting us. For security reasons, this email address is not accepting mail. Please return to the Web page where you entered your original request or refer to the contact information listed on the original message that you received for any follow-up communication. Thank you!’

What security reasons? What a spasm. What an excuse. What a disgrace. Hey, I know all about software and automatic ticketing and call logging. I don’t care about that. If they have the cheek to have an email system, they should have the decency to catch up with the modern era and communicate via email. Oh, and why must everything go via their system? For logging? For archival? For training, monitoring, and quality assurance purposes? How stupid can anyone get?

Here is the lesson for the day!

1) Never send out an email where the recipient cannot press reply! Whatever is going through your mind about the trillions of reasons why this does not suit you, just stop. Dump it all out. Forget it. Not good enough.

2) Never send out an email where the sender is not identified by name and position.

3) When a customer responds to that specific name and position, never allocate the note to a ticketing system. Oh, the dozens of people I have had to deal with over one simple matter. Your help desk should remember that the word HELP is part of its name. It does not help the customer when agents receive a ticket, while they sit at home or with their feet up at a beach at Byron Bay, responding to tickets by shooting back questions and delaying the response to the poor customer. Help desk idiots, mostly ‘idiotified’ by their superiors and the Board, are paid to respond to tickets. What they say and how they say it, never seems to enter the equation. So they never answer a simple question. They just shoot back another question. In this way, they can say that they responded to a hundred tickets today. What a giggle-factory those help-desks are turning out to be. And the CEO is to blame, and the Board is responsible. And the shareholders ought to hang their head in shame. Where is all this quality assurance they keep telling me about every time they record my calls?

4) Never publicise a 24 hour help desk if the person taking the call is simply going to say, ‘Oh, please call back during business hours.’ Go to sleep and save me the bother. It’s like those doctors on radio who take calls, and anyone who phones in with a medical question is advised to consult their GP. Get off the air, people!

5) Never send out a letter where the person writing it, has no name, and whose signature is a scribble. Whoever sends out the letter must be identified, and their DIRECT phone number shown, and that number must not go to voice mail unless that person is dead.

6) If you are on a salary above $40,000, and if any of the above made you wince with discomfort, then get out of the service lark.

P.S. After posting this article, I sent a note to HSBC via an online form. I received a response within two hours. The sender provided her full name, street address, phone and fax numbers, and an email address, along with the links on how to fill in the forms, plus advice on what to do and how to do it, and which buttons to press and why. If HSBC can do it, why can’t other large organisations? It has nothing to do with technology. It’s all about soul and civility.

P.P.S. I called the lady from HSBC and she was delightful, happy, friendly, knowledgeable, and gave me great advice, send additional material within minutes, and offered to try a few ways to assist me, with a money back guarantee. Now, what could be fairer than that.

How sad it is when the technical brilliance of Steven Jobs and his crew meets a brick wall when customer service goes down the drain.

Apple has got a lot to teach the world. Unfortunately, the very basics of customer service are overlooked, and in the end, customers will soon forget the miraculous miniaturisation and remember the hideous frustrations.

My first dictionary of computing was written on the first Apple Mac; the one that did not even have a hard drive. It worked well, and my fond memories of Apple’s product quality never faded, even after being forced to switch operating systems to conform to the corporate jungle. So, recently, I purchased a new MacBook Pro. It is not perfect, but it is a million times better than my old Windows rubbish.

I was at the George Street Apple Store one rainy afternoon, and I placed an order for the MacBook Pro, a large monitor, and a range of accessories, plus I paid for three years of service and one year of help/training. The product was wheeled out, but at that moment, their cashier system broke down, and they could not process my order. I asked if they could take my card details and process it the next day as a phone order and then have the products delivered to me. They said that it was impossible. And they said that they do not take phone orders. Oh well, their loss. When I got home, I conducted some research and noticed that an even larger Dell monitor was $800 cheaper. So they missed out on that sale and I went with the Dell monitor. I finally purchased the MacBook Pro with the service and training.

Alas, I was led to believe that any issues with my product can be dealt with via courier or post. Again, a lie, it seems, because my Mighty Mouse has been faulty, and now it does not work. It set me back three days in my work. After waiting for Apple to come back from holidays, and waiting fifteen minutes to speak with someone, they said that I would have to take the mouse in for assessment or repair etc. I explained that it was not feasible to travel such great distances, and hassle with parking etc, for something that can be dealt with, as I was misled to believe, by mail. The phone operator escalated the call to a Josh, who informed me that he was the most senior person on the help desk. I told him that I will be protesting most strongly and most vigourously, and he was not phased. A brick wall.

If a company wants to take my money, my perfect money, and dish out products that do not work, and take more money for support and warranty, then it had better not waste my time. I paid $122.55 for One on One training and $521.10 for extended warranty. Isn’t it absurd that one purchases a quality product from a quality company, and then pays $521.10 as insurance in case the product fails? Yes it is silly of me, but you see, I would do anything for peace of mind and to save time. My time is worth more than any headache of running around trying to fix a vital business tool. This money that Apple pocketed is the cream. It provides them with millions of percent profit. It is free money for nothing at all. Just money for nothing in return. And they know it. Any product fault would surface quick-smart, and beyond that, the product is stable. And who keeps a product for three years anyway? Nonetheless, I just wanted peace of mind, and now that my Apple Mighty Mouse ($94.05) is faulty (8 months in), I can see that I have been ripped off, big time.

Also, the One to One training has not been used, and can never be used, because silly me did not ask the right questions. When people of decency deal with a company of reputation, we somehow take people at face value and accept what they say to be plain English. Now I realise that I should have asked more questions. If I had been told more about the One to One training, I would not have taken it up. I was not told what I should have known, and I did not think to ask something that did not occur to me. I was misled on that score as well.

You see, the One to One training, I now find out, can only happen for a one-hour session at any one time in any one day! Having spoken with a few people at Apple George Street, and the help desk, there is no way that I can book two sessions. I live 30 km away from the store. They want me to drive 90 minutes in, pay $20 in tolls, not to count the petrol and my time, and park my car at around $35 to $50, just to have one hour. Then 90 minutes back plus petrol and time and car expenses! I wanted to go in and have training on a range of applications so that I could become a power-user and leave the Windows environment. It would not make sense to drive in just for one hour. They said that they could not provide more than one hour. It was tough luck. Well my dear Apple, if you knew this, why don’t you make it clear when making the sale? How can you stand there and take money from people, knowing that the customer has not asked you the right questions? It was sold to me in terms of ‘all the training you like’. Never a mention of the limitations.

I once upgraded an old phone, to a new space-age phone. When I got it home, I found that it did not have a countdown timer or stopwatch, which I need while on stage. Who would have thought to ask about such a basic feature, when my previous seven phones all had this feature. I just assumed that it did. Much like you would now assume that any phone you will purchase tomorrow will contain a clock. Silly to ask the question. So you see, I did not ask about the One on One training, because it was put to me in such a grand way to make me feel that I could have as many sessions as I had wanted. That was a lie. It was deceit. It was unfair. It was unethical. To this day, I have not been able to take up this offer, so that is another million percent profit for Apple.

Today, I was let down yet again, and today, this minute, I searched the Apple website, and this is what they say, which is what I was led to believe, which is not what they delivered:



So today, while they were lying to me, and ripping me off, and making out that I had to drive in to get the Mighty Mouse fixed (or go to Rhodes), I was admonishing myself for being so docile. But hang on, this image from their website today proves what I was saying. I was told that life would be easy. I would just send it in the mail. It says so above. And so I thought to delve deeper and read the terms and conditions, and here is where the link goes:



Brand consistency is vital in any organisation. There are certain divisions within Apple who are leading the world. Unfortunately, they are being let down by their colleagues. In this case, Apple is to blame, even though the entire help desk function is outsourced to IBM. The sales person at the time was impressing me with the fact that all of Apple’s help desks are local. What he did not tell me was that they were outsourced.

Anyway, silly me for trusting anyone. They lied to me. They misled me. And now I have their faulty product, and they have my perfect money. That seems like a fair exchange.

P.S. For those who might assume that the mail-in service was for the MacBook unit, and not the peripherals, here are two points. One: it would be ludicrous to send out a MacBook Pro in the mail. It would be damaged! So any such repairs need to be hand-picked and hand-delivered, and not posted in the mail or be chucked into the courier bags. And two: their policy is for peripherals. I know this for certain, because my remote cordless keyboard was faulty within two months, and they replaced it via the courier/mail system. So now what’s the deal? They changed their mind after they had taken my money. They broke the contract. How convenient. It will not do!

UPDATE: I wrote a letter to the CEO of Apple. The next day, I received a phone call from one of the Apple Executives who was most concerned that a customer should have had negative experiences. The executive gathered information and contacted me the following day, apologising for this situation. He admitted that the help-desk supervisor was in error. An Apple genius has since contacted me about my training requirements. Also, a third Apple Executive contacted me several days later to check that everything was now satisfactory. At all times, I emphasised that I was not seeking any special treatment. I just wanted to know what my contract afforded me.

The speed and attention that I have received in the past few days is the kind that I would expect from a company like Apple. It sure is difficult to keep all staff members trained about all the aspects of the business. In the end, Apple was grateful that I raised this matter. It is not a situation that the company wants repeated. Full marks for the speed of response. Full marks for the professionalism displayed by the executives.

If consumers, along with internal staff members, do not speak-up when we see incongruence surrounding the brand-promise, we would be guilty of harbouring a phantom that gets too big for its boots. There are some companies to whom I would not bothers complaining. They are simply best left to rot. Others, like Apple, are excellent on so many fronts, that when we spot the seeds of negativity, it is in all our interest to speak up. The smallest shards of incompetence can grow to become invisible, mighty black holes wherein corporate cancer is incubated. Once a company is gripped by stupidity, there is nothing it can do to shake it off. For this reason, resolute action, at high speed, might seem an over-kill, but negativity in a company like Apple must be arrested with urgency and rigour. I am pleased to see that Apple executives know this. The attention that I received in the past few days has nothing to do with me personally, but with a corporate culture that understands the dangers of corporate cancer. We all fear it tremendously.

My, and Apple’s, abhorrence to ‘bad attitude’, stems from an understanding that it takes years to grow a fine corporate reputation, and only days to destroy it. It takes ages to nurture a healthy work-ethic, and only a few moments to smother it. In ‘How to Lose Friends and Infuriate People’, I wrote, ‘…atmosphere and attitude, if rotten, cannot improve. Their movement on the scale (from bad to good) cannot be gradual because they would never reach the midpoint because of the forces acting against them… Evil will triumph over good. A negative system can never evolve into a positive one. A putrid atmosphere cannot blossom. An obstructive attitude cannot gradually swing towards the constructive. If your organisation is spreading an epidemic through atmosphere and attitude, you need to destroy the carriers. Bringing in new blood, fresh ideas, new people (no matter how exceptional) will not generate a competitive advantage because they will become affected and/or infected faster than they care to realise. You need to destroy the silent, intangible, and merciless enemy.’

The swift response by Apple shows that the company fears bad customer-service. Not because they know that they could lose customers, but because they know that they could lose their heart and soul.

For other observations about the Grand Hyatt Melbourne, click here.

Dear Brother Ken

First I would like to congratulate you and your staff for preparing the Year 12 students in an admirable way. The exhibition held on Tuesday night was inspiring and enjoyable. Please thank the students, staff, and volunteers for their kind hospitality and delicious and generous snacks.

I write to you to highlight a few areas of OH&S that need some attention. I am always security- and safety-conscious. Upon entering the school grounds for the first time last night Tuesday 8 September, I noticed the metal fence along the perimeter. My first thought turned to how students might escape in case of an emergency. The sliding gates, in the dark of night, seemed to me to be a hazard for any form or egress. If the gates did have some non-electrical release mechanism, I failed to locate it in the dark.

Nonetheless, during the exhibition, I could smell something burning, perhaps a minor matter in the kitchen from the kind catering crew. I looked around to rehearse an escape and I was alarmed at what I noticed. I share some photos here with you for your reference.

If there were an emergency, the lights might go out. There might be smoke and panic. This exit sign was not illuminated. This was at the front of the hall.

One of the exits had this table in front of it. As you know, no exit should be obstructed. When I see one anomaly, I go in search of another.

Upon opening that door, I noticed that the passageway was dark. There was a brick right in front of me. Not to the side where the brick might sometimes be placed to hold the door open. The door has a hook and latch. Therefore, not only is the brick unnecessary, it is dangerous and illegal. The brick is only visible as a result of the camera flash. Otherwise, anyone could trip over it in the panic of an emergency exit. The photo on the left was taken without a flash. In a fire, with smoke and panic, people would not see the brick. Several hundreds people making a mad dash to the exits could hurt themselves in more ways than one.

Beyond the brick was this garden hose. It was not visible in the dark. Here, it is visible due to the camera flash. This is completely against all fire-exit regulations. The hall was crowded with hundreds of people, ranging from infants to frail senior citizens.

There were three designated fire exits. Above I showed the first two. This is the third, being to the left of the stage. Again it was blocked. I did not have an opportunity to open this door to see what is behind it.

The stage had a long, loose power cord. The stage was an exhibit area, showcasing dresses. Many people went up and down the stage. This cord was neither secured nor taped down.

Cords were also loose near the doorway to the front part of the hall, just off the kitchen. This area was extensively used. The image on right shows part of a coffee table, designed by one of the students. The table contained a water feature (much like a fish tank). In all, not a good combination of glass, water, electricity, and an obstacle on a potentially slippery floor just near a kitchen, via a narrow doorway, in a crowded room.

I had never been to your school prior to last night. I was not familiar with the lay of the land. Upon leaving, I could not find the exit point for pedestrians. The place was completely dark. I could see a multitude of vehicles departing. I wanted to stay off the road, as your signs had advised. However, there was no signage directing me, a newcomer, to the exit point. I made my way towards the main road, and noticed a gate. It was too dark to work out or understand how it opened. I finally noticed that it was locked with a padlock. It was completely dark. Keep in mind that even older folk would have found it darker. As you know, age diminishes luminosity. The photo on the left was how it appeared without a flash. The inset is of the heavy-duty lock. If there were any need for a mass evacuation, there would be no way that anyone could climb that very tall fence/gate, which I assume was the intention: to prevent criminals and vandals from climbing in.

The letter to the Principal concluded thus:

If your school does not provide a safe exit, I fear that whoever installed these gates for you might have failed to comply with standard OH&S regulations.

Please do not allow a disaster to become the catalyst for a full review. As a person highly experienced in these matters, the scenarios in my head were causing me great distress, and I wondered if you and your parent-community were aware of the real dangers.

Occasionally we read about dozens becoming trampled or several killed when they could not escape from a venue. It is negligence of this nature that creates untold misery. And while, thank God, nothing has happened so far, people might snigger and mock and dismiss these observations. Such people ought to go and hold the burnt corpse of a child, while its mother is contorting with hysteria and disbelieve.

If you do not have advisers whom you trust, I would be happy to visit your fine school and carry out another informal inspection for your personal benefit.

I would welcome your call if you feel that I might be of service.

The Principal wrote, ‘…I have passed your document on to the OH&S committee for their consideration…’

It is important for readers to note that the word ‘service’ is misleading when used in business. Anyone reading this would be mistaken if they assumed that a customer wants free attention or any love and affection or any cow-towing. When a company does not provide service, or does not deliver a service, that company is admitting to stealing money. Service is not a nice-to-do to make people feel good. A lack of service is theft.

I was complaining about the hotel staff disturbing me, even after I had hit the roof and spoken with the duty manager who assured me that it would not happen again… only for it to happen again. I had asked not to be disturbed. I was disturbed. What did the hotel serve-up as an excuse? They said, ‘Our house keepers are under instruction that after a certain time they have to make contact with a room to ensure there has not been any accidents or incidents. However in your case with instruction on your sleeping pattern this was not relayed to our house keeping operations department, for which we do apologize.’

Let’s put aside the fact that the duty manager had assured me that she had spoken with the culprits and their supervisor. For now, let us deal with this heart-warming gesture of concern by the hotel to make contact with a room after a certain time. What kind of time? For how long must a guest go underground before housekeeping must intervene? I’ve heard excuses and apologies in my time, but this one is the best by far. The only problem was, it does not make sense. So, after a long wait, and several calls and emails to follow-up with the hotel about ignoring my complaint, and after this comical excuse by the hotel (along with an offer of a $50 voucher which I refused), I responded thus:

In all my years of travel, I have never been told that hotel staff must make contact in the way you described.

1:00 pm and 2:00 pm are not excessive spans of inactivity. What triggered the concern on the part of the staff? One of those interruptions that woke me was on a Saturday around 1:30 pm. Are you seriously telling me that a guest who is not out of their room by 1.30 pm on a Saturday will be contacted for their own safety? If so, I will assist you to spread this policy all over the internet so that all travellers can start to behave themselves and accommodate your policies.

As for my request not being relayed to housekeeping, I find that casts a shadow of unfair incompetence on the duty manager with whom I spoke and who seemed concerned that such a thing should happen in the first instance. She had assured me most emphatically that she would follow the matter up personally by contacting the head of housekeeping. She called me back forty minutes later and confirmed that she had followed-up as she had promised. So how was it that even after the duty manager intervened, the same interruption took place? This points to more endemic issues than someone not being told.

I have been staying at your hotel for many years, long before the name changed to Rendezvous Auckland. On this occasion I stayed for seven days. Two months prior I was there for nine days. And such has been the pattern for over ten years.

If a hotel were concerned about a guest, they would be admired if the guest had missed a wake-up call or a known check-out time, or if the guest showed absolutely no activity whatsoever. I had borrowed two umbrellas on different days that were logged to my name and room… I had meals delivered at odd hours after 2:00 am… I had spoken with your staff about internet access twice. I had called down to book a taxi in my name and to my room. I had twice left large boxes at the front desk (with a range of calls to check on them). I had a courier delivery that was delivered to my room comprising one large 28 kg box. I had another courier delivery three days later comprising four heavy boxes that were delivered to my room. I had placed a large framed glass certificate at the front desk for a third-party to collect and I enquired about this on three occasions. I was on pleasant terms with your doorman and concierge. I had twice gone down to ask your receptionist for a copy of a letter, and once over the phone. Other activity was evident such as when I had phoned your hotel operator to ask about two personnel, and to ask for a phone number.

My room access card gives you computer monitoring, I presume. And your team could have seen from my card the times I swipe. You can see a lot of activity, including many visits to the gym and phone logs… All this activity is not the pattern of a guest that had gone underground or become a recluse or a hermit. This was a guest who made it perfectly clear that he was in the hotel. A simple query would have allayed any fear of a potentially dormant guest who might have been in pain or agony behind closed doors. A guest who upon check-in asked for a quiet location. A guest who so needed to sleep that he placed yellow packing tape against the curtains to block out the light, and such tape would have been evident and obvious to the housekeeping staff.

The new hotel manager wrote to apologise and asked me what I wanted. I said that I do not want anything. I offer him my assistance and wished him well.

This was the original letter that was ignored:

…There is absolutely no reason at all that I would need to stay at your hotel, if it were not for the need to sleep.

On one of the days, one of your housekeeping staff phoned me to ask if she could clean my room. She knew that I had the DND light on because she had placed a card under my door. I have never understood why housekeeping thinks that phoning is not a form of disturbing. When she rang, I was asleep. I keep odd hours. I work late nights…

So I explained to the lady that it is pointless to wake me up to ask me if the DND light was real or not. I called downstairs and complained. I was told that they will have a word with her. Why should staff be trained at my expense? How would anyone from your management team like me to phone them at 1:00 am to ask them a silly question. My 1:00 pm is like their 1:00 am.

Then two days later, the doorbell rang. I got out of bed, and the woman asked me if I wanted my room serviced. I did not utter a word, because it would have been unpleasant. She kept talking, explaining that she had placed a card (which she bent down to retrieve) and kept trying to find the words to communicate with a guest who refused to utter a single word. She saw that I was just out of bed, disheveled, and half asleep. While she spoke, I kept pressing the DND button, flashing the light in protest. She apologised and walked away.

I called down and spoke with a Tracy I think. She said she would have a word with the woman.

I do not care what your policy is or what it should be or who did or did-not do the right thing. I pay for a service, which is four walls. We have an international agreement that says ‘Do not disturb’. Nothing more should be said.

Why take my money and not deliver on the absolute basic thing?

Other ‘do not disturb’ incidents are mentioned in this article.

WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM THIS?

Hotels and retailers understand ‘the power of the brand’, but they do not embrace ‘the way of the brand’. Imagine the production line at Cartier or Tiffany or Prada. Imagine the manufacturing processes at Porsche or Bently. Imagine the assembly belts at BMW or Bang & Olufsen. Do you think that any worker from any shift can alter the specifications? No way! Strict, almost religious processes must be followed. More importantly than the processes is the ethos. The way of life. They fixation. The art. The insistence and intolerance to anything that deviates from the brand. So you see, each brand must me nurtured within a religious, jealous, zealous environment that will not tolerate anything that jeopardises the brand promise; not because we love customers so much, but because we love our art and our craft and our integrity and what we stand for, and why we exist.

When it comes to hotels and hospitals and retailers and service providers, they seem to presume that their brand is alive, so long as they have a logo to prove it. Nay. Having fancy websites with grand mission statements will achieve nothing. They must find a way to be consistent. They need to foster a religion that sweeps their staff along a track from which it would be shameful and sinful to deviate.

In this article, some people might assume that I was just complaining about two staff members breaking company policy. No, it is dozens of staff members destroying their brand, and taking my money without delivering on the core service. What triggered this article was not so much the bad service, but the bad ways in which they ignored my requests and emails over a long period of time. In my book, ‘How to Lose Friends and Infuriate People’, I said, ‘The single most important element in customer service is speed’. In a chapter about customer service, I added:

There is an element to customer service that focuses on complaints resulting from faulty or incompatible goods and/or broken promises. Chief executive officers must carefully study why certain issues arise. If organisations do not manufacture robust products, or if they send out service technicians who perform half-hearted tasks, the organisations deserve to be out of business. Chief executive officers whose production lines still pump out substandard products do not deserve one moment’s rest. Senior executives cannot ethically command a salary so long as they cheat the customer by taking good money only to deliver rubbish, frustrations, and broken promises in return. Furthermore, profits are lost every time an error is made or a faulty product is replaced.

Therefore, such floundering is a disservice to shareholders — and what could be more irresponsible than that? Many organisations fail to realise that once customers have paid for their goods or services, they have exchanged money for whatever was given in return. Money is predictable. It works every time. It does not need service calls, nor is it ever faulty. The exchange is a very safe bet (notwithstanding fraud). Whether it be exchanged for bananas or a new computer, fault-free money is given in good faith. Imagine if money were as susceptible to faults as the product for which it was exchanged, thereby ‘inheriting’ the qualities of the product. This would mean that every time the operating system on your computer froze, the money you paid for it would freeze in the bank or wherever it is at the time. What if every time your toaster failed to work, or you bought apples that tasted like chalk, the money that you used to buy these items also failed or perished? What if there were some metaphysical link associated with each transaction? What would become of certain rich people who have amassed their wealth through lies and deceit? How successful would some organisations be today if they were accountable through a ‘law of inheritance’? This would be a scary notion indeed. As the networked world develops, more of this kind of accountability will befall organisations that can least afford it. Financial ‘ancestry’ would prohibit corporations from building their empires on money taken from customers who were given shoddy products. There is also the issue of ‘unfair exchange’. Any organisation that seeks to make a profit from its goods or services ought to come to terms with the fact that it is not doing the customer any favours. When a customer exchanges money for a new chair, the customer is the one doing the company a favour. In exchange for one chair, the customer is paying the retailer for the chair’s original cost, plus a little extra to help pay for expenses and overheads, plus more free money for the retailer’s personal bank account.

The greatest of frustrations for travellers stems from the utter disregard to a concept that hoteliers find foreign: that some guests really want to use a hotel room to rest their weary bones.

Travellers arrive at their hotel after long-hours and tiring-queues (or is it tiring-hours and long-queues?). Guests are promised a ‘home away from home’. After being shunted and shoved, they look forward to the end-point: a room that they can call their own. They want territorial rights over their patch for a few days. Guests do not rent rooms. Instead, they fancy themselves as temporary owners. Sadly, upon arrival, they are reminded that they are not in charge of anything. ‘Sorry, the room won’t be ready until after 2:00 pm.’ More bossing about. More waiting. ‘Sign here. Would you like us to store your luggage while you walk the promenade like a vagrant?’ When guests (clients really) finally enter the room, they realise that the only power they have is to decide whether or not to place the DND sign on the door-handle.

Before we accelerate to a frenzy, let’s start with some light relief. The Grand Hyatt Melbourne underwent a $45 million upgrade. I stayed at the hotel twice during the jackhammers and several times recently, and heaps of times previously. Judging by the noise and the dust, we were all expecting a Grander Hyatt. Indeed, the fixtures and fittings are lovely. But riddle me this: on what was the $45,000,000 spent? I would like to see the breakdown. What was the most expensive item? The sculpture? The consulting fees paid to the engineers? The builders and their labourers? The marble? Something must have taken the cake. What was the most expensive item? Now let us go down the list to find the least expensive item. What was it? I am going to stick my neck out and confidently guess that the cheapest, easiest, simplest, least complicated product to specify, to design, to outsource, and to manufacture, was the ‘Do not disturb’ sign. Alas, they stuffed it up, big time.

So, they spend $45 million. And for what? A better hotel? No. Just a shinier one, a larger one, a more luxurious one. A fancier one. A more stylish one. But is the hotel made better as a result of $45 million worth of marble, brass, crystal, and silk? Thrice no! The core of the business did not change. What is the core? To provide rooms for guests. Sure, the Hyatt makes money from food and beverage (or should I say beverage and food, in that order), and from laundry and functions, and parties and conferences. But what are all those 547 rooms doing up in the sky? The rooms are the core of the hotel. And part of the core is the promise of a restful sleep amidst ‘the epitome of luxury’ with a brand that says, ‘You’re more than welcome’. My goodness, what is it to be ‘more’ than welcome? The Hyatt mission says, ‘…provide authentic hospitality by making a difference in the lives of the people we touch every day…’

Clients not only want to sleep, but also want to watch TV and cuddle and make love and hide from the world while they lounge-about in their Calvin Kleins or in their birthday suit. This core activity is done in private, and, more importantly, at the client’s own pace. You see, humans look the same in their Rolex and Ray Bans, but on the inside, they operate at different speeds, and carry baggage that no-one will get to see. Some guests are there on business. Some arrive to attend a funeral. Some check-in with their heavy burdens, while others check-out with a lonely heart. Some are lost. Others are searching. They all carry the American Express card as they ebb and flow through the foyer, masking their complex lives with a smile. (After twenty years of membership, this week I destroyed my American Express card because I was fed-up with being treated like a number.)

Hotels have it tough. They are the last straw in a long line of inconvenience. Airports, traffic, late flights, cancelled connections, lost luggage, take your shoes off, empty your pockets, your bags are too heavy, sorry you can’t take that on board, sit-back, relax, and enjoy the flight, but first, turn everything off, and sorry we can’t land yet due to a badger let loose on the tarmac. (Last week, during some thunderstorms, our pilot said that we cannot leave the flight.

When guests reach a hotel, they arrive with luggage and hidden baggage. The hotel is where the buck stops, after domestics and struggles. By the way, on a recent flight, the pilot would not let us off this flight, due to potential lightning strikes. If the aeroplane is safe, why can't the aero-bridge be made equally safe? The flight was late then delayed. After a long journey in frightening turbulence, we were stranded on the tarmac. When we finally reached our hotel, we would have reached the end of our tether. I almost forgot to mention that after being let off, it took over 50 minutes for the priority bags to emerge on the conveyor belts, while my driver was kept waiting at my expense.

Click on the green arrow to play the recording of the pilot explaining this delay.

Let’s get back to the Grand Hyatt Melbourne. After spending $45 million, they splurged on new ‘Do Not Disturb’ signs. This would have been the cheapest item on the list. A card with a string. Yet, this represents the most important aspect of the business: a client’s desire to cocoon, to rest, to hibernate, to escape, to unwind, to slow down, to play, to be left alone and consume the service in their own way. When guests place that DND sign, they are issuing a directive and an order. They are saying, ‘Unless the hotel is on fire, leave me alone, go away, don’t knock, don’t ring, don’t make noise outside, don’t chit chat, don’t bang doors and drawers next door, don’t go knocking on every door down the corridor while announcing, ‘Mini Bar!’ with the same sense of urgency as they used to cry, “Bring out your dead!”‘. That sign means, ‘Please tip-toe if you are in the area’. It means, ‘Don’t clang cutlery and crockery. Don’t disturb the peace.’ How else can I put it? ‘I want to be left alone. I want peace. I want quiet.’ Well, little chance of that! Click this to hear what I had to put up with on my last visit a few weeks ago. One of my managers felt that we were being too harsh on a hire-car company when our letter of appointment stipulated over forty specific requirements when they send a driver to pick me up. And now I just realised that I need to add a new item to the other list for hotels: I do not want a room that has an adjoining door. Here’s why… (This noise went on and on; made worse when the mother lost her temper a few times. The sound came through that door, as if the family were living inside my room.)

Let me test your powers of observation. Take a look at this, being the new sign that emerged after the $45 million upgrade. What do you notice? First, you can see the terminology. It is no longer assuring the guests that they will not be disturbed. It is simply saying that the hotel will try to give people privacy. Meaning what? ‘Please do not barge-in without knocking?’ Do you mean to say that if that sign were not displayed, our privacy would be violated? Language please! Whatever do they mean? Anyway, what else have you observed? Take a look at that string. Who designed it? Never let designers and decision-makers next to a project where they do not understand the end-user’s perspective. This product would have been a cinch to mock-up. It could have been road-tested within minutes. So why was it never tested? Why was it implemented? Why is it still being used?

When hung on the door handle, the sign swings with the wind. No matter how you position it, it will move. The problem is, that on one side it says ‘Privacy please’ and on the other side it says ‘Please make up my room’. At one of the times I stayed at the hotel, the housekeeping staff disturbed me out of bed. When I mentioned the sign, knowing full well that the housekeeper was not to blame (much), the woman said that she can never be sure which way the sign was meant to face. And there you have it. A $45 million upgrade within one of the world’s most experienced hotel chains, and they can’t get the most important thing right. The most important things is a client’s rest, because they pay for a room in order to rest, otherwise they can just walk the streets all night long. Humans need to sleep. A sad and inefficient fact of life. So resting and not being disturbed while resting, is the most important aspect at the core of a hotel. Why won’t people grasp that concept? So I engaged in conversation with her. That’s a great way I conduct a lot of my research. Speak with people at the front line. The woman was powerless. If she had her way, she would get rid of these silly signs. They cause problems. Why can’t she walk into the General Manager’s office and point this out? Who knows. She could be weak. Or the culture could be so intimidating and so uninviting, that a lowly junior would never think to step outside her station. Yes we can blame the staff for not sticking their neck out about their observations. But come on… this is not a hidden problem in an isolated area. It is a sign that is hanging out in the open, for all to see. How many managers work at that hotel? Do they not have eyes to see? So please, let’s take it easy on the housekeeping staff and realise that the whole business lacks management skills.

Forget the hole in the middle. Punch a hole on either side and re-thread the string. Now the sign can never twist and turn.

Twice I was disturbed by this stupid sign. So I stopped using it. I ripped the top half of the breakfast menu that one is supposed to hang on the handle. I wrote, ‘Do not disturb’ and hung it on the door, thinking that the instruction is explicit. Overnight, some helpful housekeeper had taken my make-shift sign and replaced it with one of the problematic ones. So I was back to square one. You could not script a funnier world. I was at the hotel again a few weeks ago, and they still use the signs, and have been doing do for over one year. I noticed that they had knotted them slightly differently, but the problem remains. Fix the bloody things. It must be the cheapest thing to fix. So easy, so cheap, so important. Why can’t anyone engage the brain? The Hyatt group runs 415 branded properties in 45 countries. That’s plenty of experience to be getting on with. Why can’t they sort out one a simple matter that affects every guest every time, big time. A small matter. A big problem. Easily fixed. No-one cares.

If the Hyatt is reading this article, allow me to show you how you can fix this problem in 20 seconds flat. Grab a hole-puncher from your desk, and hey-presto. See my sample in the photo on the left. Dead simple. Twice I was woken up! What’s the jolly point of hiring a bed to sleep on, when I cannot sleep if you keep waking me to ask if I need my room cleaned? Some hotels have strange shifts and weird performance measurements for their staff, which results in over-enthusiasm to get into a room and service it before a certain time, or at a rate of ‘so many rooms per hour’. Stuff the sleeping client. Hotels would be so much better without guests.

THE BLATANT DING DONG

While staying at Hyatt Regency Coolum, I was woken to the sound of the doorbell. Here is how I describe the incident in a letter to the hotel: After that horrible first night, I managed to get to sleep at around 8:00 am. At 9:25 am, the doorbell rang. I called out, but no-one answered, so I went to the door in time to see the small buggy driving off. Outside my door were two totes, containing the fresh linen. I had the ‘Do not disturb’ sign hanging outside, so why did housekeeping deliver the linen and press the doorbell? …If a tree had fallen through the window, or if flooding had necessitated an evacuation, one would put it down to Mother Nature. If a gas bottle had exploded or if a buggy had ploughed through the door, one could understand human nature, and accept that unfortunate mistakes and errors do happen. However, a staff member ringing the doorbell, knowing that the guest was checked-in for three days, and knowing that there is no major function or conference to which one would need to rush, what can it be other than complete and utter disrespect? This was not an oversight. It was not an error. It was not an accident. It was not an inadvertent slip-up. This was not lack of training. It was nothing more than pre-meditated disrespect of the highest order, born of a management structure that boasts about world-class facilities, yet allows staff to break the codes of conduct and therefore destroy the Hyatt brand that hangs its hat on its understanding of the customer… Any person who shows a blatant disregard to hotel guests must also exhibit this level of disdain within other aspects of the business. This means that the colleagues and managers are blind, or they are all of the same ilk, to allow this type of behaviour to continue. (You can read my full report about Hyatt Regency Coolum here.)

RING RING

At another time, while staying at Hyatt Regency Coolum, and the same goes for most hotels in which I have stayed, the staff seem to think that they can telephone a room to ask you if you really mean to have the ‘do not disturb’ sign out there. It’s like sending someone an email, and then phoning them to say I have sent you an email, and they text back to say that they received it and your send them a note of thanks via the post. How many brain cells does it take to work out that phoning a room to disturb, is as disturbing as ringing the door bell or knocking on the door (or barging in, if you please, as has happened to me often enough around the world). They just walk in. Before you know it, the staff are in your room. ‘What on earth are you doing?’ I yelled at a silly woman towering over me while at an expensive 5-star hell-hole in Singapore. ‘I need to lock the mini bar.’ I told here that my check-out time was 4:00 pm. Why is she disturbing me at 9:00 am? Waking me up, just by walking in, despite the DND sign outside. ‘Yes, but it is our policy to lock the mini-bar.’ How many murders have there been at hotels?

Anyway, back at Coolum, during another stay, someone phoned my room. When I picked up, the phantom caller hung up, without a word. This happens to me so often, it is not a joke. Housekeeping ring to check that you are in the room. They do not want to knock on the door because they know that the guest would bite their head off. Most hotels have a phone monitoring system whereby they can check every call. They ought to trace the call (which is easily done) and apprehend the staff member who engages in this unforgivable practice. A few weeks ago, while at Coolum again (my clients like to hold conferences near golf courses!) I had arranged for a late check-out. There are always very good reasons. So while trying to get one hour’s sleep, having been up working all night, the phone rang to ask me when I am checking out. My dear hotels, I have never stayed at a hotel where the front desk has ever communicated with the back end. Never. We go to great lengths to book a large conference. We stipulate everything. We ask for certain check-out times. We pay extra. We confirm. We fax. We email. We double check. We obtain signatures. We re-confirm. We have conference calls. We go over everything. We put it in writing. We prepare 30-page run-sheets that are colour-coded and highlighted and stipulated and specified and we go through everything personally with the AV people, the functions people, the events people, the staging folk, the catering staff, the hotel manager, the beverage manager… and on it goes, and never has any one department communicated with another because after all that anally-retentive, fussy finicky detail, we rock up to the hotel and they are scratching their head to locate our booking and they have nothing as planned. Not a single thing. No AV, no monitor, not the microphones we ordered, and only one not four as agreed and paid for. No room allocations as agreed as per our requirements. No-one knows where the boxes are stored. No possibility of a late check-out despite it being agreed to suit our flights and the fact that I get off the stage at 5 pm. ‘Nope, our check-out time is 11 am. Sorry. We moved your bags out of the room,’ she says. Never mind that I need a shower. How bloody dare they! Hey, don’t worry. It happens all the time. No really. All the flipping time. Unbelievable. Just so that you do not think I am exaggerating, I have to make sure you get it: it happens all the jolly time. And the response: ‘Sorry, no one told me about it, and there is nothing we can do. Your event starts at 9:00, and the equipment you want is at the other end of town, and it will take three hours to set it up. If you had told us last night…’ How many stranglings take place at hotels?

And everyone wonders why the CIA was not communicating so well with the FBI at the time of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. Those terrorists were known. They were apprehended, and they were let go and let loose because the left hand did not know what the right hand was doing. If the reception staff cannot advise the housekeeping staff (or anyone else for that matter), that the guest has a check-out at 4:00 pm, then how do you expect one government bureaucracy to communicate with a totally foreign external bureaucracy? These hotels seem to have every policy under the sun, but none that says, ‘Dear staff member, please use you miniscule brain. That’s what we pay you for.’

NEVER USE A DOUBLE-SIDE DND SIGN

The oldest trick by housekeeping staff is to remove the DND sign, slowly turn it over to the side that reads, ‘Make up my room’ and then knock on the door. If the guest protests about being woken out of bed, the staff would point to the sign and say, ‘Sorry, it’s just that you had indicated that you wanted your room made up.’ At which you will say, ‘No go away!’ at which they will be glad and happy because that is one less room they have to clean, so less work for them! Delicious strategy.

So here is a better way. Use two different signs. One green that on both sides says, ‘Make up my room’. And one red that says on both sides, ‘Do not disturb’. Mind you, although this is a great step in the right direction, sadly, staff now pinch the signs and then knock on the door and insist that there was no sign! You just can’t win.

WHAT ABOUT THE NEW TECHNOLOGY?

Indeed, some hotels have done away with these signs. They place a button in the room, and a light system outside. If the guest presses the DND button, a light illuminates outside. In this way, housekeeping can never say that the sign had been stolen. Does this system work? Not at all, especially at the Rendezvous Hotel in Auckland. Read that article here. Why not review the websites of all the major hotel brands. Within those welcoming promises of bliss and joy, there are clues as to what hotels are all about. I am not asking for miracles. I do not expect people to be perfect. But I do think that we can go a long way if we start by removing staff who have no regard for the most basic tenant of any hotel: REST. I like four-letter words.

For other observations about the Grand Hyatt Melbourne, click here.