Good Customer Service

I do tend to go on a bit (in real life) about customer service – good or bad. This guy gets full marks. Chelsea writes: “To the kind man who stopped on the northwestern motorway to help a blushing girl last Friday at 5.30pm. I had foolishly run out of petrol, when to my surprise…

Compliance Costs

No Right Turn has changed his mind, and now considers anyone who opposes GST on food to be a facist bigot. Ok, maybe not quite in those terms. But I’m sure that’s only a matter of time, now that he’s made his mind up. So, low compliance costs (if we manage the change right), and…

Bruce Sheppard Defends Reynolds’s Salary

Now that’s a bit unexpected. Bruce is usually pretty hard on large companies. Shareholders Association chairman Bruce Sheppard today defended Telecom, referring to the employment of chief executive Paul Reynolds who has more than 20 years with British phone giant BT. He said Gattung was an internal appointment and he applauded the company for that…

Do Not Buy Talley’s Vegetables

I agree with MacDoctor – this is absolutely extraordinary. I am horrified that the frozen vegetable maker, Talley’s, is taking such a lackadaisical attitude to the contamination of packets of frozen peas. Up to 50% of their peas have been found to be black nightshade – a fairly poisonous berry. Have they ordered a recall? No. Have…

Wal-Mart

I can’t profess to ever having shopped at Wal-Mart. However, after reading the latest offering at Save the Humans, I should share that I own a book “Made in America” by Sam Walton, who started it. It’s a great book, and written in real folksy language. It’s a story of a guy who was massively…

Greens – Investors are Lucky, They Can Walk Away

(I originally wrote the some time ago – but it seems pertinent today.) The Greens show their excellent understanding of business. Currently if a company is struggling financially there are three groups of people who are likely to suffer; the company’s customers, the company’s investors and the company’s workers. Customers are normally in the best…

WhaleOil Says it Right – 90 Days Probation

Heck, with reasoned posts like this, Whaleoil is in serious danger of becoming a blog to be read by normal people. Much is being made by the Labour party, their lap-blog and other whining tossers about the 90 Day Bill. Ok, so the first sentence is his normal “leg-cut-off,-I’ll-get-to-the-acid-later*” style, but the rest makes sense.…

Marketing Universities

The Standard reveals some dangerous attitudes towards advertising and MBAs. Why should universities, which are all publically-owned, be advertising to try and take students off each other? I mean, it’s one thing to compete on quality but this kind of vacuous ‘marketing’ nonsense just shows we’re losing our universities. How confusing – so they can…

Split Sky!?!

It’s been missed in the fuss over the budget, but TVNZ have asked the goverment to split their compeditor, Sky TV, in half. In a submission to be made public today, TVNZ calls for strict regulations to limit Sky’s growing dominance over free-to-air broadcasters, with sports fans now paying more than $14 a week to…

Is Solid Energy at it again?

Solid Energy is again taking steps to influtrate the “protest” groups that are trying to disrupt their legal business. I/S over at No Right Turn believes that this contravenes their requirement of “social responsibility“. Hm, so tax cuts that might help people are seen as a threat to goverment revenue. But a threat to government…