blog.shrub

Hanlon’s razor tells us that we should “never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.”

I’m still unable to figure which is the case with Facebook’s new promo guidelines. Bad linking policies are nothing new — we’ve seen them from Fast Company, NPR, Starbucks and KPMG.

But these stories are old, man — the most recent is from 2004. Surely an Internet-savvy company like Facebook would know better, right?

Wrong.

According to Facebook, it’s okay to say “Check out the Company X Page on Facebook,” but you MAY NOT (capitals theirs) say “Check out the Company X Facebook Page.”

What, pray tell, is the difference? How does the latter “imply partnership, endorsement or sponsorship”?

Sigh.

In English, when reading numbers out loud, one often “chunks” the numbers into smaller groups. For example, when reading the phone number “555-1212,” one would say “five five five, one two one two,” not “five hundred fifty-five, one thousand two hundred and twelve.”

Similarly, one would call Interstate 280 “interstate two eighty,” not “interstate two hundred and eighty.”

Toyota’s Prius GPS does this. It’s an example of good design — speak the language your customers speak.

However, this falls apart when you switch the Prius over to French. Exit 420 becomes exit quatre (4) vingt (20). The problem? In most parts of the French-speaking world, 80 is also pronounced “quatre vingts” (”four twenties”).

In this case, you have to listen to your GPS and read the screen to be sure you take the right exit.

Eyeless Writer called Verizon 56 times to ask two different data pricing questions. 93 percent of reps answered at least one question incorrectly.

If you tell it to, Friendster helpfully reminds you when your friends’ birthdays are coming up. This is handy for calling them, writing them, or leaving them happy birthday comments on their wall Friendster profile.

Look at the email itself:

What’s missing? The birthday itself. Instead of building trust with its members by providing them useful information, Friendster, too is nothing but a click whore.

A while back, Wachovia bought World Savings, a bank I use for CDs. I received a few letters in the mail describing the process and telling me what I had to do.

The first thing I had to do was register for an account with Wachovia’s online banking. I do.

Mistake #1: Only three of my six CDs appear in the account list.

I call Wachovia. They correct the error. Misplacing half my accounts is not a good way to make a first impression.

While I’m on the phone, I verify that I have opted out of all solicitations: phone calls, emails, postal mail and affiliate sharing.

Mistake #2: I had to opt out of solicitations.

Now I’m pretty sure I had already opted out with World Savings. I can’t guarantee this 100%, but I’m careful about these things. First, Wachovia failed to preserve my privacy preference. Second, they enabled junk mail by default. This should be opt-in, not opt-out.

A few days pass. Today, I received not one, but two letters in the mail. Yes, file this one under “I” for irony:

Mistake #3: They send me two letters to tell me they won’t send me any more letters.

Sigh.

I had a bit of an odd experience with PC Financial this year. Frustrated by this, I wrote them to describe my experience.

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This July, I rented a car from Avis in San Diego. It was a pretty poor experience. So, I wrote them a complaint letter.

Besides writing the letter itself, I thought I’d have fun. In the spirit of Yours is a Very Bad Hotel, I proudly present “How NOT to rent a car”:

Here’s the letter itself:
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Attention people of the world. Please learn how to spell résumé. It has two accent aigus — one on each “e.”

The HTML for this is résumé.

If your computer/email program cannot handle accented characters reliably, “resume” is acceptable.

However, “résume” and “resumé” are never correct.

Thank you.

Update: after this posting appeared, Mr. Stewart’s office contacted me. They tell me they have now removed my address from their mailing list.

…but he is a spammer. We keep getting cards in the mail from him, despite repeated requests to be removed from his mailing list.

Sen. Barbara Boxer is having email problems: