I couldn't let you all down again, so here's my prediction for the electoral college outcome. I really wanted to color AZ blue just to wind up the McCainiacs out there, but my friends, now is not the time for petty attacks.

As it happened, the people I asked either weren't aware of her or already had standing plans (unless they were just letting me down gently). For lack of a companion, I ended up not going.

When I read her obituary about a 18 months later, regret coursed through me like an electric current. I can even recall a bitter, metallic taste.

I've come to understand myself a little better since then, which is why I purchased tickets to see Herb Alpert and Lani Hall in concert immediately after reading this review of their performance at Joe's Pub in New York.

Herb Alpert singularly informed popular music as a performer and producer. He shaped my tastes -- the transistor radio I possessed in the early 70s received only AM stations. Alpert is 73 years old, but it wasn't his age that compelled me to buy two tickets on the center aisle. It was the thought, "How many chances will you get to see Herb Alpert live in concert?"

Since the only logical answer was "I don't know," a decision was easily made.

Liz and I had a fine time at Yoshi's, our first trip to the new SF venue. The show was truly memorable -- a blend of traditional and Brazilian jazz, occasionally salted with a few bars from Greatest Hits material like "The Mexican Shuffle." Rather un-self-consciously, he seamlessly appended the beginning of "This Guy's In Love With You" to the end of "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face." His three-piece backing band was aces, though the pianist seemed a bit workmanlike to me.

Lani Hall's voice is in great shape. She fronted Sergio Mendes and Brasil '66 and sounds just as smooth today as when she recorded "Mas Que Nada."

I wanted to hear some of the old stuff, but he didn't delve deeply into the back catalog, nor did he need to. He gave us just enough to satisfy the craving, but no more. C'mon -- he's Herb freaking Alpert! Everyone in that room could have hummed "Spanish Flea" in unison, it's so deep in our cultural DNA. Instead of exhuming his oldies, he spoke enthusiastically to the audience between songs, taking questions and telling stories.

Another thing that was particularly nice to see: he and Lani Hall really seem to be a lot in love. People on stage are intensely aware of how they present themselves, but there was something unguarded and open about the way they looked at each other that spoke to a deep and abiding connection. At least twice, he referred to her as "my bride" with that sense of awe and disbelief that nerdy guys sometimes display when they speak of the woman who said "yes."

Or so I hear, anyway.

Last week, I received a personal response from Kayak CTO Paul English after I blogged about a nasty post on their corporate blog that was published in response to a customer inquiry.

When I contacted him, I indicated that I'd share his response here. I've redacted his personal contact info, but here's his message:

Hi Walter,

As I already said -- we screwed up. I pulled the dumb blog entry quickly for obvious reasons. This is common business practice.

Let me tell you a little bit about customer support at Kayak...

We have 50 employees, and last month we processed over 34 million consumer queries for travel. Any time any consumer has a question and contacts us - by phone or by instant message or by email - they get a personal response from me, or from my cofounder, or from one of our engineers or other team members.

Do you know any other major brand Internet companies who require that their company provide personal responses to every customer inquiry?

(FYI, I have a large screen monitor hung outside my office which charts our feedback response volume and response time per employee. And FYI, I'm usually in the top three of responders, even though I travel extensively.)

I am obsessed with customer service. Which is why I make our "overpaid" :) engineers do customer service. So we can connect with customers every day, having every Kayak employee learning from customers every single day.

Do you know other major brand Internet companies where every engineer (not just some customer service department) communicates with customers every day?

Walter, I do take this stuff seriously.

I'm sorry we screwed up. But I'm glad you called us on it.

Let me know if you have any questions. I'm happy to speak about this stuff at any time.

I'm glad to know that Kayak takes customer service so seriously, but I think a point I made earlier still stands -- they didn't see their blog as part of an integrated community/customer service strategy.

Perhaps this was a teaching moment -- a commenter here directed my attention to a helpful, recent post over at Kayak that offers real value and directly addresses customers'needs..

She contacted Kayak to point out a technical solution to the customer's question, but because her comment on their blog was subject to moderation before publication, she posted a comment on her own blog as well.

I pasted the full text of the insulting Kayak post here with a link back to the original page; click here to read it. Sorry, no screenshot. This afternoon, Liz noticed that the snarky post had been edited. We were in the car on the way to Caltrain, so I didn't have a chance to read the revised version on her iPhone.

She said it omitted this part --

Did your teachers always tell you there’s no such thing as a dumb question? Yeah, us too…but sometimes you have to wonder what people are thinking when they leave feedback on a site.

-- and said the revised article was presented as just a fun new Friday feature designed to initiate a conversation with customers.

By the time I got home, the edited version of the post was deleted entirely, leaving only a 404 Not Found.

Because I wasn't sure whether my feedback would ever clear the Kayak blog moderator, I'd posted it to my blog so there'd be a record of their original post and my response. Glad I did.

I also sent a note via the corporate contact form on Kayak's site. I'm glad about that, too, since it gave someone a chance to respond. I was hoping that because it's a startup, there'd be a number of execs on the email alias that accepts customer feedback.

Even though it was Friday evening east coast time, someone who identified himself as Kayak.com co-founder and CTO Paul English posted a reply at Cracking Foxy:

We screwed this one up big time. You won't ever see anyone from Kayak ever making fun of one of our customers again. This is very anti-Kayak.

My apologies.

--Paul
Paul English | 03.21.08 - 7:47 pm

If there was an attempt to clean up the offending post and hope that all the snark had been sucked into the memory hole, I think that compounded the initial mistake. I know deleting the post was the best choice from their perspective, but it took away an opportunity to engage customers. I would have openly and immediately apologized for the faux pas before judo-flipping my mea culpa into a larger discussion of how valued customer feedback is to our organization.

And then, I would blog about customer feedback every damn Friday until air travel is supplanted by teleportation.

From a marketing perspective, leaving that post as it was originally published would be a non-starter. Instinctively, most firms minimize any public instances in which employees make fun of customers.

But, from a community perspective, it's hard to see the benefit of pretending something doesn't happen, especially after someone's called you out on it. If the person who submitted that feedback read it on the corporate blog, I'll bet you one first-class upgrade that they will now go out of their way to tell others not to use Kayak. Those crazy retirees sure do have a lot of time on their hands!

I sent my thumbnail of the situation to Seth Godin, who said he'd look into it. Seth, please link here and here, k thx.

I haven't spoken to anyone at Kayak, but my best guess is that no one is taking their blog or feedback channels seriously when it comes to using their customer base -- a community of interest -- to help propel their products. If the blog was really considered an integral part of how Kayak presents itself to customers (many of whom are real fans like me and Liz), this would never have occurred. Just my opinion.

And Paul -- if that's really you -- you get points for responding over on Cracking Foxy. If you're interested in elaborating on what transpired today, please send a note to info at gaudypatter dot com, and I'll be glad to post it here.

Feedback of the Week (New!)

by Tyler

Did your teachers always tell you there’s no such thing as a dumb question? Yeah, us too…but sometimes you have to wonder what people are thinking when they leave feedback on a site.

Now, every Friday you can check out the “Feedback of the Week” and see what users are saying, thinking, and need help with from Kayak.com…leave a comment and let’s see how YOU would answer!

Here’s the first installment:
“We are RETIRED, Flight dates are NOT important to us ONLY THE PRICE IS!
Please make it possible to search “within a window” say; in the month of April, OR From April 15 to May 15. I believe you do a lot of people a pleasure.
Please reply by E-mail
Thank you”

Now is your chance to show us how we should be answering feedback! Leave a comment below.

Liz has blogged about this over at Cracking Foxy, but here's the comment I left in response to Tyler's post, just in case it doesn't pass Kayak's moderation:

I'm more than a little shocked that you'd insult your customers like this instead of thanking them for their suggestion. I'm a veteran of several startups, and many great ideas sprang from observing how our users interacted with the products we'd offered in ways we hadn't anticipated.

You may not know this, but many retired people live on fixed incomes. Since they're not working, travel price is more important than the travel date. I'm guessing Kayak's API would easily accommodate this feature. One suggestion: have Kayak's product marketing team create a keyword-rich landing page with calls to action for retirees who are seeking a winter getaway or a trip to see grandchildren.

Travel searches that are pegged only to a time window could provide value for many people -- why are you making fun of them?

If you're going to represent Kayak on this corporate blog, please do a little research about community-based marketing and product management. The suggestions and requests you don't anticipate can lead you in positive directions, if you have the ability to listen. This is a valuable teaching moment for you -- I hope you can admit your mistake and learn from it.

Sorry if this comes off as sanctimonious, but I'm really staggered by your tone.

(disclaimer: I share an IP address with someone else who's left a comment.)

I'm not linking to their second effort. My parents and in-laws read this blog occasionally, so find it on your own.

I'm not wealthy, so I choose to believe that I can appreciate nice things without being too materialistic. Probably a conceit, but to be fair, I can't really test that theory until I'm rich. In any event, Kohler's very funny commercial for a spiffy infinity tub caught my eye tonight.

I clicked into Kohler's YouTube channel to see what else their ad agency came up with and was particularly amused by this spot, "Existential Dilemma:"

Watch the "Last Words" commercial for the very alluring Sok infinity tub.

I was heartened this afternoon to come across a concert video of a reconstituted Journey with their latest lead singer, Arnel Pineda.

Pineda had a strong career in his native Philippines, but YouTube helped him reach worldwide audiences. Videos of his band "performing cover songs by Journey, Survivor, Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin, Air Supply, The Eagles, Kenny Loggins and other popular acts from the 70s, 80s and 90s" caught the attention of Journey's Neal Schon, who brought Pineda to Marin County for a 2-day audition last summer.

They're now on tour and are playing tomorrow night in Santiago, Chile with Peter Frampton and Earth, Wind & Fire. Should be an entertaining program.

* apologies for my poor Tagalog skills.

Seriously, they should have done some co-marketing with Dramamine -- a free dose with every ticket purchased. I'm sure it would have netted even more buzz, and it could have been a great product placement.

If there's an intergalactic version of YouTube gathering stray signals from the ether, somewhere there's a silicon-based lifeform who's laughing hard enough for ammonia to stream from its nose.

For those of you who don't know Mamet, he's a dramatist famous for his visceral, profane and subtle use of language. If you've haven't seen one of his plays (Speed the Plow, Glengarry GlenRoss), you've almost certainly seen a movie he script doctored (THE UNTOUCHABLES, RONIN).

An extremely talented friend turned me onto the ACT contest. For our entries, we each rewrote a classic film scene in Mamet's style. Hers was laugh-out-loud funny: the open-the-pod-bay-doors scene from 2001, only with HAL 9000 played by Ricky Roma (Al Pacino in GGGR).

My entry: George Bailey gets to know Clarence, his guardian angel, in the slightly retooled Frank Capra classic, "It's a Wonderful Fucking Life."

After the jump.

Introduction:

Christmas Eve, Bedford Falls, 1946.

George Bailey, and his guardian angel, Clarence, have just been ejected from Nick's Place -- a tavern that George knows as "Martini's." George is in a confused state: "Martini's" is a friendly bar managed by an old friend, but tonight, "Nick's Place" is "now more of a hard-drinking joint, a honky-tonk" run by a surly, sour man.

Before they were bounced from the bar, George ran into Mr. Gower, the druggist who once employed him as a soda jerk. In this universe, Gower is a disgraced panhandler who served twenty years for poisoning a child with a tainted prescription -- an accident we watched George avert in an earlier scene.

EXT. NICK'S BAR – NIGHT

GEORGE and CLARENCE lying in the snow. George has a strange, puzzled look on his face. They remain for a moment as they landed, looking at each other.

You stupid fuck! How am I gonna show my face in -- they know me here, you goddamn feeb! This is my place!

You are not known, George. The Blaine boy died. Gower made his mistake, you didn’t stay his hand. The great chain, George. The great chain. You were not there. You are not known.

The hell you say! I remember distinctly...I stopped Gower, I told him. Never seen a man cry before. Terrifying.

Clarence gets to his feet, leaving George sitting in the snow. He points to the neon sign over the door that reads "NICK'S PLACE" instead of "MARTINI'S."

Riddle me this, bright boy.

What the... Martini’s. C’mon, this is Martini’s place! Goddamn it, you simple --

He points to the sign and looks at Clarence. Clarence shakes his head and spits. George fixes him with a very interested look.

The fuck? What are you playing at?

I already said. I'm your guardian angel. Don’t make me --

George jumps up and seizes Clarence by the balls. Clarence winces but doesn’t fight back.

So, angels got eggs, huh? Shall we make an omelet?

Clarence looks heavenward for a moment before bringing his knee sharply to George’s jaw. George falls back into the snow.

Any number of explanations. Seed was spilled, maybe. Maybe Mrs. Bailey visited Mrs. Fanelli’s beauty salon. In the back room, I hear she’ll excise warts, other irritating growths.

Then if I wasn't born, who am I?

Nobody. Less than.

George rapidly searches his pockets for identification, but without success.

Me llamo George Bailey, motherfucker.

Ich bin... Je m’appelle...phom chêu...George Bailey.

Not even the wet spot on the mattress. There is no George Bailey. No papers, no cards, no driver's license, no 4-F card, no insurance policy...

(He says these things as George searches for them)

George stands up, looks in his watch pocket.

They're not there, either.

What?

Zuzu's petals. Some kind of name. Probably would have grown up to be a fan dancer.

Clarence mimes a burlesque while George feverishly continues to turn his pockets inside out.

Somebody upstairs likes you, George. You wanted to climb down off the cross? Fine. We pulled out the nails.

Clarence stops twirling and bows. George is completely befuddled.

Now wait a minute, here. Wait a minute here. As, this is some sort of a funny dream I'm having here. So long, you smug bastard, I'm going home.

He starts off.

Home? What home?

George stops walking and wheels on Clarence, fists clenched.

You son of a whore! Will you, will you shut up! Trying to fuck me up and make me -- what is this, Potter? Did Potter send you? Aw, to hell with -- I’m going home to ball the bee-yootiful Mrs. Bailey. Fuck off back to Cloud Nine.

George strides off hurriedly. Clarence slowly follows him, glancing up toward Heaven as he goes.

How'm I doing, Joseph? Yeah?

Well, I’ll have a drink if I want one. My balls hurt.

A group of more than 200 gathered on the Concourse at Grand Central Terminal; at the appointed moment, they all froze in place. Imagine yourself in the middle of this tableau:

As Johnny Carson used to say, that is "some weird, wild stuff."

Last summer, they increased my credit limit. I didn't ask them to do so, but I appreciated it and continued to use my card. After Christmas, I paid down my remaining balance to zero.

This afternoon, I received a paper statement indicating I owed a few dollars in finance charges. I paid these last week, so I logged into capitalone.com to make sure it was received.

My online account info indicated that my available credit had been reduced -- my paper statement reflected no such change. I called the customer service line. A customer service rep told me that my credit balance had been increased "as a result of a clerical error."

I asked for a supervisor, and after 12 minutes on hold, I was transferred. I explained the situation to her and she repeated that they'd never really intended for me to have that extra credit. I asked her to cancel my card, effective immediately.

I'm not currently carrying a balance on any of my cards, and I've been making prompt payments for more than a year. I have to wonder if there are other CapitalOne cardholders in the same boat this month.

Sure, this could be a clerical error. Or, it could be the sketchy lenders at CapOne doing a retroactive spin job to minimize liability during a credit crunch.

Eff CapitalOne. I'll continue to use my other cards judiciously, and my next credit instrument will be tied to a rewards program for miles, groceries or hotel points.