"Animal House" (John Belushi Movie) - Companies that Are Run by Moron CEOs

We couldn't agree any less with Wall Street mega-billionaire Carl Icahn. During the TV interview on CBS 60 Minutes Icahn mentioned that corporate CEOs are morons and that the way they make it to the top of the ladder is by being liked for having a college fraternity mentality. You can click here to get the story for yourself. http://60minutes.yahoo.com/segment/147/carl_icahn

As a research project, we're putting on our togas and getting some beer balls to figure out how these companies that we have dealt with personally manage to stay in business. Maybe someone needs to put these CEOs on top-secret double probation.

Best Buy - the WORST Buy
Consumer confidence is down and after spending a few hours here shopping for a plasma screen, we can see why. It wasn't that the service was lousy, the young man was helpful, but upon reaching the cash register, we were yelled at with such venom and hatred to "wait behind the yellow line." When we asked why, we were given some spiel about how it will confuse customers if we aren't waiting in line standing behind the yellow line. Obviously, the yellow line is more important than their bottom line. We left the giant TV screen there and certainly won't be back to pick it up.

Phone Company
These computers can't get the billing done right at all. There are new charges every month for services that don't appear on the contract. For once, it would be nice to open the bill and not have to spend so much time dealing with their automated voice prompts. We would love to write about how the phone company lost us thousands of dollars by a mistake they made - and admitted to - but unfortunately, these people can send our wiretaps and emails to places we don't even want to know exist.

Grocery Stores That Charge a Quarter to Use The Shopping Cart
There has been a coast-to-coast trend that is ridiculous from the vantage point of making a profit. Never mind that grocery stores have done away with bagging and the customers are forced to bag their own groceries. It is absolutely mind boggling to walk into a grocery store and realize that it will cost a quarter to borrow the shopping cart. What is even more ironic is that when the shopping cart is put back, the quarter is returned. The value of a quarter came and went with George Washington and is not something that is conveniently stored in my pocket at all times. By not having a quarter, I can't have a shopping cart to fill up with groceries. And by not having a shopping cart to spend hundreds of dollars on organic groceries, I buy just the few items that my hands can carry to the cash register. For the sake of a quarter to prevent shopping cart theft by some imagined homeless bum, profit is lost. Would it not make more sense to offer free shopping carts so that customers can buy enough groceries - if not for the profit potential at least so that the store can afford to hire baggers?

Guitar Center - the Kmart of Music Stores
Going in to the store is almost an insult to our musicianship. There are signs hanging from the ceiling by industrial chains highlighting the price of the instruments that are for sale in that section. Emulating the Wal-Mart strategy, the signs are neon bright with $99 and below, $199 and below, $399 and below, $599 and below, $799 and below. There are only about 2 guitars priced in the professional instrument range, one of them being Joe Satriani's signature axe and the other one that we have been told, "we can't sell you that, it's not for sale."

On every visit to the store, there is some pimple-faced kid playing Eric Clapton's Layla (off-key) and another teenager jumping with glee around his friends because he just got credit to buy a new guitar. I wonder if he knows it's really his parents and the rest of society who will end up footing the bill. We have experienced this live on many occasions because we have stood in line for hours on end just to pay for our merchandise. Before walking out of the store we felt as if we were given a full body cavity search to make sure we didn't stick Eddie Van Halen's signature axe up our butt.

eBay
We loved doing auctions and it showed in our 100% positive feedback for years. Our customers wrote us fan mail from all over the world about how happy they are with the guitars and music equipment they bought from us. One customer even wanted to have our baby (thanks for the vote in confidence). So what happened after all the effort we put in to providing goods that were high in quality and service that was nothing but satisfaction?

One lucky high bid winner left us a negative feedback for a lousy twenty-dollar item that we auctioned during our spring-cleaning sale. We never got the full story on what happened but we gave this person a full refund with no questions asked. We spent hours trying to appeal that negative feedback with eBay, waiting out the 90-days process by putting our supply of $100,000 guitars on hold until things were cleared up. eBay came back to us saying that they could not remove that negative feedback because the company operates on the feedbacks that are left by its customers.

Who is the customer now? Obviously not those Power Sellers that are providing merchandise, dealing with the pack and ship, irate buyers and kicking butt to make the sales happen. For a lousy twenty-dollar auction gone awry, these morons lost our business for life.