As 2023 wraps up, it seems like it might be a fitting time to look at some of the vendors and services that have changed their service in the past year or so and, correspondingly have lost me as a customer. I'm sure that I'm not alone.
HBO / HBO Max / Max — After something like about 10 years of subscribing to the streaming version of HBO, this year's Max updates finally crossed the threshold into sucking so badly that I cancelled my subscription. The original HBO app had it's issues, but it had some of the best movie and TV series content. When you tried to "View All" on the movie list, it would load about a 30 titles, then hang for a minute or more while it loaded the next 30. Sometimes you couldn't get through the entire list without the app hanging. Still, you could count on most of the top box office hits to become available on the service at one time or another. HBO Max was an optimistic improvement, with seemingly better software and some added content like the Looney Tunes cartoon library. While the HBO Max content typically lacked the gravitas of more classic HBO content, it wasn't the garbage dump that it became when it changed to Max. With Max, they backed up the truck and dumped the worst reality TV garbage onto the platform. Add to that a problem that grew out of the pandemic—an erosion of noteworthy box office content—followed by the writers and actors strikes, and the weeks or months of waiting for meaningful new content seemed endless. When I received the notice that they were going to start charging more for the service, it was the last straw.
Public Storage — After eight years or so and using one Public Storage facility to store stuff like holiday decorations and other things that we don't use regularly and don't really have room for at home, Public Storage increased the rent on the space to about double what it was when I first rented the locker. Add to that a break-in at several lockers a few spaces down, and it became clear that the value of their service was becoming a big question mark. After reviewing several options, we were able to find a larger space for more than half the cost of the rent at the old space. This is what happens when pricing algorithms don't understand loyalty.
On their way to the chopping block
Amazon Prime — Recently, I've seen a number of people complaining about the increasing cost of Amazon's Prime subscription service. As online ordering has grown and the number of competitive options have increased, the perceived value of free two day shipping has dropped, and paying $139 per year seems excessive to some. For me, the critical break came when Amazon sent a notice that they'd be incorporating ads into all of their Prime Video streaming content unless you paid an additional $2.99 per month. Frankly, if Prime Video had been a stand-alone service, I probably would have cancelled it years ago. While some of the Prime Video series have been good, the service has always felt like an incomplete offering. Additionally, I've always hated how they mixed content that you needed to pay for with content that was available for free as a Prime member — sort of an annoying bait-and-switch. That tactic is one reason why I have not purchased or rented any content from them.
It's not the only stupid thing that they do. We used to shop more frequently at Whole Foods. While different Whole Foods markets varied, some of the larger ones in the area (Cupertino, Mountain View) had great meat counters, great cheese counters, and a solid produce section. When Amazon took over, the stores evolved into a sort of shell of it's previous form. The meat counters in the large stores were cut down. Practically speaking, the meat counter at the Cupertino Whole Foods is half the size that it used to be, with the other half used to display packaged meats or cooked food. Similarly, while Whole Foods used to be a destination store for produce, now their choices often seem limited and they frequently run out of stuff. But the worst is their stupid transactional system. First, they added the Amazon Prime credit card and offered a discount to Prime members using the card. Then, they started offering some deeper discount specials to Prime members, but only if you used their Prime phone app and scanned a bar code generated by the app. Why couldn't they simply determine that you were a Prime member by the Prime credit card that you were paying with? Even if you showed the cashier, it didn't matter. Only the tracker app mattered for the discount. I'd like to say that that specifically was the reason why we went from frequently shopping at Whole Foods to seldom shopping there, but it wouldn't be true. The real reason is that they simply quit carrying many of the products that we purchase. Or the products that we purchased there became so bad — we once got a skirt steak from there that was so stringy and tough, it was basically inedible. At this point, we'd be unlikely to buy beef from there, even with some steep Prime day discounts added in.
Nob Hill Grocery Store — We've been shopping at Nob Hill for years, in part due to it's proximity to us. Recently, like Whole Foods and Safeway, they added this extra discount if you link your transaction with a phone app. Unfortunately, our first experience with this resulted in three packs of cheese purchased at 3x this price shown back where the product was, despite having an account that links our transactions to a phone number and an account (and that information provided at the transaction). In short, they followed the recipe to make upset and dissatisfied "loyal" customers.
Really Bad Account-Based Marketing Initiatives — 2023 was the year when some businesses decided that they needed to see aggressive growth or aggressive change, or something. Perhaps one of the funniest stories of the year for me revolved around a change in our Salesforce.com Account Team. Back around the time that Dreamforce was scheduled, I was forwarded an email from a VP at Salesforce. The email, inviting them to engage with the VP at Dreamforce, was addressed to two people from the leadership team, a biz-dev guy, two guys who oversee sales for two different product groups, and a guy who had left the company 10 years prior. Of the people on that list, only one was probably an appropriate audience (not the guy who had left the company). When I reached out to clarify their communication issue, they kept insisting on a "State of our Salesforce" call. When I explained that it wasn't a good time — and wouldn't be for perhaps a couple of months — they continued to suggest the call. Then, a couple of months later when we had an issue and I reached out to our rep, his response was basically, "that's a bummer, can we have that State of our Salesforce call now?"
I could probably go on, but it seems like a good spot to call it a wrap.
