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At this absurdly early hour, it’s time for yet another baseball season. With last weeks’ minor bump in the road averted, the Red Sox and the A’s are kicking off the the season with a two game set at the Tokyo Dome in Japan.

Frankly, the coffee hasn’t kicked in yet and the brain isn’t functioning, so I’ll let the starting lineup for the 2008 Boston Red Sox do most of the talking.

Dustin Pedroia 2B
Kevin Youkilis 1B
David Ortiz DH
Manny Ramirez LF
Mike Lowell 3B
Brandon Moss RF
Jason Varitek C
Jacoby Ellsbury CF
Julio Lugo SS

Daisuke Matsuzaka P

After last fall’s heroics, it might seem odd to see Ellsbury at the bottom of the lineup. It sounds like Terry Francona is going to give Ellsbury the opportunity to earn his way to the top of the lineup, just as he did last year with Pedroia. Until that happens, I have to say I like the idea of the two speedsters (Ellsbury and Lugo) running in front of two big OBP guys. This could give the Sox a little more freedom to run without worrying about opening a base for teams can pitch around Ortiz and Ramirez.

The A’s lineup has also been posted.

Update: …and J.D. Drew’s back acts up in the pre-game, so he’s replaced by Moss. Not the most auspicious of beginnings.

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After commenting on Jeff Carlson’s quality customer support experience with Apple, I had my own comment-worthy experience today, this time with Douwe Egberts / Sara Lee.

As a slightly early birthday present, my folks got me the Senseo Gift Pack. I like drinking coffee in the morning, but hate the process of making coffee. Let’s be honest, I am not a morning person… particularly before I’ve had my caffeine hit (so you can see why making coffee is somewhat of a chicken-and-egg issue).

The gift pack is supposed to include 2 packages of coffee pods. However, one of the packages was missing from my kit. When I called customer support, I had the choice between talking to somebody about Senseo issues or about coffee pod issues. I chose Senseo issues, since I was calling about a kit. It took maybe 30 seconds to explain my issue, where I was told I actually wanted to speak to the Douwe Egberts / Sara Lee folks, as they were responsible for that portion of the package. The CS rep transferred me over, where I explained my issue once more. The Sara Lee rep immediately apologized and offered my a coupon for a free package of pods, no questions asked.

The total experience took less than 5 minutes, maybe a minute of which involved hold time. Whereas some companies would make me jump through hoops to ascertain whether or not I was truthful, Sara Lee gave their representative the ability to set things right in short order. Giving me a coupon for the free pods has minimal cost to them and is an easy way to build goodwill among customers (ie, things like this posting). Plus, with the coupon, I have the freedom to choose the type of coffee I want instead of taking whatever type they threw into the box.

Again, in a perfect world, quality customer service experiences would be the norm. As the real world seems to have beaten down my expectations, though, I am often pleasantly surprised when things turn out this quick and painless.

Update: …and but a day later, Tom provides something of a counter-example.

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Jonathon Ramsey:

The Euro-spec Toyota Yaris is a well-equipped little car. But things like the nine airbags, chrome exhaust finisher, and remote central double locking are merely gravy for the real show on this new SR model: a fully-integrated portable TomTom navigation system that doubles as a touchscreen interface for the car stereo.

Neat idea. I’ve been torn between whether I prefer an integrated GPS system or a more portable option. The integrated options tend to be better… um… integrated (duh!) with the operations of the car, primarily in the form of offering a single decent-sized screen for things like maps, audio system interface, and video playback.

On the flip side, the portable, after-market systems offer… um… portability (again, duh!). Like Ramsey, I don’t know if there’s much demand for taking your GPS with you to have walking-around directions, though I will cop to having checked Google Maps from street corners. The portable units really shine if you travel. Renting a GPS unit seems to run about $10/day. If you buy a portable system and then take 2-3 trip week-long trips, you’ve recouped the cost of the GPS by not renting a system from Avis or Hertz.

Depending on the level of integration between the Toyota and TomTom, the Yaris SR could well be the best of both worlds — a GPS system that augments the other systems in the car but which can also be tossed in a bag and help you find your way around unfamiliar locals when traveling for business or pleasure. If this partnership proves successful, I hope that other manufacturers will follow suit.

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Jeff Carlson:

I could have simply sacrificed the $4 rental fee and chalked it up as the cost of research, but $4 is also the cost of a pair of double-espressos and is therefore real money. So I did what I imagine few people do: I wrote to Apple. It took a bit of navigating, but ultimately I ended up at a form where I could contact iTunes Store support. I explained my predicament and sent the message into what I expected would be yet another corporate email black hole.

If you read on in Jeff’s post, you’ll see that his message did not go to an “email black hole” and instead resulted in a refund for the rental price and the sales tax.

In the past, I’ve written about both of my iTunes customer service experiences. In both cases, I thought “pff, contact form — I’m never going to hear back about this.” In both cases, I did hear back and, in both cases, Apple resolved the issue to my satisfaction.

In a perfect world, we wouldn’t feel compelled to laud Apple for resolving their customer issues in a timely manner — the way Apple approaches customer service is the way all companies should approach customer service. Of course, we don’t live in a perfect world. There have been plenty of stories about companies screwing customers over with DRM issues and I’m sure most of us have had support emails go unanswered (I’m looking at you, Orangeware).

When Apple first introduced FairPlay, there seemed to be a feeling that Apple’s DRM implementation was an attempt to make the best of sub-optimal situation. It appears that Apple has extended that strategy from the technical arena to the customer support arena.

Buzz Andersen:

One thing I’ve been meaning to do for a very long time is talk a little bit about the state of my other popular Mac app, Cocoalicious.

I’m glad to see Buzz getting Cocoalicious up and running once more, and I’m not just saying that because I contributed to the next release.

Glenn Fleishman

Starbucks is shredding its deal in place since 2001, originally with MobileStar then T-Mobile, to switch to AT&T as their Wi-Fi provider. That moves 7,000 locations from T-Mobile’s ledgers of nearly 9,000 to AT&T’s.

…and because it’s a write-up by Glenn Fleishman, he touches on the potential implications for Apple, given that the hardware maker (iPhone), retail location (Starbucks), and service provider (AT&T) now all have active business relationships.

I was just in a relatively deserted Starbucks (gotta love the side street shop as compared to the busy intersection shop) a little over an hour ago and I was thinking that it wouldn’t have a bad bad place to setup my laptop and do some work, provided I was able to get online without paying $10/day. Given this turn of events, I wouldn’t be surprised to an AT&T Wi-Fi account option added to the iPhone voice and data plans in the near future — if people are going to use their iPhones over Wi-Fi connections, AT&T may as well try to profit off the practice. This also opens the door for AT&T to market towards iPod Touch users, as well.

Update: Somehow, I missed the following in Glenn’s article:

AT&T says in their press release that all Starbucks Card holders, which is simply their value-storing swipe card system, will get two hours of free Wi-Fi a day.

Very cool. And I’m not just saying that because I won a Starbucks Card in building’s holiday raffle last December. During my MBA program, we examined Starbucks for several different classes. During the last, Strategic Brand Management, some of us had a chance to meet Gerardo Lopez, a Senior Vice President at Starbucks and a GW alum. One of the issues that came up was how do you make the Starbucks Card more attractive; why should people give Starbucks their money up front instead of charging purchases to a credit card and leaving their money in the bank for an extra few weeks. To us, the obvious recommendation was to offer free coffee credits for putting money on the card, say like $1 credit for every $10 of credit purchased. We were told this suggestion was a non-starter because Howard Schultz (and, thus, Starbucks) has a no-discount policy.

Thus chastened, we tossed around a few other ideas, but most seemed like they might be too disruptive to store operations, particularly in larger stores.¹ As far as I remember, none of us mentioned a Wi-Fi promo, but it’s really cool to something evolve in area my classmates and I identified as an issue.

1. Though one of the ideas was to store a preferred drink on your card and simply scan the card into a portable card reader like the credit card readers used in Apple Stores. We thought that might be a bit ambitious, but it could end up looking rather short-sighted if anything ever comes of Apple’s wireless ordering system.↩