Cut the Crap!

Check this business out:

I just went by the Quiznos (Not the good one, that's closed. The one that seems to survive only by under-staffing with employees that work exclusively in the human equivalent of 7 inch vinyl played at 33 RPM.) to use my two for one coupon when this nifty little bag caught my eye at the register. Its a smaller sized tote bag that nicely fits two subs without exce

ssive wiggle room. Now, I'm not normally one for impulse purchases, but I've thought on numerous occasions that the plastic bag they give me for a sandwich is fleetingly useful at best. Though I hesitate to eschew a bag altogether because, frankly, their subs are known to leak; especially since they've taken to not wrapping them but sliding a small paper bag over the length. So BAM! for 99 cents I've got myself a reusable sammich bag, I won't feel bad about throwing out plastic containers 10 minutes old, and my normal totes won't get all juiced up inside. Win-freaking-win.

Oh, also I get a free soda every time I bring it back to Quiznos. So there's that for you cynics with your cynicism and your loathing. How do you live with yourselves?

Update: I'm not trying to say that Quizno's is the best company in the world or anything, but at least they made an effort. That said, I think I may need to smack someone with a pickled herring. In the course of trying to find official publication of the reusable sack program I found this nugget on the "Be Green" Quizno's site:

If you can't read the tiny asterisk footnote on "biodegradable" and "compostable" let me reprint it so the hilarity isn't lost.

"Not biodegradable in a landfill. Not compostable in a home compost pile or device. Requires special facilities which may not exist in your area."

What. The. Hell. How did you geniuses come up with a paper material that will not break down in the two most likely places it'll wind up? Its paper for god's sake!

Making the Most Out of a Bad Situation.

I got an update from GoDaddy in the emails today. Apparently it isn't all champaign and booby commercials over there.

Dear [HAPLESS CUSTOMER],

On July 1, 2010, VeriSign®, the registry for .COM and .NET, will increase prices – .COM will go up 7%, and .NET by 10%.

The increase will be passed to registrars like Go Daddy and then, unfortunately, to consumers like you.

As of July 1, we will be forced to raise registration and renewal* prices for these two popular top-level domains.

If you wish to avoid this price increase, you can renew your domain names by June 30 and add another year to your current expiration dates. You have the option to register or renew for multiple years and lock in long-term savings. Of course, should you have any questions, please give us a call at 1-480-505-8821.

Thanks as always for being a Go Daddy customer.

Sincerely,

Bob Parsons

CEO and Founder

GoDaddy.com

Oh no, Bob! I can't believe that they're doing this to you! Of course I agree that you should also raise your prices to make up for an arbitrary supplier cash demand. Its almost extortion! Shameful! I mean, I bet your profit margins are razor thin as it is; I've been seeing less and less of your ridiculous, condescending and mildly offensive advertisements on the telio-vision. Hmmm... let me see if I can find some contact information for Verisign and ream them out good for what they're doing to you.

• https://investor.verisign.com/releasedetail.cfm?releaseid=431292

Oh. I see. They're raising prices to fortify, scale and secure a global infrastructure that's been 100% operational for the last 11 years. That's kinda impressive actually. What do you do again? Oh, yeah you're a middle man, taking a cut off the top for something that I could do myself fairly easily if not for the system you've positioned yourself to exploit. They also list the price increases they'll be instituting. .COM domains will rise from $6.86 to $7.34. A difference of 48 cents, or 6.99%. And .NET domains will go from $4.23 to $4.65; or 42 cents and 9.92%. Looks like your story adds up just fine.

Hang on a second... What increases will be "unfortunately" passed to consumers like me? (Consumers like me? I'm a consumer like me!) You didn't mention the changes in your rates specifically, so should I assume you'll just bump the renewal by 48 and 42 cents appropriately, like any trustworthy intermediary would? (your prices already seem fairly arbitrary; it'd be nice to see a break-down of the various fees, taxes, charges and over-charges like the phone companies are nice enough to mail me) Or maybe you mean that we'll see 7 and 10 percent changes in the prices we already pay. Lets see, before the 12 cent ICANN fee you'll renew my .COM domain for one year at 9.82, and you'll give me my .NET domain for 9.69 a year.

I really appreciate the special pricing by the way, I must be one of your best bros for you to lower them from the 10.69 and 12.99 normal rates for no apparent reason at all. Lets not even mention the prospect of you raising these normal rates by 7 and 10%. (Also, 13 dollars? You're charging 13 dollars for something that costs you $4.30? No wonder you can pay a million dollars to show people chimps jumping on trashcans.)

Okay, so if you raised your prices (and your markup) by the percents you mentioned (which I'm sure you wouldn't) .COM's would go up to 10.80, or 98 cents more and .NET would hit 10.65, 96 cents more expensive per year. Why in the world would you want to use someone else's price change to justify tagging your customers for an extra 50 cents per domain per year when you are making absolutely no changes to service and it costs you literally nothing?

• GoDaddy Regisrar Info

Oh, you passed 36 million registered domains this year and it looks like over 3/4 of them are .COM and .NET variety. So +3/4 * 36,100,000 is around 28,000,000 times 50 cents is FOURTEEN MILLION DOLLARS you could collect from your loyal customers every year while blaming the actual service provider and not contributing anything else yourself.

You've got to hand it to them, those weasels certainly are making the most out of an unfortunate rate hike. At best they're using the upcoming increase to drive long-term sales now, before the crushing hike. I really wish I could rent out Jon Stuart's "GO FUCK YOURSELVES" dancers, but taking my business elsewhere might have to make due in this case. I've had this article bookmarked since February maybe now I'll actually sit down and do it.

• http://smarterware.org/5117/how-to-ditch-godaddy-redux