Monica

• Attempt to make online reservation. After completing all fields, get told that online reservation is not possible and I need to call. Every. Single. Time.
  
• Call, wait on hold for too long, and eventually make reservation with brusque or disinterested agent.
  
• Usually but not always, cab shows up. If it's going to be a no-show, you won't know until it's too late.
  
• Get bombarded by video ads in the cab until I figure out how to make it stop, which is hard because the LCD touch-screen is at a bad angle so I can't see the buttons well.
  
• Pay using that same bad touch-screen. I seem to be incapable of seeing the UI for specifying a tip amount without opening the car door and half-lying on the seat. Buttons for 20% and 25% are easy to access, presumably by design.
  

The first-tier customer-support rep who took my call collected very basic information about my complaint and told me that a representative would call. Instead I received a letter a couple weeks later, in mid-August, saying they had investigated my claim but, since Air Canada had transported me, albeit badly, there was nothing they could do. I called the person who signed the letter, and our conversation went roughly like this (I'm summarizing slightly):

Me: This is not how your representative said this would go. I'm very disappointed that my case was closed without even talking with me. By the way, I'm a customer of 19 years who's only once before ever asked you for anything.

Her: They did transport you. If you hadn't used the rest of the ticket we could have helped you. You have to take it up with them.

Me: When the problem arose I was stranded in another city. Three times. They had me over a barrel, don't you think? Also, they sold me a ticket that could not possibly work; isn't that at the least misfeasance if not fraud?

Her: I can talk to their bank (instead of the merchant) and try to work something out. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't -- it's basically a professional courtesy. What do you think is fair compensation? A full refund probably isn't going to happen.

Me: They did transport me, as you said, but they messed up my vacation and cost me extra money besides. I think a refund of half the ticket price is fair.

Her: I'll see what I can do. It may take a month.

Today I received a letter saying they have credited me for half the ticket price. The letter says "this is an attempt" and that if the merchant disputes it they will have to charge me again. So now we wait. Let's hope that this bank-to-bank negotiation is usually settled at that level without further interference.

Thank you for your reply. Unfortunately, I'm an infrequent traveler; I've only flown three times in the last decade and would not be able to use a discount in the next year. (Even if I could, I'm sure you can understand my reluctance to book my next trip with your airline.) A discount on future travel also doesn't help me with expenses incurred now. Is there anything better you can do to remedy this terrible episode?

The last time I did this (a couple years ago, I think), I went to the USPS web site, chose my stamps, and supplied a credit card and shipping address. It took about three minutes.

Last night I went through the following process:

1. I dug through product pages; the generic "forever" stamps that almost everybody wants are no longer the first thing you see.

2. I also wanted some pretty stamps for some invitations, so I browsed those. Clicking on the link for a specific product to get a closer look and then going back to the previous page reset the page values I had set (specifically: show all, instead of in batches of twelve). So after the first time I launched new tabs to view products.

3. Some of these invitations are going to Canada so I had to look up the postage rate. This involved approximately the following, all in form-like interfaces: choose type of package, choose shape of envelope (kind of a stumper; is my card a "letter" or a "square envelope"? no sizes were given), choose weight, and finally get a price. I'd been hoping for a simple rate table or at least for the most-common question ("how much to send a letter?") to be answered up front.

4. Now that I had everything in my shopping cart I thought I was within a minute or so of being done. That "crash-tinkle" sound you heard was my hopes being shattered. My options at this point were to log in or create an account.

5. I tried the username and password that I would have used had I created an account last time and got told "no such user". (Bruce Schneier is cringing, I'm sure, but at least they saved me the trouble of trying different passwords.) There is still no option to just pay already. Ok, I'll create an account. (By the way, Firefox offered to remember that password I typed. This will be relevant later.)

6. The password-entry form includes an assessment of the strength of my password. Nice. It thus came as a total surprise to me that my strong password was also not a valid password. They said special characters were fine, but I guess they didn't mean all of them. I simplified to a less-strong password.

7. The personal-information page requires a phone number. I typed it with hyphens and it accepted that. It thus came as a surprise to me when, on a later page, I couldn't put spaces in my credit-card number. In neither case was there any direction about formatting.

8. I had failed to notice that giving my credit card a "nickname" (what? I'm only giving you one!) was a required step. Clearing all form fields and telling me to try again was unnecessarily rude.

9. I finally had an account and now had to log in. I wondered whether my shopping cart would still be intact after all this, but it was. Yay. 20+ minutes after I'd started, I was finally able to submit my order.

10. After signing out, I decided to sign back in and let Firefox remember some data this time, since I'd had to violate my password patterns and might not remember. The login dialogue wasn't the form that I'd previously encountered but, rather, some pop-up (Flash?) thing that was very sensitive (had to try a few times to get it). Firefox couldn't detect this as a login dialogue. So I guess when I come back in a couple years I'll be finding out what the "forgot password" link does. This won't be helped by the fact that I had to provide answers to security questions including the word "favorite". Pfft.

I liked it better when the minimalist approach worked. Yeah, sure, now they'll remember my address and credit-card number, but it takes me 30 seconds to type those and anyway the credit-card info will probably be stale by the next time I need stamps. I'd have to make an awful lot of transactions before last night's time sink would pay for itself.

Followup June 15: This is how they shipped my stamps to me. Those pieces of cardboard are pretty thick. I think they could have done better.

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"We have the capacity to send every customer an ad booklet, specifically designed for them, that says, 'Here's everything you bought last week and a coupon for it,' " one Target executive told me. "We do that for grocery products all the time." But for pregnant women, Target's goal was selling them baby items they didn't even know they needed yet.

"With the pregnancy products, though, we learned that some women react badly," the executive said. "Then we started mixing in all these ads for things we knew pregnant women would never buy, so the baby ads looked random. We'd put an ad for a lawn mower next to diapers. We'd put a coupon for wineglasses next to infant clothes. That way, it looked like all the products were chosen by chance.

"And we found out that as long as a pregnant woman thinks she hasn't been spied on, she'll use the coupons. She just assumes that everyone else on her block got the same mailer for diapers and cribs. As long as we don't spook her, it works."

I know someone who used to get together with friends every now and then to randomly redistribute store affinity cards to mess up the data mining. I don't know how long hat will keep working (if indeed it still does) -- unless you also pay with cash. Personally, I just assume that any transaction I make that involves a credit card, affinity card, or disclosure of an address or phone number is not really private.