Crastinate

I just got a call from Cablevision letting me know that they received my complaint email and are escalating my complaint to the Vice President of Cablevision. I had written yesterday about my disappointment with Cablevision’s recent promotion tactics. It seems that my complaint email (there is no phone number to call) which linked to my blog post complaining about the issue did not go unnoticed.

While I’m not going to let Cablevision off the hook until I see what they end up doing about these situations in the future, I will say that a phone call was appreciated and am hoping that what I was told was not just rhetoric, but actually an honest approach to fixing this type of behavior.

Uncategorized joseph shmulewitz

I got an email from my graduate school alumni group on LinkedIn. The email was as follows:

Hi Ely,

We haven’t met, but I’d like to change that. I honestly believe that I have the opportunity of a lifetime for you or someone you know. The millionaires in our company just keep getting younger…that latest millionaire is just 29 years old.

I believe that Baruch Alumni were groomed to be millionaires and not just six-figure earners. If you also believe that, we should meet for about 20 minutes to see if there’s a mutual interest.

If it’s not for you, no worries. You’d have made a new friend, and maybe you could refer me to someone who may be interested. With that being said, would you be interested in meeting with me?

My first impression was that this was a scam. The company he works for (part-time) is called Primerica and it seems like it’s a life insurance and financial planning company. From what I’ve read, you have to keep on recruiting others to sell insurance and services to make real money. I replied to his email giving the sender my impressions and asking him to not use this group as a place to recruit members for his “initiative”. This was his response:

You have insulted me I do not accept your apology. You do not kick a person down and then try to help them up. That is what you have done with your response to me. You have disrepected my years of sales training, my recognition for sales excellence and the mentors who have spent years mentoring me and countless others.

Did you even read my background? I suggest next time you do your due diligence before you compose an accusatory email such as this. I’m sorry if you were among the unfortunate to be taken advantage of by Amway. That was before my time, and I’ve only heard horror stories about them. Just because my email acted as a negative trigger about your past experiences, did not give you the right to attack me.

Your response only needed to be one question…”What is this about?” I’ve recieved nothing but professional responses to my message except for yours, and your “honesty” was unappreciated here. Your “honesty” will be appreciated by someone else, when you have done your due diligence.

I would never digrace my Alma Mater, or my family with such a stunt. You definitely did not look at my page. At my office I’m known as the “dude of integrity”, you really barked up the wrong tree buddy! Please, do not ever do this to another one of our Baruch Alum. I wouldn’t want anyone else to lose respect for you.

So you tell me. Was I wrong for writing an email with my impressions that his sales pitch sounded like a scam? Is this type of selling ok? I think it’s very pyramid-scheme like and I wish that the people who are on the bottom of this food chain can see what they’re doing. But maybe I’m overreacting. Maybe I should let him continue his “selling” ways. What do you think?

UPDATE: People have asked me to post my reply to this guy that he responded to. Here it is. You can let me know if I was too harsh in my criticism.

**his name**,

I’ll be honest. Your pitch sounds very much like a scam. And if it is, in any shape or form a scam or a pyramid scheme (or a non-pyramid scheme ala Amway), please do not use the Baruch list or name in your correspondence with people. If not, I apologize, but I thought I’d tell you how your sounding. I will be notifying the person who manages this alumni group on LInkedIn to hear their thoughts as well. If you have any objections or believe I am mistaken, please contact me.

Thanks,
Ely Rosenstock

We had gone back and forth a few more times and once I mentioned the term multi-level marketing, he stopped communicating. It seems I scared him off. It was fun while it lasted.

Uncategorized joseph shmulewitz

All those who live in the New York area have probably heard of the Optimum Rewards card. For those who don’t know, the Optimum Rewards card is a benefit for the customers of Optimum’s (Cablevision) three media products: home phone service (VOIP), cable internet, and cable television. Cablevision also owns Clearview Cinemas and the Optimum Rewards Card gives every cardholder two free movie tickets on Tuesdays to any Clearview theater. It’s a nice benefit of having all three services.

Today I went from being a happy (relatively) Cablevision customer to an unhappy customer. I was told that an email was sent out to all Clearview Cinemas that Optimum cards are not to be accepted today. Reason being…too many people are using them. I know that during holidays that the theaters don’t accept the Card but today is not a holiday. Cablevision is realizing that their customers are actually taking advantage of their promotion that got people to sign up for their service and they’ve decided to yank that promotion without any warning.

I might get some comments that I’m overreacting but I’m not. This isn’t about a free movie. I don’t care about paying the $12 to see Benjamin Button. I do care about companies who think they can create a promotion to sell their product and then yank it away after the product is sold. I would be less upset if Cablevision had come out with a calendar of dates where the card is not acceptable but I don’t think they plan that far in advance. I believe it’s a last-minute decision based on complaints from their theaters about all the free movie-goers.

I urge you all to send this post to your friends who live in NY and/or use Cablevision. It’s important they know how they’re being screwed from time to time. It’s important that Cablevision knows that we know.

UPDATE: Cablevision called me.

Uncategorized joseph shmulewitz

I recently read an article which discusses how infomercials come up with products and then market them. The product development process revolves around finding a problem that people never realized they had. Let’s look at this new one that I recently saw for the Big City Slider Station. You probably never realized how much trouble you were having when trying to make hamburgers a good shape. That’s because you probably weren’t. Regardless, along comes a product that solves this non-existent problem.

The marketing behind these products are hysterical. Watch the video at the Big City Sliders site and notice how the colors are muted whenever they show the ridiculous incompetence of others trying to handle their meat. The whole thing creates this sense of urgency to buy their product. And sadly, it works really well. I find myself all the time wanting to buy the products they offer even though I know they’re rarely useful. I usually can hold myself back.

Now to a real problem that’s been solved. I went to my local Chase today to deposit a check and couldn’t find any deposit slips. I’ve heard that Chase has new ATMs that don’t need deposit slips but haven’t seen them for myself until today. All you need to do is insert the check into the designated slot and the check is instantly scanned. The ATM analyzes the writing and tells you how much the check is for. After confirmation, it is instantly deposited into your account. BRILLIANT! I never realized what a waste those deposit slips were. And how come I needed to write my account number on the deposit slip? Why couldn’t they read my account number from my ATM card?

The reason I bring this up is to point out the different and strange roads to success. Those informercials create the problem and then provide the solution. Chase solves an already existing problem. While I prefer companies that solve REAL problems, it’s hard to knock the ingenious in the infomercial approach. If you’re an entrepreneur, don’t just try to solve the problems people complain about. Let people know about the problems people never realized they had, and then provide them with the solution.

(Okay, I hate the informercial approach and think entrepreneurs should avoid this approach if possible. But hey, it works.)

Uncategorized joseph shmulewitz

Crastinate started as a simple blog for me to relay my thoughts. It quickly grew into something more than that. I know I’ve been neglecting the site for the past few weeks but that’s all about to change (business school finals can be very time consuming). I’m planning a redesign, more videos, guest authors, and much more. So make sure to keep Crastinate on your feed reader this coming year.

Happy Holidays Everyone!

Uncategorized joseph shmulewitz