Josh Mehlman

Marketers often say that men find shopping for clothes frustrating and alienating. It’s almost as though the entire process was designed for women, if you believe the stereotypes.

Some very clever online businesses have sprung up based on this premise, making it easier for men to find clothes they want without having to go through an embarrassing ordeal.

I’m not like that, generally. Over the years I’ve found a few good shops and clothing labels that usually have stuff I like that fits me, where they don’t have crappy dance music at eardrum-bursting volume and where the staff are helpful and unpretentious.

Most of the time. Not so this weekend, though, when I visited a very large department store in the CBD, renowned for its quality products and customer service.

Me: This is a nice shirt. Do you have one in my size?

Fashion retail person #1: (Flips through rack) No.

Me: Yes, I already looked there, that’s why I asked you. (Waits for fashion retail person to make helpful suggestion.)

Fashion retail person #1: (Starts sorting clothes hangers.)

In case you’re wondering, yes, at this point I checked if I could buy it online. The manufacturer had very pretty website that took 10 minutes to load on the iPhone (Yay Vodafone!) and, of course, no ecommerce capability. So, half an hour of fruitless shirt shopping later, I was back where I started, with a different person.

Me: This is a nice shirt. Could you please check if you have it in my size?

Fashion retail person #2: Yes, but I’m pretty sure all the stock we have is on the rack. I’ll check. (Goes out back)

Me: Well?

Fashion retail person #2: No.

Me: That’s a pity. Do any of your other stores have it in my size?

Fashion retail person #2: Let me see. (Twiddles computer) Yes, Chatswood. Can you get to Chatswood?

Me: It is not convenient. Can the Chatswood store send it here?

Fashion retail person #2: No. (Complicated explanation, I didn’t really pay attention after ‘no’.)

Me: Alright, I will take some time out of my work day to pick it up from Chatswood tomorrow, but only if they put it away so someone else doesn’t buy it before I get there.

Fashion retail person #2: (Spends 15 minutes on phone trying to find person in Chatswood store) I spoke to Alex, he said he’ll put it aside, but you have to get it tomorrow.

Me: OK.

The next day, in Chatswood…

Me: I had a shirt put away yesterday. Could you get it for me?

Fashion retail person #3: Hmm… I can’t find it. Was it a BRAND A shirt?

Me: No, it was BRAND B.

Fashion retail person #3: Oh! You need to go over to the BRAND C counter!

Me: (Goes to next counter) I had a shirt put away yesterday. Could you get it for me?

Fashion retail person #4: I can’t find it anywhere. Who put it away for you?

Me: I think his name was Alex.

Fashion retail person #4: Oh, ALEX. It doesn’t look like he put it away.

Me: (Speaking in the spirit of Homer Simpson trying not to swear, “Oh, fudge. That’s . . . broken. Fiddle dee dee. That will require a tetanus shot.” ) That is . . . unfortunate. I can see it over there on the shelf. Perhaps there’s still one in my size.

Fashion retail person #4: Here’s one.

Me: This has “XL” written in biro on the cardboard label but “L” on the shirt label. Are you sure it’s XL?

Fashion retail person #4: Oh yes, they found it was the wrong size and it’s really XL.

Me: Wouldn’t I better off getting this one over here that says “XL” on both labels?

Fashion retail person #4: Sure, if you like.

This is the hardest I have ever had to work to buy something, other than a car or property. Can anyone spot the dozen or so places along the way where the retailer made it harder for me to buy the shirt than it needed to be? And was it really such a nice shirt that it was worth all the aggro to get it?

How do businesses survive, treating customers with contempt? Is it only because all their competitors do the same? Surely there must be a huge opportunity for shops that sell clothes and help their customers buy them!

Yesterday I interviewed Peter Black, the Queensland University of Technology law lecturer who was recently appointed to manage Electronic Frontiers Australia’s anti-internet-filtering campaign. He’s under no illusions he has taken on a tough challenge.

“There’s no doubt it’ll be quite hard to get the government to change their mind. There’s been a lot invested by Senator Conroy and the Rudd Government in this policy.”

He says the filter opponents have a range of options. His ideal would be to get rid of the filter entirely, either by convincing the Government to drop it or by getting enough opposition from the Greens and Liberal parties to ensure the legislation won’t pass the Senate. Until after the next election, perhaps.

The emerging middle option is to implement some sort of filter but to make it voluntary. You certainly could read Labor’s pre-election policy document as saying the filter should be something ISPs could offer customers, not force on them.

But there’s voluntary and there’s voluntary. It could be a voluntary opt-in filter, which people have to ask for. Or it could be a sort-of-voluntary opt-out filter, which is applied by default unless the customer asks not to have it.

Of course, there are problems with an opt-out filter, particularly with the constant insinuations from Senator Conroy and the Australian Christian Lobby that anyone who opposes the filter is a fan of child pornography.

As Labor Senator Kate Lundy put it on Crikey, people may be concerned that opting out of the filter could “lead to interest by the authorities, even though individuals may simply want to ensure they are not having legitimate content filtered”.

Nonetheless, Lundy now says she prefers an opt-out filter. Over the past few weeks she has shifted from warily supporting the filter to being uncomfortable with it to lobbying within the Government against it. She now says an opt-out filter “respects people can make an informed choice” while fulfilling Labor’s election commitments (to the Christian lobby).

One still has to wonder how many people would be willing to email their ISP asking, ‘Can has kiddie pr0n pls, kthxbai!’

Pity the poor people of Albury-based transport company Border Express. On Friday they posted an innocent job ad looking for a developer with SQL Server and Visual Basic experience. But over the weekend, some wiseguy who had access to the company’s account details on Seek made a couple of sneaky changes. To the required skills, the miscreants added “”DD cup breasts, slim waist, tight twat” and a willingness to undergo “a pre-employment strip search to ensure they meet the requirements of the position”.

Sure, it’s one way to attract a lot of attention to an otherwise dull job ad, but everyone from female job hunters to company management was not impressed. The company and police are looking into it.

In Melbourne’s western suburbs a transport company employee was killed after a server fell on him while it was being unloaded from a truck. He reportedly saw the 200kg fridge-sized machine coming loose from a forklift and decided he would try to save it.

It wouldn’t be the first time someone put their body on the line to try and save an expensive piece of gear. With photographers, for instance, there’s a strong instinct to save the camera even while risking their own health, or body parts. But no matter how expensive the gadget, chances are a limb – or a life – are much harder to replace.

Just about everyone I know thinks the government’s plan to legislate mandatory internet filtering is a really bad idea.

This could lead me to believe the majority of Australians are as passionate about internet censorship as me and my friends. But then I remember that most of my friends are university educated, left-leaning types who work in journalism or the IT industry.

This same selection bias is at work in the online community, particularly on Twitter. The sort of people who use Twitter, who blog, who read the IT media are precisely the sort of people who would oppose internet censorship.

This has led many people to believe if they make enough noise about it online, the Government will drop the filter. Unfortunately, this greatly overestimates the importance and influence of Twitter and social media generally when it comes to real-world politics.

Even an infinite number of angry posts on Twitter, sarcastic blog posts and articles in the IT press would still have no effect on Government policy. Politicians only care about who can deliver them blocs of votes in important electorates.

Onine fame is fleeting, but mine was the top article on ABC's The Drum for a little while

As I argue on ABC’s The Drum blog, so far the Christian lobby – which is for the filter – is doing this a lot better than the disparate anti-filter coalition.

This is not to say the anti-censorship campaign is doomed. However, it needs to focus less on preaching to the choir and more on real-life, professional political lobbying.

It’s a big ask, particularly because many of the anti-censorship groups have little experience in direct political action. But it must be done if we are to convince the Government of the immense folly and dire (supposedly) unintended consequences of its current plans.

The federal government’s internet censorship announcement is only three days old but already dissent is emerging from some unexpected places. Perhaps also not emerging from some expected ones. I’ve been following the story for ZDNet.

New South Wales upper-house member Penny Sharpe railed against the filter in her blog. Yes, she is from the Labor party, but the NSW and federal arms aren’t exactly best buddies right now.

Three younger Liberal parliamentarians – MPs Alex Hawke and Jamie Briggs and Senator Simon Birmingham – have also come out against the filter, although this is mainly confirming their previous positions. Most interestingly, Hawke says he has advised the Christian lobby against the filter proposal, even though he is himself a Christian.

As I mentioned the other day, Senator Kate Lundy has been painfully fence sitting. Despite her well known and vociferous opposition to internet filtering while she was in opposition, Lundy wouldn’t say much at all when I spoke to her. Subsequently she posted a lengthy piece on her blog, the gist of which was that she opposed filtering but it was Labor policy before the election, we voted for them and she can’t speak against party policy.

Although there is still an open question about whether Labor’s pre-election policy made it clear the filter would be mandatory – the language was pretty fluffy.

While these small brushstrokes begin to paint of picture of widespread opposition to the filter, no one seems to have an overall idea of how the anti-censorship movement might achieve its goals. Stay tuned…

Whose fault is it that the Australian government is getting set to deliver the Western world’s most oppressive internet censorship regime? Ours, as it happens, for failing to have a bill of rights protecting free speech. So Professor George Williams told me in this article for ZDNet.

“Australia does not have a Bill of Rights which protects free speech at a federal level. We don’t have the protections that they have in every other democratic country.That means Australia might be subject to far more stringent regulations on the internet than would be possible in other democratic countries.”

The academic community is singing from the same hymn sheet on this idea, judging by a report released today from media studies profs Catharine Lumby, Lelia Green and John Hartley. “The proposal would set Australia apart from other Western liberal democracies that have opted for a transparent, voluntary filtering regime,” they said.

They analysed the proposed filtering regime and found it could censor a whole lot more than just kiddie porn, including perfectly legal material.

“The ACMA is blacklisting a significant number of sites that are not illegal content but are considered offensive. While this may be considered acceptable where filtering is opt-in by an end user (or parent for family computers), under a mandatory filtering regime this would result in capturing material that is clearly legal but restricted in availability (off the internet) through classification restrictions.”

Unlike the Liberal Party’s shambolic approach to party unity on the emissions trading scheme, Labor polticos are so far toeing the party line on censorship. Senator Kate Lundy wasn’t saying much today, despite her strong record of criticising internet censorship proposals in the past. Looks like Peter Garrett isn’t the only one to have abandoned his principles once in power.

From an AAP wire report, ‘PM to NSW: get your act together‘.

Asked if Mr Rees had his full support or whether he also needed to get his act together, Mr Rudd replied “Yes”, although it was unclear to which part of the question he was responding.

Gosh, it’s been a busy week; been doing so much I’ve hardly had time to self-promote about it. Outrageous.

The last issue of Nett with my mug on the editor’s page came out last Friday, including my interview with twin brothers Brian and Vincent Wu, founders of clothing retailer Incu.

The best interviews to do are the ones that defy your expectations. Plenty of small business owners aren’t shy about telling you how great they are, which gives you plenty of material for the story, but leaves you feeling a bit cheap and dirty at the end of it. Not these guys! You definitely don’t expect successful fashionistas to be friendly, humble and modest, but Brian and Vincent really are and I’m sure that has a lot to do with their success.

Over the last year, Incu managed to land a coveted deal: the rights to distribute UK brand Topshop in Australia. Considering how many Australian women buy from Topshop UK online, this is very big. The guys from Incu also told me exclusively about their plans to (finally) open an online store next year, and once again I think they have exactly the right approach.

I’ve also been doing some exciting news stories for ZDNet on stuff like telecommunications tenders, state government IT policies, how bad state governments are at looking after our personal data and ERP consolidation projects.

Aside from this, it’s all been about making clients happy by meeting their insane deadlines, finding somewhere to live and even showing up at the odd IT industry Christmas party. Phew!

Banks are often criticised for being super-responsive when interest rates go up, wasting no time in passing on these rises to customers, while being considerably more tardy and relaxed about lowering their rates when the Reserve Bank does.

Technology vendors aren’t hugely worried about interest rates, but most tech is bought and sold in US dollars. When the Australian dollar was doing badly, local prices went up. The Australian dollar is in a very strong position now but local prices have mostly remained static.

Does this spell profiteering? In a competitive market, vendors wouldn’t be able to get away with it…

Here’s a piece I wrote for CRN: The great Australian ripoff.

In covering the ongoing AFACT v iiNet case in the Federal Court, local journalists such as The Australian’s Andrew Colley and ZDNet’s Liam Tung have caused some controversy by live tweeting from within the courtroom. While broadcast journalists in Australia are not allowed to report from inside courtrooms, the Federal Court has decided it’s up to individual judges if they want to allow live coverage on Twitter.

In the same spirit, yesterday I called Toshiba tech support for help on a very minor issue with my laptop. Ideally I would have preferred to email a question and then get annoyed when no one responded (59% of companies don’t respond to email queries, you know). But Toshiba doesn’t give you the option; just a phone number and a postal address. So I called, and it quickly became apparent I wasn’t going to get anywhere fast. Because I had nothing better to do while waiting on hold, I started Tweeting:

• I am currently caller 57 in the queue for Toshiba tech support. 57! Customer service FTW!
• Enjoying Toshiba’s commitment to customer service; I am now 43rd in the queue after 10 minutes.
• “Challenges we all face are the future and the environment” – who writes these on-hold scripts? 26 min and counting. Yay Toshiba!
• “An uguarded MFD could be an easy target” – so true! Celebrating the first half hour of Toshiba’s customer love.
• “In this oversaturated market, good quality in LCD TVs stands out”. Toshiba has stopped telling me my position in the queue. 47 mins.
• Do on-hold music composers proudly call their mothers to say, ‘Hey ma, my music was used in Toshiba’s HOUR LONG CALL QUEUE’?
• Oh wow! An hour and five minutes on hold and I get put through… to a voicemail system. Bad Toshiba. BAD BAD BAD TOSHIBA.

While I was on hold, the system repeatedly gave me the option of giving my phone number for someone to call back. I did not use this option because in my experience, nobody ever calls back and it’s just a way of shortening the call queue to improve ‘performance’ statistics.

My live tweets were attracting a fair bit of attention and a few retweets. Jonathan Crossfield suggested I invent a hashtag for live-tweeting a call queue, which I did: #YourCallIsImportantToUs. Guess it hasn’t caught on yet.

I tried calling again later in the same day, but things were even worse than the first time. Once again, the live stream tells the story:

• Just call me glutton for punshiment: round two of Toshiba #YourCallIsImportantToUs Why can’t I email my question?
• OK, forget it. 75 callers in queue. Have used callback facility. Now holding breath until someone from Toshiba calls.
• [Two hours later] Still holding breath waiting for Toshiba to call back. Evidently they don’t monitor Twitter. Turning slightly blue.

First thing this morning, someone called. It was Toshiba’s PR manager, who admitted something was not right with the call centre and this was a cause for concern over at HQ. She got my problem fixed immediately. Happy me, but what about the 74 other p0or bastards in the call queue?

I might be a relatively well known tech journalist in real life, but on Twitter I am not hugely influential (no matter what Topsy says); I have a modest following of a smidge over 500 people. But thanks to the magic of retweeting by ZDNet Australia (1700 followers) and  Jonathan (more than 2400), my whinge was now reaching an audience of thousands. So did I get a call back because I complained a lot, because of who I am, or because some fairly influential people took up my cause?

Some conclusions and questions:

• Big companies: if you under-resource your call centres, you reduce costs but risk pissing off customers in a really big way. This isn’t as easy to get away with as it used to be because consumers have ways to hold you to account.
• If you want to reduce your call queues, provide an email support option and actually respond to queries when they come in. Why does no one understand this?
• Consumers: many big brands (or their PR firms) monitor what’s said about them on Twitter. They’ll call you back a lot faster in response to bad publicity than for regular tech support.
• If you’re influential on Twitter, or have friends who are, complaining loudly and rudely in public about poor service gets results; we’ve know this for a couple of years now. But if you’re not as famous as Michael Arrington, or even me, how effective is this technique?