World's greatest sad

While browsing the New York Times site, I was treated to a popup advertisement for something. In the 30-second ad, a teenage girl sitting in a bright bedroom typed the words "You're the World's Greatest Dad" into her smartphone. There followed several morphing animated scenes of a cartoon girl and her dad winning races, playing in the treehouse he'd built for her, and so on. At the end the ad goes back to "real life," showing the late-middle-aged father sitting alone in a dark book-lined study receiving the message on a laptop and apparently chuckling in pleasure.

But I thought, good God, look at this. Here's this girl texting her father. Clearly they're living apart now, in different houses. And he's sitting alone in this dark study -- it has to be his home, as he's wearing a lavender-colored v-neck sweater -- staring down at his laptop. He isn't working. This email from his daughter is basically the only thing he seems to have to occupy himself with. Is he chuckling at the end of the commercial, or crying?

Oh, and I missed noticing what product was being promoted.

Good turn deserves another

The ratio of flames versus praise on the web is probably a thousand to one, and I sure don't mind toasting a company or shop when I've received bad service. So to be fair, I want to praise AT&T Wireless and their customer service reps for the great service they gave me this morning.

Last month when I replaced the cell phone Cris uses, I agreed to a GPS service for the line, because she doesn't have a great sense of direction and often calls me for help in finding an unfamiliar address. And since the guy at the AT&T store told me it was free for the first month, I said fine. But she hasn't used the service and doesn't want the charge. So just as I was going to call to cancel the service, I get the first bill, and behold, the first month was not free.

I phoned billing, and they couldn't really help; but they transferred me to Kimberly in customer service, and not only was she able to cancel the GPS service and take the charges off my bill -- including, without me asking, the week beyond the first free month that the service has been active -- but she noticed I could save money on txting charges on the phone I use, signed me up for a cheaper service for the txting, and rebated the charges on the current bill as if I had made the change a month ago. Kimberly was responsive, reasonable, proactive, solved a problem I didn't even know I had, and gave me more than I asked for. Now that's great customer service. Well done, AT&T Wireless.

technorati: AT&T, wireless, cellphone service providers