Check out “The Great American Bubble Machine” article in Rolling Stone. Good article on how Goldman Sachs is the reason behind our financial market trouble.
http://zerohedge.blogspot.com/2009/06/goldman-sachs-engineering-every-major.html
I went to Atlanta on Monday night (6/22) to visit two different companies, one current customer and one potential. I flew Frontier airlines, as I usually do, but noticed that they have started to take the things away from us that made them stand out as a good airline.
I really noticed how their service is really taking a dive on the way back from Atlanta. First of all, Frontier only has one gate in ATL that they share with U.S. airways. Their ticket counter is squeezed uncomfortably inbetween United’s and another airlines’. I feel bad for even standing in this line.
Next, I show up at the gate for the 7:04 pm flight around 6:40 pm(the boarding time) and we’re not boarding. Things start to seem weird around 5 till 7 when there is no one from Frontier at the gate. No information monitors are there either. Something is going on…..7:30 rolls around, almost 30 minutes after the flight is supposed to take off and a Frontier employee gets behind the counter and processes standby passengers, YET she still doesn’t tell us anything! I decide to look online with my iPhone at the flight status and it says that we are now delayed until 10:12 pm! I check again in 10 minutes and now it’s delayed until 10:32 pm, which at this point the Frontier attendant still has not announced a word. A guy that I was speaking to about it decided to go up to the counter, one hour after the plane was supposed to take off, and asks what’s going on and the person from Frontier tells him to just “give her a minute” in an unfriendly tone. So, finally, more then a hour after the flight is supposed to take off the flight attendant finally announces that our plane will be there around 11:30 pm edt. She blames weather as the cause of the delay.
After speaking with many various other passengers, I discover that the plane we were supposed to be on, took off from Denver and had the oxygen masks deploy by accident an hour into the trip and they had to turn around and go back to DIA. Once that plane was ready to go again, a storm rolled in and they couldn’t take off. When we boarded the plane in Atlanta they flight attendants loudly proclaimed that the delay was not their fault, but if it was a mechanical problem that started the whole thing, then I say it is. They gave everyone free DirecTV to make up for the wait, which to me doesn’t help make up for their horrendous communications issues. Why would it take them a hour after the flight was supposed to take off to notify us on what’s going on?
I used to like to fly Frontier for their outstanding service, nice planes, timeliness, good prices and cool little features such as the satellite map. You can’t get the satellite map anymore unless you pay for DirecTV. The peanuts have left the building (airplane). Their prices are starting to drift higher as Southwest is constantly cheaper then them now. Their flight attendants are not very friendly anymore and apparantly don’t like to give out information. They’ve basically lost everything that has made them stand apart.
Pretty impressive numbers for the iPhone 3GS sales over the weekend. I stopped by an Apple store this weekend and the line had less then 4 people in it for the iPhone. Looks like they have improved their proccess for selling the device drastically. Good to see for when I get the next new model, hopefully next year.
A Star Wars Sound Board!
http://www.starwars.com/games/playnow/soundboards/?t=14#/?theme=14
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