Skype Hunting

I wonder if I'm the only one who questions why Ebay is agreeing to by Skype in a close to 4 Billion Dollar Deal. Has the fact that their revenues are starting to slow to normal levels turned them into your average run of the mill idiot publicly traded company buying anything within the ballpark of their business hoping to drive the stock price up?

What benefit is there really in a VOIP service for Internet auctions. Ebay envisions people talking to each other about their trading, asking questions, completing transactions, etc. Do they really think that I'm going to spend time either answering or asking whether that Boba Fett in the blister pack is really in mint condition?

In terms of purchases, PayPal it ain't.

The Wonder Why Years

Now here's a business I'd love to invest in, especially given the fact that Jason Hervey, formerly of the Wonder Years and most recently of that reputable firm Healthsouth, is a main investor.


RTVStar.com Brings Reality TV Casting Online and into the Future
Monday August 22, 9:09 am ET
Casting Website Turns TV Dreams into Reality


HOLLYWOOD, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 22, 2005--RTVStar.com, the website that makes reality TV dreams come true, today unveiled its advanced reality TV casting service. RTVStar.com streamlines the application process for would-be cast members, and simplifies the casting search process for reality TV producers. The simple yet powerful website is located online at www.RTVStar.com.
"RTVStar.com does for reality TV what the `common application' did for college applications," said Brian Ostrovsky, CEO of RTVStar.com. "Our service dramatically improves the application experience for potential cast members, and eliminates significant chunks of time and expense for producers. RTVStar.com is a classic business example of how the intelligent application of technology can benefit an inefficient market."

RTVStar.com charges a $24.99 annual membership fee, which entitles a user to complete a comprehensive casting application and upload a digital video and three photographs. Access to the RTVStar.com database is provided free of charge to established reality TV casting executives, who can search for potential contestants by virtually any parameter, including age, sex, location, relationship status, hobbies, interests and other attributes. RTVStar.com is a supplement to the traditional reality TV casting process, rather than a replacement for it.

Several television producers, reality TV stars and casting executives were involved in the design and implementation of the service. Producers Eric Bischoff and Jason Hervey of Bischoff/Hervey Entertainment ("I Want to Be a Hilton") are co-chairmen of the RTVStar.com advisory board. Chip and Kim McAllister, winners of "The Amazing Race," have joined the online reality service RTVStar.com as spokespeople, and will give expert advice to RTVStar members.

At the core of RTVStar.com is the RTV-profile, which is an amalgamation of the types of questions featured on applications for all genres of reality programming, including adventure, personal makeover, home makeover, lifestyle/documentary, dating, sports, intellectual pursuits and others. Reality TV casting applications tend to be 75% identical to each other and 25% genre or show specific. The RTVStar.com application rolls all of the genres together, while giving applicants the choice to select specific genres or pursue all of them. Because it is completed online, the application is more user friendly to the applicant and the casting executive who screens it. RTVStar.com also features an advanced video hosting and streaming system, and Verisign's industry-leading SSL encryption technology.

The inspiration for RTVStar.com came when Ostrovsky's wife spent the better part of a month and over $100 applying to just three reality TV series. After following her through the repetitive process, handwritten applications, video production and scurrying to meet submission deadlines, he knew there had to be a better way.

There are more than 100 reality TV series airing this season or coming soon, and more than one million reality TV casting applications were submitted industry-wide in the last year, according to trade media reports and RTVStar.com research.

About RTVStar.com

RTVStar.com makes reality TV dreams come true. RTVStar.com is a website that gives aspiring reality TV stars an inside track on the reality TV casting process by streamlining the application process for would-be cast members and accelerating the process for casting professionals. RTVStar.com was founded in 2005 by Brian Ostrovsky and is headquartered in the Sacramento, Calif., technology corridor. On the Web: www.RTVStar.com.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Contact:
Beck Media & Marketing
Todd Beck, 310-689-7363
todd@beckmedia.com
or
Chris Talbott, 310-689-7227
chris@beckmedia.com

We can't lock up the criminals, so let's lock up what they steal

The article below details how stores are becoming victims of more widespread theft with the intent to resell. As someone who visits flea markets occasionally, I always wondered how the people there got such a huge selection of drug store items. I always assumed they were either out of date or from places that closed their doors. Maybe I was wrong.

At any rate, I have a couple of suggestions for retailers. Some of them may have already been done, but maybe not.

1) Open less stores and/or hire more people. It seems as though every retailer wants to be located on every available corner these days. A recent trip to Home Depot on a weekend (which should be prime time for them)had one person working the register and 15 people in line. You could have walked out with a busload of stuff if you wanted to.

2) Secondary barcodes on all products with serial numbers (or a new barcoding system with it built in). This wouldn't stop theft, but would make it much easier to track. You would not only know what brand and model were taken, but what individual piece was taken. If you tied it in to a national database of retail theft (which could be built by the retailers), you could track the movements of items stolen and help build cases against the people that supply the items.


Retail Gangs: A New Breed of Thieves By Margaret Webb Pressler, Washington Post Staff Writer
Sun Jul 31, 1:00 AM ET



At CVS, the diabetic test strips and the perfume are now behind locked glass cabinets, with a bell to ring for service. Nearly all over-the-counter medicines are behind plexiglass panels that customers must reach over to get their Advil or Pepcid. And most razors and refills are in clunky, noise-making dispensers that won't let you put back what you take out.


The new displays are part of a larger effort by chain stores to combat what has become a significant problem for the retail industry: organized theft. Retailers say rings of habitual shoplifters are proliferating nationwide, but particularly in urban areas such as Washington, where retailers and malls are packed close together and there is easy access to highways.


"We're seeing an incredible amount of activity from organized retail theft gangs from the New York area all the way down into Richmond," said Robert Wade, vice president of loss prevention for Hecht's.


Losses from organized retail theft have topped $30 billion annually, triple what they were a decade ago, according to the National Retail Federation, leading to higher prices, frequent out-of-stock problems and a more cumbersome shopping experience for consumers.


Companies are spending millions of dollars on security systems to tackle the shoplifting rings, from software that tracks patterns of theft regionally, to complicated fixtures that prevent the removal of multiple packages at one time. Retailers are increasingly using racks that lock for a period of time after one unit is taken, cabinets that beep if they're open too long, and hangers that lock to a jacket or suit. Some of the nation's biggest retailers, including Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Target Corp., Lowe's Cos. and Limited Brands Inc., have formed organized crime divisions to focus on the issue.


"A store could lose its entire inventory of a popular item by one professional shoplifting ring, making it now unavailable when there should be a week's supply on hand," said Joseph LaRocca, vice president of loss prevention for the National Retail Federation. "Stores are being forced to do something about it now because they're not only losing the items, now they're also losing sales."


Increasingly, retail theft cases are being prosecuted by federal law enforcement, such as the Secret Service, because the crimes are large-scale, cross multiple jurisdictions and often involve the online selling of stolen merchandise.


"We have a lot of shopping malls and outlet malls in this area, and they're all vulnerable," said Ron Perea, assistant special agent in charge for the Washington field office of the Secret Service.


In June, for example, an alleged fencing operation in Landover was raided. Prince George's County had its officers on the scene "just to provide a uniformed presence," said Lt. Terence Sheppard, but the operation was handled by the Secret Service.


"Locals have their hands full with a lot of street crime. If the feds can come in with our resources and take this off their hands, that's helpful," Perea said. "We are working with a number of jurisdictions in D.C., Virginia and Maryland on very similar crimes like this."


Organized retail theft has been around for years, especially in some high-profile products such as infant formula. But it's always been a difficult concept for retailers to accurately measure, because when a product disappears, it's hard to know exactly where it went: Did an employee steal it? A delivery driver? A shoplifter? As a result, retailers have largely treated all shoplifters much the same, with the occasional prosecution leading to little or no penalty.


But theft has been growing so fast that retailers are only now recognizing the role that organized crime is playing in the industry's growing losses. Wade of Hecht's said sometimes a major theft will go unnoticed until the store does inventory and finds, for example, 400 missing ties and 200 missing shirts.


"The problem with external theft is it's a ghost," said Jerry Biggs, organized retail crime section coordinator for the drugstore chain Walgreens Co. "It's been a ghost for so long that it is now like having something that's been dormant and all of a sudden it's grown under the carpet and it's big ."


Retailers and theft experts say criminals have discovered that large profits can be made relatively easily, and without much risk, by stealing merchandise from crowded, understaffed stores. They say the most stolen items tend to be high-priced, widely used products that are routinely sold in chain stores: over-the-counter medicines, razors, film, CDs and DVDs, baby formula, diapers, batteries, hair-growth and smoking-cessation products, hardware, tools, designer clothes and electronics.


Shoplifters might spend all day going from store to store, then sell the goods they've stolen to the fence for 10 or 20 percent of their retail value, said Chuck Miller, a retail security consultant in Great Falls and author of "Organized Retail Theft," a handbook published this month for industry professionals. Fences then aggregate the products from multiple shoplifters and sell them at flea markets, online or to bodegas and convenience stores, he said.


In department stores, thieves will work together, with one distracting a sales clerk and another stealing clothes. Some schemes involve creating high-quality fake receipts in order to return stolen goods for cash. At home improvement stores, a shoplifter might take an inexpensive item out of its box, fill the box with higher-priced goods from all over the store, then seal it up and pay only for the cheaper item that was originally in that box.


"The common criminal would rather have a situation occur at the register where they plead ignorance, so to speak, rather than do straight shoplifting and risk being apprehended by a loss prevention detective," said Claude Verville, vice president of loss prevention for Lowe's. Shoppers found with phony bar codes or stuffed boxes, he said, usually say they don't know anything about it.


Lowe's has responded by beefing up its in-store camera systems and installing more-sensitive electronic sensors at the exits, while also requiring that employees respond within 12 seconds if an alarm sounds.

Yet catching the sometimes loosely organized rings of individual shoplifters remains notoriously hard because gangs tend to hit numerous jurisdictions. When a chain store is robbed, managers may not realize another store was hit by the same group earlier in the day.

"It's very hard to connect the dots," said Thomas S. Saquella, president of the Maryland Retailers Association. "They may hit a store in Frederick, a store in Prince George's and a store in Montgomery in one day."

Retailers are beginning to work together, establishing a joint database of crimes so that companies can prove the scope of theft by a particular group, and thereby lead to more forceful prosecution by law enforcement. Individually, loss prevention executives focus on gathering enough evidence to elevate organized theft cases to the federal level.

"I'm going after a guy right now that's been arrested 56 times," Walgreen's Biggs said. "I've got to put together a case that can show this isn't your typical little shoplifter."

The day after making that statement, Biggs called back to say he had just arrested the same shoplifter for the 57th time.

Box Office Blues

The Box Office is now in a "slump." Here's my recipe for fixing it.

1) All Hollywood executives should have to go to one movie where they pay the same percentage of their income for a ticket as the average movie goer does. The popcorn, candy, and everything else should be priced the same way. For fun, have 100 different cell phones ring during the showing, show 20 ads, and have a crying baby or two.

2) Let exhibitors see a higher percentage of ticket sales in exchange for lowering their prices.

3) WAIT for the DVD. At the very least, don't announce the date it will ship while the movie is still in a few thousand theatres. If I know that I can buy the movie for the same or LESS than two tickets (and rent it for far less than that) in only a few weeks, then why would I go to the theater?

4) Make good movies. Very few movies I see trailers for these days say "you must see this", at least not enough to make me WANT to see them in the theater.

5) Make movies for adults. Not 2 hour snoozefests, but good thrillers and/or action movies that work better on the big screen than at home.

Denny's Grand Slam PR Mess

Personally, I think that Denny's has never discriminated. They offer bad service slowly to people of all races, colors, and creeds.

In this day and age, I can't believe the following:

1) There are business managers who would still openly discriminate (assuming this is true)
2) People still go to Denny's expecting decent service.

Seriously, I didn't even realize they were still in business. But I guess you have to have somewhere to go at 4 AM when you're drunk and hungry.

Of course, who knows, maybe Osama has a hankerin' for a Grand Slam or Moons Over My Hammy from time to time. I've seen more unsavory looking characters than him sipping coffee there in the middle of the night.




Florida Denny's Sued After Bin Laden Remark By Jane Sutton
Thu Apr 28, 4:14 PM ET



Seven Arab American men filed a $28 million lawsuit against a Denny's restaurant in Florida, saying the manager kicked them out and told them, "We don't serve bin Ladens here," their lawyer said on Thursday.

They sued the restaurant owner, Restaurant Collection Inc., and former manager, Eduardo Ascano, saying they were harassed, humiliated and refused service at the Denny's in Florida City, southwest of Miami, in January 2004.

Lawyer Rod Hannah said the men had not ruled out an additional lawsuit against the Denny's chain, which paid about $54 million in 1994 to settle a discrimination suit filed by black customers.

Denny's said the allegations were without merit. Restaurant Collection could not be reached for comment.

The Florida lawsuit said the men visited the restaurant early in the morning of Jan. 11, 2004, and after long delays, were seated, given menus and served drinks.

After waiting more than an hour for their food while later customers were served, they asked twice about their order. The lawsuit said Ascano told them "Bin Laden is in charge of the kitchen." Asked about the reference to the al Qaeda leader, he swore and told them, "We don't serve bin Ladens here" and ordered them to leave, the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit said that violated Florida's Civil Rights Act by discriminating in public accommodations and that the owner was negligent in retaining a manager with a record of treating customers rudely and in a discriminatory manner.

The lawsuit was filed in Miami-Dade County Circuit Court on April 22 and asks for $4 million for each of the seven men, who live in the Boca Raton area. They are of Egyptian, Lebanese and Syrian descent and all but one are U.S. citizens, Hannah said. One owns a restaurant.

"They are all earning a living and are respectable and respectful citizens," Hannah said.

CONFLICTING ACCOUNTS

The two sides gave conflicting accounts of police involvement in the incident.

The lawsuit said a police officer who was a patron in the restaurant shouted at the plaintiffs to "Get out! Get out" and threatened to arrest them when they asked her to make out a police report about the restaurant manager's behavior.

Denny's Corp. said "the guests became so enraged with the franchise manager trying to address an unfortunate delay in service that a police officer who happened to be dining in the restaurant during the late-night incident found it necessary to eject the party for their extreme behavior."

No arrests were made and the plaintiffs' left after paying for their drinks, their attorney said.

Restaurant Collection is a Florida company that owns the Denny's franchise where the incident took place. Denny's Corp is a chain based in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and has 549 company-owned and 1,036 franchised restaurants in the United States.

Denny's Corp. said in a statement that the discrimination allegations were without merit and that it was confident the company would be vindicated.

After the 1994 settlement with black patrons who said they were denied service or made to pay in advance, Denny's apologized and has greatly increased minority ownership of its franchises and minority hiring at restaurants and suppliers.

The men first filed a complaint with Florida's Commission on Human Relations, which said in January there was reasonable cause to believe they had been discriminated against.

A real article about the movie industry....

The article mentioned below was an April Fools joke. But, maybe it won't be soon. It seems that the movie industry is up in arms over bad box office the past few weeks.

While I doubt this trend will continue (There's a little sequel to Star Wars just days away from the theaters), perhaps the industry has itself to blame.

Has anyone in Hollywood actually priced out a trip to the movies these days? Unless you eat before hand, smuggle in your own food, or have the will power to abstain, the price of the ticket is the least of your worries (although $11 for two people at a matinee is still steep). When a popcorn in a small lunch bag costs a little less than $4, a soda is in the $3 range, and a bottle of Aquafina (tap water, for crying out loud) is the same, you're lucky to get out of the theater for less than $25 bucks for two people, probably closer to $40 if you have a family. Then you have the ultimate humiliation of paying that much money to sit through 10 minutes of commercials (not trailers, commercials), including one for that $3 bottle of purified tap water they'll sell you in the lobby.

For the same price you can buy a box of microwave popcorn, buy a new release on DVD, buy a few 2 liters of soda, and half a dozen assorted movie boxes of candy, and have enough money left over to rent a second movie for a double feature. Plus, you can skip the commercials, pause the movie, and see the film with the proper color and aspect ratio that your local theater never seems to be able to reproduce. And if you don't want to keep the movie, put it on Ebay and make some of that money back.

Hey, the picture's lousy, adjust the tracking!

According to my favorite DVD review site, DVDFILE, the movie industry is worried that they may fall victim to the piracy that has allegedly reduced music sales, is going to extreme measures to protect High Definition DVDs against piracy. The plan, detailed here indicates that the discs will be encoded with serial numbers that will be tracked at the point of purchase.

I'm not sure I believe this is actually true, but if it is, I don't imagine that the plan will go far. Copy protection is one thing, but having a serial number follow you wherever you use the disc won't fly with your average consumer. Besides, how would this work in the rental business, where the same copy would be used by tons of different people.

The movie industry has done a smart thing with their sell-through prices, so much so that I doubt your average movie viewer is going to be making copies of every disc that comes down the pike. If the HD discs match the DVDs currently in use, it will be some time before a HD DVD burner is affordable and useful to the public. And since you can buy a DVD for cheaper than two tickets to the movies, I don't think people who didn't pirate before are suddenly going to now.

Would you like to supersize your bypass?

Never let it be said that Burger King is not shrewd. The fast food restaurant, which has been lost in the wilderness recently has been generating some publicity. First, for its new Tendercrisp Bacon Chedder Ranch Chocolate Creme Brule (or whatever the hell it is) commercials, which feature Hootie, Hooters, and a guy in a creepy king costume. And most recently, for its Enormous Omelet Sandwich, a cardiologist's nightmare at 730 calories, 47 grams fat, and 415 milligrams cholesterol. Yeah, everyone and their brother has been criticizing BK for unleashing such an irresponsible dietary choice on the public. But what a PR windfall, hours of airtime devoted to a new sandwich, much of which is certainly heard by people who now are rushing there to try it. With people on the downward side of the latest diet cycle (let's face it, low carb is on its way out), people are eating again, and what better way to thumb your nose at society than by eating enough fat to keep Crisco in business for a year.

Jaguar to Discontinue Cheaper Line of Jags....

Jaguar is discontinuing its cheaper X line of cars, according to the USA Today to "regain an image of exclusivity and the profit it hopes that brings".

I'd like to make a suggestion to Jaguar and its parent company, Ford. Perhaps the key to reviving Jaguar is to make a car that doesn't look like a rebadged Taurus with lots of chrome. I realized they'd lost their distinctive look when I saw a nice looking new Jag from a distance and pulled up to realize that I was admiring a new Hyundai Sonata.

Identity Theft -- Time for the industry to act

In the past few months, data has been compromised at numerous companies and universities, causing potential identity theft for thousands and possibly millions of individuals.

Unfortunately, these companies and organizations, as well as our Government seem not to really care about protecting this data or doing much about those who steal it. It's estimated that individuals who have their identity stolen face hundreds of hours trying to put things in order, including a back and forth game with law enforcement, credit card companies, and credit bureaus.

Here's what I think could be done to stem this tide.

1) Impose heavy penalties on identity theft. Prison time plus manditory restitution and penalties equal to or greater than the restitution.

2) Place restrictions on how companies can collect and share personal data. If they can do this for pharmacies, doctors, and hospitals, they can do this for agencies that handle data. Impose fines for those that fail to properly safeguard this information.

3) Devise software to spot telltale signs of potential identity theft on credit applications. Surely things like a name being spelled incorrectly, incomplete or inaccurate information on applications, or an address that is different than one that is currently on your file is a good way to spot this. If the software spots something potentially wrong, the credit should be flagged and an attempt to contact the individual should be made immediately at the existing address/phone number.

4) Require manditory reporting to government agencies ANY time the same social security number is given for two different names. I once had access to a database to investigate fraud where you would often find the same Social Security number tied to seven or eight people.

5) Credit companies should provide a free notification service for any changes to your credit report via e-mail.

I'm sure there are other ideas, but something must happen soon. Credit Bureaus, Banks, Colleges and other people who hold personal data must start holding themselves accountable before the government and/or lawsuits do.

General Motors -- Time to Downsize

I'm not one for encouraging anything that might cause people to lose their jobs, but it's time for GM to go on a diet.

They're predicting a negative cashflow of about 2 billion dollars, per the USA Today, which also reports that $2000 of EVERY VEHICLE goes toward healthcare expenses.

The problem with GM is that for years they've been producing numerous model lines with little to distinguish them except questionable reliability and cheap looks and feel. The one brand that they managed to make some headway with, Saturn, was undone by its seeming unwillingness to update the style of its vehicles. Its reliability slipped, as did GM's apparent desire to maintain it, and now it's just another nameplate for the company.

It's time for GM to consolidate its model lines and its models from the reported 80 to a much lower (and more manageable) number. They should take a lesson from their Japanese competitors and reduce the lines down a few nameplates with distinguishing traits (entry level, middle of the road, luxury for example), and concentrate on making cars that people want to buy because they're good cars, not because they have hefty discounts or favorable financing. A greater focus on quality (which is all over the map, per Consumer Reports) wouldn't hurt, as would some nice looking entry level models that rope in young buyers and keep them buying GMs as they get older.

Hate your job? So does India!

Couldn't stop laughing at NPR's Marketplace report that the people working the call centers in India hate their jobs, are getting burned out, and turnover rates are huge. It's getting so bad that they're having to go to less qualified people who have trouble speaking English.

To listen to it here.

An overture for tortured buzzwords

While looking for advertising for my blogs, I found this brilliant piece of copy on the website of Overture.com under "Partner Solutions".

"Achieve superior monetization for your site with our customized solutions."

Apparently the person who wrote this got paid by the syllable. Guess "Get paid with our customized advertising" didn't sound professional enough. The saddest part is that the word "monetization" isn't even used correctly.

Per m-w.com:

Main Entry: mon·e·tize
Pronunciation: 'mä-n&-"tIz also 'm&-
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): -tized; -tiz·ing
Etymology: Latin moneta
1 : to coin into money; also : to establish as legal tender
2 : to purchase (public or private debt) and thereby free for other uses moneys that would have been devoted to debt service
- mon·e·ti·za·tion /"mä-n&-t&-'zA-sh&n also "m&-/ noun

Screw the $21.4 Million, I want 3 Months of Tech Support.

NPR had an amusing take on the points in bold during their business report this morning. You can hear it here.

Carly Fiorina to get $21.4m severance pay
By Scott Morrison in San Francisco in the Financial Times
Published: February 13 2005 20:09 | Last updated: February 13 2005 20:09

Carly Fiorina will be paid a $21.4m severance package after being fired as chief executive of Hewlett-Packard last week. She will also be able to keep her computer and receive free tech support for three months.
The controversial Ms Fiorina, considered one of the most powerful women in corporate America until her departure, will get $14m of her severance in cash, equal to 2.5 times her compensation last year, and receive another $7.38m in performance related bonuses.

Ms Fiorina was asked to resign after the computer and printer maker's shares fell 50 per cent and her $19bn acquisition of Compaq Computer in 2002 failed to generate promised profits.

The terms of the severance agreement, which were detailed in a regulatory filing late on Friday, include the vesting of her 6.07m Hewlett-Packard share options. The average exercise price of those options is $35.73 per share, well above HP's closing price of $21.30 on Friday. She has one year to exercise the options.

The company also provided her with a number of other severance related benefits, including $50,000 for financial counselling, legal and outplacement services. She will also receive administrative support for a six-month period, maintenance of home security for a one-year period and an undisclosed cash payment for the balance of her unused vacation time.

She received $1.4m in salary, a $1.57m bonus and options in the fiscal year to October 31 2004, down from her total compensation of $6.64m the year before.

Even after jumping almost 7 per cent on the day of her departure, HP shares have fallen more than 9 per cent in the past year. The group trades at a significant discount to its rivals due to concern about the company's ability to execute its strategy profitably.

Ms Fiorina, who was hired in 1999 to shake up the “gray old lady of Silicon Valley”, dropped a bombshell in late 2001 when she announced her intention to buy Compaq, the struggling PC maker. That touched off a high-profile proxy battle with Walter Hewlett, then board member and son of co-founder William Hewlett, who said the deal would dilute the value of HP's printing business.

She won over investors by a narrow margin and earned the grudging respect of doubters by integrating the two companies ahead of schedule. But the acquisition failed to boost earnings and HP gave up its lead in the PC market to Dell. HP's corporate computing division has also struggled in the wake of the merger.

Her business career began at AT&T, where she rose to be a vice-president by the early 1990s, impressing with her intelligence, professionalism and style. She made her name when AT&T took the decision to spin off its telephone equipment business in 1995, now known as Lucent Technologies.

One way to keep a Wal Mart out of your neighborhood

This wonderful story from Canada, courtesy of USA Today and the AP:

Union Plans to Sue Wal-Mart Canada

TORONTO, Feb 11, 2005 (AP Online via COMTEX) -- A union Friday said it will file charges against Wal-Mart Canada for exhibiting "bad faith" during its first-ever contract talks by secretly planning to close the affected store.

Earlier this week the Canadian unit of retailing giant Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said it will close the store in Jonquiere, Quebec, in May.

In October, a few months after the store received automatic union certification by the Quebec Labour Relations Board, the company revealed the store wasn't making money.

The company said union demands wouldn't allow the store to operate efficiently and profitably, compounding its already "fragile" economic state.

At a press conference Friday, Michael Fraser, the Canadian director of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, questioned whether Wal-Mart ever had any intention of reaching a collective agreement with the union.

"Wal-Mart made its decision to close the store months before we sat down at the table with them. They made a decision the day the labour board certified the union. Everything since then has been a charade," he told reporters.

The union, which is also skeptical about the company's characterization of the store's economic condition, will be filing unfair labor practice charges. The union plans to ask the province's labor board to force Wal-Mart to prove the store wasn't profitable.

Fraser said it's "quite a coincidence" that the first Wal-Mart store to be unionized in Quebec is also losing money. He said the store's closure is really meant to send a message to Wal-Mart employees in Quebec and across Canada.

Wal-Mart Canada spokesman Andrew Pelletier said the company would provide the store's financial data if requested by the labor board. He noted the union could have seen the income statement for itself, as company negotiators brought it to bargaining meetings.

Pelletier also dismissed allegations that the company bargained in bad faith. In fact, he said the conciliator acknowledged that Wal-Mart Canada bargained in good faith, and he expects the conciliator's report to say so when it's released in the coming weeks.

"We're not the ones that walked away from the bargaining table," Pelletier said, adding that the company initiated the bargaining process and asked for a conciliator. However, in applying for binding arbitration, he said the union was effectively telling the company it wasn't prepared to budge from its monetary demands, which on top of a struggling store made the situation "untenable."

Fraser said the union was not calling for a boycott of Wal-Mart stores as it's engaged in organizing other locations across the country.

It would be interesting to see how many stores Wal-Mart has closed because they are unprofitable anywhere. I'm guessing the number is few or none. There have been other stories of Wal-Mart taking drastic action to quell unionization in the past, including switching to prepackaged raw meat instead of meat cut inside the store to keep its meat department from unionizing.

So, the message is clear to all the communities across the country that don't like the affect that Wal Mart has or will have in their community. Just help organize a union in your local Wal-Mart, and they'll be gone in a hurry.

Fired and forced to live on 21.1 Million

Poor Carly Fiorina. The now ousted CEO of HP will have to walk the streets knocking door to door with her resume hoping to find work, forced to live day to day on a measily severance of 21.1 million.

Perhaps she can look to the buddies that have gone before her, the thousands of people laid off since she took over the company. Maybe they can help her find another CEO position where she can do her best to bring a company down.

Carly was yet another in a long list of CEOs more concerned with their own well being and public stature than in understanding and improving the companies they work for. Carly's completely misguided merger of HP with Compaq created, like most mergers, was less than the sum of its parts. How she thought it was a good idea to merge HP with a company whose biggest asset was one that they already held (namely, a PC business on a downward slide) is a mystery to many.

What kills me is that the price of failure is a 21.1 million windfall that she'll enjoy until some other company picks her up and allows her to lead them down the path of nothingness.

Subway -- Jared is right. Subway's a healthy alternative to the wax paper wrapped heart attacks at other restaurants. I enjoy their sandwiches quite a bit, even if they have less meat on them than Kate Moss on a hunger strike. Having visited 178 Subways in my lifetime (all within a mile radius of my house), I've noticed that almost all of them have the following in common:

1) Awful bathrooms. I think one of them near me was used to film Trainspotting.
2) Sub Nazi owners. My local one has a husband and wife (I assume) who act like you're trying to rip them off when you ask for an extra napkin.
3) The Subway half measure and/or Elastic Veggies. The half measure is when your "sub artist" takes a large handful of vegetables and taunts your sandwich with them, holding them over, as though blessing your sandwich with them, but then only puts half of them on your sandwich. The rest go back in the bins. Elastic Veggies is when the worker grabs a tiny amount of vegetables and pulls them apart with both hands as though willing them to fill the entire length of your sandwich.
4) The one sub, one napkin rule. This rule seems universal. While most fast food places will allow you to pull a ream of napkins out if you want, Subway keeps them under lock and key and has its workers parcel them out like they're giving out gold bullion. I wonder if Jared has to ask for more than one
5) The gloves. I have never figured this one out. They're doing sandwiches, not surgery. For all I know, the guy just swabbed the toilets with his elbows just prior to slipping on the gloves. A thin layer of plastic (which that person grabbed all up and down while slipping on his fingers) isn't going to protect me from Mad Sub Disease or any other sub bourne illness.

I can only figure that Subway is 1) run by the biggest tightwad franchisees in the business or 2) charges so much for its supplies that its owners have to pinch every last penny or go under. All of the above are minor annoyances, but I'd love to once have a sub where I didn't have to ask them to put more vegetables on.

When Black Friday comes.....

Black Friday. I had never heard this term for the day after Thanksgiving until last year. Now there are whole websites devoted to talking about the sales (and leaking sale prices) on that day.

Now I can't say I've ventured out to REALLY shop on this day recently, especially not at 6 AM.

Which leads me to this thought....

Why in the world do all of these companies start their sales at 6 AM? I understand the thinking that you want to catch people before everyone else does, and that if they happen to come late, maybe you snag them for the stuff that isn't ridiculously low. But......

Why not promote opening your stores at noon? If you're a big enough store (like Target), the promise of a crazy sale later in the day will have people holding money back for you, and probably snag more people who find the idea of getting up at 6 on the day after Turkey Day insanity.

Or maybe not.

As a decade long Diet Coke drinker, I've occasionally only had the regular kind available to me. Whenever I drink it, I think, "This was the stuff I loved as a kid?" Never was quite sure why it didn't taste as good. The story below might answer my question. It also makes me wonder why Coca Cola doesn't seize on this opportunity to make the true Coca Cola Classic (made with sugar) available to all of us. They could put it out in smaller bottles or charge a premium price and I'm sure they'd make enough to pay for it.

<<Mexican Coca-Cola taking root in U.S.

The Associated Press

LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. - Deep in the heart of Coca-Cola country, there's at least one place where the iconic caramel-colored fizz doesn't reign supreme - or at least the version most Americans know.
At Las Tarascas Latino Supermarket, 30 miles from the soft drink giant's world headquarters, store manager Eric Carvallo adjusts prized bottles of Mexican Coke displayed prominently at the front of the store.

He then briefly points over his shoulder to a noticeably smaller display of American Cokes tucked in the corner.

Carvallo notes that his store goes through 10 to 15 cases of Mexican Coke each week - his entire stock - while he's barely able to push the five cases of the domestic version he orders.

"Sometimes I have it left over. Sometimes a case, case and a half. So it's a lot of difference," he said.

Taste is the main reason why his discriminating shoppers buy Mexican Coke - they say the cane sugar sweetener used in Mexican Coke has a sweeter, cleaner flavor than the high-fructose corn syrup in the American version. Many are willing to pay $1.10 per 12-ounce bottle for the imports, even with cans of American Coke sitting nearby for 49 cents each.

"You drink it and taste it - it's something you tasted all your life," said Carvallo, referring to the many immigrants who prefer Mexican Coke over its American counterpart.

While the flavor of Mexican Coke provides a taste of nostalgia for immigrants hundreds of miles from home, its retro green-tinted contour glass bottles have also caught on among some baby boomers, who can recall a time when their cola was made with sugar - before rising costs drove U.S. bottlers to switch to corn syrup in the 1980s.

With a niche market for Mexican Coke taking root in the United States, The Coca-Cola Co. and its bottlers are quietly looking to block its passage across the border.

One reason the Atlanta-based company wants the drink to have a low profile in the United States is that bottlers here don't profit from sales of the import, which are produced by independent Mexican bottlers. Mexican Coke, brought in by third-party distributors and retailers, infringes on franchise territory rights of the U.S. plants.

John Craven, editor of BevNet.com, an online beverage industry newsletter based in Cambridge, Mass., suggested Coke also might want to quell any potential demand for a formula that would cost more to produce.

Martin declined to specify what action the company has taken to curb the gray market trade of Mexican Coke, saying only that "our bottlers discourage that practice."

Discouraging the imports may be all they can do, since Mexican bottlers legally produce the drink and third-party distributors and retailers aren't bound by contracts between Coke and its U.S. bottlers.

"It's very tricky for them to enforce," Craven said. "It's not a product that they can get Customs to stop at the border since it's not a counterfeit."

Coca-Cola said it has been unable to track exactly how much Mexican Coke is sold in the United States, although some industry observers say the company's concerns are unwarranted since sales likely pale in comparison to its American counterpart.

"If there's a tiny amount of Coke from Mexico sold in the U.S., it's a pin drop compared to the ocean of American Coke sold by the U.S. bottlers," said John Sicher, editor of the New York-based industry publication Beverage Digest.

Craven agreed, but noted the company's resistance to this budding niche market. "Consumers are starting to wise up to a lot of these smaller brands that are out there, these regionally premium sodas," he said.>>

Last night PBS presented an excellent show about Wal-Mart, details of which can be found here. The show addressed my concern about how Wal-Mart shifted from "Buy American" to selling stuff produced mostly overseas, stating that the change came when Wal-Mart started to see its stock price drop and wanted to increase profits. They flooded their stores with hundreds of cheap imported items with high profit margins. The strategy worked, and continues to this day.

What the show also made clear is that Wal-Mart now ropes its suppliers into a deal with the devil that can hurt ill prepared companies who cede too much up front. Former Rubbermaid executives discussed how that company originally enjoyed a great relationship with Wal-Mart, one in which their sales skyrocketed. When Rubbermaid's costs skyrocketed due to the cost of raw materials going up, they tried to pass this on to Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart advised Rubbermaid that they would either have to eat the costs or see their shelf space dwindle. When Rubbermaid refused to lower the prices Wal-Mart went elsewhere to get similar products and cut its shelf space devoted to Rubbermaid way down.

As a result, Rubbermaid lost lots of money, and eventually was taken over by Newell. THe town of Wooster, known as the home of Rubbermaid, lost its plant, which was sold in pieces, with much going to overseas producers.

Of course, you can argue this was Rubbermaid's fault. After all, someone was able to step in and do what Rubbermaid did cheaper and better. And you wouldn't necessarily be wrong. But, as this story and one about Vlasic on Fast Company (here) demonstrate, Wal-Mart forces the hand of companies both big and small to play ball or suffer. Wal Mart believes that prices should go down, not up, and believes its suppliers should help its "rollback" policy by lowering or keeping their prices the same year in and year out. They even go as far as to suggest that they move their production overseas to keep the costs low.

The end result of this is anyone's guess. You have to think that low prices aren't necessarily good if more and more of the country has less disposible income, especially in the small towns that Wal-Mart made its bones in.