In 1998 we bought cabin up in Winthrop, WA - great vacation country! Absolutely stunning, all year. But, the drive is 18 hours or more ... so, the house sits idle; and, when we get up there, we face deferred maintenance.
In 2004 we decided to sell, but the house didn't move. We liked the way it was advertised and handled by Sheila Coe (Coldwell Banker in Winthrop, WA); she's the agent that we used to buy the place, and that our friends have used, and we like her both personally and professionally. As best we can tell she was just selling into a crappy market (there were, like, 80 listings up in Pine Forest then) and we told her we were still a bit ambivalent about selling, so we kept the price at the top of the market. We ended up loaning out the house to our neighbors, as a temp place while they built a new home.
In Sept '05 the neighbors moved into their new place, so we re-listed the cabin. We chose a different agent, mostly because I dislike Coldwell Banker based on some past transactions with a different office, and after all, Sheila hadn't sold the house, so we figured to give someone else a shot.
The selling process this time was annoying. I felt we got fragmentary information, delivered slowly; long silences when the agent went out of town without warning, etc. I was perturbed by not having the house as widely advertised or as well monitored as I expected. (It was pretty much invisible to a Google search - that's awful!) I was always asking for ideas about how to improve the marketing, how to improve the traffic through the house or the attractiveness of the house ... so I was getting cranky, and it was starting to show - I'm sure I was a pain in the ass for him to endure.
This taught me a lesson - sign up with an agent that matches your style. I expected an ongoing conversation with status reports, he expected to interact only when something very specific came up. I was getting ready to change agents, when another agent in the office brought us an offer. The offer was 10% down, but it was clean so we took it.
The closing process through LandAmerica Transnation in Omak was another sorry exercise in customer non-service, or maybe mis-expectations. They didn't tell me what to expect or provide a schedule, were slow to respond to questions or requests, delivered a cashier's check and charged me $40 overnight fees, even though I asked for electronic deposit, etc. Escrow agent went out of town on a family emergency (didn't tell me) so assistant closed escrow ... I didn't get the settlement statement (an emailed PDF) until a week after closing when I kept asking.
The point isn't really to rant as much as it is to keep in mind that vacation-area styles may be very different from the Silicon Valley-area practices. I should have been more careful about interviewing and clarifying. Maybe next time I'll be smarter!
Thursday, July 20, 2006
Sunday, July 02, 2006
Auctioning flights, using airline miles as currency?
I've been reading that loyalty "miles" programs have been too succesful - huge numbers of miles are being accumulated against a fixed set of air travel flights, and "free" flights are slamming airline balance sheets in both operations and as an overhanging liability.
An airline response of narrowing the available set of flights on popular flights is no good - that just defers the redemption until a time when operational costs have climbed further. And, the overhang will keep growing ... available seats on unpopular routes are probably available for a reason!
Instead, the response has to take advantage of the that airline miles are effectively a currency - so, use repricing (inflation) to mop up the excess.
In that vein, some airlines are raising the number of miles required for various classes of flights, but I bet that irks the loyal customers the airlines are trying to retain - and it focuses the annoyance on the customers that have the most miles, the most loyal of all. Instead, they need a flexible re-pricing mechanism to adjust prices without the obvious intervention of airline pricing departments.
Auctions
Say eBay set up an AirlineTicket category, where the bidding is in airline miles, rather than in dollars. The airlines pay eBay to run the trading mart, showcasing it as a customer convenience particularly for those high-milage customers (the ones with the most miles to spend). Start with bidding against specific flights or upgrade coupons, with a high Buy It Now levels (higher than current per-seat settings). Open up seat availability on a schedule ("3 seats/day" etc) so there are chances for late arrivals to drive up the price for late-purchase seats. Let the customers float the prices up and mop up the currency.
Next, open the auction to flight profiles, so you're bidding on a flight at a between two endpoint groups, over some date range. PriceLine meets eBay.
This calls for some kind of currency-conversion function between airline miles and other currencies (such as dollars), but we know that can be done - loyalty credit cards already grant airline mile credits for dollar-based transactions, now just couple the airline ticket purchase with an offsetting airline miles debit
I think it would have the effect of a tempory "inflation" burst, and then airlines could manage prices by adjusting seat availability and rate of miles grants to achieve a mild ongoing inflation in airlines miles, thus ensuring utilization of the currency rather than hoarding.
And occasionally someone will score a seat for like, 1000 miles - and brag about the coup! Bargain pricing possibilities for noncompromised high-quality goods is a real treasure hunting payoff ... I think this could be a fun and popular way to acquire a non-essential ticket.
An airline response of narrowing the available set of flights on popular flights is no good - that just defers the redemption until a time when operational costs have climbed further. And, the overhang will keep growing ... available seats on unpopular routes are probably available for a reason!
Instead, the response has to take advantage of the that airline miles are effectively a currency - so, use repricing (inflation) to mop up the excess.
In that vein, some airlines are raising the number of miles required for various classes of flights, but I bet that irks the loyal customers the airlines are trying to retain - and it focuses the annoyance on the customers that have the most miles, the most loyal of all. Instead, they need a flexible re-pricing mechanism to adjust prices without the obvious intervention of airline pricing departments.
Auctions
Say eBay set up an AirlineTicket category, where the bidding is in airline miles, rather than in dollars. The airlines pay eBay to run the trading mart, showcasing it as a customer convenience particularly for those high-milage customers (the ones with the most miles to spend). Start with bidding against specific flights or upgrade coupons, with a high Buy It Now levels (higher than current per-seat settings). Open up seat availability on a schedule ("3 seats/day" etc) so there are chances for late arrivals to drive up the price for late-purchase seats. Let the customers float the prices up and mop up the currency.
Next, open the auction to flight profiles, so you're bidding on a flight at a between two endpoint groups, over some date range. PriceLine meets eBay.
This calls for some kind of currency-conversion function between airline miles and other currencies (such as dollars), but we know that can be done - loyalty credit cards already grant airline mile credits for dollar-based transactions, now just couple the airline ticket purchase with an offsetting airline miles debit
I think it would have the effect of a tempory "inflation" burst, and then airlines could manage prices by adjusting seat availability and rate of miles grants to achieve a mild ongoing inflation in airlines miles, thus ensuring utilization of the currency rather than hoarding.
And occasionally someone will score a seat for like, 1000 miles - and brag about the coup! Bargain pricing possibilities for noncompromised high-quality goods is a real treasure hunting payoff ... I think this could be a fun and popular way to acquire a non-essential ticket.
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