IBM – Part 3 December 11, 2002February 22, 2017 Well, IBM has read the last two columns and there is a good resolution – and I don’t just mean my visit from a 34-year computer veteran who speaks six languages and could single-handedly repair the space shuttle if he had to. But before I get to that, some of your feedback: John Lemon: ‘Get a Mac. They’ll ship it to whatever address you want, the OS works, Airport kicks ass (I’m using it right now). The card is ‘only’ $99, takes about 20 seconds to install, and comes with instructions.’ Darrell Granger: ‘The new Mac operating system is completely compatible with PCs, and you can even buy Microsoft products for Macs. Mine worked wonderfully right out of the box.’ Mike Brown: ‘Why didn’t you call Dell? The people at Dell were very nice to me and they answer your questions as long as you live.’ ☞ Well, yes, but see below – nobody’s perfect. Doug Jones: ‘Sorry to hear about your troubles with receiving your IBM laptop. However, where I work (Spokane County Engineering Division), we have a (sarcastic) saying for this type of event: ‘God bless the efficiency of the private sector.” Alan Silver: ‘The problem is exactly what you said: IBM is just too big. This does not make them a bad company, only one where the proverbial right hand seems not to know what the left hand is doing.’ Mike Dominy: ‘I am not a Mac Whacko. I work on PCs for the Army, but I would only buy a Mac for my own Personal Computer. To me, IBM means I Bought Macintosh.’ John Mulhern: ‘I have purchased dozens of desk top and lap top computers for my company, AT&T Wireless, and several for my personal and family use. I have tried IBM, Compaq, Gateway and Dell. The only brand that always, without fail, worked perfectly right out of the box, was Dell. I have no idea how their customer service is as I never had to use them.’ Namewithheld: ‘PLEASE DO NOT REPRINT OR SOME LAWYER WILL LIKELY FIRE MY ASS. I’m one of those famous IBM scientists who works in the Research Center here in Westchester. Your story makes me really sad. I personally apologize to you for the bad service you received. There is simply no excuse for the poor quality and bureaucratic rigmarole you went through. If you still need a battery, let me know. Either call me at 914-[xxx-xxxx] or email me at [xxxx]@yahoo.com and I will overnight you the battery from my own Thinkpad.’ ☞ I believe almost everyone at IBM feels this way. Individually, those I’ve dealt with have been nothing but eager to help. The frustration comes in making an organization as colossal as IBM work in a logical, human way. The lawyers say pages and pages of disclaimers must be included with every item; the logistics guys determine (I guess) it is cheaper to print one 40-page pamphlet in 35 languages and put it in each box rather than a single-page disclaimer customized for the purchaser’s country. And everyone is so bright, and so tech-savvy, they can’t imagine the need for baby-talk instructions. (It’s a big thing that we actually have a notary public where I live. We are years from having an MIS director.) The products themselves are pretty great. My sense is that – especially when price is removed from the equation – ThinkPads are generally considered the class in the field. (But why doesn’t my ThinkPad have a START button on its keyboard? I know keyboard real estate is tight, but Compaq handles it just fine. START buttons are for idiots. IBM needs to realize that most of us are idiots.) Anyway . . . here’s what happened. (And then don’t miss the reader comments that follow, because there are a couple of potentially money-saving suggestions.) I got a call from a very nice woman in Toronto who seemed to have the mandate to make this right – Georgina. A lot of her colleagues had read my two columns, she said, and they were going over every line trying to see how to improve the various aspects of their systems that had caused trouble. Believed her – and why not? These are bright, well-meaning people – like the anonymous Research scientist quoted above – who want to be the best. Not to mention that, in the long run, their livelihood depends on it. They had spent the day coordinating with their guy in my area and finding him a battery to bring to my home (I had paid for on-site service, after all) – would around six o’clock work OK for my schedule? Up he came with a battery and, as I say, 34 years’ experience with computers, battery technology, amps, joules, fiber optic cabling systems for nuclear power plants – and, yes, he spoke six languages. (By now, he could just be retired; he does this for fun, he told me. He likes solving problems. He’d be receiving some parts at 2AM at his home tonight, he said, to solve some other problem he’d been tasked to resolve – happy to do it.) Just before he came I had gotten this e-mail, which I thought it might be helpful to print out for him (I wish I had gotten it sooner): Tim Redding: I used to have a Thinkpad that did this exact thing. In fact, your battery might not be dead. When I used to take mine out to start the computer, I would then put the battery back in and everything would work fine. Go figure! The linguist put in the old battery and it worked fine. Tried starting cold with the battery alone, with the battery and the power cord – no matter what he did, all worked as it should have. Part of me was beginning to feel like the guy who calls the TV Repairman – worse, has been abusive to the TV Repairman – only to find he had forgotten to plug it in. And I do feel a little sheepish for not having tried harder to solve this on my own. But IBM tech support had walked me through each step, and the screen had gone black each time we tried to start up with the battery installed, and it was the IBM phone tech support guy who told me I must have a bad battery or a bad connection and that I needed service. In fact, as best I can fathom it, when the virgin machine is turned on for the very first time, if the battery level isn’t just right, the start-up routine shuts down. It’s only after the machine has installed itself and done some initial self-settings that it is prepared, thereafter, to cope with whatever battery level it finds at boot-up. Tech support should have told me to persist – to try it with the battery after I had fully installed everything. But with a billion different products and models and configurations, how can tech support to get every call right? Anyway, I seem to be in business. And the good news is not just that I can use my ThinkPad, it’s that – conceivably – the IBM really may be looking at ways to improve the system. (One small example: Apparently, if you have bought the on-site service package from IBM Direct, IBM’s service department doesn’t find out about it from the Entitlement department until three to five days after you register the machine online – if you can get online. ‘Gee,’ I said. ‘What if IBM Direct made that part of your record from the moment the machine is shipped out to you?’ Georgianna seemed to be on very much the same page.) Now let’s save a little money – and beat up on Dell: Scott Nicol: ‘I’m a little surprised – you drive a used car but buy new laptops? Computers depreciate much faster than cars, and laptops are among the fastest depreciating computers. Add to this the fact that computers don’t wear out many parts and you really don’t need a 2GHz processor to do a little word processing/money management/internet access/games (would you pay more for a Saturn with a 1000 HP engine?), and the laptop purchase starts to look really extravagant. I’m a programmer, I work from home, and I have far too many computers. The last time I bought a new computer was 10 years ago. Between auctions (eBay) and surplus dealers (geeks.com, to name just one), I’ve purchased about a dozen computers and many more peripherals (network switches, printers, monitors, UPS, etc). Generally they were off-lease or factory refurbished, no more than a year old. Some were brand-new-in-box, leftovers from a model change – in one case the only difference between the old and new model was the face plate. Prices are typically 25% to 90% off of new retail. I’ll probably even end up buying a laptop like yours – two years from now when I can pick it up for $500.’ Jonathan Hochman: ‘How nice of you to send IBM a $1500 holiday gift. I have bought at least six systems from Dell’s Factory Outlet. These computers have been shipped to a consumer, and been returned to Dell for some reason. Dell tests, repairs, and repackages them so they are indistinguishable from new. They are already built, so there is no waiting. Only once did I have a problem with a Dell notebook. They sent me a replacement hard disk the very next day. Please don’t pay a big premium for the fastest processor. Unless you run weather-prediction or code-breaking software, you will never use that much CPU power. Also, you don’t have to pay a computer manufacturer for extra memory. After-market memory from crucial.com is simple to install, and costs less. Usually it’s worth increasing the memory if your computer seems slow. If you need a Wi-Fi card, D-LINK makes good ones that can be had for $80. If you install a wireless access point in your home, I suggest hiring a consultant to configure the thing, and also a router to keep your network secure.’ Michael Joy: ‘I have a similiar tale of woe, though it involved furniture rather than a computer. Took 6 months to iron out. Was only solved when I called the CFO of the company and his secretary solved the problem in 15 minutes. MORAL: Let’s be honest about it and let the secretaries run the world. They already run the only parts of the world that actually work.’ Mark D Hiatt: ‘Please allow me an IBM story of my own. I used to travel quite a bit and learned to place a heavy premium on light weight (pardon me). When I needed a laptop, I bought this amazing little ThinkPad that, while only slightly larger than a trade paperback book, opened up a full-sized keyboard when you raised the lid. The keyboard split down the middle and shifted slightly when you lowered the lid and the whole thing was small, light and worked as expected. I used this little guy for months. (If this was a Capra movie we’d see one of those Page-A-Day calendars now, with the pages blowing off into an unseen wind.) I’m in Speedway, Indiana on my way home from Washington DC. I’d opened the door to judge the weather and my wife came by to have one of those moments with me at the door, her arms around my shoulders – Gee, isn’t it great we’re on the road together and it’s going to be so nice today and all of that. I turned, which she anticipated, but she thought I’d go clockwise when I went the other way, bumping into her arms, losing my balance and sending me onto the laptop’s heavy-duty case. I heard a cracking noise. I unzipped the case to remove the ThinkPad. Sure enough, one edge of the lid was cracked and when I opened it up the screen was shattered. I dialed the ‘800’ number and was told to expect a special box to ship my remains back to IBM would be at my home almost before I would be there myself the next day. Then it would be three days to wait for their estimate. Two days later, I got the bid: $2275 to fix the screen of my $1750 laptop. I was ready to spit nails! That night, NBC’s Tom Brokaw was interviewing Lou Gerstner of IBM and Lou was telling an amazed Brokaw how high-tech he was. ‘I even have my own web page,’ he told a slack-jawed Brokaw. There it was on national TV, bigger than life. And while the rest of America marveled at the techs-pertise of the IBM CEO, I was busy copying down the URL to Give Him A Piece of My Mind. I let him know what I thought of spending more to replace half of a computer than I’d spent on the whole machine. It felt very satisfying to hit the Send button on that one. I thought I was done. But the next day, there was a phone message waiting for me from one of Gerstner’s minions. And within the week, I had a replacement for my battered ThinkPad. No charge. Andy, there isn’t a computer company anywhere in the world that warrants their laptops against Fat Guys Walking On Them. When it came time to buy another traveler, I bought another ThinkPad, and when it came time to replace my desktop computer, I bought another IBM, and for years now friends and family have commented on the marvelous styling of the sleek, black machine and I have told them this story. And now I’ve told you: IBM is Good People.’ ☞ I agree. But if the system is designed to charge you $2,275 and not to allow people the flexibility to do what they think the Chairman would do if he knew about the problem, then the people are good, and the Chairman is good (or wants to be liked), but the system that the Chairman presides over needs fixing – which at the end of the day is ultimately his fault. Michael Burns: ‘Between my two businesses and my personal life, I order well over $100k worth of stuff by credit card every year. Almost all of it on-line. The billing addresses are PO Boxes, the shipping addresses are real street addresses. I’ve learned one very important lessen over the years, namely that any place that even hesitates to ship to an address different than the billing address is a place to avoid as their customer service always stinks. They are more concerned with not getting taken than they are with servicing their customers. So if I place an order and they balk in any way, we simply switch suppliers. And yes, both of my businesses accept credit cards, so I do understand the merchants’ perspective about being taken.’ Parks Stewart: ‘Now that you’ve teased us all with the ‘Patience, jackass, patience’ line, I think it’s somewhat incumbent on you to tell the whole joke.’ ☞ Patience, jackass — patience! Sorry, but that basically WAS the joke. After an endless shaggy-dog buildup . . . the jackass asking his owner for water and his owner responding ‘patience, jackass, patience’ and the jackass asking his owner for water – ‘water, master, water!’ – and his owner responding ‘patience, jackass, patience’ and the jackass asking his owner for water and his owner responding ‘patience, jackass, patience’ . . . my dad fell for it and asked my brother to get to the point, for crying out loud – and my brother responded, ‘Patience, jackass, patience!’ The idea of my brother, aged 11, saying anything that incredibly disrespectful was so risky, so out of character, so edgy for 1954 – well, it was Lenny Bruce come to Apartment 6C. We were convulsed. And now you know. Finally, let us be clear: nobody’s perfect: Ed Farber: ‘About a month ago a friend of mine purchased a computer from the Dell kiosk in a local mall. Yesterday, he called Dell to find out when the computer would be delivered. He was told that there was no record of his order (but there was a record of the check that was used to pay for it). The Dell rep then told him that the model he ordered is no longer available and it would cost an extra $150 for the replacement model. He said ‘no thanks’ and asked for a refund. He was on the phone for over two hours and spoke to six different people from Dell and they still couldn’t get it right.’ Jeff: ‘I own a Dell and had such exceptional customer service problems that they sent me a free, moderately high-end digital camera to induce me to keep rather than return the laptop. Even after accepting the camera, their support still stinks, and is disconnected in the same way you described IBM’s to be (i.e., tech support doesn’t know what customer service has said and they can’t transfer you to each other’s phone lines, etc.). Their tech support has never once found me a solution which wasn’t, basically, ‘Do this obvious step that any moron would have figured out to try,’ followed by, ‘That didn’t work, huh? I have no idea what’s wrong then.’ (I’m paraphrasing a little bit.)’ ☞ By all indications, Dell ordinarily does a very good job – how else to account for its ever growing market share? But IBM draws a lot of raves, too. If my frustrating little saga actually led IBM to reexamine some of its procedures, at least on the home-user side, it would be a great win-win. Could one user in a million – even in Bratislava, let alone in Budapest or Beijing or Biloxi – actually read the two-page Bratislavan Declaration of Conformity shipped with every ThinkPad? Somehow, the creative Ben & Jerry types (well, let’s face it: the Apple types) need to be given a little more juice in IBM’s overall power mix.
Poor IBM – Part 2 December 10, 2002January 23, 2017 Having yesterday abused you with the sad saga of my IBM ThinkPad T30, I feel compelled, in fairness, to tell you the rest of the story. It came! FedEx delivered it exactly as expected (as FedEx generally does). I grabbed the wi-fi chip that had been delivered weeks ago (no installation instructions) and the extra 256MB of memory I had ordered (shipped with the computer, but for $3,100, IBM can’t be expected to install it for you), and set to work. Step #1 – Being sure that nothing is plugged into the computer and the battery is not inserted, open the little place that the memory goes and install it. Check. Step #2 – Open the only other openable compartment where – yes! – the wi-fi chip seems to fit and install it. Check. (Well, no one said anything about the two impossibly small cables hidden under a vinyl flap, and IBM tech support didn’t mention them, either, so I installed it wrong, but later figured it out from the CD wi-fi installation disk. Or at least I hope I did.) Step #3 – Take a moment to marvel at all the little Part Number bar codes from around the world stuck all over the computer and its chips. Check. Step #4 – Insert the battery. Check. Step #5 – Plug the power cord into the wall outlet (being careful in 34 languages not to insert wet thumb instead). Check. Step #6 – Press the Power button so Windows XP can lead me through setup. Check. Step #7 – Watch delightedly as the screen bursts into color and begins its initial launch (‘please wait while we initialize the volume . . . ‘) and then goes black. Step #8 – It’s still black? Step #9 – Still? Step #10 – Press a few keys to try to wake it up. Black. Press the power button again to try to turn it off or on. Nothing. Try control-alt-delete. Still black. Try removing the power cord – a chirp – and then plugging it back in – another chirp. Still black. Try the power button for 5 seconds. Black. Try it again – success! It seems to come to life and start all over again, running through the same early start-up screens preparing to load Windows XP and – black again. Step #11 – So maybe it was doing something? I waited a while longer. Patience, jackass, patience. (This is the punch line to a very long, very old joke my brother told the family at dinner one night in 1954, when I was 7 and he was 11. It left us, though not our parents, convulsed. ‘Patience, jackass, patience.’) Still black. Step #12 – Call IBM support again at 800-772-2227, a telephone number that, once I found it (they don’t exactly print it in bold) came back to me, from ThinkPads of yore, like an old nemesis. Listen to the messages, punch in the model number, listen to the messages . . . and fairly soon I am on the line with, in this case, Carlton. He asked me some more questions – I have already memorized my IBM model and serial numbers – and then he let me tell him the problem. ‘Try removing the battery,’ he said. And sure enough, with the battery removed, I got all the way into the Windows setup. ‘You probably have a bad battery,’ he said. ‘We’ll ship you out a new one.’ ‘OK,’ I said, grateful for the support. (You can’t really expect IBM to test any of this stuff before they ship it.) ‘But actually – come to think of it – I paid a bunch of money for next-day on-site service. Is this something that would be covered? Could someone actually bring me a new battery and make sure that fixes the problem?’ ‘Why, yes!’ said Carlton, looking at my record and seeing that I qualified. ‘Great!’ I said. ‘Call 800-IBM-SERV for that,’ he said. (To serve you better, IBM has kept these departments separate, and the service reps in the first department can’t connect you to the reps in the second.) ‘Thanks!’ I said, and dialed 800-IBM-SERV. More messages, saying or keying in the model number, and so on, and I got a nice young guy who, upon hearing my by-now-memorized serial number, told me he was sorry, but that number didn’t seem to be coming up in his system. Was I sure I had signed up for the on-site service? I was sure. I had gotten eight identical e-mails from IBM two days earlier announcing that the system had shipped, at last, and detailing its contents – including (in all eight identical e-mails) this item: 30L9190 2YR ONSITE REPAIR 9X5 NEXT DAY 1 I don’t know why I got this e-mail from IBM eight times in rapid succession. Maybe someone’s ‘send’ key stuck. Maybe IBM was becoming as frustrated with me as I was with them. Maybe it was someone’s substitute for eight exclamation marks. I read the nice young guy this e-mail and asked whether my IBM order number would help him track down my service contract. ‘We don’t have access to those records,’ he said. ‘You know,’ I said, ‘one thing that could be great is for you guys at IBM all to standardize on a single system. You know – instead of using Macs in one department, Linux in another, and so on, why not have everyone using the same stuff – maybe connect it all with a network – and give everyone access to the data they need. Would that be a good idea?’ Yes, he said, his careful chuckle suggesting that he totally agreed, but also that he knew he had a guy on the end of the phone this close to going postal. ‘I will transfer you over to Entitlement,’ he cheerfully concluded, ‘and they will straighten it out.’ This is how I got to meet Kim, and how I got to tell my story again and read her the eight e-mail confirmations of the ‘parts’ they had shipped me, including 30L9190, 2YR ONSITE REPAIR 9X5 NEXT DAY. Kim asked if it would be OK to put me on a music hold for a couple of minutes – ‘of course,’ I said (Serenity now! Serenity now!) – and then came back to ask if I could wait another couple of minutes – ‘Not a problem,’ I said – and then came back to suggest that, as more research would be required, it would be better if she could call me back. An hour or so later, with the sun now firmly set, my caller ID flashed IBM. ‘Kim!’ I answered with enthusiasm. ‘How’d we do?’ ‘Is Andrew Tobias there?’ asked a man named Nana. Nana, like everyone else I’ve spoken with at IBM, was truly a nice fellow. Entitlement had okayed me, he said, so what was the problem and how could he help? I explained the battery situation, and also that, while I had been waiting on music hold, I had discovered that the cursor moved backwards. Push the TrackPoint to the right and the cursor moved left. Push it to the left and it moved right. ‘Is that the way it’s supposed to work?’ I asked. ‘No,’ he said, and – two points for Nana Owusu – by getting me to restart the machine in BIOS mode, or whatever it’s called, and having me re-set the factory defaults, the cursor started going where it was supposed to. ‘Do they ever test these machines before they ship them?’ I asked while we were waiting for mine to reboot. ‘They’re supposed to,’ said Nana. Now, in fairness, it may be that IBM was so keen on finally getting my replacement ThinkPad that someone decided to skip the testing phase, in the interest of time. I might have made the same call myself. But whatever happened, the battery seemed to be no good. Nana said it was now too late to set up a service call for tomorrow (today, as you read this) and also too late to overnight me a battery. But he could do it for Wednesday. Well, Wednesday I’ll be in transit, so rather than ask for a human to deliver the battery and check out the machine, I asked Nana to just send the battery . . . maybe we’d get lucky and that would solve the problem. Nana took down my SHIPPING ADDRESS very carefully and, after putting me on hold, came back to announce that these batteries, made in Japan, are currently out of stock. To his credit, he didn’t announce this with even a trace of glee or, for that matter, frosty defensiveness. I felt him feel my pain. He would check with management and try to expedite the battery somehow. Which is where it now stands. I can use the laptop; just not without a power outlet. Perhaps the most annoying part of all this is how this situation has distracted me from what might otherwise have filled this column. E.g., Senate Majority leader Trent Lott of Mississippi saying the United States would have been better off if then-segregationist candidate Strom Thurmond had won the presidency in 1948. (‘When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him,’ Lott proclaimed at Strom’s 100th birthday party. ‘We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years, either.’) Or Texas Governor Rick Perry sticking with support for the Texas sodomy law that his predecessor, George W. Bush, had also supported. (The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in 1986 that consenting gay adults had no right to private sex. Now the Court has agreed to hear a Texas case that revisits this issue. Should it in fact be criminal for two guys or gals to be intimate in the privacy of their own bedroom? Yes, says the newly elected Republican Governor of Texas: ‘I think our law is appropriate.’) Or the Bush administration’s favoring drug companies over consumers. (‘Drug companies have repeatedly disseminated misleading advertisements, even after being cited for violations, and millions of people see the deceptive ads before the government tries to halt them, Congressional investigators said,’ reported the New York Times last Wednesday. ‘The General Accounting Office criticized delays in enforcing standards for the accuracy of drug advertising and attributed much of the delay to a recent change by the Bush administration that lengthens the review process.’) And that merely scratches the surface. (How about not extending the unemployment benefits that are running out for 780,000 folks just in time for Christmas? How about double-crossing John McCain on campaign finance reform?) I also feel rotten for IBM, because if they can’t get this right, who can? (Dell! I hear you shout. Compaq! Winbook! Apple!) As recounted yesterday, IBM is a national – yea, verily, a global – treasure. I hate to see the brilliance of their research scientists foiled by the dispatcher at UPS or the woman who blocks shipment to an alternative address. The one silver lining is that my original shipment, which went awry and may actually have been stolen (well, where else can it be?), will probably not work right out of the box, either. So my hope is that the thief will call in for tech support, will be asked for his ThinkPad serial number . . . and faster than you can say, ‘may I place you on hold?’ red lights will start flashing at IBM and federal agents will be at his door. Now I’m going to see if the DVD drive will play a movie. # [Hey: the DVD works! Cool! So does the earphone jack! And . . . get a load of this Pinball Game! Unbelievably lifelike and spectacular – and I got over 1,000,000 points on my first ball. Serenity indeed! My old pinball machine – a real one – cost substantially less than $3,100 and was very cool. (‘The … Black … Knight … will … play … you,” it would bellow when you pressed its start button.) But it took up a lot of space and the ball sometimes got stuck. Could my ThinkPad have been worth the aggravation after all? Am I seeing light at the end of the laptop tunnel? I know it would have been easier with a Macintosh, but I am keeping a positive attitude. Serenity now.]
Poor IBM Warning: No Useful Content December 9, 2002February 22, 2017 IBM is a miracle. Do you know that they have made argon atoms dance the Macarena? That they can fit the entire contents of the Library of Congress on a single crystal the size of a sugar cube? (Not that anyone has danced the Macarena or has seen a sugar cube in quite some time.) IBM has a new device that can travel through your arteries turning plaque into brain cells. None of that is strictly true, but it’s how I feel about IBM. These guys can do anything. I am flying at 37,000 feet typing this column on my brand new $3,100 IBM ThinkPad T30 laptop computer. It weighs less than a honeydew melon, yet I have more computing capacity here on my lap than was possessed in the entire Defense Department when I entered high school. It can read and write CDs. It can play a movie on its DVD drive. It has a hard drive capable of storing not just my next book, if I should write one, but the contents of 100,000 other books as well. It communicates with the Internet at high speed without wires, so I can sit at the airport or at Starbucks and click on the icon for my free RealOne Player and have it grab classical music from South Dakota or South America or fetch my e-mail. I can plug my credit-card-sized (but thicker) Casio Exilim M2 combo color camera/MP3 player into one of its USB ports and upload photos or download Tchaikovsky. All this sitting at the airport with no wires. All of that IS strictly true (I think) except for one tiny, all but trivial detail; namely, that IBM – while able to make this miraculous machine, and eager to sell it to me – was not able to physically deliver it to me. So it is not on my lap and I am not typing on it. The saga begins – and let us be clear that my saga is no more important or maddening than your saga, whether with IBM or UPS or anyone else, so I offer it as a collective, cathartic e-vent – October 21. (Oh, sure: you have a saga that’s been three generations in the courts. Well, but this is my saga.) I was all set to buy a $1,699 Winbook J4 with more or less all the features above, but a friend persuaded me to go the extra mile and get the IBM. As cheap as I am, I don’t mind paying up for a laptop – I spend most of my day typing on one, and I also see it as a way to toss a few bucks into this amazing technology pot. My hesitation with IBM was that, having owned three ThinkPads in the past, I had come to think of her as just too big to be consumer friendly. But that was two Winbooks and two Compaqs ago (I am actually typing this on my more than adequate two-year-old Compaq Armada E500S), and my friend told me that the service from IBM Direct is now terrific – and as if that weren’t enough, you may recall that IBM has been taking these huge two-page full-color ThinkPad ads everyplace featuring none other than my better half. So off to the website I went. The site was not exactly idiot-proof, so I wound up calling a human named Richard who did a very good job of taking my order and credit card. I was assured that my ThinkPad would arrive in about a week, just as soon as it could be tested and second-day aired. (The 802.11 wi-fi part would come a couple of weeks later and I would have no trouble installing it myself, Richard said.) Oh, good. Richard took my billing address and my shipping address and had me swear that Visa had my shipping address registered (otherwise there would be problems), and that was that. Two days later, a woman named Breanne at IBM reached me to say that Visa’s authorization wasn’t good enough. We were talking about a $3,100 machine, and they were not about to send it to the alternate address I had given them, and that Visa has registered in their file, without my filling out and faxing in a handwritten form. There are certain risks even IBM is not large enough to shoulder. This was annoying, but life is short – bring on the form. I had to handwrite my name and billing address and shipping address (their computer couldn’t pre-fill any of this out?), enter all the credit card info by hand, and sign a statement that I really, really wanted the ThinkPad shipped to my shipping address. I then began a day of faxing the form back to IBM, whose designated fax number was constantly busy or out of service. I called Breanne and got her voice mail. I left word asking her to e-mail an alternate fax number. ‘It should be fine now,’ she e-mailed back. But it wasn’t. Finally, having been working on this on and off all day, I lost my cool and e-mailed her asking her to just cancel the order. Part of me was thinking that $3,100 was a lot to pay for an IBM version of a $1,699 Winbook; part of me was aware that my Compaq was largely all I needed anyway; and most of me, I guess, assumed that someone from IBM would call apologetically, cut through all this nonsense, and ask me not to give up on IBM. I got back a chipper e-mail: ‘I will cancel your order. Sorry! IBM Credit Card Services.’ That was it. Time passed. The leaves changed color up North. It was November. I caved. I decided that I really ought to have a backup in case this laptop dies, and I was excited by the wi-fi capabilities I had heard about. I called Richard at IBM and, yes, he still had my order on file and was happy to charge my card $3,100 and let me try again. This time, my handwritten fax went through confirming that I really, really wanted it shipped to my shipping address. (I need it shipped to my shipping address to be sure someone will be there to sign for it even if I’m away.) My card was charged November 13, and a couple of days later I had my brand new IBM Thinkpad carrying case, delivered to my shipping address, and the little wi-fi chip thing IBM wants me to install. (“Some assembly required.”) Richard was in Canada, the wi-fi thing was made in Malaysia but came with an installation CD made in Mexico and a 36-page safety booklet in 33 languages telling me not to stick my wet thumb into an electrical socket. (Several of the alphabets I could not identify, but it was titled Before installing this product, read the Safety Information. Or, put a different way, Ennen kuin asennat tämän tuotteen, lue turvaohjeet kohdasta Safety Information. Is that French?) Missing was only the computer. Someone, I learned later, had decided to deliver it to my billing address. And in truth, UPS delivers a lot of stuff there. If no one’s home, they toss it over the gate or leave one of those annoying notices tacked to your door telling you they’ll come try again. When I’m not around, I have a friend who takes care of a lot of this stuff at my billing address. He grabbed the notice off the door and, not knowing any of the background (or that the package was from IBM), nonetheless did exactly what I would have hoped. He called UPS, told them I was out of town, and instructed them to deliver the package to an address a few miles away: my SHIPPING ADDRESS. UPS said, OK, that’s what they would do. I got back into town the next day just as my friend was going off to Morocco for a 10-day vacation. When I saw him, he mentioned this in passing, but I didn’t think it was the computer – why would the first two-thirds of the order go to my SHIPPING ADDRESS, as endlessly confirmed and verified, and the computer itself be UPS-ed to my billing address? A couple more days passed without the computer. I called Richard at IBM who said, well, gee, it sure should have arrived . . . that it had been shipped to my SHIPPING ADDRESS and he would get with UPS to track it down. The next day Richard asked if I knew a woman named Kristin Porter (or something sounding like that) who lived at 2699 Bayshore Drive. Kristin Porter? It sounded vaguely familiar, but no, I didn’t know her – is that where the computer had been delivered? Indeed. And then I realized what it was. It wasn’t a woman named Kristin Porter, it was a hot Miami-based ad agency called Crispin, Porter & Bogusky, which happens to be where my friend-who-called-UPS works. Somehow, UPS must have had his name in its database. Whoever took my friend’s phone call may have been unsure he had taken down my SHIPPING ADDRESS right and so, to be safe, checked on my friend’s records and decided to send it to his office instead. (I’m just imagining how this could possibly have happened. No one can explain it.) And so, without telling IBM or me, the package went to Crispin, Porter & Bogusky. Of course, as it was addressed to me and I don‘t work there (and my friend had gone to Morocco for 10 days), they had no idea what it was or what to do with it. I called my friend in Morocco who called his friends at the office – but its being Thanksgiving, more or less, they, too, were away, so he left voice mails – but the long and short of it is that no one at Crispin, Porter & Bogusky can find it. Richard got his supervisor onto the case and they have transferred it to Melissa who called me from IBM’s “Post Sales Support Team, PCD/X-Series Operations, Americas ibm.com Centers.” As usual, I had to start all over telling my sad story. She explained that IBM will file a claim with UPS and UPS requires 8 days to try to retrieve the package, after which it will either be delivered to me or else IBM will offer to credit my credit card (that can’t be done yet) or send me another system. “You know,” I said, “I first started trying to buy this computer in October. What if – just hypothetically – I actually needed it? Could you do your work without a computer for two months?” Melissa couldn’t have been nicer, but policy is policy. So. This is already much too long a story and – trust me – I have abbreviated it. Once the 8 days passed without anyone’s being able to find the computer, IBM called FedEx to send me another ThinkPad. FedEx picked it up from IBM in Guadalahara at 12:25pm Saturday and got it to Ft. Lauderdale via Memphis at 6:31pm Sunday. By the time you read this today, I might even have it. But I am not counting any chickens (you can count them; just don’t eat them unless they are free-range). And if I weren’t by nature a reasonably positive person (Serenity now! Serenity now!), I might even have lost a little of the joy that initially accompanied my purchase – let alone my enthusiasm for installing the wi-fi. (In addition to the 36-page Safety Instructions that accompany the wi-fi chip, there’s a 44-page legal pamphlet, mostly in English, detailing, for example, special limitations of liability in Egypt and the all important Korean conformity notice. There is also, separately, a 3-page English-language “Product Acquisition Agreement” governing the terms of my purchase of this one-ounce $169 wi-fi chip. Not included are printed installation instructions of any kind.) If there is no column tomorrow, it will be because you deserve a break and/or because I am on hold with IBM tech support. Thank you for letting me vent. I owe you one.
Earn 37% Tax-Free December 6, 2002February 22, 2017 Brad Hurley: ‘FYI, the front-loading washer has a pretty impressive rate of return (37%), as do many other energy efficiency upgrades. Check out this page from the folks at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. When looking at the chart, note that what they call ‘purchase price’ is really the incremental cost (the additional amount you pay up-front for the energy-efficient model compared with a conventional kilowatt-guzzler.) Chicago is saving almost $1 million annually through energy efficiency retrofits it made to municipal buildings, and Denver saves $350,000/year after converting all of its traffic signals from incandescent lamps to energy-efficient LEDs. The key to slowing global warming and improving air quality is to burn less coal, oil, and gas. If more people and businesses understood the profitability of energy efficiency (and if we didn’t have oilmen in the White House), we’d easily meet and beat the greenhouse gas emissions targets in the Kyoto Protocol.’ ☞ Note, too, that your 37% return is tax-free. Awesome! (And for those who want to save the planet, read Natural Capitalism.) DRYING LIKE A SPANIARD Gloria: ‘Tell Charles there’s no need to sprain anything. I grew up in Spain, at a time when dryers were rare (I think they still are, for the most part). All through the years we got by hanging the clothes outside. If it rained, then we hung them on the staircase wrought iron banister. This became embarrassing when my sister and I started to bring boys home (miscellaneous undergarments on display). But that was a minor inconvenience. Also, by using fabric softener during the wash, the clothes were not stiff, and they smelled fresh and lasted longer, as one of your readers said. Then I moved to the US, dryer-centric country, and I forgot about the old ways. Fast forward to today: my husband and I bought a house just a couple of months ago. There is no gas hookup in the laundry room, which our dryer needs. It is taking us a while to find someone who would come over to put a gas line there (an indication of how much construction is going on in Northern CA these days). In the meantime, we hang the clothes outside, or once again, along the banister. I don’t mind it too much, and I’m tempted to let the dryer sit idle for a while.’ AD AWARE Ken Bowen: ‘Thanks for the tip. I’ve been plagued by those pop-up windows ever since my daughter (without asking me) installed some ‘free’ software on my computer. This one tip alone is worth the subscription price to your site!’ ☞ Let’s not get carried away. Bill: ‘I have been using it for many months now and it is amazing the amount of junk that websites force on us. Make sure you install the ref update too. That way, you can get the latest reference file (new spyware detection) whenever you want, in a semi-automated way.’ Fred: ‘I’ve been using Ad Aware for over a year. I almost always find a couple dozen new spyware files. Have you heard of fatwallet.com? They post online coupons/rebates and forums for hot deals on various items. They also have a finance forum posting hot deals for credit and investment accounts (no stock picks per se, but more like what broker is most economical, lowest minimum opening balance etc. My favorite part is where they describe the cheapest way to buy stuff online from retailers by taking advantage of multiple coupons.’ TIVO I can’t imagine life without it. I’ve written a bout this before, and assume that within a few years the majority of American families will have this capability in their homes, one way or another. I love TiVo. But that’s different from being sure TiVo (the company) can ever make much of a profit. The stock might go up on a great holiday season, or even one day make it big. (Imagine 2 million users on whom TiVo cleared $100 a year profit, between fees and the marketing deals it can make. That’s $100 million profit for perhaps a $1 billion market valuation – quadruple where it is today.) But at least for now, I’ve taken my modest profit. The last straw were the latest insider sales. If they’re selling, why not we?
Ad-Aware; Let’s Fund the SEC December 5, 2002February 22, 2017 AN EASY WAY TO TRUMP THE TROJANS My friend Bryan Norcross turned me onto this. It is a free, quick way to identify and remove the Trojan programs that have been placed on your system to pepper you with more pop-up ads. I don’t claim to be any sort of expert in this, except to say that it was as easy as 1-2-3: 1. Click here to visit the Lavasoft website. The program you want to download is called Ad-Aware Version 5.83, which you will see prominently featured. 2. Download it. There are instructions and a section of Frequently Asked Questions you may want to read first. (You select the site from which you want to download it – I chose the PC Magazine site, but you might choose C-NET or any of the others.) 3. Run it. Ad-Aware scans your hard-drive and soon presents you with a list of these unwanted Trojan programs. It found 138 on Bryan’s computer. I had 40. You then check the ones you want to delete – all of them, in my case and Bryan’s – and, zip-zip, they’re gone. This can only be good. LET’S FUND THE S.E.C. You are investors. I’m an investor. In Arthur Levitt, S.E.C. chairman under Bill Clinton, we had a terrific friend and advocate. In Harvey Pitt, his successor, it’s less clear what we got. But whatever you may think of the S.E.C. leadership mess (Pitt resigned; both the S.E.C. and the new accounting oversight board that he tapped William Webster to lead are leaderless) . . . there is the lack of resources. The S.E.C. is underfunded and understaffed. Reported the New York Times on its front page last Sunday: ‘Two of the most important units of the 3,100-person commission, its enforcement division and its office of compliance inspections, are understaffed by hundreds of officials, experts say, sharply limiting their effectiveness.’ The same can be said for the new accounting standards board – and, for that matter, the IRS. There are some places it makes little sense to scrimp. Keeping the S.E.C. (or the I.R.S.) understaffed is good if you or someone you love is into insider trading or misleading the public (or not paying his taxes). But it is bad for folks like you and me. W. and the Republican Congress are on the wrong side of this one.
More 529 Choices December 4, 2002February 22, 2017 But first . . . CLEAN YOUR CLOTHES IN THE FRIDGE Brad Hurley: ‘Of course, another solution for consolidating laundry loads is to buy colored underwear instead of white. I don’t own any white clothing other than one dress shirt that I use once or twice a year when I have to wear a suit. And on the subject of laundry, when it’s time to buy a new washer it’s a wise idea to get a horizontal-axis (front-loading) model. Mine (a Frigidaire) uses one-third the water, one-third the electricity, and half the soap of a standard top-loading model. It costs less than $20/year to operate and is better for the environment. The purchase price is a bit higher than top-loading models, but the lower operating costs more than make up for that in the long run. Meanwhile, I haven’t owned a clothes dryer in 20 years. Why bother? In summer I put everything out on a line, and in winter I use indoor drying racks. Sheets are a bit awkward to dry inside, but everything else dries fine, if less fluffy and soft than what would come out of a dryer. Clothes seem to last longer when they’re not subjected to the heat of a dryer. I’m still wearing several favorite shirts that I bought in the early 1980s.’ ☞ I showed this to Charles and he rolled his eyes so hard he sprained them. (But we like the part about the water-and-energy-efficient front-loaders.) And now, responding to yesterday’s column . . . YOU REALLY OUGHT TO GIVE IOWA A TRY Carl Grice: You write that the Missouri 529 college plan is an excellent one, ‘with the lowest expenses of any plan that includes international equities.’ Just so you know, the Iowa 529 plan has the same expenses as the Missouri plan (0.65%), does have international exposure in the equity portion, AND it uses Vanguard funds.’ I LOVE NEW YORK Dana D. Dlott: ‘I can’t claim to be an expert on 529 plans, but I did recently open one for my kid. I have some comments: First, don’t uncritically believe Hurley’s ‘cap’ ratings at savingforcollege.com. [Joe uses mortar-board graduation caps much as a movie reviewer uses stars.] I was excited to see his highest rating for my state, Illinois. But when I downloaded the prospectus, I found the plan had many unpalatable features, including total reliance on Salomon Smith Barney and a really terrible provision that the fixed income part of the plan had to be invested in one of a few banks mainly in Chicago that paid low rates. This is all consistent with the terrible and corrupt state government in Illinois. It’s obvious that such a plan couldn’t be enacted in Illinois without some crony back-scratching. I recommend opening your 529 account in a state that is known for good government. I ended up opening my plan in New York. I won’t claim the NY government is great, but compared to Illinois, Albany is a bunch of saints. In any case the plan is run by TIAA-CREF, which I like a lot, and the overall cost has just been lowered to 0.60% which was the lowest I could find.’
Is that a 529 I See on the Verizon? December 3, 2002February 22, 2017 Chris Conway: ‘I have three children ages 14, 12, and 9. We have one UGMA [Uniform Gifts to Minors Account] for each child set up years ago. The current values are approximately, $18,000, $17,000, and $15,000, respectively. The accounts are actually DRIPs tied to Verizon stock. Should I consider switching one or more of these to a good 529 Plan – like the Missouri Plan? (And if so, WHEN??) How will the gains be treated if we liquidate the UGMAs to fund the 529s? (And, we do have to ‘liquidate’ don’t we? I can’t just ‘roll it over’ can I? Or should I keep them where they are? Given the market lately, I’m not sure where the price of Verizon will be when child number one is ready for college. I also understand that these two plans (UGMA vs. 529s) may be treated differently by the college financial aid process. Which one would result in a lower family financial responsibility in the college aid process?’ ☞ That’s a good chunk of money you’ve set aside for college – you should take pride in that. But it’s really dangerous for your children’s future to be tied to the performance of a single stock, no matter what method is used to hold the investments, so I would suggest liquidating these accounts for that reason alone. You WILL have to sell the shares to move the money into a 529, but as long as you are planning to use the money for college, all future gains will be tax-free under those circumstances, and you will get far better diversification. (The younger children are subject to the kiddie tax, which means gains over $1,500 will be taxed at the parents’ tax rate; but gains for the 14-year-old will all be taxed at his low rate.) The Missouri plan is an excellent one, with the lowest expenses of any plan that includes international equities (for extra diversification). The Utah plan has lower expenses, but is limited to US stocks only. If you do use the Missouri plan, my friend the estimable Less Antman recommends the 100% Equity option, which will still be a big step down in risk from your current Verizon-only approach. But consider the Managed Allocation Option, which will move more of the funds into less volatile bonds and money market accounts as your children get closer to college age. As for college aid, there is an advantage to the 529 account, Less advises, but it might not apply to you. A 529 account with the parent as owner of the account is treated as a parental asset, and only around 6% of it is treated as being available each year for a child’s college costs, while 30% of the child’s own assets, including UGMA/UTMA accounts, are considered available. The problem you face is that you cannot switch UGMA funds back to your name, so the 529 account, if funded with the assets from the UGMA account, must itself be designated that way. (One possible way around this is to spend the UGMA funds for optional expenses of the children themselves, like cars, if you’d be buying them cars, computers, summer camp, and so on. Use other money to fund the 529 plans in your name. But note that you cannot use UGMA money for parental responsibilities – like room and board and clothes – so you’d be hard-pressed to spend all that UGMA money on them without being wasteful.) The main thing: you have all your kids’ college eggs in a single basket. I’d be sure to fix that. For Kaye Thomas’s excellent article on transferring custodial account money to 529 plans, click here. Also, if you haven’t already got it book marked: savingforcollege.com. (Less did most of the work on this column – thanks, Less!)
A 14.85% Yield? December 2, 2002February 22, 2017 CLEANING LIKE A GUY Mark Gorman: ‘In connection with ‘cleaning like a guy’ you recently wrote: ‘You will also want to add a second washer, for colored fabrics.’ Shame on you! A real guy knows that the way to wash clothes is to throw everything together and wash it all in cold water. When she comes for a visit, my mother sometimes comments ‘That’s why your underwear is gray’ (it’s not really gray, but let’s just say it’s not as white as it used to be). To which I respond, ‘And your point is….?” ☞ I stand corrected. YOU MEAN QWERTYPOTTY ISN’T A WORD? Smokin’ Joe Cherner (who types about 120 words a minute): ‘TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters on a single row of an English language keyboard.’ TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE? Several of you have asked about a mortgage REIT (real estate investment trust), symbol NLY, that currently yields 14.85%. (It sells for $18.50 and pays a $2.72 dividend.) Clearly, the market does not expect that dividend to be sustained. But you asked me about it because it came recommended by Jim Grant of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer. Well, Jim is way smarter than I am (although that alone is no formula for investing success), and he tends toward the skeptical end of the spectrum (a plus). So I checked with him over the weekend. Yes, says Jim, it looks too good to be true, and yes it has risen in price since he last wrote about it (in October, it was selling so cheap that it yielded 17.3%) ‘but we are bullish nonetheless.’ He owns some, and one of his former publishers is the REIT’s director of research. The outfit – Annaly Mortgage Management – is basically in the business of making sophisticated bets on interest rates. This is a scary business that can go wrong. Jim Grant is convinced the reward justifies the risk. On his recommendation, I am buying a few shares.
Poor Mother Earth November 27, 2002February 22, 2017 ‘Why should we ask our military to die for cheap oil when the rest of us aren’t even being asked to get better mileage?’ – Molly Ivins, who writes this week, as well: ‘I think it is inarguable that this is the most anti-environmental administration since before Teddy Roosevelt.’ ‘The Bush administration, with remarkable single-mindedness, has set about undoing more than thirty years of work to protect the nation’s air, water, and shrinking wilderness.’ – Elizabeth Kolbert writing in last week’s New Yorker. ‘With President Bush and Vice-President Cheney – two oilmen – in the White House, and with lawmakers of a similar anti-regulatory outlook about to control both the House and the Senate, there has probably never been a greater government consensus on, or perhaps one should say against, the environment.’ ‘The oil industry tycoons who run the Bush presidency must be rubbing their hands with glee. The road to higher profits – and to accelerated environmental degradation – lies open.’ – Henry Garfield in (Maine’s) Village Soup last week. He goes on to say: Al Gore, a Democrat with solid environmental credentials, received more votes, despite the presence of Nader, the ‘environmental’ candidate. Put the Green and Democrat vote together, and you have a solid majority against Bush’s anti-environmental agenda. The irony of all this is that Nader’s candidacy has made the impending assault possible. Gore would certainly veto drilling in the ANWR and other odious anti-environment, pro-big business legislation. Nader’s assertion that there is no fundamental difference between the two major parties is about to be proven wrong with a vengeance. The consequences, in terms of polluted watersheds, despoiled wilderness and increased emission of greenhouse gases, will be felt for generations. Gore’s chief failing, in the eyes of voters who deserted the Democrats for the Greens in the 2000 election, seems to be that he is wooden on television and in debates. Granted, Bush’s malapropisms and linguistic manglings are more entertaining, but behind the regular-guy facade lies a cadre of wealthy businessmen eager to impose their agenda on a country that opposes it. This is just what Nader ran against, yet this is what his candidacy has wrought. The unvarnished truth is that Nader got Bush elected. If Nader had not been on the ballot, Gore would have won New Hampshire, and Florida would have been moot. You can yell all you want to about Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris and hanging chads and the Supreme Court, but none of it would have happened had not Nader split the majority, left-of-center vote. In a parliamentary democracy, minor parties make some sense, because ideologically close parties can form governing coalitions. In the American, winner-take-all system, splinter parties like the Greens are ineffective at best and counter-productive at worst. When drilling begins in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, President Bush ought to send a personal thank-you note to every Green voter in America. After all, they made it possible.’ The sad thing is that we were not able to hang on to the Senate in 2002, to blunt more of the damage. As in 2000, it was so close! Had one small plane not crashed (or had Garrison Keillor written his piece on Norm Coleman before the election instead of after), and had 41,000 or so votes been cast differently in Missouri and New Hampshire, three Senate seats that went R would have gone D. Big swing. They didn’t, so that’s that. But let us not forget that, despite the huge Republican financial advantage and their being able to schedule the war debate to fall between Labor Day and Election Day to crowd out issues like, well, oil and the environment, it was still very, very, very close. And on the environment, polls show, most voters do not favor the administration policies. But they won, so they’ll do what they want. Poor Mother Earth. Well, into our SUV’s (which could easily get better fuel mileage but don’t) and off to grandmother’s house we go. Onward and upward. Happy Thanksgiving!
Cleaning Like a Guy November 26, 2002February 22, 2017 Gary Krager: ‘I’m in the process of designing a new home for myself and have done a couple of ‘GUY’ things I thought you’d like. One is to have not one, but two dishwashers. One will always have clean dishes in it and the other will always be in the process of ‘being loaded’ to use. The other is to have two clothes dryers. I don’t want to sound like Andy Rooney here, but, did you ever notice how it takes twice as long to dry a load of laundry as it does to wash one? Well, with a second dryer that problem is solved.’ ☞ You will also want to add a second washer, for ‘colored’ fabrics. (If money or space or the environment are considerations, go back to plan A – eat and drink direct from the container; rinse your dish and silverware after use; allow to dry.) Bob Fyfe: ‘I was in Dallas recently and visited a friend who had two dishwashers, one on each side of the sink. He said that it is the latest thing in high-end homes in the Dallas area. There is also a two-drawer dishwasher that can be used for the same purpose. Here’s an excerpt from the site: ‘You don’t bend down and reach way in to get dishes out and put them in. You just open a drawer. And you get two dishwashers in the space of one.’ Some people keep clean dishes in one drawer while washing dirty ones in the other.’ REFEREES Toby Gottfried: ‘Analogies are well and good, but let us not forget one important difference between football and real life. Football is just a pure competition and the objective is solely to win. At some point the game ends 0and you start fresh with the new one]. On the other hand, real life doesn’t end, and ‘how you play the game’ has lasting effect. To take one example, a business might increase its profits by polluting, but the effects of the pollution might be far reaching and permanent; a far cry from cheating at football where once the final gun is sounded, what happened on the field matters not a whit.’ John Stone: ‘The comments about rule books reminded me of a new formulation I heard recently: Rich Libertarians believe that everything they have came from hard work. Rich Republicans believe they were favored by God. Rich Democrats believe they have been very lucky. Poor Libertarians believe they are victims of a conspiracy. So do poor Republicans and Democrats.’ NEVILLE CHAMBERLAIN DJ Heger: ‘Alex & David Smith didn’t even mention the biggest reason Chamberlain deserves history’s wrath – the Russians would’ve joined the British, French, & Czechs against Germany. The non-aggression pact between the USSR & Germany came about because Stalin knew he couldn’t depend on the British & French.’ Walter Willis: ‘In addition to the replies you published, the Rumanians threatened to cut off Germany’s oil, and the Russians were still trying to set up a collective security deal with the West Europeans to keep Germany in line. It was only Munich that persuaded the Russians and Rumanians to sign separate treaties with Germany. Without oil from Rumania or Russia, a German war with Czechoslovakia, France, and Britain would have been very unpleasant for the Germans. It was not merely in armor, artillery, aircraft, ammunition, and allies, that Germany was outnumbered. Raw material to keep Germany’s industry running was in even shorter supply. They had no significant stockpiles during the Munich crisis.’