
Tipping was brought to the US from Europe after the Civil War and was met with opposition — six states even passed anti-tipping laws that prevented diners from having to tip. The laws were later repealed, but the angst toward the tradition of tipping lives on in the minds of many American customers.
San Diego, CA, restaurant owner Jay Porter observed that tipping was not only a point of contention for his customers, but was also causing tension between his staff members and adding to the stressful environment.

My best friend has been back from her honeymoon for only a few weeks, and she already has another trip on her brain. The difference between her honeymoon and the next vacation? She and her new husband will be treated to a complimentary hotel stay on their next trip!

Travel professionals surmise that women travelers are more likely
to request a different hotel room than men, whether it's a couples or family trip or a woman on a solo business trip. Some room-change requests are made to ensure the traveler is getting the most for her money, but there are some who manipulate the system for a sense of accomplishment.
Have you been known to request a room change or do you usually settle for the rooms offered to you?

I can't always be cool, calm, and collected. It inevitably follows that on those stressful days, I have to call my cable or phone company or something equally as undesirable.
And, of course, all I need to push me over the edge is to be "communicating" with a robot, telling me to push a button for this, a button for that, but no button to talk to a living, breathing human being.

I was throwing a hissy fit yesterday when I saw that Netflix had still not sent me my
Mad Men DVD, and then an hour later I got this in an email, explaining
their outage. It wasn't the only outage this week: Gmail went down for a while on Monday, and then the next day, the Gmail Blog
posted an explanation.
I gotta be honest: I'm not used to this kind of customer service.

Depending on the type of business, customer service can be a big part of your shopping experience. Whether or not you're actually offered service, if the staff has a way of lurking around you, or if they're overly attentive can weigh on your impression of a store.
I'm likely to skip out on returning to a restaurant if the service was rude, but customer service at stores hasn't kept me away or driven me to revisit.

Comparison shopping is the name of the game when it comes to buying plane tickets, but I must say I'm delighted when JetBlue or Virgin America turn up on top of my search results. And if the flight is on the long side or a red-eye, I may be willing to pay a little extra for tickets on my favorite carriers. Do you prefer any particular airline to the others?

I'm sure this British Telecom telemarketer was accustomed to getting hung up on or yelled at by irritated customers, but nothing could have prepared him for the ranting and cussing and sheer volume outta the next customer on his list of peeps to call. My unsolicited advice? This customer needs to calm the f*ck down, watch
this simple instructional vid, and save himself a heart attack.

Cell phone contracts have been a bone of contention with customers ever since the invention of the cell phone, but news that some cell companies are going to loosen their policies on contracts means a little more freedom and a few less bones.
This past weekend the
Washington Post reported that AT&T and Verizon Wireless are going to let customers make changes to their calling plans without automatically extending their contracts. In addition, AT&T is going to reduce the fees consumers pay for breaking their long-term contracts.

In a recent
geeksugar poll 28 percent of readers said the iPhone's steep price tag was holding them back from buying the device. At $499 for a 4 GB model and and $599 for an 8GB model, coupled with the fact that many people will have to break their contract with their current phone service in order to sign up with Cingular, there's no denying that it's an expensive cell phone replacement. The high initial fee had many hopeful owners worried about monthly costs.