First Day at School

This past week I began a two year part time MBA program at Babson College. The Fast Track program is designed for the busy professional who doesn't want to give up his/her day job to become a full time student. It includes both distance / e-learning and face to face classes.

Our kick-off week entailed about 55 hours of classroom discussion, learning our way around the IT infrastructure supporting the classes and meeting our new classmates. Our 2010 class has about 95 students, broken into two sections. From here on out its mainly online with a couple weekends of face to face time.

It was great to meet all the new students, everyone was excited to begin their new MBA classes. Never having been a fan of school, it was refreshing to attend classes with students actively participating and really adding valuable insights based on past experience to some of our discussions. Perhaps this is the difference between undergrad and graduate courses. The average work experience for a student was 13 years! So its great to be able to absorb and learn from such a deep pool of knowledge.

Verizon

I recently purchased the new Verizon BlackBerry Pearl. I researched the pricing on Verizon's website and it quoted me a price about $100. So I went down to the Verizon store at the Cambridge Side Galleria ready to plunk down my money for a new phone and 2yr agreement. What ensued seemed like something froma used car dealership. First the Verizon guy asked me to login to my account to show him the price I was quoted on the Verizon site. Once he was satisfied that it was a legit price, he proceeded over 15-20 mins of constant back and forth with the 'back row' Verizon representatives. At the mall store there's the front row folks, and directly behind them is another row or reps who apparently have all the pricing power. From time to time he would update me on the 'success' or 'failure' of his ability to get me the same deal. Keep in mind this is a Verizon branded store not a generic cell phone shop. Over the 15-20 mins my wife observed that the back row reps were all fairly young (less than 21) and seemed to act like they were in an exclusive club and how dare anyone try to bargain with them! Finally the best deal they could offer to match their own online price was $150 and a mail in rebate of $50. So I said thanks, declined their counter-offer and went back home. Ordered the phone online for $100 and it showed up 2 days later. I was able to activate it over the phone and am quite happy with my new BB Pearl.

I also bought my wife a new phone via the web, but we still had to transfer the stored phone numbers so we went to another Verizon store this time in Everett on Mystic View Rd. Our experience here was what one would expect. Professional, courteous and efficient. We walked in, talked to the greeter, he took us over to the tech support folks, we gave them the phones and less than 10 mins later walked out with the phonebook transferred from old phone to new phone.

Moral of the story, if you want a new phone,try to do it online first for the best deals, and stay away from the mall stores where it seems that customer service takes a back seat to bratty behavior.