Trevin Chow

I alluded to it previously blogging about my 30th birthday, but recent events brought this to the forefront of my mind again.  I was so upset about the events that transpired on my birthday that I decided to write a review on Yelp:

I had dinner at Coupage last Saturday for my 30th birthday and was looking forward to finally eating here given all the great things I’ve heard and read about the place.  I had a reservation for 14 people.

The food was quite good and everyone enjoyed it. The restaurant was a bit on the small side and the tables were a bit close together for my liking.  I think the proximity of tables is great if you have a party of 4 or less, since the conversation will naturally be quieter. However with a party as large as ours, or actually any party greater than 8, it might get uncomfortable given how close the other tables might be.  I couldn’t help but feel that everyone in the restaurant could hear every word of every conversation.

Following the meal, we asked for the bill from our server which included an 18% gratuity.. He was an absolute dream all night and very courteous.  However, when it came to the bill, we were told they could not take more than 2 credit cards.  Given our party size, it’s unrealistic to expect everyone except 2 people to have that much cash in hand, or us to piggyback tabs on top of only 2 credit cards.  We kindly asked our server to take more cards at which point he went to talk to the owner. He then got "permission" to take up to 6 cards, which was still very hard for us to do.  We tried to be as flexible as possible, and got it down to 7 cards which in itself is an amazing feat for 14 people to do considering there was only 1 couple at the table that could join tabs.

We asked them to take the 7th card, and were given a complete hassle.  One of the members of our party asked to speak to the manager, and kindly talked to him about how we were disappointed they wouldn’t take the 7th credit card given the party size, the bill total and the obligatory 18% gratuity that was tacked onto the bill.  The owner first tried to explain that the credit card fees are too expensive for him, and when challenged on that point, the conversation degenerated to what was effectively name calling where the owner declared that he "runs the 3 top restaurants in Seattle and we should be thankful for our experience".

I always write very balanced reviews and would normally be understanding when I have a negative experience. However, in this case, I’m not at all writing about the credit card limit or their inability to take more than 2 (or 6) credit cards.  Instead, I’m reviewing the owner’s extremely poor attitude towards his customers.  The specific conversation we had indicates something more fundamentally wrong with his customer service and his perceived right to verbally abuse his customers.

Not only did this ruin our evening, but it will ensure that we will never eat at Coupage ever again nor any of his other restaurants.

After posting this review on Yelp on June 30th, I’ve received 6 messages from other Yelpers in the Seattle area (3 of which are in the Yelp Elite group) praising me for the review and iterating how bad their past experiences have been at the restaurant.

What makes me re-write this in my blog you ask?  Well today I got a message from another Yelper named “Joseph S” (who just joined Yelp this week) who is brand spanking new and berades me with this gem of a message.  I’m quoting his message word for word so forgive the poor grammar and spelling mistakes:

give me a break dude when a paryty of 14 has dinner in a restaurant it is completley rude and disrespectful to assume you can split a bill 14 ways which is what your party attempted to do!    Try going to any fine dinning restaurant anywhere in the world and ask to split a bill 14 ways or even 6!  The manager, matre d, server, kitchen staff as well as other diners will be laughing at you.  It is unfortunate that the complete lack of respect your party has for the restaurant industry fueled an umpleasent experience on your birthday……You should repremand your friends not our establisment or better yet try going to Canlis or Crush with a group of 14 people and ask to split a bill any other way than one or two cards and see what kind of response you get.

It should have been crystal clear to anyone that read my review in entirety that I didn’t write the negative review based on their inability to take more credit cards than we wanted them to.  I was writing about the verbal abuse and poor customer service.  Seems that the newly joined Joseph S didn’t read it, but also seems to imply he works at the restaurant.

What’s ironic is that not only have I been to both Crush and Canlis, but have had some of the best dining experiences there.  They not only took more than 6 credit cards on several occasions with large parties I’ve been with, but their attention to customer service (and satisfaction) is something that the owner of Coupage should learn from.

If this other Yelper really does work at Coupage, it really chaffs my butt to receive a message like this from someone that represents their restaurant. If he does, it definitely is helping to continue their tradition of poor customer service. 

I’ve asked the mysterious Joseph S whether he does indeed work at Coupage, so we’ll see where this goes from here.  In the meantime, I encourage any of you that are Yelp users to mark my review as “useful”

2 days ago I raved about how much I liked the iPhone after Jobs’ Macworld 2007 announcement.  After thinking about it and reading more coverage, the so-called reality distortion field has passed and I’m not feelin’ the iPhone like I previously did.  Call me wishy-washy, but it’s true.  Omar and Torres have both discussed it at great length, and I agree with most of their points.  I’m not going as far as Torres and saying I won’t buy this phone, but there are enough things that concern me about it to at least delay my purchase for a significant amount of time.

After reading Mike’s post, here’s my response:

1. Access to my corporate data over the air – Agree that if this functionality doens’t exist, the device is also a non-starter for me.  However, we haven’t heard definitively that this won’t be possible so let’s keep our fingers crossed.
2. EDGE network speed — while Mike finds Edge “so slow it’s almost unusable for browsing”, I woudl have to disagree. After moving to the Samsung Blackjack recently which sports 3G HSDPA connection, I find myself in Edge-only mode to presrve battery life.  For what I normally browse (yahoo mail, rss feeds, engadget), Edge is clearly slower than 3G/EVDO, but not a deal breaker.
3. Too expensive? People are continually saying this device is too expensive, but I’m still on the fence.  $500-$600 for this device isn’t as outlandish as people claim it is given it’s a full blow iPod but also a phone.  Considering iPods are $200-$300 and phones alone can go upwards of $300, the iPhone price point is right there.  Admittedly, once you factor in the fact that Cingular should be subsizing the price since they are going to lock you into a 2 year contract, you gotta wonder whether Cingular is subsizing anything at all.
4. Touchscreen interface – I was really keen on this originally, but now, I’m going to have to agree with the skeptics.  It looks freakin’ cool, but after you factor in screen scratches and smudges along with the lack of any tactile response, this device could be an absolute nightmare.
5. Closed system – I was all hyped up about the iPhone running full blown OSX since it meant that app developers wouldn’t have to really do much to refactor their apps other than accomodating smaller screen size (unless the iPhone did some clever UI scaling).  But turns out that the iPhone will be a closed platform just like the iPod.   WTF Apple. Haven’t you learned anything at all from anyone else in the industry? Why do you keep doing this?

Other than a cool form factor, the only thing that the iPhone does for me, is allows me to ditch my standalone iPod altogether.  I would always have my ipod on me which would be ultra-convenient, but then again, this means I always have to carry my headphones.  I just know I’d end up in a situation where I have my iPhone with no headphones to listen to music. 

The teedot jury is still out on whether the iPhone will be a winner or not, but what’s certain is that I’m not going to rush out and buy this thing.

Rule 1 — never stay in the Freestyle Inn in Rome. I mentioned yesterday that the showers were cold as hell.  Today I’m going to tell you about the dirty bathrooms that made me gag and I think I actually threw up in my mouth.  They were so small, cramped, humid and dirty you would have thought you were in a 3rd world country. I have no idea who they paid to get their rating so high on HostelWorld.com, but they did a good job fleecing us that night’s room adn board!

Luckily we moved to a new hostel, call the Pop Inn Hostel and so far, so good. It’s much larger, cleaner and people seem generally more sociable. We spent today sweating around Rome, checking out various sights including a guided tour of the Vatican.  Since my Roman history isn’t that good, these guided tours are fantastic.  Our tour guides knew an oustanding amount of information and made our experience in Rome worthwhile from an educational experience. 

We’re here for 2 more days then off to Florence for 6 days where we will have several 1 day trips to various Tuscan towns including Sienna, Lucca and maybe one other. 

I’m using a crappy inernet kiosk right now that charges and arm and a leg so I only have 12 mins

Our Europe 2006 trip started at 8:20am with a flight on American Airlines leaving Seatac with a 3 hour layover in New York before continuing onto London. 

…well it was supposed to be a 3 hour layover. It turns out that some crazy oxygen mask and video project malfunction caused us to be delayed by exactly 3 hours on the runway, which caused us to miss our connecting flight from Heathrow to Nice.  Since it wasn’t an officially booked connection through a single airline carrier, we forfeited the cost of the second ticket.. ouch.  Kiss 120 pounds goodbye!  We had to book a secondary ticket foranother 128 pounds each through Easyjet.  Not a good start to our Europe trip.

We just paid 4 pounds for 20 mins of internet access… time is running out..

By now, everyone should have heard about the foiled terrorist attack in the UK. For those that haven’t, here a link to the BBC News article to bring you up to speed.

• Airlines terror plot disrupted [BBC News]

This is some scary stuff. 21 people arrested, and 3 US airlines were believed to have been targets for these attacks. The attack was supposedly involved building explosives with liquids and electronics devices as detonators that the terrorists were planning on bringing aboard the planes.

Currently, passengers are not allowed to take carry-ons on any flight in the UK. In the US, your carry-ons are not allowed to contain any liquids.

Unfortunately, the damn terrorists decided to coincide their attack with my trip to NYC to visit Amir. My flight was scheduled to lave Seatac at 5:50pm with a 3 hour lay-over in San Francisco before continuing onto JFK. When my boarding pass was printed, my Gate # for the second leg from San Fran to NYC wasn’t printed out.

After getting my boarding pass and checking my bag, I had to go through, what I expected to be, a crazy security checkpoint. To my surprise, the security checkpoint wasn’t that bad. People were being forced told to throw away any “liquids”. People in line were asking all these crazy questions wondering whether their carry-on items were considered “liquids”. WTF?! People, what is so hard to understand about “liquid”?? Hint: if it’s not solid, it’s either considered a liquid or a gas, and I’m pretty sure most people know wtf a gas is.

I wanted to smack this one dude in front of me when he was trying to debate with the security officer about whether his cologne was considered a liquid. First of all, last time I checked, cologne wasn’t considered a solid or a gas. Second, why are you giving the security guy a hard time? He’s just doing his job! It’s not like you’re going to negotiate with the security guy for an exemption.

After spending 25 mins in the security checkpoint, I end up at my gate waiting for my flight. Thankfully, it’s on time! As I’m sitting there, I strike up a conversation with a girl sitting next to me. She told me that she got ot the airport at 11am this morning for a 1pm flight, and spent 4 hours in the security line. She said there were close to 3000 people in the security line and it went from the terminal out into the parking garage. If you know Seatac airport at all, that would have been one serious line. This girl ended up missing not 1, but 3 possible flights on her route and was now forced to take a later flight at 7pm — 2 hours after mine, which means she will be at the airport for 8 hours before departing. Sucks to be her.

I get onto the plan without incident, promptly fall asleep and wake up just as we’re landing in San Fran. Funny part is that I wake up sleeping on the shoulder of the dude next to me. I apologized to the guy and he told me he tried to shake me off 3 times, but i kept leaning back on him so he gave up. Funny stuff. I guess I”m thankful that nice people still exist in the world

I get off my plane and then realize “sh*t!, i dont’ know the gate # for my next flight” (remember, it wasn’t printed on my boarding pass I got in Seattle). For the life of me, I could not find out what the gate # was within the “secured area” of SFO, so I had to exit back into the terminal just to find out the gate #. Because I had to exit the secured area, I had to go through the security checkpoint again! ARGH!

I’m standing in line, and once again, I’m stuck with people who IQ must be their shoe size. People are arguing and yelling at the security guy because he’s making them throw out makeup, eye drops, etc. The best part was this one lady who had to throw out her $150 bottle of perfume. Ouch.

After the 65 minute parade through this second security checkpoint, I walk up to my gate and find out that my flight is delayed by 4 hours. WTF!

I promptly find a restaurant in the airport order myself some food and Guinness. I’m now plunking away at some work stuff on T-Mobile wifi ($9.99 per day, ouch!).

So turns out that even though the terrorist attack happened on the other side of the world, they managed to indirectly hold me hostage in the San Francisco airport. I guess this is the part where I say the cliche line “the world is flat“. But I won’t.