The latest news in the world of customer experience and customer loyalty.
Ohio Man Makes a Point by Fighting for Stole Rewards Points
Mark Kochheiser wasn’t pleased when he found out someone hacked into his credit card and gotten his number, expiration date and CV number. That wasn’t a problem. A call to Huntington Bank killed the card and any attempts to ring up debt under his name. What really hacked him off, though, was the person used his reward points—all 134,658 of them. When he called the bank to get them back, the bank said it would look into the matter. Well, more than four months later, he still hadn’t heard. And he didn’t let go. He wanted his points back. Kochheiser told the Akron Beacon Journal his speculation was the bank didn’t care as much because it didn’t lose any money. They were, after all, just points. After his fourth contact with them, the bank finally came through and put $500 in his checking account—the approximate value of the points—and created a new account and put the points in it as well. Persistence pays—in both cash and points. Interestingly, the hacker used the points to book a hotel in Nigeria.
Hedge Fund, Run by Sears CEO, Offers to Buy Some Sears Brands
The whole is supposed to be greater than the sum of its parts, but that’s not what it’s looking like with Sears Holdings Corp. The company’s CEO, Edward Lampert, has been shopping for a buyer for the former retail giant for two years without success—or at least some of its independent brands—in an effort to stave off bankruptcy. It already sold its Craftsman tools brand to Stanley Black & Decker last year for $900 million and has been dangling its DieHard batteries and Sears Auto Centers, among other properties, out to see if anyone was interested. No luck. So on Monday, according to an article in The Wall Street Journal, Lampert took matters into his own hands, offering to buy its Kenmore brand, its Sears Home Services home improvement business and its Parts Direct business himself through his hedge fund, ESL Investments. The purchase would have to be approved by the Board, but is complicated by the fact that Lampert is running both the hedge fund and the corporation, which would seem to pose some conflicts of interest. And, it’s further complicated by the fact that the hedge fund is the controlling stakeholder in the company and is a major Sears lender. Who’s best interest would such a sale be in?