A few years ago, my wife bought me a watch from a web site called Overstock. I had vaguely heard of them. After I got the watch, I decided to return it (I'm just not much of a watch-wearing type of guy).
In short, the process was a big pain in the butt. I had to place a phone call…..wait on hold to talk to someone……explain myself…..get an RMA number…..write down all kinds of information……write out a shipping form. I don't remember all the details, but I do remember two things: (1) it was a big pain in the 'nads; (2) I decided never to do business with them again, and I told my wife to please likewise refrain.
At that point, I pretty much forgot about them (except for seeing an occasional story about how their CEO would rage against shorts, blaming them for Overstock's dropping share price).
But I happened to see a story mentioning them; out of curiousity, I punch up the stock chart, and I wasn't shocked to see this:
So they've gone from something like $75 to $5 from 2005 to present.
My experience with them is one of those moments of truth that tells you, in my opinion, what kind of company you're dealing with.
Allow me to contrast this with Amazon. We buy hundreds – literally hundreds – of products from them year to year. They all arrive crazy-fast. Shipping is free. The packaging is done perfectly. We've easily done six figures of personal business over the course of our history with them.
And when we want to do a return, there's no phone call, no RMA, no charges, no filling out of forms – – just a click or two later, we've got a ready-to-use shipping label and return form. It's virtually effortlesss.
So it likewise comes as no surprise to me that Amazon's chart looks like this:
This isn't a commentary on either of the stock charts, per se. It is simply an observation that – although I am a chartist – I find it heartening that, on the whole, companies I deal with that offer superb products or services (think Apple, Whole Foods Markets, Amazon, etc.) have thriving organizations whereas companies that, from my experience, don't really give a crap about their customers eventually find their customers stop giving a crap about them either.
