Which raises an interesting question: are customer loyalty programs worth the money that companies pour into them? Indeed, does customer loyalty exist anymore, on even the most basic level? If one negative interaction (which, granted, took about an hour out of my day, was handled extremely rudely, and resulted in my being charged an extra $20) was able to turn off my years-long loyalty to Starbucks, then how deep was my loyalty to begin with?

This week's This American Life (no permalink for it yet) has a similar customer service story from hell. What's most interesting between the two of them is the lack of, or use of, good CRM: each customer rep seems to have no idea what was done, or promised, during the last customer encounter.