By sid213 (January 25, 2009) (Question 1)

Recently, I moved from my apartment. After living in my old shared apt. for one year and a half, I decided to move in with people I feel more comfortable with. The change was from East Village to Lower East Side. Even though I don’ t have many things, I needed to hire a mover. My first resource was craigslist. Man in the Van seemed good, they have good advertisement. But… I dislike their lack of transparency in prices. I have learned that is better to always see the prices upfront. I look for other companies, and I could not find one that could advertise exactly their price. Most of them expected me to write them an email.

I have heard of U-haul (I see them everyday in the city), and just by having a clean and transparent website, and the accessibility to pay online they persuade into choosing them. Knowing that I would not have to deal with making calls, (even though I did had to), that I could pay online.

U-haul’s interface design (not just their website) can be analyzed by Foggs concepts of captalogy. U-Hauls design was planned persuasion, one can consider its design endogenous. It´s macrosuasion can be seen in the whole experience layout as a cheap price, and do it all for your-self (wit the aid of technology) concept. In microsuation there where many other elements that appeared, such ass add-ons, the little things that they meant to offer me: boxes, movers, insurance, dolly, plastic bags, protection for bed… etc. In this case the functional triad was applied mainly as a tool and as a virtual reality.

My main criticism is the physical and human side of the company. I arrived to 23rd St. and 6th ave. and there was no signals that could indicate me where to go. When arriving there was this lady screaming at me that I should get in the line (I never saw the line). Really bad service. Even tough all their system was computerized and that the information that the customer service person was seeing I could also see, her attitude made everything change. After I was done with the administrative side, she gave me the instructions to pick of the car. She talked really fast (you could tell that she says this everyday) but I did not understand her.

It is disappointing that what I would mainly change of their system is the human factor.