I have to nominatet this site for the worst company website. I think one the trash truck drivers must of coded it.

http://www.aaatrash.com/

That's hideous.

Wow, that sucks. Reminds me of an original site designed in Frontpage back around 1995.

HIJACKER Wrote:
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> Wow, that sucks. Reminds me of an original site
> designed in Frontpage back around 1995.


Odds are it is Front Page.

ha! they are using java applets! java sucks.


"the wisdom of the wise will perish, the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish."

Yo Steve Jobs

Remember this?

^^ That Macintosh Certificate on the screen at 2:15 says Jan 24, 1984. That's exactly 25yrs ago today. :)

OMG Wrote:
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> Yo Steve Jobs
>
> Remember this?
>
>


This is funny now. But as someone who was working with Basic on a PC Jr. back then, it was revolutionary at the time.

HIJACKER Wrote:
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> ^^ That Macintosh Certificate on the screen at
> 2:15 says Jan 24, 1984. That's exactly 25yrs ago
> today. :)

I best Steve Jobs wishes he had the pancreas he had 25 years ago.

Steve Jobs Wrote:
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> I have to nominatet this site for the worst
> company website. I think one the trash truck
> drivers must of coded it.
>
> http://www.aaatrash.com/


Yeah but they give you a link to a weather page right on their main navigation. Some may ask why a trash company would do that, but I don't care. aaatrash.com is now my browser's home page to I can quickly get to the weather page.

There was some local trash company site ( I think it was AAA) that had a picture of their call center. The picture was definitely taken in 1980, becuase the 3 women working there were sitting behind PC jr's and they had 80's haircusts and they guy had a mullet.

lol
Attachments:

WashingToneLocian Wrote:
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> OMG Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Yo Steve Jobs
> >
> > Remember this?
> >
> >
>
>
> This is funny now. But as someone who was working
> with Basic on a PC Jr. back then, it was
> revolutionary at the time.


The Macintosh was cool, but even without a GUI, the C64 was still probably the best computer available at the time, especially considering the price. And especially if you were into games and dialing into BBS's.

I must have had three of four hundred floppies full of games, all clipped with a hole punch to make them double-sided.


The AAA site brings me back to the good old mosaic days, circa 1995 or 96. It uses those fun "raised button" images and it even uses frames!

I remember the 5.25" floppies full of games, hole-punched sides and all. I was on the Atari side though.

Steve Jobs Wrote:
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> I have to nominatet this site for the worst
> company website. I think one the trash truck
> drivers must of coded it.
>
> http://www.aaatrash.com/


I noticed that a few months ago and wondered 'why bother?' as it is almost useless.

AAA Trash and Suburban Propane are the only two bills I have left that I can't pay on-line. If it weren't for those two I could probably quit buying stamps alltogether.

Steve Jobs Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I have to nominatet this site for the worst
> company website. I think one the trash truck
> drivers must of coded it.
>
> http://www.aaatrash.com/

BTW, one of the lamest things about websites like that are that they've figured out that they need to have a site, and have gone through some amount of trouble to add links for certain common activities, but then the link is just to print out a form that you then have to mail in.

http://www.fairfaxcountyva.com/index.php?action=sponsor&id=446 technically this is in Falls Church (I think)

OMG Wrote:
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> lol


Hahaha... at first I thought your picture was a joke, but now I see it on the AAA website. That's funny that somebody actually put that on there.

pgens Wrote:
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> I remember the 5.25" floppies full of games,
> hole-punched sides and all. I was on the Atari
> side though.

Scorch, Oregon Trail... sigh - the good days.

Oh wait, the original Leisure Suit Larry, HA!

The weather is on there for what reason? Because if it's bad weather there is no trash pickup for AAA customers?

Dude Wrote:
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> AAA Trash and Suburban Propane are the only two
> bills I have left that I can't pay on-line. If it
> weren't for those two I could probably quit buying
> stamps alltogether.
>
> Steve Jobs Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > I have to nominatet this site for the worst
> > company website. I think one the trash truck
> > drivers must of coded it.
> >
> > http://www.aaatrash.com/

I cant pay my stupid fucking town of Vienna water bill online. Moron community.

Dude Wrote:
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> AAA Trash and Suburban Propane are the only two
> bills I have left that I can't pay on-line. If it
> weren't for those two I could probably quit buying
> stamps alltogether.

Most companies give discounts for paying bills online because they don't have to hire people to process the incoming mail.

Dude Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> AAA Trash and Suburban Propane are the only two
> bills I have left that I can't pay on-line. If it
> weren't for those two I could probably quit buying
> stamps alltogether.

I mostly online bill-pay using my bank, which I can do fee-free and it doesn't matter if the vendor has their own facility for bill payment or not. The only time I buy stamps now is for holiday cards.

Jester Wrote:
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> The weather is on there for what reason? Because
> if it's bad weather there is no trash pickup for
> AAA customers?


There's no logical reason to put a link in your site's "menu" to www.weather.com, to the home page, not to a page for Fairfax County or anything.

I guess the company that "built" their website didn't know the really complex API for weather.com, so they couldn't figure out how to link to the weather for this area.

I think Matt's Script Archive had a perl script that would grab NWS weather data via FTP for any Zip Code so you could display the weather directly on your home page at about the time that the AAA site appears to have been created (1996?) But I guess the web developer's free web account with AOL didn't allow cgi scripts.

Let's keep it in perspective, here. It's not like you'd go there to be dazzled into choosing this trash company. You go there because your other choice is American, your realtor/landlord was too lazy to give you their info, and you don't have a phone book.

Yeah, it looks awful, but would a better website really get them more business?

MrMephisto Wrote:
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> Let's keep it in perspective, here. It's not like
> you'd go there to be dazzled into choosing this
> trash company. You go there because your other
> choice is American, your realtor/landlord was too
> lazy to give you their info, and you don't have a
> phone book.
>
> Yeah, it looks awful, but would a better website
> really get them more business?

No, it wouldn't get them more business. But a professional looking website that allowed customers to pay by credit card would save them money in the long run.

It wouldn't take much to set up the back-end to process credit cards automatically, posting the money to their business account 24 hours later.

But in order to get people to trust the site enough to enter their credit card number, the site would have to look a little more up-to-date and professional than it does now.

Bob Wrote:
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> No, it wouldn't get them more business. But a
> professional looking website that allowed
> customers to pay by credit card would save them
> money in the long run.
>
> It wouldn't take much to set up the back-end to
> process credit cards automatically, posting the
> money to their business account 24 hours later.
>
> But in order to get people to trust the site
> enough to enter their credit card number, the site
> would have to look a little more up-to-date and
> professional than it does now.

Well, yeah, but they're a trash company. They don't give a shit. People will mail in their bills because if they don't, their trash stops being collected.

American's got a slightly better website, but they don't offer online payments, either. There's no need for these companies to evolve for the sake of maintaining competition, because they've got the market practically cornered.

^^ Agreed.

It's not like we really have a choice - most of the trash companies are selected by HOA anyhow.

MrMephisto Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>
> Well, yeah, but they're a trash company. They
> don't give a shit. People will mail in their
> bills because if they don't, their trash stops
> being collected.
>
> American's got a slightly better website, but they
> don't offer online payments, either. There's no
> need for these companies to evolve for the sake of
> maintaining competition, because they've got the
> market practically cornered.


Screw competing with the other trash company. I'm talking about cost savings.

There are 350,000 households in Fairfax County. Some of those are apartments/condos or communities that pay for trash service through the HOA, but even if there are only 100,000 accounts and AAA has half of those, processing 50,000 checks every 3 months takes time. If they could convert even just 20% of those accounts to online payment, that's 10,000 fewer checks to handle, and 10,000 payments that post automatically without human intervention in 24 hours.

Quicker posting of money to their bank, less manual processing. That would have to save them a decent amount of money.

[www.fairfaxcountyva.com] technically this is in Falls Church (I think)

Their street number 71** indicates they are in fact in Fairfax County. Falls Church street numbers are no higher than 1000 and are on the other side of Lee Highway.

Have always wondered where the dividing line runs. Is Lee Highway in Fairfax or Falls Church or partly in both? The FC police frequently set up radar along Lee Highway, but they may have some sort of an agreement with Fairfax County. Not a very transparent arrangement.

Don't most credit card companies tack on a convenience fee for online payments?

I'm not disagreeing with you, but there's really no incentive for them to do that. Account manager probably just sits there and opens checks all day to make sure customer accounts are up to date. It wouldn't really take that long, it would just be an incredibly boring job (that they could also lose by going to electronic payments).

Or, make the driver open the envelopes while he's waiting for the guys to run around and get the cans.

Plus, all 50k cheques wouldn't come in at the same time, I imagine.

We're not talking about their business model, though, we're talking about their shitty website; my point being, their website can be as shitty as they want it to be with very little consequence until something changes in the Trash Removal Industry.

Filmdex also has a terrible website.

MrMephisto Wrote:
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> Don't most credit card companies tack on a
> convenience fee for online payments?
>

Well, every merchant pays their merchant account issuer somewhere between .5% and 3% of the transaction and depending on what processing network you use and how you connect to it, 10 cents to $3 processing fee to the network. Some crappier credit processing banks like the ohio banks that started offering merchant accounts to online retailers early on charge the most, but with a good reputable bank, it shouldn't be more than 10 cents a transaction and no more than 1%, maybe less if you run them in batches.

> I'm not disagreeing with you, but there's really
> no incentive for them to do that. Account manager
> probably just sits there and opens checks all day
> to make sure customer accounts are up to date. It
> wouldn't really take that long, it would just be
> an incredibly boring job (that they could also
> lose by going to electronic payments).
>
> Or, make the driver open the envelopes while he's
> waiting for the guys to run around and get the
> cans.
>
> Plus, all 50k cheques wouldn't come in at the same
> time, I imagine.
>

of course they don't all come in at once. I'm sure they get about 750 to 1,000 a day, though. Someone has to open the envelope, enter the customer information into a database or spreadsheet, verify the check is filled out properly, for the proper amount, etc. and then stamp the deposit information on the back of the check.

Judging from the fact that as a bank teller 20 years ago, I could do about 80 to 100 transactions a day, which is slower because I'm dealing with a human being who is asking questions, and having to check IDs, etc, one person might be able to process 400 or so checks a day, so they need two full time people to handle checks.

Plus someone has to transport those checks to the bank. Unless they are smart and have an OCR machine that scans in the checks and posts them electronically to the bank.


> We're not talking about their business model,
> though, we're talking about their shitty website;
> my point being, their website can be as shitty as
> they want it to be with very little consequence
> until something changes in the Trash Removal
> Industry.

Sure. They don't need to do anything to stay in business or compete. Trash is trash. And they probably make a very tidy profit as it is.

Though I'm sure if someone ran the numbers properly, using accurate figures, there's a big chunk of money they are foregoing by sticking with 1960's payment processing technology.

But... but....

The 60's were awesome.

Let us at least hold on to this little part of it, Bob.

I seem to recall us "hanging on to part of the 60's" at my house the other night Mephisto, good times. And no banks in site.

Yeah. I fucking love the 60's all day, every day.

okay, can't argue with sound logic.

I'm guessing the folks at AAA trash also hold onto other parts of the 60's, too.

(come to think of it, I had a friend who claimed one of the sons of the owner was at Springwood with him back in like 1994. So at least someone at AAA was hanging onto the 60's, at least back then, allegedly.)

Bob Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Screw competing with the other trash company. I'm
> talking about cost savings.
>
> There are 350,000 households in Fairfax County.
> Some of those are apartments/condos or communities
> that pay for trash service through the HOA, but
> even if there are only 100,000 accounts and AAA
> has half of those, processing 50,000 checks every
> 3 months takes time. If they could convert even
> just 20% of those accounts to online payment,
> that's 10,000 fewer checks to handle, and 10,000
> payments that post automatically without human
> intervention in 24 hours.
>
> Quicker posting of money to their bank, less
> manual processing. That would have to save them a
> decent amount of money.

you must realize that these are the people that drive around and take your trash. i wouldnt exactly say these are the most technologically advanced group of people. seems like they established the system in the 70's and it's been the same ever since. the website was a moment of "genius" that occurred back in 2000 even though it looks like it's from 1995.

Quote
whois
Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
LaFerriere, James DNSadmin@repsrv.com
Republic Services, Inc.
110 SE 6th Street
Suite 2800
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33301
US
954-769-2400 fax: 954-769-6407


Record expires on 30-Apr-2009.
Record created on 30-Apr-2000.

"the wisdom of the wise will perish, the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish."

Gravis Wrote:
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> i wouldnt exactly say these are the most technologically
> advanced group of people.

So I shouldn't hold my breath for dump hovercrafts?