Something pretty horrible happened this week: We found out we're being subjected to Star Wars Episode 7 in 2015. Also, there was this big hurricane that left people without power, water, transportation, and in some terrible cases, homes and lives. The business world took note, sometimes because their New York headquarters were filled with water, as happened to Verizon, or more often, because their customers and clients were severely affected. So how did they react?
The Good:
Smartphone car-hire service Uber paid its New York drivers double their normal rate to encourage them to go out and meet the need of travelers in the public-transportation-deprived city. Meanwhile, it charged customers the regular rate. In an email today, three days after the storm first hit, Uber says it's out over $100,000 for the good deed and that it's changing to its surge priced rate moving forward, meaning customer pay 1.5 times the usual rate. That seems reasonable given the demand for cabs in NYC at the moment.
Goldman Sachs, which enhanced its all-powerful mystique by keeping its building lit while the rest of downtown New York went dark, invited residents in its Battery Park neighborhood to stop by to charge their phones and get water. BUT NO SNACKS.
Comcast meanwhile is handing out free Wi-Fi through November 7 in states hit by Sandy. If you're reading this, you're probably not hurting for Internet service, but tell your disconnected friends to look for "xfinitywifi" hot spots and use the company's complimentary trial session option. You can find the Comcast coverage map here.
Chase sent customers an email early in the week letting them know that fees for late payments and overdrafts would be waived for those in the storm's path. Other banks joined the fee-waiving party. But the kindliness ends November 1, said Chase in an email on Halloween.
The Not-Great:
New York chain Equinox decided to ban guests this week due to gyms becoming homeless shelters for rich people after the storm. "Usage has been crazy," a spokesperson tells BusinessWeek. For those without power and hot water, a place with smoothies, showers, and electricity is heaven so members aren't as eager to leave as usual. "They are staying at least until their phones are charged," says the gym's COO to BusinessWeek.
The Gap tried to be cute about directing those stuck indoors to its website, but some people thought the store had an empathy gap:
The Ugly:
UBS encouraged some of its employees to stay home during the storm. Permanently.
American Apparel got shredded for emailing customers about a special Sandy sale, offering 20% off to customers "bored during the storm.” They made the offer only to those in the storm's path. So if you were lucky enough to still have power and Internet service...
It did not excite many in the Twittersphere who called it "the lowest of the low" and "living up to [the store's] reputation for tackiness."
A spokesperson told the Fashionista blog that the email "came from a good place" -- the need for the store to keep making revenue in light of retail stores being shut down -- and inserted the inevitable "if" in proffering a sort-of apology: "[I]f we made a mistake here it came from the good place of trying to keep the machine going–for the sake of our employees and stakeholders."
American Apparel wasn't alone in trying to get eyeballs to its site while people were staying indoors due to the storm, though other retailers weren't as crass in making their bids.
General consensus from Twitter: if you're using a natural disaster as a hook to get people to buy your goods, at least donate part of the sales to relief efforts.
Meanwhile, CVS, United Airlines, and Bank of America are among those businesses that have announced sizeable donations to the Red Cross, which has raised $11 million in the wake of Sandy.
