Reply promptly to invitations.

Clean up your own messes. Be kind to those less fortunate. Don't pick your nose in public.

You probably got advice like that from Mom years ago. Yet these basic principles of etiquette are flaunted, on a daily basis, by some of Canada's largest companies. And, according to experts, it's costing them customers and money.

For the past month, I've tracked my dealings with local and national companies that persistently tell me how important my business is to them. While some did just fine, I amassed a Dante-esque catalogue of technology hells. Call it bad design, call it arrogance or stupidity. I just call it bad business manners.

Tom Keenan, Business Edge

Hugo Idler, head of NetConnect North America, offers companies a way for their customers to talk to service reps.

Let's start with DHL Express Canada. They get good marks for having an easy to remember number, 1-800-CALL-DHL emblazoned on their trucks and webpage.

But the flames start to lick at DHL's feet when you realize that they don't bother to give the numeric equivalent. Haven't they heard of "soft phones" that don't have those 1920s-era letters on them? Don't they know about Skype?

Amazingly, if you put 1-800-CALL-DHL into Skype, it figures out that you really want 1-800-225-5345 and connects you to DHL ... but it's the U.S. DHL call center!

Skype is a global business. DHL hasn't quite figured that out yet. If you do reach the DHL Canada line, you're treated to a boring 50-second long spiel reciting numbers for departments such as their accounts receivable office. Only then are you told the option to find what you really wanted to know - "where is my darn package?" Deeper in my circles of hell is Enmax Power Corp., the Calgary-based utility that used to have a monopoly but now has to compete for our business. They have a nice website and a fine call centre. Just don't get behind in your payments with Enmax, because then you'll find out just how little they care about you.

Due to their failure to send me bills, I wound up with a disconnect notice for a property that I own. The minute I received it, I called Enmax, offering full payment by cash, credit card, firstborn child, etc. Their agent said she couldn't take my money because I needed to speak to the "payment arrangements office."

Calling this office produced the expected recording, but with a surprise ending. Instead of "leave a message and we'll call you back" or "here's some sappy music while you wait for us," their recording curtly announced that if you received it during business hours they were too busy to talk, so just call back again. Click.

I called again. Same result. I had to use extreme persuasion and even threats to get anyone at Enmax to take my money. Suggestion to the idiots who devised this system: Review the part of the Bible where Jesus talks about how you treat "the least of my brothers" and don't assume that people you are seeking to ditch should put up with this kind of treatment. Perhaps their phones are disconnected too, and they're freezing at a payphone.

There's a whole circle in my user-interface hell for Air Canada. Their Aircanada.ca website and its separately owned cousin Aeroplan.com simply reek of bad design. They're both sluggish. They erase data you've typed in and make you start over.

The Air Canada site offers an airport code (PSP, which is Palm Springs, Calif.) on a pull-down list for my "Welcome Aboard" pass, then doesn't allow me to fly there on that pass. After suggesting one itinerary, Aeroplan.com tried to ticket a totally different routing with no explanation or apology.

Their tech support is handled out of Bangalore, and not very well. One of their reps actually told a friend of mine to start over and create a whole new Aeroplan account instead of trying to solve his problem.

AC's inflight experience is equally unspectacular from a technology viewpoint. For months, while competitor WestJet was offering satellite TV on most flights, the People's Airline had forlorn-looking "coming soon" signs on their seatbacks.

When it finally arrived, the "enRoute fully on demand inflight entertainment system" excelled at disappointment. Pushing the buttons marked news or map results in "This feature is currently unavailable.

While you can watch movies, the touch-screen control buttons are minuscule, and flight attendants warn you to push them with your fingers, not a pen, lest you damage their sensitive screens.

You'd better have pixie fingers, because while hitting the pause button, you're as likely to touch stop. This takes you through a tedious four-step routine in which, among other things, you're offered a change of language in case you've suddenly became fluent in French or Spanish.

Even worse, the fast-forward and return buttons, which work just fine on a $29.95 DVD player from Wal-Mart, produce jerky and unpredictable results on Air Canada. I've logged more than two hours watching the 97-minute flick The Queen on AC flights without ever seeing the ending, because the system literally jerked me around.

Of course, you can always lug a laptop and watch your own DVD. Air Canada's even springing for power outlets though, bizarrely, only two of every three seats on this Airbus A320 got them. Tough luck if you're staring at the dummy plate.

It's moot anyway, since on this flight from Toronto to Calgary, only three of the 120 outlets in the whole economy section appear to be working, judging from the sea of dark power lights. I query the flight attendant, who says she doesn't understand the power system, but "I do know the plane can only support so many outlets."

Not wanting to provoke a steep dive from 36,000 feet, I don't encourage her to go fooling with the switches up front. (Note to self: Buy a spare laptop battery, since you can't count on the airline for juice other than orange or tomato.)

Business peccadilloes might be excusable if there was no alternative, but there are actually plenty. "If customer service was really important to a business, there are ways to allow a customer to immediately connect to a live person," says Hugo Idler, head of Toronto-based NetConnect North America. His firm offers a "Call Me" service that places a button on webpages for immediate live callback from a customer service rep.

NetConnect's Call Me customers include companies such as GE Capital, Lexmark, and several major cruise lines. Idler dispels the notion that firms must hire a lot of staff to support this service, noting that "Call me calls are 28 per cent shorter, on average, than traditional inbound calls," and tend to cluster around predictable times like the lunch hour.

"Car dealers should all have call me buttons on websites," he muses, "so they can talk to customers at the precise moment they've got car-buying on the mind."

In a world where Apple is praised for the simple, user-friendly design of the iPod, and now the iPhone, it's ironic that so many companies leave the architecture of their vitally important customer service system to geeks and bean counters.

Maybe it's time to give freer rein to artists, psychologists, and yes, even customers, to tell us what they really want, in exchange for their "valuable business."

Web Watch: www.netconnect.com (Tom Keenan is a professor at the University of Calgary and an expert on technology and its social implications. He can be reached at keenan@businessedge.ca)