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To: Jurgis Bekepuris who wrote (15834)	11/19/2002 4:01:36 PM
From: Wallace Rivers	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 78652

I live on the East coast, and I will tell you that as mundane as the experience at LUV appears, it is anything but unrewarding. Everyone, from the occasional phone reservations agent (I book almost exclusively online) to gate personnel to flight attendants and pilots, have been uniformly upbeat and helpful. One actually can use the rewards of its frequent flyer program. I contrast this to US Airways and American, where I have oodles of miles, which are extremely difficult to use. I have been treated rudely on Northwest, found it insulting to be asked to pay $5 on US Airways for a headset on a trans-continental flight. Southwest has none of these pretenses - you pay your very reasonably priced fare, find a seat, and are delivered on time (generally) to your destination. If you want, bring a lunch, it will beat whatever the other "majors" shove in front of you. All this, and management actually knows how to run the company so that it makes money, something few airlines can say! I'm guessing I've made about 3 dozen round trips on LUV over the past 2 years (including non-stop Baltimore to Vegas, they now offer Balt.-LA non-stop, as well), and I'm completely sold on them. Enough of my rant on LUV.

To: Jurgis Bekepuris who wrote (15834)	11/20/2002 1:46:27 PM
From: Bob Rudd	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 78652

Wallace - <<HD - wasn't the whole point of HD that there is no customer service? (partly serious question). I assumed that it's "you know what you want, you know how to do it, you get the stuff and get the h*** out of there" store. Otherwise, you might as well call someone to do home improvement for you>>No that wasn't the concept. They initially positioned not only as source of product but helping DIYer's by hiring ex-contractors and knowledgeable personnel to be able to help people with projects. They even held in store seminars on various projects. Unfortunately, as the growth from new store openings has dried up, They've tried to maintain eps growth by constraining SG&A...cutting staff in store, so that in many areas the service sucks. This drives DIYer's needing guidance back to traditional hardware stores and home centers. The growth has slowed as they continued to open new stores, of the same size even, in ever smaller locations - the low hanging fruit in attractive markets has been picked. Also Lowes has come into HD markets where there had been only weak local competitors. Expectations of 15 to 18% going forward just don't seem realistic based on this. I've traded HD profitably a couple of times, but have no current position and don't find it attractive at current levels.