Northwest companies generally scored well in the customer satisfaction in a survey released today by the University of Michigan.

The survey rates customer satisfaction with goods and services in a cross section of American companies.

Companies are scored on a 100-point index with 100 being a perfect score. The university rates only 200 companies, so not every major company is rated.

Among the Northwest companies scoring well was Starbucks, tied for first place in the limited service restaurant category with Wendy's with a 78 score. McDonald's was rated last with a score of 64.

Bellevue-based T-Mobile USA was rated second among the wireless telephone services category with a score of 70. In first place was Verizon Wireless. Sprint Nextel earned the bottom rating of 61.

Qwest Communications, the Northwest's dominant fixed line telephone company, moved up sharply to a 72 rating from its 69 last year. Qwest's rating hit bottom in 2002 with a 56 score. Qwest was tied for first with Verizon among fixed line telephone companies.

Microsoft was the only Northwest company rated in the index that fell below the industry norm. Microsoft dropped to a 70 rating from a 73 last year. The industry average in software is 73.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Tuesday that consumer prices in the Tacoma-Bremerton-Seattle area increased 1.9 percent for the two months ending April. Regional Commissioner Richard J. Holden said the increase was mainly due to higher prices for transportation, and to a lesser extent, higher prices for housing. From April 2006 to April 2007, overall prices rose 4.0 percent.

The housing index increased 1.1 percent for the two months, and compared to a year ago, was 5.2 percent higher. Shelter, the primary component of housing, moved up 1.2 percent over the past two months.

Lodging away from home, an unpublished category, contributed strongly to the shelter index increase. Prices for household furnishings and operations moved up 0.5 percent for the two-month period, and were 4.9 percent higher over the year.

The food and beverages index rose 0.2 percent from February to April and was 4.1 percent higher over the year. Grocery prices rose 0.7 percent. Food away from home declined 0.5 percent from February to April, but increased 4.0 percent for the latest 12-month period.

Apparel prices rose 9.8 percent from February to April, and increased 7.5 percent from April 2006 to April 2007.

The Port of Tacoma says its needs more than 30 pieces of privately-owned property on the east side of the Blair Waterway to develop marine cargo terminals.

And – if necessary – the port will use its power of eminent domain to force the sale of the land, said Bob Emerson, the port's senior director of real estate and industrial development.

The landowners affected by the port's expansion – 22 in total – received letters this week notifying them of the situation and of a Port of Tacoma commission meeting.

At that meeting, the commissioners will vote whether to authorize the port's use of eminent domain to acquire the properties, if negotiations between the port and the individual landowners fall through.

The properties affected total 130 acres.

The port may not physically need the land for two or three years, but Emerson said the port wants to be certain that the land will be available for development.

Many of the businesses will need to relocate, though a few should be able to reconfigure their operations on their current site, Emerson said.

Read more in Wednesday's News Tribune.

The April unemployment rate in Washington has fallen to a level unseen since modern records were first tallied. At 4.4 percent, the unemployment rate bettered the record for March – 4.6 percent – and led Employment Security Department Chief Economist Evelina Tainer to say Tuesday’s numbers represented “a pretty good report.”

April was the third consecutive month to show a decline in the unemployment rate.
Since April 2006, payroll employment in the state has increased 2.3 percent.

Tuesday’s numbers reflect good news from a few months ago, she said. “While we did see a downward trend in the unemployment rate, it didn’t decline very much.”
Especially in King County, she said, “I think it’s important to keep in mind that we didn’t have a recovery until May or last year. While the rest of the state didn’t have the declines that the Puget Sound area had during the recession, some of the area continued to grow. What we’re seeing now – it’s shifted to recovering in the non-Puget Sound area to more Seattle. Tacoma is feeling some of that as well.”

Regional Labor Economist Paul Turek, who tracks employment in Pierce County, said the local rate in April – 4.7 percent – was down from 4.6 percent in March and well below the 5.3 percent marked during 2006.
“It’s a good economy,” Turek said.

Amazon.com today announced a new feature called "Subscribe & Save" offering customers automatic delivery of grocery products with discounts of 15% and free shipping.

Customers choose when they would like shipments delivered (in one-month, two-month, three-month, and six-month intervals) and get a guaranteed discount and free shipping for the length of the subscription.

The service comes with automatic e-mail reminders allowing customers to make changes as needed or cancel.

Plus, customers are charged only when each order is shipped. The program requires no minimum purchase amount and no time commitment for ultimate flexibility.

In Sunday's column, I told you about an upcoming City of Tacoma Planning Commission hearing regarding proposed new rules governing planned residential developments. But I made an error. I gave you the wrong date for the hearing.

The Planning Commission meets tomorrow (Wednesday) at 4 p.m. in the City Council Chambers at the Tacoma Municipal Building, 747 Market St.

Among the key issues under review is how much of a residential development should get preserved as open space. In addition, the Planning Commission is likely to recommend to the City Council a more specific definition of what counts as open space. Since the 1965 rules went into effect, open space has been so liberally construed that private yards, private roads and storm water detention ponds can count as open space.

Microsoft Corp., whose Windows operating system runs about 95 percent of the world’s personal computers, sold 40 million copies of its new Windows Vista as of last week, Chairman Bill Gates said.

The rate of adoption has been twice as fast as that of the previous Windows XP version, Gates said in a speech at a Microsoft conference in Los Angeles today.

Vista went on sale broadly on Jan. 30.

Vista is Microsoft’s first new PC operating system in five years and the company is counting on it to fuel revenue growth, Bloomberg News reported. The world’s largest software maker said last month that Vista sales during the March quarter were higher than it expected, contributing to a 32 percent increase in revenue.

The first set of composite wings for Boeing's 787 Dreamliner arrived in Everett this morning aboard an enlarged 747 freighter Boeing has dubbed the Dreamlifter.

The wings are significant in that they're the first wings for a Boeing airliner that Boeing itself has not built. The wings were made by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in Japan.

The wings are also an aviation achievement because of their composite construction. Prior to the 787, all jetliner wings were made of metal.

Boeing and Airbus have built airliner tails from composite (the 777's composite tail is built at Boeing Frederickson plant) but nothing as big as the wing.

Composites promise to make wings lighter, less labor intensive to build and more corrosion resistant.

Boeing workers in Everett, will attach various control surfaces to the wings and then mate them to the center wing box and the fuselage which are coming from other major manufacturers around the world.

So far, Dreamlifters have delivered the 787's nose section, the wings, and the aft fuselage. The vertical tail fin was trucked to Everett from Frederickson. Other fuselage sections, the wing center box and the horizontal tail have yet to be delivered.

Once all the major pieces have arrived, Boeing machinists will begin connecting the pieces. The object: roll out a substanially complete Dreamliner on July 8 (7/8/07). First flight is set for late August.

The proposed South Sound Logistics Center – a joint project between the ports of Tacoma and Olympia – isn't sitting well with the center's Thurston County neighbors.

This from The Olympian today:

TENINO — A truck and rail cargo facility proposed for 745 acres near Maytown drew overwhelming opposition from neighbors during a meeting at Tenino High School on Monday night.

South county residents raised a host of environmental, economic and traffic concerns about the joint idea of the ports of Tacoma and Olympia.

Many in the crowd of about 125 urged the ports to perform more environmental study of the impacts from the project, proposed on the site of a former munitions plant about 2.5 miles east of Interstate 5 near Maytown.

Olympia’s three port commissioners tried to assure the residents the project was an idea under study at least until the end of the year. It would take three to five years to build, they said.

“This is not any done deal,” commissioner Bob Van Schoorl said. “This is when the public process begins.”

Many residents were wary and believed the ports would build the South Sound Logistics Center without organized opposition.

Here's the rest of the story.