It's been a fun week of talking to customer service people trying to get out of paying extra money because their crappy products broke. The problem with my cousin's ACER computer (described in the previous post) turned out to be due to a Vista update that killed lots of computers, not just my cousin's, and has so far involved a three-way conversation between Microsoft, my cousin, and myself that ended with the decision that my cousin should drive to Best Buy and get the Best Buy rep on the phone and call us all back. That hasn't happened yet, but it should be fun.
This post is titled "Yay, AT&T!" because happily, and unlike the combined to-date efforts of Best Buy, ACER, and Microsoft, AT&T recognized they were the ones who fucked up and acted in fairness to the customer! Here's the chronology of what happened, and how AT&T fixed it.
1) On Jan 2nd, 2008, I upgraded my cell phone for the first time in five years. It cost $70, with a $50 rebate (remember this for later...$20 net cost to me).
2) Three weeks later, the LCD screen on the front of the phone (it's a flip phone) broke. The screen cracked, showing a line down the middle. I did not drop it. I did not dump it in water. I did not chew on, jab, bang, or otherwise molest it. I just pulled it from my pocket and it was broken.
3) I explained this to AT&T warranty services, who told me they would send me a replacement, and to send in the broken one when I received the new one. Which I did.
4) Two weeks later, AT&T sends the broken phone back to me, saying "This phone is broken! The LCD is cracked! You owe us $115 for the new phone!"
5) A large vein began throbbing in my head, my eyes got squinty and murderous, steam poured from my ears, and I picked up the phone. I explained to the AT&T rep who answered that I had absolutely no intention of paying. I was then put on hold for 20 minutes, with the rep coming back every 2-3 minutes to tell me to wait another 2-3 minutes.
Now, this is where AT&T earned this post...because eventually the rep came back and said, "First of all, you shouldn't have been charged $115 because the phone only cost $70. Secondly, because you told Warranty Services exactly what the problem was and they replaced the phone anyway, we're going to credit the charge to your account. Sorry about that."
So...they owned up to their mistake and waived the charge, and thus avoided permanently losing a customer. That's not just fair business practice, it's SMART business practice, and what's shocking is how many companies completely fail to grasp that concept.
Yay, AT&T!
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Monday, February 18, 2008
Don't Buy Anything ACER
To some, this might be obvious, since ACER is generally a lower-end computer manufacturer, whereas if you want something reliable from a company with good customer service, you'll probably buy from Dell or another, more reputable manufacturer. But if you don't have the extra money, ACERs are cheap and even they will have to honor the 1-year warranty.
That's sort of true. With two big caveats:
1) Expect it to break early.
2) Expect ACER to pretend it's your fault and refuse to pay anything they can get away with.
I base this on a sample size of one event, but talking to them on the phone for my non-tech-savvy cousin basically has me thoroughly pissed off and fervently hoping they go bankrupt tomorrow.
Why? Well, she bought a computer from them less than two months ago. Yesterday it started displaying arcane error messages on startup, and auto-shutting down a few minutes later. Calls to tech support only made things infinitely worse: now it won't start up at all. ACER says they'll fix it, but refuses to even attempt to pull the files off the hard drive without a $100 fee.
Now, clearly it is good practice to back up your computer periodically, but come on...no one backs up their personal computer on say, a weekly basis. My cousin had recently dumped the entire contents of her camera onto her computer to make room for more pictures, and had not yet backed it up to a CD. The computer is less than two months old -- it's covered by a 90-day software warranty and 1-year parts warranty -- no reason to expect imminent and total system failure.
ACER's warranty, like most warranties, specifically excludes loss of data from coverage, so legally they are in the clear. Their 90-day software warranty, I was told by phone "only applies to up and running software," to which I asked "What good is a software warranty that only applies when the software works?" The reply, and I'm not making this up, was "Basically, it has to work when you turn the computer on the first time, beyond that the software is not covered." I doubt this is actually the policy, but it is the policy as ACER's support staff understand it.
So in conclusion, ACER is at the top of my shit-list for terrible customer service and warranty policy. Avoid them like the plague. If you have the plague, drive to ACER headquarters and cough on someone, preferably someone in Quality Control or Warranty Services, or anyone in a really nice suit. And don't buy their stuff, ever.
That's sort of true. With two big caveats:
1) Expect it to break early.
2) Expect ACER to pretend it's your fault and refuse to pay anything they can get away with.
I base this on a sample size of one event, but talking to them on the phone for my non-tech-savvy cousin basically has me thoroughly pissed off and fervently hoping they go bankrupt tomorrow.
Why? Well, she bought a computer from them less than two months ago. Yesterday it started displaying arcane error messages on startup, and auto-shutting down a few minutes later. Calls to tech support only made things infinitely worse: now it won't start up at all. ACER says they'll fix it, but refuses to even attempt to pull the files off the hard drive without a $100 fee.
Now, clearly it is good practice to back up your computer periodically, but come on...no one backs up their personal computer on say, a weekly basis. My cousin had recently dumped the entire contents of her camera onto her computer to make room for more pictures, and had not yet backed it up to a CD. The computer is less than two months old -- it's covered by a 90-day software warranty and 1-year parts warranty -- no reason to expect imminent and total system failure.
ACER's warranty, like most warranties, specifically excludes loss of data from coverage, so legally they are in the clear. Their 90-day software warranty, I was told by phone "only applies to up and running software," to which I asked "What good is a software warranty that only applies when the software works?" The reply, and I'm not making this up, was "Basically, it has to work when you turn the computer on the first time, beyond that the software is not covered." I doubt this is actually the policy, but it is the policy as ACER's support staff understand it.
So in conclusion, ACER is at the top of my shit-list for terrible customer service and warranty policy. Avoid them like the plague. If you have the plague, drive to ACER headquarters and cough on someone, preferably someone in Quality Control or Warranty Services, or anyone in a really nice suit. And don't buy their stuff, ever.
Saturday, February 16, 2008
"It was unclear how close the satellite will be to the space station when it is shot down"
Sometimes, the media reports on science topics very well. Other times, it assigns a complete idiot to the science story, and hilarity ensues.
A shining example of the latter (from an AP reporter, posted on CNN): http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/space/02/16/shuttle.ap/index.html
The gist: There's a damaged spy satellite that the Pentagon wants to shoot down, right? The satellite is in Space, in this place called Orbit. It occurred to an intrepid AP reporter that there's something else up there in Space, and also located in Orbit...the International Space Station! Oh no, thought this reporter. What if the Pentagon misses with their missile and hits the International Space Station instead?!? Oh the humanity! I need to break this story!
So the reporter dutifully asked NASA and the astronauts currently on-board the station if they were concerned about being accidently shot down by the Pentagon. To which they responded, because they're not complete idiots, "Um, no. We are not worried."
A shining example of the latter (from an AP reporter, posted on CNN): http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/space/02/16/shuttle.ap/index.html
The gist: There's a damaged spy satellite that the Pentagon wants to shoot down, right? The satellite is in Space, in this place called Orbit. It occurred to an intrepid AP reporter that there's something else up there in Space, and also located in Orbit...the International Space Station! Oh no, thought this reporter. What if the Pentagon misses with their missile and hits the International Space Station instead?!? Oh the humanity! I need to break this story!
So the reporter dutifully asked NASA and the astronauts currently on-board the station if they were concerned about being accidently shot down by the Pentagon. To which they responded, because they're not complete idiots, "Um, no. We are not worried."
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Open letter to Scarlett Johannson
Dear Scarlett,
Sorry for missing your calls, and thank you for calling to urge me to vote for Barack Obama. Your message was very insightful, both times you left it. I am not sure how you got my number, but clearly we have a mutual friend who thought we might see eye-to-eye on this one. I actually did vote for Mr. Obama, and I would love to discuss him with you. I tried calling the Obama campaign to get your number, but they refused and have since blocked my calls. Leave your number next time!
Sorry for missing your calls, and thank you for calling to urge me to vote for Barack Obama. Your message was very insightful, both times you left it. I am not sure how you got my number, but clearly we have a mutual friend who thought we might see eye-to-eye on this one. I actually did vote for Mr. Obama, and I would love to discuss him with you. I tried calling the Obama campaign to get your number, but they refused and have since blocked my calls. Leave your number next time!
Recommendation: King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters
Add it to your Netflix. It's a documentary about a bunch of 80s arcade game nutcases, focusing on an epic battle over the all-time Donkey Kong record.
It's every bit as nerdy as it sounds, and hilarious. 96% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, too, so I'm not totally smoking crack on this one. And the camerawork is steadier than Cloverfield, so you won't want to barf :)
It's every bit as nerdy as it sounds, and hilarious. 96% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, too, so I'm not totally smoking crack on this one. And the camerawork is steadier than Cloverfield, so you won't want to barf :)
Exercise (Warning: This post contains bad jokes, even for me.)
If you haven’t exercised in a few months, let me give you some tips I have learned for getting back in the habit:
1) Don’t.
Look, if you want to try it, go ahead. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you, it's gonna hurt. What's that? It adds ten or twenty years to your life? Pah. The universe is billions of years old, what’s ten or twenty years compared to that? Over that time period, ten or twenty years is well within the margin of error of your supposed exercise-extends-your-life study.
(Note: Ninjaneers are not required to take statistics. I did, but I rejected it based on my own definitive study of its effectiveness, which had a sample size of two coin flips. Fifty-fifty is a myth.)
Okay, okay, I hear you evangelicals hollering about that “billions” number. Not that I know any evangelicals (…that I know of! Wink, wink) but I can hear you anyway. God gave me psychic powers. And you’re saying “Hey, ten or twenty years looks a lot bigger when you realize the universe is only six thousand years old, not billions!”
Two things.
A) You just used math to compare two numbers. As you know, math is the devil’s tool and it is totally unreliable.
B) To God, time isn’t time. It’s just the fourth dimension in this whole space-time thing he created. Imagine a three dimension coordinate axis. There’s the X-direction, the Y-direction, and the Z-direction. Three arrows. But God, in his infinite hilarity, made this fourth arrow, and it’s invisible to everyone but him, and it points in a direction that no one can imagine. And then he created us, and made it so no matter which way we turn, we’re always walking in the same direction down that freaking time arrow. He think’s its funny as hell.
Still with me? (Seriously? You must be bored.) Here’s my point. Say God exists and is responsible for all the content of the modern Bible. He would have had to convert the age of the Earth from God units to human units. Look, humans can’t even keep human units straight, and we made them up. Remember when NASA lost that Mars probe a few years ago? Units are a bitch. So it is totally reasonable if God got a decimal place in the wrong column when he was editing that book of his. Trust me, he told me so when he gave me the psychic powers. It’s billions.
Anyway, I digress. To recap, if you haven’t exercised in a while and you are thinking about starting up again, follow these steps:
1) Don’t.
2) If you somehow fucked up tip #1, you might be okay. Just don’t ever, ever stop exercising again.
3) If you fucked up tip #2, what can I say. You’re retarded or something. Get a beer and go back to tip #1.
P.S. The reason this post is so long is because I can't freaking walk right now. I fucked up tip #1.
1) Don’t.
Look, if you want to try it, go ahead. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you, it's gonna hurt. What's that? It adds ten or twenty years to your life? Pah. The universe is billions of years old, what’s ten or twenty years compared to that? Over that time period, ten or twenty years is well within the margin of error of your supposed exercise-extends-your-life study.
(Note: Ninjaneers are not required to take statistics. I did, but I rejected it based on my own definitive study of its effectiveness, which had a sample size of two coin flips. Fifty-fifty is a myth.)
Okay, okay, I hear you evangelicals hollering about that “billions” number. Not that I know any evangelicals (…that I know of! Wink, wink) but I can hear you anyway. God gave me psychic powers. And you’re saying “Hey, ten or twenty years looks a lot bigger when you realize the universe is only six thousand years old, not billions!”
Two things.
A) You just used math to compare two numbers. As you know, math is the devil’s tool and it is totally unreliable.
B) To God, time isn’t time. It’s just the fourth dimension in this whole space-time thing he created. Imagine a three dimension coordinate axis. There’s the X-direction, the Y-direction, and the Z-direction. Three arrows. But God, in his infinite hilarity, made this fourth arrow, and it’s invisible to everyone but him, and it points in a direction that no one can imagine. And then he created us, and made it so no matter which way we turn, we’re always walking in the same direction down that freaking time arrow. He think’s its funny as hell.
Still with me? (Seriously? You must be bored.) Here’s my point. Say God exists and is responsible for all the content of the modern Bible. He would have had to convert the age of the Earth from God units to human units. Look, humans can’t even keep human units straight, and we made them up. Remember when NASA lost that Mars probe a few years ago? Units are a bitch. So it is totally reasonable if God got a decimal place in the wrong column when he was editing that book of his. Trust me, he told me so when he gave me the psychic powers. It’s billions.
Anyway, I digress. To recap, if you haven’t exercised in a while and you are thinking about starting up again, follow these steps:
1) Don’t.
2) If you somehow fucked up tip #1, you might be okay. Just don’t ever, ever stop exercising again.
3) If you fucked up tip #2, what can I say. You’re retarded or something. Get a beer and go back to tip #1.
P.S. The reason this post is so long is because I can't freaking walk right now. I fucked up tip #1.
Friday, February 8, 2008
How'd Heath Ledger get all those drugs? Umm....
Gotta say, I'm rolling my eyes at the "How did Heath Ledger get all those prescriptions" question that the national media and, apparently, the DEA are asking. Why? Well, I have three of the five in my medicine cabinet right now, accumulated over the course of a year, and I'm a reasonably healthy guy:
1) Hydrocodone - sprained ankle, never actually took one, still in the cabinet
2) Xanax - Needed after a 5-day Vegas bender to be capable of sleeping through the ensuing withdrawl and catch-up work stress. Took it just one night, still in the cabinet
3) Ambien - Recent insomnia episode
Obviously, Ledger royally fucked up by taking them simultaneously, and why the hell he would do that is a valid question. But as far as how he got all those drugs in the first place? I'm guessing he had a series of incidents like mine and simply asked his doc to prescribe something. That shit accumulates, and its not like you need to venture to the bad part of town at 2am to get them. Or maybe his doctor belongs in prison, we'll see.
1) Hydrocodone - sprained ankle, never actually took one, still in the cabinet
2) Xanax - Needed after a 5-day Vegas bender to be capable of sleeping through the ensuing withdrawl and catch-up work stress. Took it just one night, still in the cabinet
3) Ambien - Recent insomnia episode
Obviously, Ledger royally fucked up by taking them simultaneously, and why the hell he would do that is a valid question. But as far as how he got all those drugs in the first place? I'm guessing he had a series of incidents like mine and simply asked his doc to prescribe something. That shit accumulates, and its not like you need to venture to the bad part of town at 2am to get them. Or maybe his doctor belongs in prison, we'll see.
Hey, this guy looks like a clueless Obama supporter...
Great video clip of a young-ish Obama supporter being approached by a guy with a camera who obviously expected the young Obama supporter to be completely ignorant on issues, but ends up shutting up and letting the guy give some of the best man-on-the-street answers I've ever heard. Possibly fake, of course, but it seems genuine.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kica8hmSdAM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kica8hmSdAM
The Fay Buchanan email
Dan suggested I start a blog, and then Dan demanded this be my first post. Sounds like Dan should get a blog. Anyway, originally written as an email on Super Tuesday...
---
I've got MSNBC on in the background while I work (not CNN...CNN is dead to me), and I thought you might like to know that the Republicans are cannibalizing themselves to an insane degree that is coming to a head in the physical incarnation of Fay Buchanan, who is currently working for the Romney campaign, and who I predict will be dead by the end of the night from one of the following causes:
1) Her fangs clog and her venom sac ruptures, and she chokes to death on her own venom.
2) In her zeal to explain how life-long Republican McCain isn't conservative enough and 2-year Republican Romney is the heart of the conservative movement, she forgets to inhale and suffocates.
3) A studio aide closes the door to the room she is in, and the accumulation of smoke from her fire-breathing kills her by asphyxiation.
4) The depth and contortion of her scowling frown continue to grow at the same exponential pace as her bitterness until it tears her face in two.
5) Angry evangelicals form a mob, grab their torches and pitchforks and break into the studio to burn the witch who dares call their preacher candidate a self-serving lowlife who is selling out the unborn.
6) Death by pretzel.
7) Lynn Cheney enters the studio to aide the Smear McCain effort in person, but their shared passions draw them inexorably into a horrid bestial lesbian romp, which is cut thankfully short when their husbands arrive to first ogle and then stone them to death as Jesus would demand.
8) Dick Cheney mistakes her shrieking for a captive bird and unloads with his shotgun.
9) Huckabee calls in a favor. Lightning, a falling satellite, or a spontaneous plague of locusts do her in.
10) Someone spills water on her. She leaves behind only her clothes, smoke, and an uncontrollable horde of flying monkeys.
--
Now that Romney has done the graceful thing and ended his candidacy to prevent the terrorists from winning, maybe Fay can find something more relaxing to do and escape these fates.
---
I've got MSNBC on in the background while I work (not CNN...CNN is dead to me), and I thought you might like to know that the Republicans are cannibalizing themselves to an insane degree that is coming to a head in the physical incarnation of Fay Buchanan, who is currently working for the Romney campaign, and who I predict will be dead by the end of the night from one of the following causes:
1) Her fangs clog and her venom sac ruptures, and she chokes to death on her own venom.
2) In her zeal to explain how life-long Republican McCain isn't conservative enough and 2-year Republican Romney is the heart of the conservative movement, she forgets to inhale and suffocates.
3) A studio aide closes the door to the room she is in, and the accumulation of smoke from her fire-breathing kills her by asphyxiation.
4) The depth and contortion of her scowling frown continue to grow at the same exponential pace as her bitterness until it tears her face in two.
5) Angry evangelicals form a mob, grab their torches and pitchforks and break into the studio to burn the witch who dares call their preacher candidate a self-serving lowlife who is selling out the unborn.
6) Death by pretzel.
7) Lynn Cheney enters the studio to aide the Smear McCain effort in person, but their shared passions draw them inexorably into a horrid bestial lesbian romp, which is cut thankfully short when their husbands arrive to first ogle and then stone them to death as Jesus would demand.
8) Dick Cheney mistakes her shrieking for a captive bird and unloads with his shotgun.
9) Huckabee calls in a favor. Lightning, a falling satellite, or a spontaneous plague of locusts do her in.
10) Someone spills water on her. She leaves behind only her clothes, smoke, and an uncontrollable horde of flying monkeys.
--
Now that Romney has done the graceful thing and ended his candidacy to prevent the terrorists from winning, maybe Fay can find something more relaxing to do and escape these fates.
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