ComplainerMan

I’m deaf in one ear!!! Thank you AT&T. I hate you. Why do the designers of cell phones feel it is so urgently important that we know that our cell phone is low on batteries? Why have I sacrificed the hearing in one ear for the knowledge that my cell phone battery is low, and why did I have to be warned right in the middle of a phone conversation.

Furthermore why is in necessary to repeat the warning every 3 minutes, so if you are asleep in the middle of the night and have misplaced your cellphone, you lose a night’s sleep over it? I know! I went for the FREE phone with my cellular plan. Should have bought a phone for $250! I would hope a phone that is that expensive is not designed in such an idiotic manner.

eBay is scammer central. There are many sellers who know the system well and can fool you into trusting them. They know all the tricks, and if you are an infrequent eBayer, it’s easy for them to get the best of you. Here are some warning signs that the eBay seller you are considering making a purchase from wants to scam you.

1. The seller is relatively new, but has an apparently sophisticated system going with many auctions or sales. This could indicate the were banned, or got a large amount of negative feedback with a previous account or accounts, and are starting fresh
2. They have a low number of feedback comments, but frequent sales.  Again, if they are selling at a good pace for a number of weeks, it could mean they are new and getting a strong start. More likely they are an experienced seller and just started a new account because they were banned or got too much negative feedback.
3. Their positive feedback is for low priced items. They do have some negative feedback, especially regarding misrepresentation or poor communication. People on eBay generally don’t give negative feedback lightly, so no matter how plausible the reply, multiple negative feedback in a short amount of time is a red flag. 
4. The deals look too good to be true. They usually are.
5. The shipping is too high.  Shipping is now posted prominently in auctions, so it’s harder to pull this now, but scam sellers will try to get away with jacking it up as much as they think they can get away with. They will often quote a premium shipping service and actually ship with a cheaper carrier, and pocket the difference. 

Even after  you know you’ve been scammed, and confront the scam seller, they will try to fool you into thinking you have no recourse. You do! Immediately post negative feedback and warn others. Go to the resolution center. If you paid with Paypal (which you should ALWAYS do on eBay)  visit the PayPal Resolution Center to open your case. Then you can file a claim under PayPal’s Buyer Protection program.

Babel DVD

Babel, starring Brad Pitt and Kate Blanchett is the third movie in a trilogy co-written and directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu. It won the “Best Picture” Golden Globe. That shows how pretensious and shallow Hollywood establishment journalists are. Also won Oscar nominations, which is not surprising.

I checked Babel out at the library so I didn’t waste my money. Just my time. The value I got out of it was the “slice of life” from different cultures in Japan, Mexico and Morroco.

The movie itself was exploitation draped in a thin pretense. Sure they spoke different languages. Sure they were connected, but in a very contrived way. That doesn’t justify depicting a child pleasuring himself after seeing his sister naked, or a deaf Japanese school girl flashing in public, or a dying woman making out with her husband while using a bedpan. To pretend that these scenes were anything other than exploitation is hypocrisy.

Another thing I gained from seeing this movie, is confirmation that if you want to make a film that wins awards, just make the film revolve around a safe, non-controversial ”issue.” Then pour in the action, perversion and porn to sell, sell, sell!!!

I purchased an old Macintosh SE on eBay last week for $10 plus $40 shipping. For $50 I would have a piece of computing nostalgia - an anachronistic curiosity that I could mess around with for the remainder of it’s life, and then properly discard as eWaste, when that life came to a natural end. I have old SE peripherals, software and music files I used to create MIDI music back in the day, and this machine would allow me to take a stroll down memory lane. But it was not to be. When I received the old Mac, it had already met it’s demise:

Sad Mac. Dead Mac.

The Sad Mac icon, indicating a dead hard-drive. The icon is barely discernable because the CRT (cathode ray tube) is so messed up. I looked at the box and could find no damage. I did notice that it was shipped DHL, not UPS as the auction specified. I went back to eBay and confirmed that it was supposed to be shipped UPS with $100 of insurance, but I noticed something else. My sad Mac was not the same model as the one in the auction picture, which was there to demonstrate that the unit being sold still worked.

One of these things is not like the other.

I contacted the seller to inform him of the problem, but didn’t mention the picture issue to see what he would say. He didn’t respond within 2 days, so I sent another message, this time mentioning that the picture he sent of the working Mac SE was a different model than the broken unit I received. This time he responded within about 15 minutes, saying he was sorry the unit didn’t work, but that the picture WAS of the unit I received. That was it. Either he accidentally sent the wrong Macintosh SE from his extensive inventory (sarcassm) or he was trying to scam me. Selling a broken computer as working, and pretending it was damaged in shipment. I replied with the specifics of how I or anyone could tell that the computer in the auction picture was different from the Mac I got.

His reply completely ignored the picture issue and instead offered to refund the $10 I paid for the computer. Not the $40 shipping. A little back and forth later the best deal I could get from him was a full refund by shipping the computer back to him at my cost. So any way you sliced it, I was going to pay for shipping a dead stick across the country. I chose to leave negative feedback and try to get eBay to resolve the issue through the resolution center.

My wife and I received a couple of Olive Garden gift certificates as wedding presents, but there isn’t an Olive Garden restaurant near our home, so it was a number of months before we actually got to use them. This afternoon, however, we were moving some items from a storage unit I have in Hayward, and were near enough around dinner time that we dropped by.

We arrived at Olive Garden in Fremont at around 5:30 and were surprised how many people were waiting out front. The wait was around 45 minutes, but that is exactly how long they told us it would be when we signed in.

After we were seated our waiter visited promply and took our drink orders. He arrived quickly with the house red and proceeded to fill our glasses to about 1/4 inch from the very top. “We got our money’s worth” I told my wife. We ordered, and our food arrived quickly and was very good.

When we had finished and I was chewing my last bit, I felt a crunch on one of my molars. At first I thought I had lost a filling, but on closer inspection I realized I had been chewing on a piece of broken glass. Just about that time the manager was making his rounds and asked us how our meals were. I replied that everything was good except for the broken glass in my food, and showed him the shard. He, of course, apologized profusely and replaced my almost-finished meal with a new one. He also took the price of my meal off of the bill and gave us a $25 gift certificate. Well, maybe if it doesn’t hurt coming out, I’ll give Olive Garden in Fremont another try.

Trying to find a way to reach Yahoo Web Hosing.. I mean Web Hosting customer support? Here’s how I did it. First of all, forget about searching for the information on the Yahoo site. It’s not there. I went to http://helpme.att.net, since I have DSL through ATT, but it used to be SBC/Yahoo. Next, I chose the “email us” option.

The “email us” page informed me, that in order to provide better customer service, they had discontinued their email support service. Corporate double-think at it’s finest. I could, however find my answer by going to the useless help section that I had just come from, or chat with a support person.

My support chat session started immediately, and the support person was very polite, considering I was contacting the wrong business division. She even apologized for that fact that I had been though a lot trying to find out how to contact Yahoo Web Hosting customer support. I got the impression that this was not an unusual request for her.

And, drumroll please… here is the number 866 722-9932. I have been on hold for a 1/2 hour and am still waiting because “all agents are busy helping other customers..” I hope that is true. It would be a shame to have gone through all this not to be helped. But I wouldn’t be surprised.

Item 1 - He looks like a spy. He never looked like that in the movie.
Item 2 - The one action scene in the movie is highlighted.
Item 3 - Critics Quote: “A First Rate Spy Game” - It’s not really a spy movie, so probably taken out of context.
Item 4 - Obligatory sex scene. That was the only time he got it during the entire movie.
Item 5 - Composited image from the same action scene noted in Item 2. The plane was actually dropping aid to African refugees, not bombing them as it appears in the picture. The plane never flew over the people, they just photoshopped it so it looks like it did.

So this movie isn’t a spy movie, but it also isn’t a good movie in my opinion. It’s about a career diplomat and his beautiful firecracker young wife who gets killed by the government for trying to stop a big drug company from testing a dangerous drug on unsuspecting poor people in Africa. I wouldn’t mind seeing a good movie with that plot, but this wasn’t good. And when you are expecting to see an exciting spy movie thriller, and you see this poorly done downer of a movie, you just might complain about it on your blog. I know I did.

Sears
1700 Stoneridge Mall Rd
Pleasanton, CA

My son’s watch battery ran out, and I needed it replaced. I could have tried myself, but I though I would let the experts handle it. Watches are basically jewelry and their appearance is very important. The experts at Sears would replace the watch battery without damaging the watch, whearas I am pretty sure that I would not. While I was at it, I’d have the battery of one of my many dead watches replaced.

When I arrived at the watch repair department, which is a little cubby upstairs near the toilets, there were two elderly people in front of me. The woman was successfully helped, the man was not (informed his order was in, but it wasn’t).

The wait was about 10 or 15 minutes until I was up. The young man (18 or 19 years old) had about an hour before his bus arrived, but my battery replacement would take only 10 minutes. I was back in 15, and was informed that whoever replaced the battery in my watch last time (it had never been replaced) put the back on wrong, and if I wanted him too, he could remove it, but it would take an hour. Upon inspection, it was apparent that he had indeed done some prying on the metal back, which left it pretty beat up. After trying to imagine what kind of watch back removal operation could possibly take an hour, I declined and put the watch back in my pocket.

He had successfully removed the back from my son’s watch, but didn’t have the right battery. He had one that was close in size, but didn’t think it would work. I agreed. Then he asked if I would like him to order the correct size battery. I said that would be a good idea, to which he added that he needed that size anyway and would order two. I could come back in a week and try again.

The main reason I went to Sears Watch Repair to have my watch batteries replaced was so that the “experts” could do it without wrecking my watches. I found out that I am better off going elsewhere, or trying myself. There is no reason that I can think of for you or I to go to Sears Watch Repair.

I’ve used 1&1 Internet hosting for about 5 years, but have been steadily moving my sites to another host for the past year or so. If you are thinking of using 1&1 Internet for your hosting needs, please consider these factors before signing up:

1. There are two layers of technical support. Layer 1 is an offshore call center. The support personnel may be able to understand you if you keep it simple. They will be able to look things up for you on the computer, and put you on hold while they ask someone else for an answer to your question. Layer two are the actual technicians who can perform operation on your site, or give you advice that will help you. You will never be able to communicate with them. Layer one will submit a ticket to them, and they will hopefully address your problem within 48 hours. It took over a month for me to resolve one problem, so don’t hold your breath.
2. Everything is so sloooowwww. To determine how long an operation will take, think of how long it takes on another web hosting company, be it a domain transfer, a database creation on your account, or someone responding to you appropriately, and multiply by 10. If you like waiting, 1&1 Internet is for you!
3. If you actually are able to cancel a service that is set up with recurring charges to your credit card, you will have paid a dear price in blood, sweat and tears. They make it impossible to cancel anything, and if you finally figure out which hoops to jump through, you deserve an honorary degree.

1&1 Internet. Just don’t do it. Please.