Technology

So I have to get up early on my day off. I have been shorthanded all week, so one of my former employees agreed to work four nights for me, provided I supply transportation. I am not a damn taxi driver, but I figure if given a choice between working 3rd shifts all week and picking his ass up it’s a no-brainer. The girls are home sick with me today, one with pink eye and the other with a cold, so the three of us picked him up and took him home.

I had to go by the bank and make a quick deposit. I am used to filling out the deposit slip before I leave the house, then sticking everything in an envelope. Not anymore. When I got to the bank (which is closed at this time of day) I went around to the ATM and discovered it had slightly changed. You put in your card and tell it what you want, but then you insert your bills and checks and it scans them, totals the deposit, and then spits back a receipt with the scanned image of the check right on it. Very cool.

This doesn’t seem like a very big deal, but gadgets excite me. That was just too damn cool.

We are back home now. The girls are messing around with Valentine cards because you have to start them off early to turn them into good little consumers, right? Either way it gives me the opportunity to blog for a little while and maybe surf some of the sites that I haven’t had the chance to over the weekend.

Technorati : ATM, Banks, Blog, Computers, Technology, Valentines Day, Vasrious and Sundry Stupid Ass Shit

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There are a bunch of spoofs of the PC vs. Mac commercials over at youtube. Here’s one of the ones that is pretty funny. There are a bunch of others over there as well.

Technorati : Mac, PC, Youtube

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Someone from Verizon called me back first thing this morning as I figured they would. Any charges are being taken care of and they apologized. She did make sure to tell me that I should have suspended the phone immediately the same day that it was stolen, and she is right but they should have taken care of me the first time they were asked, and not tried to get my wife to purchase something utterly useless and then blow me off when I complained about it.

At least all that is settled. All that is left to do is for my wife to call the coach at the other school and let them know they have a damn thief on their wrestling team.

I hate dealing with Customer No-Service and once I have dealt with them once with no satisfaction, I feel like it is time to do what I did and email everyone else in the damn company that CAN fix the problem.

Technorati : Customer NoService, Verizon Wireless

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I found the email address for the Georgia/Alabama press contact and sent this email to her, as well as the last one. Persistence pays off and I have gotten myself worked up to where I am pretty pissed off now:

If you have an email address where I may get in touch with someone who will take care of my issue, I would appreciate it. I found all of your addresses via the contact page as there is nowhere else that I seem to be able to get in touch with anyone. Your Consumer Advocacy page only allows for 700 characters in the complaint, which is nowhere near enough.

I am also cross posting any emails that I send or receive via my blog. Thank you for your help,

Richard Miles

Technorati : Insurance Fraud, Verizon Wireless

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Updated at 9:58pm. I managed to find some contacts. Thanks to the help of Google, I managed to find several media contacts on their news center. I emailed the letter below to Robert.Kelley@VerizonWireless.com; Thomas.Pica@VerizonWireless.com; Sheldon.Jones@VerizonWireless.com; caran.smith@verizonwireless.com; Carolyn.Culbertson@verizonwireless.com and Nancy.Stark@verizonwireless.com. Hopefully someone will respond by tomorrow evening, otherwise I will start hounding the BBB and some of the local news channels with their pain in the ass Consumer Advocacy Alert Teams, or whatever the hell they are called now.

Originally posted on 1-21-2007 at 9:14PM

I have attempted to contact Verizon. I did find one link to email the Customer Advocacy department, but it won’t let you send a fucking message over 700 characters. I am looking for email addresses to any of their VP’s or Presidents, particularly in the marketing or communications departments if any of you guys know them. Contacting customer non-service is fucking useless, I am tired of dealing with them. Perhaps someone with the company that would not like bad press would be willing to take care of my problem.

Here is the body of the email that I have been trying to send this evening, edited for content that you guys don’t need. More in the extended entry.

On Saturday, January 13^th, my son’s mobile phone was stolen from him at a wrestling tournament. His mobile number is EDITED and he is on my Family Choice plan. I called it a couple of times, the first time someone answered and then hung up. After that they just let it roll to voice mail. For a couple of days they must have had it turned off as it would roll straight to voice mail without ringing.

We tried several times to call whoever it was, and last night Saturday January 20^th I had a friend who is NOT in my son’s contact list call. They answered and hung up after briefly speaking with my friend, and then called back. After getting no information from them they hung up and called back from another number EDITED, also a Verizon number apparently registered in Newnan Georgia. They also hung up on my friend after they figured out what we were after. I called this new number and threatened them with legal action if the phone was not returned to me immediately. They said OK and then hung up. After a few minutes they called me back and gave me a story about a neighbor having the phone, and they didn’t want to have anything to do with it. When I told them that they would be considered accessories to theft they agreed to get the phone and return it to me today.

(more…)

My brother and I drove to Carrollton around noon along with my youngest and my son. I finally managed to get in touch with the guy who had the cell phone, apparently he was in church in Newnan, which is about 40 minutes from there. We agreed to meet at 5PM this evening in Carrollton to get my cell phone back. In the meantime, we decided to stop and eat lunch at the Mellow Mushroom. The owner is a friend of mine and a former regular customer (only former because I am at a new store, not because I ran him off) then we paid a visit to the Verizon Wireless store in Carrollton, which is a corporate store.

I explained what had happened with his phone being stolen. There were a couple hundred text messages which had been sent and then deleted, and a few phone calls, one being long distance. I also explained that the Verizon Reseller in Villa Rica had suggested insurance fraud to get him a new phone cheaper and talked my wife into adding insurance on his phone. This woman’s answer was “You can’t add insurance, this has to be done within 15 days of purchase”. Excuse the fuck out of me, but I have the printout where the reseller removed the “insurance declined” on his phone.

Her answer to the text messages and any charges was that I needed to speak to “customer service” and that she couldn’t help me. I guess she must be the highly paid door greeter since obviously she has no customer service.

As far as me telling her that the Villa Rica reseller is not only condoning insurance fraud, but suggesting it to customers, her answer was “They are an authorized Verizon dealer”. Now what the fuck does that have to do with anything? Bitch. Thanks for the help. The lack of interest and the fact that she obviously doesn’t give a shit about her company makes me want to dump them and find another carrier. If I could do so without incurring a shitload of penalties I would do it tomorrow.

Since that is not an option, I have some research to do. I will do the same thing that I did with Blockbuster a couple of years ago, and email the crap out of all of the division presidents and anyone else in the marketing department that wants to hear it, demand that I not get charged for anything that happened on his phone over the last week, and that they let him re-download the ringers that were deleted, otherwise I will start hammering on the better business bureau and anyone else that will listen on the Internet. Asshats. The more I think about their reaction, the more pissed off that I get. Obviously this is not a company as a whole, or even representative of most of them, but the attitude of “don’t give a shit seems to permeate companies as they get bigger and don’t have to worry about one customer that pays $180/month in phone bills. That’s a drop in the bucket for them I guess.

Trackposted to Rightwing Guy, Wake Up America, Faultline USA, Big Dog’s Weblog, basil’s blog, The Pink Flamingo, Cao’s Blog, Dumb Ox Daily News, Conservative Cat, Right Voices, and Gone Hollywood, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Technorati : Cell Phones, Customer Service, Insurance Fraud, Verizon Wireless, WZW
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43 Things : Cell Phones, Customer Service, Insurance Fraud, Verizon Wireless, WZW

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I saw this over at youtube last night or this morning, and my brother sent me the link as well, so I decided to share. Pretty damned funny

Technorati : apple, conan, iphone, youtube

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