Day: April 18, 2013

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I hate Games in Business Transactions

I Hate playing games with vendors or suppliers of services.

All too often these days people seem to want to play games with your paycheck, they want to play games with your bills, games with your mail, your email, your online accounts. They want to play games with you returning things.

DirecTV after two and half weeks finally got around to sending me a “recovery kit”

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Do you know what’s in the recovery kit? Take a guess it’s not what you would think…

I was expecting a large box with a couple of return labels.  I was going to put both of the DirecTV receivers in the big box and then take the big box to the post office.

What I got was a package full of labels… No box, no packing material, nothing that I could put the DirecTV receivers in to make sure that they got back to DirecTV.

The first passing thought was slap the stickers directly on the receivers themselves and send that to DirecTV however I knew the post office wouldn’t take them that way.

So I found a couple boxes down in the garage.

The receivers are in the boxes covered in ghost poop, I’m not at all sure that they’ll survive the rough handling that I know the postal service will subject them to. At this point I don’t really care… much.  I do, the machines didn’t do anything wrong they’re in good working order and they shouldn’t be damaged because no-one cares.

I did pack them tightly and with what packaging materials I had available. I just wish that the idiots at DirecTV had sent me the proper boxes with appropriate packing.

Now it’s just a matter of figuring out how the post office wants the labels on the boxes.

Clearly DirecTV was trying to do nothing more than make it difficult for me to return their product

We came to an end of our relationship after eight years because of exactly this kind of game playing.

If I want to cancel my service I should be able to cancel my service, it should be no harm no foul.

I should be able to put the receivers in the box and I should be able to send the box back to DirecTV.

Instead I had to make three requests for the recovery kit

After the third request what I get is a package full of labels not shipping boxes.

I know what the game is about and how it’s played.

It’s all about them figuring “Maybe if we make it to hard for this person to get rid of the receivers,  if we make it so that he’s going to be charged a ton of money if he keeps the receivers for any length of time after the contract is up maybe he’ll sign up with us again, maybe we can continue to get the $120 or $130 a month.”

All I can say is they don’t know me very well.

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With me, the harder you make something, the more annoyed I get, the more likely I will go to the ends of the Earth to accomplish my goal.

In this case I’m going to make sure that I can put DirecTVs equipment straight up their collective ass.

So DirecTV not only did you lose a customer because I couldn’t make changes to my plan without having to go to some kind of unbelievable game with plan switches, and 2 year contracts all of which was designed to make absolutely sure that I ended up spending more money than I was originally, you’ve also lost a customer forever.

I cannot imagine myself doing any business at all with DirecTV from here on out I’m not going to say never.  But it is sure as hell going to require a lot of thought before I sign my name on any dotted line with these people.

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What a Week!

Pressure cookers?

For real?

I had to think about that one… Then I had the inevitable Aw Shit! moment as the physics and chemistry played out in simulation in my head. 

This does support my assertion that anything at all can be used to ill purpose. All it takes is the will to harm others.

I do hope that the perpetrator(s) is hunted down like a dog and served justice.

Preferably a justice befitting the crime.

I was surprised to see the Pakistani Al Qaeda denying any involvement. That seemed unusual to me since they love anything horrible happening to Americans, and often lay claim to things they couldn’t possibly have any connection to.

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Then theres Westboro Baptist Church claiming they will picket the funerals in Boston.

Uhhh, Westboro if I were you, I’d sit down and shut the hell up!

You really don’t want to piss off Boston and the rest of the country on this one!

Do you even have enough people to call yourself a church anymore? Oh right all you need is 3 gathered in his name.

Of course with Westboro I’ve always wondered whose name they gather in. They do seem to have a rather intimate knowledge of Hell and the people that are going there.  

Just Sayin…

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And then… Anonymous hacked Westboro’s Facebook page in response to Westboro claiming they’d picket funerals in Boston. 

You have to love it.

The talking heads on all the networks are another group that needs to sit down and shut the hell up.

Blathering on and on about stuff that is contradictory or just completely wrong is not journalism it’s gossip.

Anderson Cooper shamed himself on Wednesday standing in a parking lot with another CNN “personality” and some “expert“. While… a Hospital and Federal building were being evacuated just blocks away.

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The two CNN “Journalists” didn’t even break stride in their gossiping to take note of the potential news taking place behind them.

It was shameful.

The NBC reporter from LA was equally irresponsible and frankly annoying in his breathless reporting of the Boston federal building evacuation.

Someone needed to get that man a double dose of Valium.

I’d turned the TV off sometime on Monday and really haven’t been watching more than 15 minutes at a clip. More than that and I want to vomit, due to the piss poor reporting.

It amazes the hell out of me that Twitter is faster, and often more accurate in reporting news than any of the “Big News” organizations.

I guess 140 characters limits the hyperbole. (It sure as hell limits mine…)

YourAnonNews actually does a great job of getting all kinds of current events out on twitter. The irony that they may be affiliated with the infamous hacker group Anonymous isn’t lost on me.

It was YourAnonNews that was covering the Ricin mail that was sent to Sen. Roger Wicker and President Obama. YourAnonNews reporting was simple, to the point and amazingly accurate. Here’s the NPR report about the suspect

I’ve noticed that when YourAnonNews gets it wrong on Twitter, they send out corrections as fast as they sent out the original item. 

YourAnonNews is gaining my respect for simply saying “This Happened” With no further commentary or spin. 

Barack obama gun control ap 328

We managed to Piss off President Obama when the Senate blocked the gun control plan.

I caught just a snippet of the president berating the Senate and to some extent it felt like he was talking to a bunch of children (Which is when I turned the TV off).

The president claims that he has the public on his side. Really? I don’t think he’s got as much public support on gun control as he thinks he does.

Perhaps he should consider polling OUTSIDE Washington and the Democratic party.

I’m sure that more and more gun control laws will be floated but I strongly suspect they’ll meet the same fate. 

It’s not that people aren’t willing to discuss solving the problem… It’s that lots of people question the wisdom of making yet more laws that either won’t be enforced or can’t be enforced. 

And aren’t we still waiting for the whole Fast & Furious investigation and trials to wind up? Seems that we should clean up the problem inside DHS so that they can follow the law before we create new laws.

I personally didn’t like the Presidents tone. He lost, he shouldn’t be a sore loser.

Isn’t “don’t be sore losers”  what the republicans were told repeatedly in November? You know I’m a whats’ good for the goose is good for the gander kind of guy.

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It was YourAnonNews who first broke the news about the fertilizer plant explosion in TX. Here is the Fox Coverage. The other was USA Today and I wont subject you to the infinite ads.

My Twitter feed lit up about 2 hours before the mainstream media made their first reports about the TX explosion.

I’d be really depressed and angry if I watched all of this on the live repetitive loop.

A couple of weeks ago a friend sent me this blog article Why you should stop watching the news 

So I’ve been weaning myself off the 24 hour news cycle and taking control over what invades my life.

Twitter serves this purpose well. I see the 140 character descriptor and if it’s of interest I’ll open the link (if any) otherwise it’s like water flowing off my consciousness and out of my life.

Eventually, I can see myself not bothering with TV at all.

Think about it. The “News” as it’s called is really a concentrated loop of bad crap that lasts about 18 minutes. It’s interspersed with commercials that in one way or another make you feel bad about yourself. 

You need a new car – the subtext is that you’re not stylish or wealthy enough.

You need this or that drug – Reminding you that you’re mortal, aging, and perhaps not enjoying your life as much as you could or should because your health is failing.

Be happy buy more crap – as if we all don’t have enough useless crap in our lives.

I’m enjoying the control I’ve been exercising. I’m also feeling a lot better about a lot of things.

Perhaps the brightest spot in this week has been my phone interview and apparently doing well at a friends company. Perhaps there will be some of my own news to tell in the near future.

Have a good day, and remember You’re in control you don’t have to be victimized by TV. It is your servant not the other way around.