It’s Due to COVID…

“Due to the ongoing pandemic crisis we have made changes to our enterprise systems to protect your health and the health of our employees. This may cause longer than usual wait times. For faster service please use our voice prompt system or our website. If the answer you’re looking for is not available please continue to hold…”

Alright, I call BULLSHIT!

First of all I as a customer don’t care. Whatever you’re doing to protect your employees is your business. It’s between you and your employees. This is especially true if I’m calling someone like a credit card service or my insurance company. I DON’T see you people in person EVER!

Second of all, I’ve been noticing that there are a lot more errors. Errors in Billing, Errors in shipments, Errors in services rendered.

And when I call folks on those errors, the response is “Oh well with COVID, blah blah blah” The problem is, computers don’t get COVID. COVID doesn’t suddenly and mysteriously change due dates, causing late charges on credit bills. Someone commanded that change but it wasn’t COVID.

COVID doesn’t add two days to shipping in the one second between the time I click on “Checkout” and the time I press “PAY”. If you’re going to quote me a delivery date on my whole order, then split that order and space it out of 4 days after I’ve pressed PAY and entered my credit card info just quote me the real date not some fiction.

“But it’s due to COVID”

NO, IT ISN’T!

You know what’s in your warehouses and you also know how long the shit I order is going to take to get to me.

Somewhere in the billing systems for credit cards there’s an algorithm that says, “If customer pays bill two weeks ahead of schedule, then adjust Due Date to three weeks earlier.” Deposit collected late fees in account marked “Profit Skim”.

A second algorithm says note in customer account for representative. “If customer calls to complain reverse charges and allow customer to choose new billing date. Blame it on COVID”

The hope in the case of the credit card companies is that most people won’t call ‘em on it and will just pay the late fee, assuming that they (the customer) made a mistake.

The best case scenario for the credit card company is that the customer won’t notice it at all, and is an auto pay customer. If they pay a fixed amount monthly, then the unpaid late charges generate another full amount late fee that continues to add up month over month until the entire monthly payment is consumed in late fees but nothing is applying toward the actual debt. 

Once that happens the late fee cycle resets causing the customer to essentially make no headway towards paying off their debt.

My plan is to pay off all the credit cards and not have more than one. I prefer CASH or debit card transactions. I’ll keep one credit card for those weird life emergencies. But I’m cutting up cards as quickly as I can. 

COVID has become the Catch All phrase that is supposed to be the acceptable excuse for whatever someone has screwed up.

I’m sick of it. 

Own your screwups, don’t blame your mess on a virus that appears to be 99% survivable without intervention.

Yeah 1% of the population is a big freakin number. But to date, less than 1% of the population has died and the financial computer systems are still running.

It’s funny that for all the mistakes I’ve been seeing, I’m still getting the bills. You’d think that at least one of these institutions would have an outage that takes out their billing wouldn’t you?

Grrrr!

“Quite an experience to live in fear, isn’t it?”

“That’s what is to be a slave.” – Roy Batty Blade Runner.

Now we’ve all had a taste of it. What have we learned?

The vast majority of people in the USA haven’t actually been slaves. Yet there are a lot of folks who’d like to enslave us all. These people don’t care what your skin color is. They want you enslaved in a system. Their System.

These are the people that want you to be dependent on their largess. They offer bright baubles of technology, healthcare, entertainment, etc. then make us feel “less than” if we’re unable to afford those baubles.

They offer us a daily dose of fear via the news, & commercials. “More terrifying moments of unrest today in Minneapolis. The President today said, ‘insert daily out of context statement here‘ does this statement mean the end of America? See our report at 11. Suffering from Kidney Failure? Are you going to die? Try our new drug, if you can’t afford it (The implication is your insurance is bad, or you don’t make enough and are therefore ‘less than’) contact us and we’ll help pay your bill.”

They keep us apart by instilling mistrust in each other. “It’s white oppression, it’s black criminality. It’s racist, that person is a Nazi. Wear a mask, don’t wear a mask, wear a mask as a symbol of solidarity, You should wear a mask because you never know who might be carrying a virus. Black Lives Matter=Good speech, All Lives Matter=Bad speech, ACAB (All cops are bastards), Why are the police not stopping this looting?”

With each new presidential administration, there are people who are “Right” and people who are “Wrong” the actual facts of the administration’s accomplishments or failures notwithstanding. The “Right” and the “Wrong” people flip based on how the media presents a particular narrative.

In simplest terms, we’re always being manipulated by headlines, soundbites, and glamorous ads showing us things that a great many of us can’t afford. The ads implicitly extol the virtue of working harder to make more money so that we can afford these pretty things. The thing lots of people miss is that all of us working harder, generates more tax revenue that in turn, fuels the system.

The same system that locks us in our homes, costs us jobs, and vilifies individuals who after doing the math, decide that feeding their families is worth the risk.

That same system almost deifies individuals in protests that devolve into rioting and looting. It makes a sick kind of sense. Either situation creates an “Enemy” that can be pointed to, now or in the future, to maintain the cultural division.

As long as the American people are fearful and divided, the powerful can do as they please in plain sight. Who will question the national guard being brought in to quell riots? Who will question another lockdown because of a spike in Covid-19 cases?

Social Media was supposed to help level the playing field allowing people to communicate with each other directly, expressing thoughts and beliefs freely without bias, other than those biases the people brought with them.

As Social Media blossomed, controls were put into place to silence dissent. Those controls started out innocently to prevent blatant racist and hate from spilling unbidden onto computer screens. Those controls quickly escalated into full blown censorship.

The implied reason for that censorship is that “average people” are unable (too immature, or too stupid) to process dissenting opinions without experiencing angst. Therefore it is assumed they need to be protected from free thought, instead of exercising the freedom of simply choosing not to view items which are offensive to them.

Mind you, what one may find offensive, others may find informative. With censorship instituted on social media no-one has to decide, and everyone is once again placed in a bubble of docile safety and conformity.

Safe, in that bubble, they’re not troubled by dissenting opinion and not forced to think for themselves or form their own opinions. The narrative of those in control is preserved and the correct “Group Think” is doled out 200 characters at a time, by sanctioned influencers.

How are sanctioned influencers picked? They’re approved by Twitter checkmarks and number of followers. An influencer with a large number of followers and a check mark is seen as someone “In the know“. They remain a blessed influencer as long as they maintain the appropriate narrative.

However if an influencer goes off the reservation or someone speaking counter to the narrative, (There are always a few allowed, to maintain the illusion of Facebook or Twitter’s impartiality,) becomes troublesome. Their follower count mysteriously decrements. Their coveted Twitter Checkmark is removed, they end up in “Twitter Jail” or their messages simply vanish, and finally they are banned outright. These people still have online presences, they’re just on other platforms with lower brand recognition.

Platforms like GAB aren’t allowed to post their applications on Google Play or the Apple App store. Other platforms like Parler are allowed to have Play Store or Apple App store presences for the time being.

This speaks to the tight integration between Google, Apple, and the group, or groups controlling the narrative. Not only are specific people exiled from Twitter and Facebook, their ability to be seen by the masses is limited by the corporations who provide the dominate operating systems for smart devices as well.

Isn’t it odd that nudity, violence, and graphic sex is allowed on a platform like Twitter and freedom of political messages is not? Even odder is that Apple and Google provide access to an application which can present these images while at the same time denying access to alternate applications which are largely politically conservative in nature. The only difference being that Twitter filters out comments that present dissenting political opinion?

Isn’t this exactly the kind of thing that is never supposed to happen in a free society?