Introduction to Blogs Section

This section may or may not continue. Mostly it's for me to vent and comment about the absurdities of life. I haven't set up anything for responses. In full disclosure, I wouldn't have the time and energy to respond.

Credit Card Services: June 19, 2011 About those people who call you up at dinnertime with those great opportunities to make changes to your credit card account.
K-Mart - UPS Follies: May 25, 2011 Demonstrates how silly, inflexible rules prevent getting your order delivered if you make a single typographical mistake in your delivery address. As in writing while elderly or ill. This falls hardest on those who are seniors, disabled, ill or just plain poor. Those who make simple mistakes and then don't have the ability to drive to the UPS center when UPS refuses to deliver the package, because you weren't at the address they expected. And how, when that happens, Sears/KMart will refuse to make any corrrections to your address, will cancel the order without your express permission, and will ship the package back to Sears/KMart at your expense.

Note: This afternoon, Friday, June 17, 2011, a nice young lady named Jodi from Sears-Kmart in Des Moines called to fix the problem. Her Mother has bouts of sepsis and she understands what a hassle it can be. She refunded the shipping charges on the old order, and reordered the item with free shipping and a moderate discount. If she had not done this, I would never have visited another Sears or Kmart store again. A very nice young lady indeed. So Jodi's supervisor, Beth, should be pleased with her. She did the right thing and kept a customer from never returning.

What has UPS done? NADA. So, except for this note, I've left the page above unchanged as a cautionary tale to those who ship by it.

AT&T Internet Follies: January 8, 2012 For 15 months now, the billing for DSL service, even with alleged promotional benefits, has gone up and down like a yo-yo, from credits to at least one monster charge well in excess of premium DSL rates. AT&T has repeatedly promised and reneged on the rate for Internet DSL services, requiring repeated calls to AT&T Customer Service to get bills fixed - allegedly. After promising DSL internet service at $14.95/month, the actual bills submitted by AT&T for internet service have been, from November 2010 to December 2011: $39.90, $39.06, $24.55 CR (credit), $35.00, $14.95, $5.10 CR, $35.00, $9.95, $30.00, $30.00, $10.91 CR, $5.10 CR, $5.10 CR, $44.22. No AT&T promise has been worth the air taken to utter it. AT&T has engaged in serial bait and switch tactics at worst, and demonstrated utter bumbling incompetence at best. Apparently AT&T's rate management is so unbelievably and unnecessarily complicated that neither its employees nor its computers can understand or deal with it. It seems designed to confuse the customer, especially the elderly, and extract ever-increasing bills from those who don't want to argue about it. In my opinion, it rises to the level of wire fraud, and should result in indictments. Here are some 34 pages, of AT&T bills and communications, intersperced with my notes of phone conversations with its representatives.