farmdevil.net

I recently requested a free credit report from Experian. I got the report in a timely manner but it contained a credit item that I had never heard of. It said I was an authorized user on a CitiBank account. It said that I had been on this account since 1997 and it listed a couple of years worth of balances. The card seems to have been paid on time, but it wasn’t mine so I wanted it off of there. I went to the dispute website and found that the item in question was not on the web version of the report.

My next step was to call and speak to a customer service representative. She said that she could see where it had been on my report but that it had been removed. She couldn’t tell me anything about it except that it had been removed and I was clearly wrong about having never done business with CitiBank. This item has allegedly been on my credit report for 13 years and now all of a sudden it disappears, and she wants me to just act like it didn’t happen. She just kept saying that I had been an authorized user on an account with CitiBank but that it was recently removed from my report. I told her very specifically that I wanted to dispute that statement, as I had never done business with CitiBank.

The big-picture problem here is one of accountability and the way CSRs always push accountability onto their computer system. I believe that I have a valid reason to expect a better explanation of mysterious items on my credit report but all the lady could do was regurgitate what was on her computer screen. She even did this to the extent of insulting my intelligence by believing the computer screen over me. It is infuriating when people are trained to hide behind their computers instead of actually serving the customer. Unfortunately, this has become the norm in all industries.

Apparently Discount Tire has joined the ranks of businesses like rental car companies that secretly add items to your bill in hopes that you don’t notice. I got a new spare tire for the boat trailer last week and, when paying, I noticed that the cost was a bit high but when I asked the employee about it he said some stuff about installation and environmental fees and such. I went ahead and paid my bill because they don’t give you the actual invoice until afterwards. When he showed me the invoice, I saw that he had snuck a $14.95 charge for a road hazard warranty on there! I told him he had better remove that and I was very forceful about the fact that this isn’t how to do business. He said he thought I had worked it out with the previous guy. I’ll bet he did. It actually turns out that this is standard practice at Discount Tire because Tiffany got tires at another location a couple days beforehand and, upon looking back at her bill, she had been charged an extra $60 overall. After talking to me, she went back to the store and demanded her money back as well.

Overall, Discount Tire didn’t end up getting the money and they lost two customers. I actually was the one who recommended them to Tiffany because I had never experienced the sort of sales tactics there that I had seen at other places, but now I have no plans to go back without a very compelling reason. This is what capitalism in America has turned into. Having a storefront is no longer about selling a better product or service than the other guy. It’s about tricking people into paying more than they should. For one thing, these warrantees are not worth it unless you plan to drive through construction zones everyday. For another, my tire is a spare mounted to the side of my trailer. It will need replaced 7 years from now because of cracking, not road hazards. When I go to a store (particularly automotive places), I tend to know exactly what I’m looking for. I need the salespeople to give me (just) that thing at a good price with good service. Otherwise I don’t come back.

In order to get my car registration renewed in Arizona without getting the emissions test, I had to have a police officer here sign a paper saying that the car is here in Kansas. I went down to the Wichita police station to get it signed. When I first gave the paper to the lady at the desk, her exact word were “I’m going to have to go get a real officer.” I was about to burst out laughing but thought it was better to remain quiet. Anyways, she ended up coming out of the back and telling me that the city police can’t do that. She said some B.S. about the Kansas Highway Patrol taking care of inspections and all of that. I told her that the Arizona law says that I can have any police officer sign it. Apparently Arizona places faith in police officers as being responsible and honorable enough to take care of it. But the Wichita police apparently don’t think of themselves as real police officers able to sign such a paper. When I was starting to get angry she told me she had worked there for 22 years.

When I went to the highway patrol station the next day, a very friendly and professional officer took care of it for me in about 1 minute. I asked him about the Wichita police and he said it sounds like they just didn’t want to do it and pointed out to me that it says right on the paper that any officer could sign it.

The whole thing was a waste of my time and gas and it was all because of the police shirking their responsibilities.

Since eBay has been touting it’s changes to the buyer and seller ratings system, I thinks it’s time to chime in.

Since the detailed seller ratings were first introduced, I have had a particular problem with one of them: shipping fees. Why should a buyer be able to rate a seller’s shipping fees? There is nothing secretive or misleading about shipping. If you agree to buy an item, you know the cost that you have agreed upon up-front. As a seller, I reserve the right to charge for packaging materials as well as my gas for the 20 minute drive to the shipping store. A buyer can take it or leave it, but why should he be able to affect my ratings because of that?

Buyers notoriously tend to have no concept of what shipping actually costs. Before I sell an item on eBay, I go to the UPS store and have them tell me the total cost to package and ship the item to 90210 (or an obviously far away zip code from whatever state I happen to be in). I mark it down a few dollars, and that’s my price. I lose money on some and gain money on others, but it’s a flat rate and there are no surprises.

Last year, a customer of mine was upset by my shipping price of $25 on an item. After getting lucky and winning the item for $0.99, he emailed me and proclaimed that the shipping costs to Colorado were $7 and asked that I give him a discount. For one thing, what incentive do I have to give him a discount after he already bid and won? For another thing, nothing ships from Ohio to Colorado for $7. Add packaging and even the smallest items must cost about $12 to ship there. This was a rotisserie unit for a cooktop! It was big! I had already heavily discounted the price that shipping to 90210 would have cost ($35). I emailed him back explaining my policy of flat-rate shipping and how I win some and lose some. I believe it ended up costing $19. I’m sure he rated my shipping fees poorly, but is that any indicator of my selling fairness?

I’ve done some research that I think might be interesting to friends or anybody who finds this page from a Google search. First I will give some background and then I will explain my research.

I first discovered Tire Discounters when I was seeking nitrogen for my tires. I called them up and was told that nitrogen was $4.95/tire. I wanted to try it out so I was going to go ahead and pay the money so I went in there and the guy told me it was free. They got lucky that time because right after he told me it was free, I told him about the patch I also needed. That was just the beginning of my saga with Tire Discounters. I went in there with the truck the next week to get the nitrogen in it as well. The manager greeted me and told me that it would cost $4.95/tire. I told him that wasn’t going to happen because I got it free the week before. He looked in his system and told me it was because I got something else done. Well, as I just mentioned, I didn’t ask for the other service until I had already received the quote of free. Over time, I went in to that same location to get my tires topped off and I also had some other minor things done (rotation, balance, I forget). Each time I felt like the manager was trying to rip me off. The other employees were very helpful. Once they scratched my wheel and, when I pointed it out, they were very honorable about making it right. Note that anytime you go to a big chain shop like that you need to take very careful inventory of scratches.

I ended up going to another location one time and the manager there took care of me for free so I asked him what the deal with the shiftiness was. He told me that they can do it for free with no problem but the only time he wouldn’t was if someone came in with brand new tires from somewhere else. I could respect that attitude.

Finally, we took Tiffany’s car in to another one of the locations and that is where it got really shifty. The manager tried to tell me that it cost $5/tire (if I remember correctly) but then when he found out we needed two valve stems as well, he ended up saying that it would be $15 for the valve stems and he would inflate the tires for free. I felt like he was being less than ethical in his pricing so that is what led me to do my research.

I called every Dayton and Columbus location and 6 Cincinnati locations. I only called each once, because I was worried I would ruin the experiment if they were suspicious. When I called I always asked about inflation first because I didn’t want them to “throw it in” with another service, and then I asked about the price of replacing a single valve stem.

The most important thing that I found was that if you call that last location, you can get a quote of $0 for the inflation and $5 per valve stem. This basically shows that the manager got a happy medium out of us between the normal price and the price he had originally tried to get. I have since concluded that the managers are like used car salesmen and they try to figure out how much they can get you for before you even come up to the counter.

Here are the results:

Note that the prices for inflation ranged from $0 to $7 and the prices for a valve stem ranged from $0 to $18.95!

The moral of the story is that you should always be careful when dealing with used-car dealers turned tire salesmen. Tire Discounters has decent products. They even have pretty good deals on tires with lifetime maintenance. They should let those things sell themselves and not spend all of their time trying to rip people off on nitrogen. If they keep me happy by keeping my nitrogen filled, they will have a customer for life. But if they continue the shiftiness, nitrogen is all I’ll use them for.

You may have noticed that the site has reverted to a default color scheme. I’ve just migrated all of my hosting to GoDaddy and while I was at it I thought I’d redo everything. I imported all of the old posts and went through them looking for dead links and other issues. I think I pretty much fixed everything. If you find any broken links, please let me know. Once I find a new image for the header, I will decide on a color scheme. But for now, this is it. I won’t be posting very often as I plan to be busy with school and other projects. But I hope to continue ranting on various issues from time to time.

Also you may have noticed that the Gallery is now gone. I don’t plan to reinstall it. I have decided that running my own gallery was too much hassle and I may eventually start using Flickr or something along those lines.

Note that this is probably more like version 4.0 of the site. I don’t recall what iterations there were before I started using blog software. This is the third in a line of sites that I feel like claiming at this point.

I know I haven’t posted in a long long time and I have had a few complaints regarding that matter. So I figured I had such a good rant on Facebook the other day (it has been described as almost scholarly) that I would post it on here too. Also you may notice that I have finally updated the biography page to actually reflect what I am currently doing and I have modified the blogroll a bit. Enjoy.

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So there has been some debate lately about recent additions to Facebook.

Back in the good old days, Facebook and MySpace weren’t very similar at all. They both filled different niches in the large market that is the internet. Now we have seen their cultures converge. I think it’s for the worse.

Aside from the fact that it looks like it was designed in crayon by a six-year old and the usability is even worse, MySpace is a place for people who need to feel comfort in the fact that 116 of their closest friends care about their mundane, day-to-day activities. It is a blog with an attached community.

I have no problem with blogs in theory. I have a blog. But two notes about my blog:
1. It is hosted on regular web hosting so I have complete control over design and features. This makes it an art form in addition to a tool.
2. Back when I did update it (8 months ago?) it wasn’t to advertise my every move. It was a place for me to write about my travels and various observations about life.

Facebook used to be for people like me who travel alot or go to college out of state and need a convenient place to keep tabs on their friends. I have some friends on facebook that I rarely look up unless I am about to travel to their respective state. It was a tool to assist in maintaining one’s network. It did not include a blog. It didn’t advertise users’ minute-to-minute actions. But the point I want to make is more important than the actual technology and features. I think that the culture of facebook has changed for the worse, and it has become worthy of some of the same criticism I used to reserve for MySpace.

On a slightly different note (but still on the topic of culture), Facebook has become a replacement for real friendships. People act like being facebook friends eliminates the need to maintain a friendship. Also if you were really friends with somebody, would you need to have a limited profile to block your screenname or pics (they aren’t allowed to be dirty anyways)? If you are writing it on the internet, it’s as good as public anyway. I would feel better if the tables were turned. If notes were available to nobody and then only were available to those that you selected, I would be fine with it because then it is a move to allow and not exclude. People seem to think that they hold great power in the ability to limit access and to delete friends. In a friendship there should be no sense of “power” or games. If there is a need to limit access or delete a friend, either you should learn to pick your friends better or you are being an asshole. We should all reflect on what it really means to be a friend.

I should wrap up by saying that with my web design and usability background I am qualified to express some of these opinions, however they are still opinions. Also the preceding text includes many generalizations. Not everybody who uses MySpace is vain. Not everybody on Facebook makes a lousy friend. Take this as a rant and maybe reflect a little. That is all.

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Now on Facebook there has been some discussion in the comments. I have conceded that MySpace was not the way I describe it at inception, but it has grown to be that way. Also we can’t forget about LiveJournal when criticizing online cultures.

It is a sad sad week. I sold my 1998 BMW 323is to my uncle on Friday. Many of you have never known me to have another car. We were together for a long time (over 5 years) and I put about 114,000 miles on it in that time. The thing still looked like new except for the unavoidable rock chips in the hood. I decided that having it was unnecessary since my family has an extra vehicle here in Ohio. It seemed like it was just depreciating out in Arizona. Now I will be trying to make some interest on the money and saving some more money to buy a nice car when I graduate.

So I just read [dead link].

I’ve ranted about this on several occasions before but I thought it could use another rant. I don’t aim to offend anybody in particular but if you don’t support condom use, you are part of the problem.

Why can’t organized religion get on their collective horse and realize that their policies just don’t work. Not using condoms doesn’t promote abstinence, but instead it promotes unwanted pregnancies. If people don’t like abortion, maybe they should try to keep people from getting pregnant in the first place. Furthermore, a “culture of life” should include disease prevention.

I would like organized religion a lot more if there weren’t contradictions like this. I know they don’t want anybody to have sex. But maybe they should notice that not everybody is on board with their no sex thing.

I’m just saying they should stop being so backwards and step forward from the 18th century.

This weekend was action-packed!

Friday night I stayed late at school for a Mario Kart tournament in the engineering building. The first 2 hour round I came out 7th out of 12. That isn’t too bad considering it’s been 4 years since I last played it.

Saturday I got up early and went over to school to get ready for the ACM programming competition. Chaitr met me in the lab an hour early to go over some things in preparation. In these competitions, they give you several problems and you have to solve as many as possible in 3 hours. We expected to lose (I haven’t used Java in 9 months and Chaitr isn’t really a computer science person so she doesn’t do it that much.) but we thought it would be fun to give it a shot. As it turns out, only one team got a problem right since the solutions are checked by a computer for correct results to test cases. We didn’t even get a problem done. We would have though, had they allowed us to use the Java API or if our copy of J Builder had been working properly. It would only sometimes do code completion and underline errors. When the time was up, we were probably 20 minutes from completion and it would have went way quicker if the program had been working right. That night I went to a halloween party put on by Erin’s friend Elaine’s family. I dressed as a flasher and it was a good time.

Sunday I went to school in the afternoon and did some homework before meeting with the Golshanis to play some basketball and soccer. We were supposed to play outside but it was raining so we played indoor at Kettering Medical Center instead. It was a darn good workout and I have a big bruise on my leg from soccer. We are supposed to start playing regularly every Sunday.

This week I have a few people to hang out with and some homework to do. But otherwise, it shouldn’t be too rough.