Steve Lopez of the LA Times has a don’t-miss personal anecdote about his travails dealing with his bank after his debit card number was stolen. His bank ultimately decided that the charges were his responsibility, leaving him short over two grand. The bank’s unwillingness to discuss his claim has left him with little recourse. A phone rep told him his previous conversations weren’t able to be reviewed because the rep “can’t always get access to those tapes,” and John Hall of the American Bankers Association told him, in essence, to keep calling until he got it resolved, despite the fact that that’s exactly what Lopez has been doing.
complaints
Consumers Speak: Best Buy vs Circuit City
By 12.30.05
Rick B writes:
It may be a bit late for tales of Christmas shopping woe, but what the heck–its slow at work today. [No joke. -Ed.]
Consumers Speak: SBC Yahoo DSL’s Rack Rate
By 12.29.05
Mike L writes:
Received a letter from SBC regarding my DSL service – informing me that my 1-year contract is about to expire. And, for my convenience, they will automatically renew my service (currently paying ~$26 per mo.) for “just $34.95 per month, with absolutely NO TERM commitment!*” The letter went on to encourage me to take “absolutely NO ACTION” It boasted that this “low monthly rate” is “$5 less than the rack rate for SBC Yahoo! DSL Starter (a service not listed on their website, not that I know what a “rack rate” is…), and $15 less than the rack rate for SBC Yahoo! DSL Express (I was starting to feel the sensation of being “racked”). This lovely letter is signed, sincerely, by one Jason Crawford of the SBC Yahoo! Marketing team.
Customer Avoids Murdering Humpy UPS Employee
By 12.28.05
I already wrote a letter to UPS informing them that while I’ve never had a problem with their company I will happily take my package to the copy shop down the block where I can choose from a host of their competitors.
Law Firm Investigating Powerbook RAM Problems for Class Action
By 12.28.05
We’ve heard many times that Apple Powerbooks are finicky about RAM (and that may be true), but it would appear that for owners of 15-inch Powerbooks, it might not be the memory that has the problem after all. A law firm is investigating claims that a fairly recent version of Mac OS X corrupted the firmware in the memory controller inside Apple Powerbooks, rendering the lower of two memory slots unusable.
Consumers Speak: Sprint Nextel’s Shoddy Refurb Treos
By 12.28.05
Oz writes:
I have a business account with Sprint and every now and again, damage my equiptment – which results in a call to Lockline, there handset insurance contractor.
Gamefly’s Post-Sale Coupon Cruft
By 12.27.05
Reader Greg B. writes:
Wanted to point out a bad experience I had yesterday with the Gamefly deal; [A sale we had linked to – Ed.] not the deal itself but a link they post after it which harvests all of your personal info from Gamefly (including credit card details I think) by simply submitting any e-mail address. You do get a 10 buck coupon but ugh man, I promise you my mailbox is going to be friggen’ overflowing with junk next month – this site was all sorts of sketch.
Big Three Shippers: What Didn’t You Get from UPS, Fedex, and USPS?
By 12.27.05
Mr. Jarvis has had much in the way of Christmas-time delivery problems, with at least four packages having issues with both Fedex and USPS. Others in his thread have had plenty of problems with the big three shippers, as well.
FIFA Backs Down on World Ticket Prices (A Bit)
By 12.23.05
For you in this time of joy, a happyish ending to Grant Williams’s FIFA World Cup Ticket Saga:
Edit: I get results, baby! According to the Babelfish translation of this page, the TST-Series non-refundable fees have been negotiated down to only 10, 20, and 30 euros per ticket instead of the 20, 30, and 50 euros they were originally. Not perfectly to my satisfaction, but better than nothing, I suppose.
Consumers Speak: Lenovo’s Tricky Customer Service
By 12.22.05
Ever since IBM sold their industry standard Thinkpad line of laptops to Lenovo, some have worried if the quality of the units would suffer. On the whole, it seems they haven’t—they continue to review well, performance-wise.
Staples Charges Per-File Fee to Make Your Copies
By 12.21.05
A pal of head BoingBoinger Mark has stumbled across an unbelievable $2.49 per file ‘virus scanning’ charge levied by Staples when customers bring in documents to be printed. Another former Staples employee writes in to say that the fee is more of a document handling type of thing, with an initial $2.49 plus $99 per file charge, just because it’s more of a pain to deal with files than to copy something from paper to paper.
More Amazon Xmas Delays
By 12.21.05
We’ve got another case of a reader getting burned by slow notification of shipment delays from Amazon. We expect that delays are reasonable this time of year—the Amazon warehouses must look like the Snickers machine at a Harry Potter convention—but this whole ‘We can’t fill your order but we won’t tell you until it’s too late to order again’ thing is awful.
MoviesWithASmile.com: Friends Don’t Let Friends Watch ‘Friends’
By 12.21.05
They also offered to upgrade the shipping for no extra cost.
Find out if Rachel finally gets with Ross’s monkey after the jump.
What’s the Most Poorly Packaged Item You’ve Received This Xmas?
By 12.21.05
It’s the season of shipping, when every stocking is stuffed with truck stop amphetamines and UPS men cry themselves to sleep at the wheel. So far we’ve lucked out—nearly all our packages have come in with ample packing and nary a scuffed corner.
Countrywide Mortgage Identity Theft: We Can’t Find the Crime
By 12.21.05
We haven’t been able to determine to what degree the identify theft letters from mortgage companies are legit. But thanks to an astute reader ‘fotonique,’ we’ve discovered what might be the source of the letters being sent out from other mortgage companies, including ABN-AMRO.
AirTrain: Tiny Bathrooms, Big Cancellations
By 12.21.05
Josh C writes:
Recently, I flew Airtran to get to a family gathering. Normally I like them; their rates are low and upgrades are cheap. But I had two problems that I want to warn your readers about:
West Elm Needs to Hire Studlier Boys
By 12.19.05
The real shocker of this story is that the furniture store West Elm is just a division of Williams-Sonoma. Horror! It was one thing to be chased out of our old neighborhood by a hip, independent New York furniture boutique, but now we’re unsure how we feel about West Elm. Does it make us cooler or more lame to have been chased out of a neighborhood by a big chain or a small, burgeoning store? These are heady questions for a Monday morning.
