Charter Communications, which was ranked worst telephone, internet, and television service provider by Consumer Reports, has come up with the perfect scam. The sad thing is, people are falling for it!

Last week, the company kicked off an auction where one unlucky person will win “Charter High-Speed Internet for Life”. There are a few catches with this scam. First, you must reside in an area serviced by Charter Communications. Makes sense, but this leads to the second catch: the free service is not transferable. If you move or no longer have the ability to receive Charter’s services, you’re out of luck until your town gets Charter or you move back into their service area. In this day and age, people move around and your chances of living in a town that puts up with Charter is probably quite slim.

One good thing is the company will give you the highest level of Internet service available in the market you’re living in. For many people, this means 10MB (or faster) service now, and who knows how fast it will get in the future.

My beef is really with the people bidding on this scam. To see just how gullible some people are, check out this list of bids. As of right now, the high bid is $23,852. Seems a bit high for lifetime Internet access, especially when technology evolves so quickly. Look back just 15 years… people were to have dial-up Internet access and the Mosaic web browser was just about to be released. How much would you have paid then for Internet access for life? What will we have 10 years from now for Internet access?

Ok, back to these bidders. Let’s assume the high bidder is 25 years old (because honestly, what 25 year old doesn’t have $24k lying around?). Let’s also assume that this 25 year old is healthy and will be surfing the web until they’re 85. So they are paying $23,852 for 60 years of internet access… which is $397.53 per year or $33.13 a month (Charter’s current promotional rate for 10MB service is $24.99 a month - see the issue so far?). Over the 60 years, the high bidder would have earned an average of $19.94 per month in Interest (at 2% compounded annually), which raises the true monthly cost to $53.07… seems like a rip off to me! If the $23,852 is left in a savings account, monthly interest earnings would be over $39 a month. Heck, why not put it in a money market account or buy a CD and put it to good use versus donating it to Charter?

Now if the high bidder is really dumb, they’ll put this winning bid on their credit card and throw even more money out the window!

I recently started recording all of my old cassette tapes onto my computer, mainly so I can throw away all my old tapes (which are just collecting dust). I have tapes from a variety of brands like Sony, Memorex, TDK, Maxell, Supertape, Irish, Certron, Fuji, Randix, Realistic. Out of the 20+ cassettes I’ve gone through, I’ve only had two problems… both with Memorex tapes. They don’t wind the tape properly, so one spindle stops spinning. That leads to an accumulation of tape inside the tape deck, which isn’t good.

After getting frustrated with having to completely fast-forward and rewind the entire tape in an effort to get a smooth spindle, I read the label on one of my cassette cases. “Full Lifetime Warranty. This cassette will be replaced free of charge if it is ever found defective in materials or workmanship. Simply send it, postage prepaid to Memtek Products.”

So - I wonder if Memorex/Memtek will honor their lifetime warranty?

In early 2006, I powered up my old IBM PCjr and realized it would not boot up. The BIOS would beep a few times, but nothing else would happen. How was I supposed to play JumpMan or Shamus?! So to eBay I went and in April 2006 I found and won a working IBM PCjr. It cost me $51 and even came with original manuals, keyboard, and power supply… all in the original box. A great deal in my mind.

Fast forward to the end of August 2007. My original IBM PCjr (which refuses to boot up) just sold on eBay. I threw it back in the original box I previously bought and included my old keyboard and the manuals. The winning bid? A whopping $154.50. I couldn’t believe it. With the housing market in a slump, is this turning out to be prime PCjr selling season?

So I guess the moral of the story is this: Broken crap is worth more than working crap. Who knew?

With the recent demise of SunRocket, I was forced to switch VoIP providers in a pinch. My wife and I did some quick research and had narrowed it down to a few companies that provided features and price comparable to what SunRocket had offered. Since we take advantage of the free long distance and free roaming on our cell phones, having a home phone is not critical - it’s just nice to not have to worry about low batteries and lost signals once in a while. For that reason, we wanted an affordable (read: low price) service. The major VoIP players charge way too much, as do the cable providers. In the end, one company stood above all the rest when it came to the features and the price they offered. Unfortunately, with all the SunRocket customers heading for the same handful of companies, nobody can keep up. After a couple weeks of unreliable service, we’re now faced with our old phone number not yet transfered to our new provider. This means people calling us get a “SunRocket is out of busines” recording.

Turns out there would have been a lot less aggravation if we simply handed out tin cans and ran string to our friend’s houses.

Tom Wilson has aparently resorted to ripping himself off. My friend Carrie has been giving me Ziggy’s One-Day-At-A-Time calendar for as long as I can remember, and much to my surprise I found a repeat! The comic for Sept 8, 2006 was almost identical to the one from Mar 17, 2007. Sure, it’s drawn slightly differently, but c’mon… it’s the same strip! Have the Wilsons really been doing this so long that they’ve run out of ideas? Or maybe they figure their audience is so old, they’d never remember the same strip showing up twice. I would just ask that next time they wait more than 6 months to repeat it.

Over the past month, I have had a whole host of issues with my Sprint PCS account. You name it, they screwed it up. The name on my account was suddenly changed with no way for Sprint to change it back (the caller ID name for one of my lines became the primary account holder name). They were forced to close my account and open a new one for me. Great. On top of all that, there were charges on my old account that I shouldn’t have had. They messed up a previous plan change and ended up billing me for extra minutes and services.

So here I was with my new account. It was set up on July 24 and the first invoice was sent out on July 26. There were a handful of issues with this bill. First, my corporate discount was missing. Second, all the services I just got credit for on my old account were now back! Grrrr! I called to have the corporate discount added and was told at that time to ignore this first bill and they would send me a new one. The due date on this first bill was August 21, so not a big deal.
On August 1, Sprint sent me another bill (due August 28). This bill was generated to align my account with the corporate billing cycles. Aparently, at this time, my previous bill (dated July 26) became past due. Yes, you heard right - Sprint considered my July 26 bill to be late and unpaid, even though it wasn’t due until August 21. On August 10, I received a disconnection notice due to my unpaid balance. On top of all that, my August 1 bill still had more erroneous charges and I was even double-billed for the last week in July (charges appear on both bills).

When all was said and done, I made two trips to a Sprint store, two email inquiries to the Sprint web site, and literally about 15 phone calls to Sprint. I had much better luck once the woman in the Sprint store gave me a “special” toll-free number to call. Aparently it takes you right in to the Texas call center, which is considered level 2. After one ring, you get a live person… and a live person who knows what the hell they are talking about. Double bonus.

Now, over a full month since I started down this road, my issues are resolved. I received almost $130 in credits for all of the erroneous charges they applied to me account. The funny part is, the last woman I spoke to in the corporate discount group was such an idiot that she credited my an extra $10! That’s the least they can do for all my time and aggravation.

The lesson for today boys and girls is: avoid Sprint at all costs. Their customer support sucks and their billing system sucks. Don’t waste your time with them.

A handful of Filene’s stores around here are closing because they are in close proximity to a Macy’s store (Macy’s parent company bought Filene’s parent company). So, the stores that are closing are having clearance sales. One would think there would be some good deals.

Think again.

Most items are 60% off, but they are 60% their “regular” price, which seems a lot like a jacked up price.

Also, the stores that are closing no longer deal with wedding registries at all. In fact, the entire registry computer and anything associated with gift registries has been removed. There is a small sign instructing people to call a Filene’s that isn’t closing. The annoying part is we opened our registry at Filene’s a few weeks ago and the lady said nothing would change until the end of May, when they would automatically transfer the registry data over to Macy’s. Aparently she left out the part about how our guests wouldn’t be able to shop at their local Filene’s if it was closing. Grrr…

Tonight we went to Shaw’s for two reasons:
     We needed snacks for Super Bowl Sunday
     We had gift cards we needed to use
Note that we don’t like Shaw’s and normally don’t shop there.

So we proceeded to find some snack foods and some soda, and then headed for the self-checkout line. We ring everything up and press “finish & pay”. The payment options come up… there’s cash, credit, debit… but no gift card option. What the heck is going on? We try scanning the gift card’s barcode and the machine instructs us to “use the pin pad to complete transaction”.

Ok. The pin pad says “select payment type”. Hmmm. So I pick credit and swipe the gift card. No luck. I try debit… nothing. Finally we resort to flagging down a clerk who says “oh, these don’t take gift cards. You must go to a register.”

Crap. So we take our items (which are already bagged) and proceed to the nearest register that is manned by a human. After many strange looks (why would anyone be in line with their stuff already bagged?), we use our gift cards as payment and rush out of the store.

Anyone want to buy some Shaw’s gift cards?

Leanne and I were at L.L. Bean’s flagship store in Freeport, ME earlier this evening. Gift certificate (a Christmas present) in hand, we wandered the store set out to buy a pair of jeans (for her) and a jacket (for me). By the end of our shopping trip, a few more items had found their way into our tote bag. Funny how that happens.

We spot an open register and head on over. I empty our tote bag onto the counter and the cashier proceeds to ring everything up. Leanne hands the cashier the gift certificate (which would end up covering about 25% of our spree) and then things get interesting.

The cashier asks, “May I have your phone number?”

“No,” says Leanne, rather politely.

“Well, we need your information in order to redeem the gift certificate.”

“Why do you need my phone number?”

“It’s for security reasons. Don’t worry, we won’t sell your number or anything.”

Ummm… for SECURITY REASONS?? WHAT!?! This made no sense. After some back and forth a few more times, the cashier explained that we could just “make up a number” - which struck me as quite odd given the highened security surrounding this transaction. So, Leanne gave her parent’s number, I paid the balance, and we were on our way. I was surprised they didn’t run a background check!

It was bad enough when Radio Shack asked for your phone number when buying simple things like batteries… but to claim it is for security reasons is absolutely absurd. Even if the gift certificate were reported stolen by the original purchaser, how would they track down the person who redeemed it (especially since the cashier suggested we make up a number)??

I hear retina scanners will be installed next week…

The morons at Fox have done it again. The network has cancelled Arrested Development for what they call low ratings. Winning Emmy awards aparently doesn’t mean anything these days. Being the funniest show on television aparently doesn’t mean anything, either!

Perhaps the idiots that cancelled this show should walk down the hall and terminate their marketing and scheduling departments. They didn’t do this show justice and failed to find an effective way to market it.

Bastards.

Boycott Fox.