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.

It appears as if I have been neglecting my poor ol’ blog for the past few months.  Ok, so maybe I have.  But I assure you it has not been without good reason.  There have been 3 weddings in the past 6 weeks (one of which was my own!), a trip to San Diego, a vacation in Australia, countless incompetant businesses I’ve had to write complaints to, a house to clean (still have wedding gifts all over the place), numerous doctor visits, a washing machine to fix, and a whole shitload of work to catch up on… not to mention the normal stuff like mowing the lawn, taking the cats to the vet, going shopping, writing emails, eating, sleeping, etc.  Fun fun.

So, the other day I decided to transfer all of my domains to Crabersen Internet Solutions, clean up some of my DNS information, and do a general healthcheck on my various web sites.  Then, today I decided to post something to my blog, and while I was at it found the need to upgrade my installations of WordPress and Gallery.  Aparently they were grossly out of date.

What’s in store tomorrow?  Well, I need to actually post some decent pictures on my Gallery page and eventually re-do my home page.  It sucks.  I know it sucks and I just don’t have the time to update it since I spend all of my energy battling idiots at work who think they are web experts.  Um, sorry… the fact you know how to surf the web does not make you a web expert by any means.  Furthermore, the fact you use IE means you should be shot.

Last night my friend Carrie and I went to the They Might Be Giants concert at the 9:30 Club in Washington, DC. We got there surprisingly early, got prime parking, and most importantly – got a foam finger.

The show was pretty good. They played a bunch of new songs that I hadn’t heard before, and judging by the reaction of the crowd, most people hadn’t heard them before. The good news is, they made up for it by playing a bunch of really old songs. It’s amazing how well “Number 3″ sounds with the sampled sax and a full band. Other classics included “We’re the Replacements”, “Everything Right is Wrong Again”, and “Rhythm Section Want Ad”.

Oh, and the opener was Michael Leviton, a eukulele playing singer who takes the stage alone and sings songs about his favorite places to drown (off his CD of the same title).

Last night we went to the 2006 World Men’s Curling Championship in Lowell. It was the first time I’d ever attended a curling event and I must say it drew a decent crowd. Downtown was packed and was showing signs of life once again. The crowds in the arena were great and so were the Swedish cheerleaders (aparently the bra has yet to find its way to Sweden). Unfortunately, Canada beat team USA 9-6, but it still looks like we’ll make the finals.

Countries like Australia had their own unique cheer, which was pretty cool. The Canadiens would sing their national anthem. Sweden, well we already know they had cheerleaders. And the Americans? Well, as one fan noted, the Americans couldn’t even get a syncronized cheer going (think U-S-U-A-S-U-A-S…). It was pretty pathetic.

I always knew there was a reason why I kept two cases of bowling pins laying around my basement. Up until last night, I was never really sure what that reason was. My brother and I bowled in the Dexter Tournament of Champions Pro-Am at Bradley Bowl. The format has you bowling 3 games with 6 different pro bowlers. I brought one of my bowling pins and a Sharpie, hoping to snag a few autographs. Upon arriving at Bradley, we noticed signs posted on the walls advertising a bowling pin and marker for $25. What a rip off!! Anyway, I got a number of autographs and only missed Brian Voss out of the ones I wanted.

The above picture was taken with all of the amateurs on our pair of lanes (my brother and I are ones on the right), plus two of the pro bowlers (Walter Ray Williams, Jr. and Lonnie Waliczek). I thought I did fairly well, throwing a 740 series (268, 252, and 220), which is by far my best scratch series. With handicap that put me at 818, which was well ahead of everyone else on our pair of lanes. I’ll have to wait until the final scores are published to see how I did overall. Oh, did I mention that the tournament was 9-pin no tap? For those non-bowlers, that means if you get a 9 on your first ball, it counts as a strike. My brother and I had a great time and it definitely builds some false confidence to see those high scores up on the board… until you realize that’s with counting 9’s as strikes. Oh well. I did have 5 real strikes in a row in my second game.

Check out Katy and the Pin

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…

The bowling theme continues… I talked to my brother last night and he was telling me how he bowled a 300 the other day. YAY!!! Congrats to him! Ok, so the downside is he bowled it during a practice game before his league. He’s pissed that he doesn’t get the ring out of that deal.

This weekend, we bowled in a city tournament over in Lowell. It was a two day, 9 game tournament consisting of 3 games each in singles, doubles, and team events. I figured I would be in good shape, since I entered with my “book average” from the end of last season (a 173). My current average is 180, so I falsely assumed this 7 pin advantage would be in my favor. Not so.

In the doubles event, which was up first on Saturday, I bowled horribly. I was 9 pins below my tournament average… ugh. I brushed it off as 3 practice games as we moved on to the singles event. Aparently I needed 3 more practice games, because I barely reached my tournament average. As I turned in the scoresheets, I told the tournament director “he’s two for the bottom of the pile”.

On Sunday, we had the team event. I fared considerably better, averaging almost 187 for the three games. Unfortuantely, our entire team did not fare as well. We ended up with a decent total score, but I’m not too optimistic because there is another team squad again this coming weekend. Oh well, there’s always next year.

I’ve had this old wooden wall shelf lying around the house since we moved in, thinking one day I’d hang it up and put some stuff on it. Well, the day finally came. Yesterday I got off my butt and mounted the shelf to the wall and quickly filled it with some of my Whalers memorabilia.

I still need to make room for my posters, promotional hard hats (from when the Hartford Civic Center roof collapsed), and other items that don’t currently fit.

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?