I got an email from my cellular provider last week. Apparently they've been wringing their hands together, worried that my current mobile phone isn't everything my heart wants and desires. Now, I am on a very simple plan. A modicum of free minutes, nationwide long distance, and that's about it. No built-in text messaging plans, no web access plan, nothing like that. Nor do I really send text messages or use the web access built into my phone, and not just because it's not covered in my plan. I just don't use or need it. So there's nothing about my usage patterns that would make them think that I require a new phone or new packages to add to my service.
However, there is now a year left on my contract (I should have long since been out of contract, but there was some shuffling that went on last year before we moved and I knowingly consented to a two year extension to make them easier and less expensive) and I guess they're staying up nights fretting that I might leave once the contract is up. You know. IN A YEAR.
(Note to cellular providers: if you all didn't suck at least a little bit on service, pricing, and general customer service, you wouldn't have to use contracts to lock people in. They'd stay on their own. It's a terrible way to do business, it truly is.)
So I ignored the email last week. I don't want a new phone. This one calls people when I type in numbers and press send, and it lets me talk when other people type in my particular numbers and my phone rings, and that's all I'm really looking for out of, you know, A PHONE.
Apparently they were so concerned with my lack of immediate contact when they made their generous offer to charge me money to replace something that still works fine and lock me in for three more years instead of just one more short year of my life, and they sent me a text message to alert me to this wonderful deal that awaited me. In the text message, they lovingly described what I was entitled to indenture myself to, and then at the end, they included a brief, annoyingly txt-speechy description of how to reply to the unwanted text message to tell them that it was, shockingly, UNWANTED.
I worked out the instructions and replied back to get them to never text message me again, and I got a CONFIRMATION text message that I had to reply to AGAIN to confirm that I didn't want such vital messages as "please give us $79.99 so that you can throw a working piece of equipment in the trash in the name of keeping up with everyone else's pieces of beeping plastic."
I replied to that one, and my phone has now blessedly stayed silent. FOUR text messages to say, "No, thank you," and get them to actually go away.
It could be worse, though. They could have had a telemarketer call me and insinuate that I'm a dinosaur because I don't want a phone that will play MP3s at me and show me my email and generally annoy me because the main function of the phone has been nearly lost in the morass of other functions that are built into the damn thing, and the whole thing will cost me three or four times what I currently pay per month.
In fact, I think they would have done that, but I already opted out of marketing calls. That's what must have gotten them so concerned. They must think only a terribly depressed person wouldn't want to hear about their amazing offers. I really should be grateful that they care.
Really, I think I'll see if another company has better coverage out here among the horses and switch when my contract's up next year. So THEY can annoy me with emails and calls and text messages anew, I'm sure.
Showing posts with label utilities. Show all posts
Showing posts with label utilities. Show all posts
Monday, October 13, 2008
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
Stupidest Website Registration EVER
I couldn't get through to the automatic account information for one of my utility bills to verify the balance I should pay and so, like a good web user, I went to their website to see if I could get an account there and see the balance via that interface. When I went to the page to begin account registration, this is the help text next to the form I was asked to fill out.Username: AT LEAST 10 characters please. No, forget the please. 10 character minimum. MINIMUM!
Password: At least 4 characters, and NO MORE THAN 10 characters. No specs on whether you have to include letters and numbers, or letters/numbers/mixed case like most sites that are concerned about account security.
You put the security on the PASSWORD, morons. Not the username.
How many people routinely use a username that's at least ten characters? Ridiculous. If this wasn't a one-shot usage (I don't anticipate having to use the site again, even to verify account balance) I would be seriously ticked off.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
But You're Not There on Saturday and Sunday, Morons!
You know what ticks me off? When people who send you bills give them due dates on a Saturday or Sunday. Listen, I know the bills are auto-generated, but it's not hard to code it so they check to see if the due date falls on a weekend. It's really not. If it's Saturday, make it due one day earlier. If it's Sunday, make it due one day later. Then hard code in all the bank holidays each year and change the dates for those, too.
You know I'll pay you on the earlier day to avoid late charges, even though you should round up to Monday for a Sunday due date. You might even do that, but I don't know and I certainly refuse to navigate your phone tree to ask you, only to have your CSR probably give me the wrong answer so I get hit with a late fee anyway.
Bills are soul-suckingly annoying to deal with anyway (and before some helpful soul tells me to have them auto-debited, HELL NO. There is no way I'm not going to go over the bills with a fine-toothed comb, and you have a much better position to argue with them over a bad charge when they don't have your money yet and they only get it when I okay the bill and send in payment) and then the companies go and give them impossible due dates. Don't make me come over there, billers. I'm going to count to ten!
You know I'll pay you on the earlier day to avoid late charges, even though you should round up to Monday for a Sunday due date. You might even do that, but I don't know and I certainly refuse to navigate your phone tree to ask you, only to have your CSR probably give me the wrong answer so I get hit with a late fee anyway.
Bills are soul-suckingly annoying to deal with anyway (and before some helpful soul tells me to have them auto-debited, HELL NO. There is no way I'm not going to go over the bills with a fine-toothed comb, and you have a much better position to argue with them over a bad charge when they don't have your money yet and they only get it when I okay the bill and send in payment) and then the companies go and give them impossible due dates. Don't make me come over there, billers. I'm going to count to ten!
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Two Meditations on Replacing a Cable Box
There was all manner of cable company weirdness at the homestead yesterday. It was like a semi-self-correcting cascade failure: first the internet connection, then the phone, though television service was still fine. I busied myself resetting modems (cable and phone) and eventually it all worked itself out.
Then the oddness started. We lost our HD channels, so I switched to the 'regular' version of the channel to wait it out, see if it would correct itself again. About ten minutes later, though, the box itself started to make some alarming clicking noises. I mean, Poltergeist-style. (Combine this with my daughter's latest habit of randomly proclaiming, "It's coming!" and you can see why I was momentarily freaked out.)
I tried to power it off with the remote to no avail, so I got up and yanked out the power cable. In the vain hope that a power cycle would somehow help things, I plugged it back in, only to observe the problem even worse than it had been the first time.
A call to Comcast, with a remarkably laid-back customer service agent (which I thought was a thing of the past, as those CS agents seem to be judged on call length more than customer satisfaction) led us to the idea that the construction in my area had caused my intermittent outages, and also a surge of some kind when the cable was fully restored that one of my boxes survived, but the older, more beat-up looking of the two, did not.
I got the address of the "closest" service center (if you, like me, can observe that they're never close to where you live, that's actually a good thing, which I'll get to later) and planned my route for after the B got up from her nap. The good thing was that the office was open until 7:00, so it allowed me, home-bound during her nap, to still make it there after she got up. Thumbs up on the office hours.
It came time to head over there and we took off, GPS and Google Maps-assisted. The neighborhood got worse and worse as I got closer and closer. I had used street view to look around where the office was so that I would more easily recognize the office once I got there (unnecessary, as it turns out...there was a huge sign that even my sense of direction-impaired butt could see) and the building opposite the cable office, whose sign was too blurry to read in Google street view, turned out to be a "Gentleman's Club". Ahem.
I went in to retrieve my new box and was asked for my saga yet again, but it was, I think, just conversational. The content of my story didn't seem to be a contingency on getting my box, but a way to pass the time while he brought up my account and switched the old box out and the new box in. Interestingly, I was told I was getting the last one, and it was indeed the only one of its kind in the stack on the table behind him. I mentioned that the phone agent had told me she thought they had "plenty", since, as the agents can't see inventory for the different offices, they are supposed to send an email to the phone center when they are running low. This apparently reminded him of what he was supposed to do (though that hadn't been my intent, I just mentioned it in stream-of-consciousness mode) and he was working on it when I left with my prize.
So my first meditation, for those scoring from the title, is that cable service centers are always in the Bad Part of Town.
On the ride home, I decided to actually listen to the GPS and take the highway, instead of the side streets I tricked it into on the way there. There were many changes from one road to another, and in those merges, I realized the second of the things I learned on my trip yesterday.
By far, and I mean a very wide margin, the drivers of cars bearing a specific sort of Colorado plate seem to be the ones most likely to try to run you off the road, stay ahead of you on a merge at any cost, or refuse to let you switch lanes. That plate is this one, initially added to the roster after the Columbine school shootings, but now seems to be in use more by abortion opponents more than people concerned with schoolyard violence:
Not one, not two, but three cars with this type of license plate messed with me on my way there or my way back. I assure you, with my two year old in the car, I err on the side of caution, so I was not driving so aggressively as to anger everyone around me. One of them was clearly behind me as I tried to merge onto I-270, with plenty of space ahead of them for me to come in and still leave him sufficient following distance, but he sped up and paced me, forcing me to slow down to merge in behind him.
He was, of course, one of those Colorado drivers (and yes, I say Colorado, because this is more prevalent here than ANYWHERE else I've ever driven) who, once all the merging and whatnot is done, they drive along the highway at LEAST ten miles per hour under the speed limit.
I guess there were sort of two driving meditations there at the end, the first about the Respect Life plate and the second about the Colorado Sunday Driver phenomenon, but I'm far too lazy to change the title now.
Then the oddness started. We lost our HD channels, so I switched to the 'regular' version of the channel to wait it out, see if it would correct itself again. About ten minutes later, though, the box itself started to make some alarming clicking noises. I mean, Poltergeist-style. (Combine this with my daughter's latest habit of randomly proclaiming, "It's coming!" and you can see why I was momentarily freaked out.)
I tried to power it off with the remote to no avail, so I got up and yanked out the power cable. In the vain hope that a power cycle would somehow help things, I plugged it back in, only to observe the problem even worse than it had been the first time.
A call to Comcast, with a remarkably laid-back customer service agent (which I thought was a thing of the past, as those CS agents seem to be judged on call length more than customer satisfaction) led us to the idea that the construction in my area had caused my intermittent outages, and also a surge of some kind when the cable was fully restored that one of my boxes survived, but the older, more beat-up looking of the two, did not.
I got the address of the "closest" service center (if you, like me, can observe that they're never close to where you live, that's actually a good thing, which I'll get to later) and planned my route for after the B got up from her nap. The good thing was that the office was open until 7:00, so it allowed me, home-bound during her nap, to still make it there after she got up. Thumbs up on the office hours.
It came time to head over there and we took off, GPS and Google Maps-assisted. The neighborhood got worse and worse as I got closer and closer. I had used street view to look around where the office was so that I would more easily recognize the office once I got there (unnecessary, as it turns out...there was a huge sign that even my sense of direction-impaired butt could see) and the building opposite the cable office, whose sign was too blurry to read in Google street view, turned out to be a "Gentleman's Club". Ahem.
I went in to retrieve my new box and was asked for my saga yet again, but it was, I think, just conversational. The content of my story didn't seem to be a contingency on getting my box, but a way to pass the time while he brought up my account and switched the old box out and the new box in. Interestingly, I was told I was getting the last one, and it was indeed the only one of its kind in the stack on the table behind him. I mentioned that the phone agent had told me she thought they had "plenty", since, as the agents can't see inventory for the different offices, they are supposed to send an email to the phone center when they are running low. This apparently reminded him of what he was supposed to do (though that hadn't been my intent, I just mentioned it in stream-of-consciousness mode) and he was working on it when I left with my prize.
So my first meditation, for those scoring from the title, is that cable service centers are always in the Bad Part of Town.
On the ride home, I decided to actually listen to the GPS and take the highway, instead of the side streets I tricked it into on the way there. There were many changes from one road to another, and in those merges, I realized the second of the things I learned on my trip yesterday.
By far, and I mean a very wide margin, the drivers of cars bearing a specific sort of Colorado plate seem to be the ones most likely to try to run you off the road, stay ahead of you on a merge at any cost, or refuse to let you switch lanes. That plate is this one, initially added to the roster after the Columbine school shootings, but now seems to be in use more by abortion opponents more than people concerned with schoolyard violence:
Not one, not two, but three cars with this type of license plate messed with me on my way there or my way back. I assure you, with my two year old in the car, I err on the side of caution, so I was not driving so aggressively as to anger everyone around me. One of them was clearly behind me as I tried to merge onto I-270, with plenty of space ahead of them for me to come in and still leave him sufficient following distance, but he sped up and paced me, forcing me to slow down to merge in behind him.
He was, of course, one of those Colorado drivers (and yes, I say Colorado, because this is more prevalent here than ANYWHERE else I've ever driven) who, once all the merging and whatnot is done, they drive along the highway at LEAST ten miles per hour under the speed limit.
I guess there were sort of two driving meditations there at the end, the first about the Respect Life plate and the second about the Colorado Sunday Driver phenomenon, but I'm far too lazy to change the title now.
Friday, February 08, 2008
Who Programs These Phone Trees?
So I'm calling the company I'm considering getting phone service from at our new address, and the first thing the phone tree prompts me with is, "Enter the telephone number of the address where you have service or the phone number where you would like to get service."
Bwah?
I mean, granted, the phone service is not the only service this company provides, but when one actually is a purveyor of phone services, has it not occurred to them that there will be people calling from outside the area, wanting to hook up brand-new service, and they will not have an answer to that phone prompt?
I waited through the computer lady asking me to please input the telephone number requested three times ("I'm sorry, I didn't understand you, can you please enter that again?") and I tried the 'press 0 for an operator' trick to no avail. Eventually, the phone tree kicked over to its secondary option to route my call, asking for a zip code where I had existing service or wanted new service.
Still...annoying. Head-scratching. You give people phone service! Is it such a stretch to think that a good number of the people calling have no way to start drilling into your phone tree without having to wait through the timeout on the first option? That's really, really annoying.
Bwah?
I mean, granted, the phone service is not the only service this company provides, but when one actually is a purveyor of phone services, has it not occurred to them that there will be people calling from outside the area, wanting to hook up brand-new service, and they will not have an answer to that phone prompt?
I waited through the computer lady asking me to please input the telephone number requested three times ("I'm sorry, I didn't understand you, can you please enter that again?") and I tried the 'press 0 for an operator' trick to no avail. Eventually, the phone tree kicked over to its secondary option to route my call, asking for a zip code where I had existing service or wanted new service.
Still...annoying. Head-scratching. You give people phone service! Is it such a stretch to think that a good number of the people calling have no way to start drilling into your phone tree without having to wait through the timeout on the first option? That's really, really annoying.
Monday, August 13, 2007
I Have the Power
So, the wind blew above 10 miles per hour during a thunderstorm last night, and 50,000 people in our area lost power. Including us.
It was a million degrees here last night, and has been surface-of-the-sun hot for over a week now. We also use a baby monitor without a battery backup, though we have a secondary monitor that does operate via battery.
However, at 1:00 a.m., do you really want to be in your kid's pitch black, completely silent room trying to sneak a fresh 9V battery into the nursery unit (I was pretty sure it was a fairly run-down battery in there) without waking up the baby? I decided just to wave the white flag and bring her in with us, something that ensured that none of us got a lot of sleep last night.
This morning, we still had no power, and the number of households in the blackout weren't getting lower very quickly. No ETA's from the power company, either, although they always seem to be working hard to restore power when this happens.
The real problem isn't the power company and how quickly they restore power. The real problem is that a rat's misplaced sigh seems to be enough to set off some sort of blackout chain reaction. The technicians seem to be hard working and well-intentioned, but I can only assume that some areas of our county have such woefully outdated or just plain busted power infrastructure that we'll have these issues over and over.
It always seems to be the same zip codes. It always seems to be the same damn houses in those zip codes. It makes me want to call the power company and beg them to raise everyone's rates some infinitesimal amount and upgrade the damn breakers or whatever is not toting its load. I am so sick of either freezing or roasting in this house without climate control.
The B, on not a lot of sleep and a crappy nap the afternoon before besides, did a wonderful job soldiering through this morning. I took her out to Target, Kohl's and then St. Louis Bread Company for an early lunch, and she was a trooper. She waved at people and stomped around, still in a good mood, but boy if she didn't just collapse when I put her down for her nap.
Best moment of the day was when I was leaving Bread Co. and called our answering machine one more time before giving up and taking the B to our BIL and SIL's for her nap (because they had power) and discovered that we got our power restored just in time for her room to cool down enough for her to nap in.
Seriously, though. I've never lived anywhere that had so many troubles with its infrastructure. The cable is iffy. The power is iffy in lots of areas. Property taxes per square foot are comparable to our last house, only the city doesn't pay for trash collection out of that kitty. It's just insane, but no one is interested in fixing it. The only things that are argued over in our elections are social issues that the candidates have no intention on following through with anyway, just interested in using the hot button issues to get elected.
Fix it! Fix it so those poor techs aren't out in the middle of the night, in the rain, trying to get our power back. Won't someone please think of the techs?
It was a million degrees here last night, and has been surface-of-the-sun hot for over a week now. We also use a baby monitor without a battery backup, though we have a secondary monitor that does operate via battery.
However, at 1:00 a.m., do you really want to be in your kid's pitch black, completely silent room trying to sneak a fresh 9V battery into the nursery unit (I was pretty sure it was a fairly run-down battery in there) without waking up the baby? I decided just to wave the white flag and bring her in with us, something that ensured that none of us got a lot of sleep last night.
This morning, we still had no power, and the number of households in the blackout weren't getting lower very quickly. No ETA's from the power company, either, although they always seem to be working hard to restore power when this happens.
The real problem isn't the power company and how quickly they restore power. The real problem is that a rat's misplaced sigh seems to be enough to set off some sort of blackout chain reaction. The technicians seem to be hard working and well-intentioned, but I can only assume that some areas of our county have such woefully outdated or just plain busted power infrastructure that we'll have these issues over and over.
It always seems to be the same zip codes. It always seems to be the same damn houses in those zip codes. It makes me want to call the power company and beg them to raise everyone's rates some infinitesimal amount and upgrade the damn breakers or whatever is not toting its load. I am so sick of either freezing or roasting in this house without climate control.
The B, on not a lot of sleep and a crappy nap the afternoon before besides, did a wonderful job soldiering through this morning. I took her out to Target, Kohl's and then St. Louis Bread Company for an early lunch, and she was a trooper. She waved at people and stomped around, still in a good mood, but boy if she didn't just collapse when I put her down for her nap.
Best moment of the day was when I was leaving Bread Co. and called our answering machine one more time before giving up and taking the B to our BIL and SIL's for her nap (because they had power) and discovered that we got our power restored just in time for her room to cool down enough for her to nap in.
Seriously, though. I've never lived anywhere that had so many troubles with its infrastructure. The cable is iffy. The power is iffy in lots of areas. Property taxes per square foot are comparable to our last house, only the city doesn't pay for trash collection out of that kitty. It's just insane, but no one is interested in fixing it. The only things that are argued over in our elections are social issues that the candidates have no intention on following through with anyway, just interested in using the hot button issues to get elected.
Fix it! Fix it so those poor techs aren't out in the middle of the night, in the rain, trying to get our power back. Won't someone please think of the techs?
Sunday, August 05, 2007
Online Bill Pay Saved My Bacon
I meant to post about this before, but completely forgot.
When we went to the lake for a week or so awhile back, my second bill-paying session of the month fell during the vacation. (Yes, I'm that scheduled, that I have two days a month where I sit down and queue up the bills, and my Google Calendar is set up to send me reminders to do it. I highly recommend this.)
I meant to do them early, but getting ready for the trip and B wrangling ate up all my time, and the day we were leaving, I still had a pile of un-queued bills. I then meant to grab my bills and I would queue them once we got onto a trusted wireless network at the lake. (I don't recommend accessing your bank account or other financial information on a hotel wireless network. Maybe that's paranoid, but I still wouldn't do it.)
Well, I forgot to grab the pile of bills as we left the house. What I did have was my payment history, all in one place on my bank's website. With that, I had average bill amounts (and many of our bills don't vary from month to month, like cable, wireless, etc.) and monthly due dates, all without a single bill that was mailed to me. I just queued the payments for what I thought were ballpark correct amounts, erring on the side of having a credit instead of underpaying.
When I got back and went through the bills, I found that I had everything covered, and we only had a credits of more than $5 with one bill, where we have a $20 credit for next month.
If your bank offers you free online bill pay, I'd give it a look. I really appreciated its existence last month, because it saved me from trying to remember every bill, remember separate login information for all their websites, and then saved me "online bill pay fees" that some of our bills charge for paying them online.
This message was brought to you by the number 14 and the letter K. The more you know, the more you grow.
When we went to the lake for a week or so awhile back, my second bill-paying session of the month fell during the vacation. (Yes, I'm that scheduled, that I have two days a month where I sit down and queue up the bills, and my Google Calendar is set up to send me reminders to do it. I highly recommend this.)
I meant to do them early, but getting ready for the trip and B wrangling ate up all my time, and the day we were leaving, I still had a pile of un-queued bills. I then meant to grab my bills and I would queue them once we got onto a trusted wireless network at the lake. (I don't recommend accessing your bank account or other financial information on a hotel wireless network. Maybe that's paranoid, but I still wouldn't do it.)
Well, I forgot to grab the pile of bills as we left the house. What I did have was my payment history, all in one place on my bank's website. With that, I had average bill amounts (and many of our bills don't vary from month to month, like cable, wireless, etc.) and monthly due dates, all without a single bill that was mailed to me. I just queued the payments for what I thought were ballpark correct amounts, erring on the side of having a credit instead of underpaying.
When I got back and went through the bills, I found that I had everything covered, and we only had a credits of more than $5 with one bill, where we have a $20 credit for next month.
If your bank offers you free online bill pay, I'd give it a look. I really appreciated its existence last month, because it saved me from trying to remember every bill, remember separate login information for all their websites, and then saved me "online bill pay fees" that some of our bills charge for paying them online.
This message was brought to you by the number 14 and the letter K. The more you know, the more you grow.
Saturday, April 14, 2007
I Did It!
Our house, prior to this Monday night, had a thermostat that should probably have been on display in the Smithsonian instead of plugged in on our wall, desperately attempting to regulate our house's temperature.Well, when you stay home most of the time, save for excursions outside to play with the baby or run an errand, having it way too hot...way too cold...way too hot...etc. all day long is extremely irritating, and I'd had enough.
I took some of the money I've made from my transcriptions and handed it to Amazon in exchange for the modern programmable unit you see pictured here. I was hoping it would switch between heating and cooling on its own, but I was wrong about that. It does, however, keep the house temperate (upstairs and downstairs) all day long, after I've spent a couple of days tweaking the programmable settings for each section of the day.
The big trick was getting it installed. After putting a couple of ceiling fans into the house, I know that we sometimes have the correctly-colored wires there, but we also sometimes just have a couple of black wires there, and it's anyone's guess which one is which. I was relieved, after prying the old, "my edge has been painted over at least 100 times" thermostat off the wall, to see that the wires were correctly sheathed in colored plastic wire covers that indicated their function.
We switched off the power and I removed the old unit, and as the house started to get hot (this was just on the edge of our current cold snap) I set about connecting the new unit. After a run-in with the slightly vague manual that was included with the new thermostat, I looked at an updated one on the manufacturer's website and got confirmation on where I should hook up my red wire.
Hooked it up, switched it on, made my first guess at a programming scheme based on the temperatures we'd been trying to select on the old unit, and it was on and humming away. This was when we discovered how far off the old thermostat had been. All the temps we'd been setting it on that got us the best results with the old unit were completely different on the new unit. The new unit really seems to keep the house comfortable for the whole day, and it does so using less operating time, which means it's using less of my moolah to do it.
I am extremely pleased with the switch and I really wish we'd done it a year ago. It makes me want to go on a tear through the house, seeing what else is old and inefficient, costing us more money to run and doing a poor job of it, to boot. Look out, old appliances. I'm comin' for you.
Sunday, September 03, 2006
Son of a...
We just got back from a nine hour car trip. We were home for two hours, then our power went out. I can only assume it is in solidarity with the power in Virginia. So greetings to you from my cell phone, which I am now turning off to save power.
Edit: The power came on about an hour and a half after it went out. I was asleep when it did, but the light from the hallway eventually woke me up and spurred me to get up and get the B's room straightened out. Had to make it dark again (too much light coming in from said hallway light) and start up her white noise CD. Kudos to the electric company for getting us going again so quickly.
Edit: The power came on about an hour and a half after it went out. I was asleep when it did, but the light from the hallway eventually woke me up and spurred me to get up and get the B's room straightened out. Had to make it dark again (too much light coming in from said hallway light) and start up her white noise CD. Kudos to the electric company for getting us going again so quickly.
Saturday, July 22, 2006
Oh, Yeah...
Ah, and we did get power back. We had already planned to evacuate to the MIL and FIL's house in Wisconsin, so we went ahead and made the trip anyway. I hear there was another storm while we were gone, but we reportedly kept our power and will be returning to a house with air conditioning and internet.
Hurrah. Thanks for the well-wishes.
Hurrah. Thanks for the well-wishes.
Thursday, July 20, 2006
No power
I am posting this from my cellphone. Twenty percent of the area has no power. There are supposed to be more storms and the temps are supposed to be in the 100s. But how is your day?
Monday, November 07, 2005
The Infrastructure Here Is Crap
Sorry, I'm mad; bear with me. This city really sucks.
First, the sales tax is something like 8% here. I keep goggling when I hear totals at cash registers, because I kind of add things up as I go along and then estimate the tax. Old habit from my college days when I usually only had $20 on me to pay for the groceries and I had to come in under that. Eight freaking percent? The roads should be gold-paved! And this is a red state, friends. Where they supposedly aren't "tax and spend". Hah.
I just looked at the estimated property tax on this house. It's comparable, on a per-square-foot basis, to what we were paying in the old city. Except that, in the old city, that amount included trash collection, something we're paying for here.
Next on my hit parade is the fact that I have to drive fifteen miles to get a property tax waiver so I can register my car. I have an office that does registrations about two miles from the house, and they can do everything EXCEPT issue this bogus waiver. It seems to me to be just an excuse to charge new state residents an extra $10. The ladies in the (outsourced) license office were great, got me my license quickly and easily, and commisserated that the waiver is a bullshit requirement. I can only assume they were good and efficient only because they do not work directly for the bureaucracy that infects all who come into contact with it.
And finally, last Friday, we got an infraction notice from the city because we didn't buy a $25 bullshit occupancy permit that we didn't know about and no one told us about. I was further informed that we were "illegally living in [our] house" which we paid nearly a quarter of a million dollars for a couple of months ago. Hey, hey. I haven't felt like a radical since I went to a protest in downtown Boston when I was 20.
When I innocently asked for directions to city hall (not way downtown at least, the local one) I was run an incredible 'tude that included this interaction. Keep in mind that I was biting my cheek and trying to be humorously self-deprecating to get this lady to help me. I'm really bad with directions, which I cop to without reservation on relevent occasions. I think I started with, "Can you tell me where I need to go? I'm horrible with directions and I might ask some questions."
Her: "Go to <main road I know how to get to.> Then turn at the Phillips 66."
Me: "Right or left?"
Her: "<sigh> Right."
Me: "Do you know the name of that cross street?"
Her: "<heavier sigh> I think it's <name of street>."
Me: "Okay, what side of the street is the building on?"
Her: "It's City Hall, you can't miss it."
Me: (thinking, 'Doesn't she work there? Is it so hard to say left or right?') All right. What does it look like?"
Her: "It's behind <name of shopping center I already told her I didn't know by name>."
Me: "Great. What color is the building?" (thinking, 'Maybe if I ask direct questions I have a better shot at getting an actual answer.')
Her: "<great big heavy sigh, like she gets a bonus for each one> It's stone. Kind of grey."
Me: "Well, thank you. I'll get that taken care of."
Her: <hang up unceremoniously>
Jesus. I'm sorry you had a fight with your boyfriend or whatever, but you honestly shouldn't be in a job where you occasionally have to talk to people and dispense information. I can be cranky (big surprise there) but for heaven's sake...even when the cable company and I were in daily contact when we first moved in because they were utterly unable to deliver all of the services I wanted to get from them and kept changing their story about what the problem was, I never got shirty with them.
I wouldn't be shocked if someone came by and told us we needed permits for the plants in the yard or something like that. I'm sure it will be $3.50 per plant, $4.00 for trees, and I'll have to drive 45 minutes to some bad neighborhood somewhere to get my permit in person. Bitches.
First, the sales tax is something like 8% here. I keep goggling when I hear totals at cash registers, because I kind of add things up as I go along and then estimate the tax. Old habit from my college days when I usually only had $20 on me to pay for the groceries and I had to come in under that. Eight freaking percent? The roads should be gold-paved! And this is a red state, friends. Where they supposedly aren't "tax and spend". Hah.
I just looked at the estimated property tax on this house. It's comparable, on a per-square-foot basis, to what we were paying in the old city. Except that, in the old city, that amount included trash collection, something we're paying for here.
Next on my hit parade is the fact that I have to drive fifteen miles to get a property tax waiver so I can register my car. I have an office that does registrations about two miles from the house, and they can do everything EXCEPT issue this bogus waiver. It seems to me to be just an excuse to charge new state residents an extra $10. The ladies in the (outsourced) license office were great, got me my license quickly and easily, and commisserated that the waiver is a bullshit requirement. I can only assume they were good and efficient only because they do not work directly for the bureaucracy that infects all who come into contact with it.
And finally, last Friday, we got an infraction notice from the city because we didn't buy a $25 bullshit occupancy permit that we didn't know about and no one told us about. I was further informed that we were "illegally living in [our] house" which we paid nearly a quarter of a million dollars for a couple of months ago. Hey, hey. I haven't felt like a radical since I went to a protest in downtown Boston when I was 20.
When I innocently asked for directions to city hall (not way downtown at least, the local one) I was run an incredible 'tude that included this interaction. Keep in mind that I was biting my cheek and trying to be humorously self-deprecating to get this lady to help me. I'm really bad with directions, which I cop to without reservation on relevent occasions. I think I started with, "Can you tell me where I need to go? I'm horrible with directions and I might ask some questions."
Her: "Go to <main road I know how to get to.> Then turn at the Phillips 66."
Me: "Right or left?"
Her: "<sigh> Right."
Me: "Do you know the name of that cross street?"
Her: "<heavier sigh> I think it's <name of street>."
Me: "Okay, what side of the street is the building on?"
Her: "It's City Hall, you can't miss it."
Me: (thinking, 'Doesn't she work there? Is it so hard to say left or right?') All right. What does it look like?"
Her: "It's behind <name of shopping center I already told her I didn't know by name>."
Me: "Great. What color is the building?" (thinking, 'Maybe if I ask direct questions I have a better shot at getting an actual answer.')
Her: "<great big heavy sigh, like she gets a bonus for each one> It's stone. Kind of grey."
Me: "Well, thank you. I'll get that taken care of."
Her: <hang up unceremoniously>
Jesus. I'm sorry you had a fight with your boyfriend or whatever, but you honestly shouldn't be in a job where you occasionally have to talk to people and dispense information. I can be cranky (big surprise there) but for heaven's sake...even when the cable company and I were in daily contact when we first moved in because they were utterly unable to deliver all of the services I wanted to get from them and kept changing their story about what the problem was, I never got shirty with them.
I wouldn't be shocked if someone came by and told us we needed permits for the plants in the yard or something like that. I'm sure it will be $3.50 per plant, $4.00 for trees, and I'll have to drive 45 minutes to some bad neighborhood somewhere to get my permit in person. Bitches.
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