Sprint Fail

Remember back a few years ago, when Sprint had those ads with CEO Dan Hesse in noirish settings, talking all sincere and stuff about how dedicated they were and all that crap?  And then he offered up "his" email address.  Now anybody who doesn't know that those emails were routed to a foreign country for useless responses probably also believes in unicorns, but I went ahead and sent Danno a message anyway:

Mr Hesse -

The other day, my trusty HTC EVO 4G stopped working and I had to find a replacement phone quickly.  I've been happy with my Sprint service overall, and have been a customer for over ten years, but in purchasing a replacement phone,  Sprint has done everything to make me reconsider my loyalty

- I had to purchase from a third party to get a reasonable price.  The price I got was $50 less than the best price offered to me on the Sprint website, despite my long tenure, and it was a real price, not a price computed after figuring in so kind of bogus rebate.

- The deal I got from the third party site also included a free accessory kit, something I've never seen offered by Sprint.

- The deal I got from the third party will also credit the (ridiculous and bogus) $36 "activation fee" that you insist on charging.  Do you think customers don't recognize pure profit-taking when they see it?

- Once my purchase had been made and processed by the third party, I received a stupid email from Sprint telling me "As of 10/07/2013, the Everything Data 450 plan was added to your account and the Everything Data 450 plan was removed."  Any programmer worth his salt could have supressed that email.

- And then for some reason, Sprint disconnected my mobile number from Google Voice.  Since my current phone is dead, it was very important for me to have the calls go to Google Voice, so I could at least check the voice mails, and I would also have been able to receive and send text messages as necessary.

Despite my 10+ year relationship with Sprint, I am seriously considering cancelling this contract immediately and going with one of your competitors - and trust me, because you are costing me real money by effectively disconnecting my phone due to the Google Voice fiasco, there would be no chance of you receiving an ETF.

Major failures Dan, from start to finish.

Stupid Sprint is Stupid

I sort of broke my phone the other day, and the best deal I found on getting a replacement was via Costco. WHY?  Why can't Sprint give me the best possible deal, since I've been a customer for ten years???  Topic for another post, I guess.

So anyway, last night I logged in to my Costco account and filled out all the information and so on.

Today I received an email from Sprint, helpfully informing me that:

As of 10/07/2013, the Everything Data 450 plan was added to your account and the Everything Data 450 plan was removed

Boy, that was informative.

. 

Wherefore Art Thou?

Tivo introduced some new boxes today, all named "Roamio".  And in so doing, they continue their apparent campaign to alienate existing customers.

Let's start with the very announcement itself. Sure they put out the press releases and had coverage on all the tech sites, but not a peep in email to a long-term customer.  Barely a mention via their official Twitter account, except for some retweets of other coverage.  Then finally a single post at around 12 noon EDT.  Maybe there was something on Facebook, I stopped following them there because of the nearly negative signal-to-noise ratio.

Along with not giving any heads-up to paying customers, there is, of course, no incentive for existing customers either.  Want a new box?  Full price for everybody.  No trade-in, no service discount, nothing.  It's bad enough that the Series 3 box I have, with "lifetime" "service" hasn't received any significant software update in years.

And then there's the website.  I logged in on tivo.com the other day, and I know I checked the box that said "keep me logged in for 45 days."  But with the new hardware comes a new website, and not only am I not logged in, but that checkbox doesn't even appear.  The new sign on screen has just two fields, email address and password.  Since I've logged into tivo.com dozens of times in the past, I double-clicked in the email field so that Chrome could fill in the box for me.  No dice.  It's a different URL completely.  OK then, I'll just type in the email.  As soon as I type the first letter, an error message appears above the input field --

Invalid: This is not a valid e-mail.

Nice.  That error message stays in place until I get to the "o" in ".com".  Good to see that whoever programmed that completely unnecessary validation routine recognized a TLD other than com.  For a company that's celebrated for the device UI, they sure bolloxed up that bit of user interaction.

I think I'll stick with my ancient TiVo HD and the even ancienter Series 2 DT in my bedroom, at least until all the early problems (and we know there will be problems) get worked out.

Don't even get me started on why only the base model offers an ATSC tuner.  I'm sure there must be some reason, but I'm not interested enough to figure it out at this point.

SWM ISO ...

I got my Gmail address way back when the service first started up.  As such, it's a fairly short name, and didn't require a lot of customization.  As time has passed, I have started getting more and more email that should be going to somebody else, because other people seem to think they own my email.  I've gotten wedding plans, "Mom's" electric bill, contract information of various types, and so on.  I also started getting more and more spam, on an account that initially didn't get any.  With all those various mis-addressed emails coming in, sometimes I'd just ignore them, sometimes I'd reply to the sender stating that they had the wrong person.  There's a woman in Australia who never would believe that I wasn't the person she was trying to reach, and sometimes when I look at my spam folder, I still see jokes that she's forwarded.  A couple weeks ago, I got an email about renting a theater in Vancouver, BC and tried to tell the sender that she had the wrong person.  Her first reply insisted that I had indeed been the one to email her.  I replied again, saying "hey, I was just trying to let you know that you had the wrong person, but if she just wanted to argue, then she should just go ahead and rent the theater to somebody else.  Her reply to that?  "FU".   So yeah, I'm less and less inclined to help people reach the right person.

Anyway ... yesterday I received an email welcoming me to one of the larger online dating services.  It wasn't for me, in case the preceding paragraph didn't make that clear.  That email provided "my" username, password, date of birth and ZIP code.  Good gravy, I'm halfway to stealing somebody's identity and I haven't even used the credentials to log in to the dating site and see what else I can find!

I'm sorely tempted to log in and change field that says "looking for women" to "looking for men".  I am gay after all.  Or perhaps to change the profile text to say "Hey ladies, I'm too stupid to even know my own email address, so you'll probably want to keep looking."

But back to that initial email.  The PASSWORD?  In plain text?  In Two Thousand Freaking Thirteen?  Clearly that means the site in question is not encrypting their records.  Is it time to name and shame them?  Should I actually log in and see what other information is available to me?

"Make" Your Own Time Machine

Serveral years ago, I signed up for the "Premier" subscription to Make Magazine.  This is supposed to provide automatic renewal at a preferred rate.  The first couple of years were rough, but I thought everything was working OK finally.

Until I used my powers of smart-assery to stir up the hornet's nest.

Here are the emails, starting with one from them, then my reply, then alternating...

2/16
Dear Larry Macgregor,

We hope you have been enjoying your subscription to MAKE. We will be sending your next issue to the printer shortly. Per your request, your subscription was automatically renewed for another full year on 3/9/2012.   [....]

2/16
So my subscription "WAS" renewed on a date that falls over three weeks into the future?  Care to explain how that works?

2/21
Hello Larry,

Thank you for your email.

No, your subscription has not been renewed yet.

Would you like me to remove this feature?

2/21
No, I don't want the feature removed, I want emails that make sense.

Such as "Because you are a valuable subscriber using our Premier feature, we'd like to remind you that your subscription WILL BE renewed on March 9.  To manage your subscription options, please go to .  Thank you for being a Premier Maker".

See how that works?  It communicates the information clearly without resorting to telling the customer that something has happened in the future.

This isn't rocket surgery.

[oops, there's that smart-assery again!]

2/12
Hello Larry,

Thank you for your email.

I understand what you are saying.

Will let the appropriate department know.

Is everything else okay with subscription?

Should I add the account back onto automatic renewal?

2/21
Wow, you took it off auto renewal?  The first reply you sent me ASKED if you should do that, and I replied NO.

How was that unclear?

DO NOT CHANGE ANYTHING ABOUT MY SUBSCRIPTION

2/21  (actually received as I was writing this post)
Hello Larry,

Nothing has been changed on your account and everything is in its original standing.

Have a marvelous evening!
-------------------------

I can't wait until I notice that I've strangely stopped receiving the magazine, even though I'll probably still get charged.  Yeah, I shouldn't have replied to the first email, but dammit, it was a stupid message.  If and when I get my time machine, I'm sure as hell not going to waste it on trips into the near future to renew magazine subscriptions.

Eat me

Last night I went to the nearby Kroger to pick up a few groceries, and since I was tired from working in the yard all day, I thought I'd check out their "hot bar" for potential dinner items. It still looks like a bad day in your junior high cafeteria, but I went ahead and grabbed a couple egg rolls, some lo mein and some fried rice. When I got to the end of the counter and placed my stuff on the scale, I got ... nothing. The scale was either turned off or unplugged or otherwise dead. No sign saying "please use the other scale next to the salad bar" or anything. Of course not. Nonetheless I walked over to that other scale, put my plate with the ill-fitting lid on top, entered the secret PLU and hit Print. Chunka chunka chunk. OUT OF LABELS. CALL ATTENDANT.

Um, OK, what attendant? Surely not the two Japanese sushi dudes. I stood there for a bit. Waved my arms around a few times. Watched a few store employees venture nearby but not actually make eye contact.

Left the food sitting there. I hope Kroger enjoyed eating the $6 they would have gotten from me. I found my dinner elsewhere.

All Your Coupons Are Belong To Us

I have a love/hate relationship with coupons. I save the coupon sections from the Sunday newspaper, and clip and use various coupons from there. On the other hand, I think that individual stores that have customer loyalty cards ought to just give me the damn sale price. Yes Walgreens, I'm talking to you. Is it really worth the time it takes for a cashier to reconcile a register with all those slips of paper, and for the store to process them at the end of the day or week?

Now, as a member of Costco, I get coupon books in the mail every month or so, and it does kind of suck to have to tear out the coupons. They made it slightly less annoying though, by programming their cash registers in an interesting way. This morning, I had five coupon items, along with the rest of my order. When the cashier took my coupons, he hit some magic button and the register immediately gave me credit for every coupon-eligible item in my order. OK, it's not perfect, and I still had to tear out a few pieces of paper. And the cashier probably still had to reconcile the register to allow for the coupons. But as a customer, it got me out of the store a bit faster, so good for that.