Buyer, Beware:
DO NOT use any pay phone operated by Legacy
Long Distance International!
Legacy has hijacked several pay phones in Redwood City, and
on April 12, 2007, charged me over $27 for two local
calls. This was an avoidable error on my
part, but it doesn't excuse their deceptive and predatory practices.
Their phone system wouldn't let me call a toll-free voice dialer
service,
actively tried to prevent me from using my own
calling card, and never disclosed their rates. Many people have
filed complaints against this company, and we can only hope that the
government shuts them down soon. Meanwhile, avoid them like the
plague, and always check the fine print before using an unfamiliar
telephone.
[Read more...]
DO NOT do business with ePhotoClub.com-- they
are SCAMMERS!
This web site is run by a New York-based ring of small-time criminals
who-- no joke-- actively harass callers to
their toll-free "customer service" line.
I was unfortunate enough to experience this personally (bizarre details coming soon),
but at least nobody called me a bitch.
Avoid, avoid, AVOID, and warn others to steer clear of these assholes.
See
this forum posting for more information,
and check out the slew of complaints on
Epinions.com
and
ResellerRatings.com.
Remember, kids: always do your homework before shopping online.
(Unless it's at
Amazon.com,
but even then, if you're shopping for commodities like
DVDs,
you should do a quick price check on
Froogle or elsewhere.)
JustGive.org may do nice things, but they are
not nice to their users.
While doing wedding stuff in December, 2004, I had played with the idea of a charity
registry. To that end, I created a justgive.org account with some
fake data for experimenting. We
ultimately decided against doing a charity registry, so I promptly
forgot all about the fake registry I had created.
Then, in February, 2005, out of the blue-- without any provocation or
solitication on my party-- I received
a rather snippy email from the "Senior Creative Director & Nonprofit Liaison"
of JustGive.org:
"We noticed your message to your wedding guests on your JustGive
Wedding Registry page and thought perhaps you'd like to just delete
your registry and instead send your charity list to your guests via
email. We provide this registry for free to couples and deduct a
credit card fee that we have absolutely no control over. It's true
that out of a $20.00 donation, $19.40 is sent to the charity, but
your request to your guests that they make a credit card donation
directly to the organization reveals that you just don't understand
credit card fees in general... We encourage you to either educate
your guests about the true nature of our fees or simply remove your
registry altogether."
It's no skin off my nose, since I wasn't using their services
anyway, but shouldn't someone in customer service know better than
to insult, demean, and otherwise aggravate their organization's current or
potential customers?
[Read more...]
Clean-Sweep (formerly Molly Maid of Cupertino) are unreliable and unprofessional.
The initial in-home estimate went well, and the owner, Eric McDonald, sent a very nice
follow-up letter, but apparently all that was a fluke.
I called on Monday and made an appointment for a house cleaning on
Wednesday morning, two days later. On Wednesday morning, twenty minutes
after the appointment time, I called back to see if there was a problem.
Indeed, there was: the problem was that the person answering the phone was
incompetent. She hadn't even saved my information on Monday. She claimed
that I had not made an appointment, even though I had given her my name,
phone number, address, and a specific time.
Why do these people always try to blame the customer?
But hey, if you don't want my money, I'm happy to spend it elsewhere.
I have since found much better (and less expensive!) service from Emma's Eco-Clean, an environmentally conscious, women-owned housecleaning cooperative. I highly recommend them to anyone who needs house cleaning services in San Mateo or Santa Clara county.
DO NOT stay at any Moonstone Hotel Properties in Central California.
In November, 2003, I made reservations for the Sand Pebbles Inn in
Cambria, CA, using their web site. I reserved a single room for one night
in December, 2003, almost exactly one month in advance. I received
confirmation from the online reservation system.
In December, When I arrived at the Inn, they had no record of my
reservation. I showed the clerk my printed confirmation. She told me
that they only received Internet reservations by fax-- not apologizing,
and not so subtly implying that I had done something wrong by using their
advertised reservation system. How, I ask you, should it be my problem
that their shit is fucked up?
Luckily, there was one room available, albeit very small staff quarters
with thin walls and few amenities. The clerk rented me the room at a much
lower rate than the one I had originally reserved, but if she had ever
wanted any hope of my further business, she should have given it to me for
free.
Unless I am unimaginably desperate, I will never patronize another
Moonstone Hotel Property. And I will be wary of any site which uses
InnLink's demonstrably unreliable reservation system.
DO NOT see movies at Century Theatres.
The last movie I ever saw at a Century Theatre was
The Lord of the
Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (December 19, 2001). And just like
almost every movie I've seen at Century, it had significant sound,
projection, and other problems:
- The curtains were not rolled back (i.e., from
1.85:1 to
2.35:1), thus
cutting off the left and right edges of the picture for the entire show.
- The house lights went off and on in the middle of the movie.
- The sound, advertised as Dolby Digital, warbled and popped throughout
the show.
I've had enough. No more exceptions for friends or group outings. This
is an absolute, unequivocal boycott. I will never visit another Century
Theatre in my life.
-
Why give your money to idiots like these when you can get great
service and competitive prices from Amazon.com?
I haven't had too many bad experiences as an online consumer, but when I
do have one, it's always a real doozy. It's probably a perception issue,
like the one I have when working with technical stuff-- I usually don't
notice the little problems because I can fix them in a few seconds. I
only notice and remember the hideous large troubles that plague me for
weeks and give me nightmares later.
NOTA BENE: most people doing business online are legitimate, well-meaning,
and honest. The bad apples are a very small minority. Fraud will always
exist, but if people don't fight it, it will become a larger
minority... and larger... and larger...
Even so, I'm still a big advocate of online commerce. Security is not
really an issue any more. Now it's just a matter of people learning how
to use the technology properly and remembering that there are still human
beings at both ends of the transaction. It's never about the money, or
the merchandise-- it's about value, and value only exists because
we say it does.
I hope that some of the information linked above helps you avoid these
unscrupulous bastards (and others like them), and maybe moves us one step
closer to putting them out of business for good. If you have information
that you'd like to share, feel free to
E-mail me.
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