Category: Rants & Observations

Google Reader

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Yesterday it was announced that Google Reader will be no more as of July 1st. I couldn’t be more disappointed, as well as pissed off at Google. I’ve always disliked Google to a certain degree because they seem really inflexible. It’s part of the reason why even though I have two gmail accounts I still use Yahoo for my main emailing. A lot of my dislike stems from the fact that the company I used to work for had arrangements with them to provide a service for which they would not accommodate any of our requests which made it difficult to make a profit. In fact last I heard they were coming up with other ways to bill our clients for the services we were getting from Google because the reports they provided did not allow us to automate the invoicing, thus it wasn’t making us any revenue.

In any case, I use Google Reader constantly. I do mean constantly. If I’m not checking the updated feeds via the Google Reader site in Firefox I’m checking it through Feeddler on my iPhone or iPad. I can’t imagine a better way to keep on top of the newest posts from my favorite sites and being able to keep my progress and starred articles synched. It seems a lot of people would agree, and on top of that, there really aren’t any comparable alternatives right now.

I understand that RSS feeds aren’t as popular as one might hoped, which is apparent from the crickets I got in response to my Facebook update yesterday bemoaning this development, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t useful or appreciated. They’d probably be utilized by more people if they understood what they were, or more importantly, how beneficial they are. Who reads articles on actual websites anymore? I rarely do. I get the majority of my news via Google Reader and Twitter, and with Twitter I send the articles to Pocket to read later.

Needless to say I’m really upset about all this and will likely delete my Google+ account soon. Might as well before Google decides to do it for me. Besides, it’s not like it’s going to end up being the Facebook killer they hoped it would be. Oh, and I might just switch to Bing for my search needs as well.

Consumerism is ugly

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It’s time people stop turning into crazed consumers on Black Friday. Is all that insanity worth a few bucks off on an item you and/or your loved ones don’t even need?

This story really fires me up. Kmart refused to price-match Sears even though they are the same company, but what’s worse is that the guy still ordered a Christmas Tree from them! If you’re not willing to voice your opinion by boycotting a company when they aren’t helpful they are going to continue to screw over their customers, just like Best Buy did to this guy who, quite frankly, is an idiot. Why would he continue and shop at Best Buy on Black Friday after they already screwed him over the year before? My brother was out on Black Friday and called me from Best Buy about a great deal on a TV which was very tempting but I passed because I don’t do business with that POS store.

You need to vote with your pocket book if there’s any chance that things will change. Are we as a nation really that desperate for junk that we’re willing to let companies walk all over us? Based on these stories we are, so I guess we deserve to be mistreated. If we continue to give our business to organizations who don’t give a crap about customer service then we don’t have any right to complain about the lack of it. If good customer service was truly important to the public people would refuse to shop at places who can’t offer it adequately.

And this story is just sad. Shoplifting is wrong, but a person doesn’t deserve to be killed for attempting it. Obviously if you work for a company you want to do what you can to prevent theft but in the end it’s the company (the same company who ultimately does not care about you since you’re just a vehicle to their profitability) who is losing out if someone gets away with stealing merchandise. It’s not worth your job, or jail time, to protect the company from losing money on a couple of DVD players. How much could those possibly be worth anyway? More than a human life? I think not.

This time of the year just depresses me with the rampant consumerism.

Tomorrow

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I recently read that the happiest people are those who are present in every moment instead of wallowing in the past or planning for the future. I think the problem is society places a lot of focus on future plans as do most work environments so it’s really tough not to get used to that mindset. I catch myself thinking about the future far more than the present. For instance, right now I’ve got two things I’m looking forward to – 1) our annual Thanksgiving potluck at work tomorrow and 2) getting through this insanely busy week (6 hours of overtime already in the bag and it’s only Tuesday) so I can enjoy the entire week of Thanksgiving off. Both of those things make me happy so I guess it’s not always bad to be focused on the future, especially if it helps get you through a not so pleasant present.

Sunday Bloody Sunday

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Ok, my Sunday didn’t actually involve any blood but I like that song by U2. Anyway…

I didn’t realize the cast of SNL only gets Sundays off. Apparently they write from Mon-Fri and do a rehearsal before the show on Saturday. What a grueling schedule.

It seems to me that everyone works just too damn much. I want to live a slower paced life and someday, hopefully soon, I’m going to make that dream a reality. Life is too short to feel stressed out and unwell so much of the time.

And now I must bid you adieu so I can get to bed at a decent hour.

Attacked by inanimate objects and companies

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Yesterday I was attacked by our vacuum cleaner. Joe was vacuuming the stairs and had the cleaner at the top of the stairs. It fell and hit him on the top of the head, so I started up the stairs to go hold it for him. At the time he was telling me he didn’t need my help, it fell again, this time striking me across the forehead and one side of my nose which really hurt. It still hurts today. I’m just waiting to see if a bruise forms so everyone can assume my husband beats me. ;)

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This morning I was looking over our Discover bill since we’ve started cutting back on our restaurant expenses in order to save more money, and I noticed a charge from our paper, the Chicago Tribune, in the amount of $58.50. I was immediately alarmed because we usually pay $19.50 per quarter, and back in November we had been charged $58.50 but determined it was for a longer period of time, so we didn’t dispute it (more on that in a bit).

Joe immediately called the Tribune to inquire about the charge and was told it is now $58.50 quarterly. Yikes! That’s three times what it used to cost, and the only reason we even subscribe is for the Sunday paper. If we purchased the paper individually it would cost us $10 per month ($2.50 weekly) which is why we were ok paying $19.50 every three months (which also includes Wednesday and Friday delivery which we don’t care about). Joe asked them to cancel our subscription and refund us the charge, which after some back and forth trying to keep us, they agreed to do.

After getting off the phone I remarked to Joe that it still didn’t make sense because I know when we were originally charged the $58.50 in November we wouldn’t have just assumed the charge was for a longer time period without something to give us that impression. Sure enough, I was correct. Evernote came to the rescue, and I found this screenshot I took in November when this first came up.

Click the screenshot below to make it bigger. Notice how there’s a column to the far right that says “Paid Thru” and it says August 10, 2012 in the field? That explains why we had assumed the charge was for nine months of service at once. Sure, we weren’t exactly happy that they changed their billing from quarterly to three quarters, but it was no big deal since we pay our credit card in full every month anyway.

After looking at that screenshot Joe called them back and insisted they refund us another $39 since the original charge was misleading and we would have cancelled then if we had known their rates had tripled. At first the guy was implying it was our fault for not logging back into the account and checking on it later since that paid through date was an error. How the heck would we know it was an error, and why would the burden be on us to check the account again when what it said originally made sense to us and indicated we wouldn’t be charged again until August? Joe explained this to the guy and eventually he relented and agreed to reimburse us $39 on top of reversing the most recent charge of $58.50.

Interesting enough, when Joe was finally able to reset his password and log into his Tribune account they no longer had the option to look at past transactions and what the through date would be. How convenient for them. I’m so glad I use Evernote to document this stuff.

These companies are unbelievable! I feel like they intentionally mislead customers in the hope they don’t notice or don’t want to be bothered to dispute the charges. Well they are messing with the wrong couple because we don’t bust our butts working for our paychecks only to waste our money.

Now we’ll have to buy the paper weekly, but in a way it will be more convenient than home delivery because we’ll be able to get it on Saturday and go through the coupons ahead of time. That’s all we get it for anyway.