Andrew's Sprocket

So a few months ago I wrote on the transition to all digital television. I thought it was a closed case. But Mr. Pres Elect brought it up and wants to push the termination date back a six months and pump more money into this ridiculous scandalous money laundry scheme. Yes, that’s what it is. If these converter boxes didn’t have a government subsidy they would cost $20. Which is what you end up paying after the $40 subsidy. So they jack the price of this box up to $60 and take government money (which of course comes out of our pockets in taxes somewhere). Did the government issue rabbit ears when analog TV first came out? So why do they think they need to subsidize this upgrade? Unless it’s just to make some money. Which someone is doing…cough cough Madoff? I’m kidding but somehow wouldn’t surprise me.

The budge already $1.34 Billion and now Barack is asking for more. But why? I mean other than the fact that the system was setup to fail when the these $40 coupons were prepaid for but had expiration dates. I mean is it really because people will be without TV? Are you serious? Ask the people. I’m sure not going to glance at the fat bar maid any differently. I have been without TV for 6 months and plan on going 6 years. Yes, it’s part of the bigger plan to keep the American people absorbed with entertainment while other things get budgeted for in the background.

(screen shot from the Evidence of Revision Part 5. I was sick all weekend, employee C, and got a chance to watch all five parts.)

This catering to every pebble is what stunts innovation and progress in a technical world. JUST DO THE DAMN THING. CUT IT OFF. LET US USE THOSE AIRWAVES FOR THE BIGGEST WI-FI PROJECT KNOW TO MAN.

So please Mr. Pres Elect, spend our time on something else.

I was interested in booking a flight from Boston to Portland, OR. I have an American Express card which carries Membership reward points that I am allowed to use with travel. So I figured I would use them.

After first finding a flight on Travelocity I went to the American Express travel site to follow the procedure of booking the flight and using my points. It seems their the Amex travel site actually uses Travelocity as the backend, the format and template was identical so it was easy to find the same flight.

After clicking next to get to the section that would tell me how many points I could use and how much it would save me I get a big error message that there was a System issue and they could not access my Membership points. After trying this several times I called up Amex to book over the phone.

The first rep I talked to was from GB. I read off the flight #, my card info, my address, repeated the spelling of my name several times and finally booked the flight 30 min later. Hey mentioned that the error on the website was sometimes due to if I was already logged in when I tried to book a flight. Maybe due to session management and transferring between the two domains they had setup for this? I did try it both ways. Having been logged in then not having been logged in, I was prompted to login but got the same error message.

Well, the next step was to bring in a membership rewards rep to use my points. After this rep connected to our call, the call volume dropped 5x on this connection, guess that happens when the connection is sent over seas. They then had to gain more security info like mothers maiden name and her birthdate. After _Not_ giving them the info they had on file they then asked for a business phone number, which I don’t recall giving them years ago when I setup the account.

The third rep was from India. So I had to reset my passcode, which involved being transfered to another department. Now in the passcode reset department, I must read off card # and other info relating to my account. I then gave the real birthdate and was to be transferred back to the membership rewards department. After a minute of silence I looked down to realize that I had been cut off, hung up on, not surprisingly.

It has now been 45 min since calling and I was calling again, reading off my card # and address info then being connected to the rewards dept., call volume dropping 5x to some lady in India, the first rep now translating since I couldn’t hear a word being said. Finally the rewards points were credited and and everything was booked. I then asked when I can expect to receive the confirmation email and asked them to confirm the email address they had they said it was wrong, which is the first letter of my first name and last name, pretty simple.

What is happening to customer service in this country is the same with what is happening with the failing infrastructure in all facets of our country, it’s being neglected or out sourced and the level of quality is going down the drain and we pay for it in the end. The only advise I can offer is keep things local and embroider everything with made in the USA.

After calling Sprint today about obscure overages on my bill, I have a monthly call with them and why I am not renewing my contract, I happened to mention that I have had numerous dropped calls and text messages not being delivered.

It was not 10 minutes after hanging up that I received a flood of text messages that friends told me they had sent last week and ones that I had requested, either by sending questions to google or other services. Actually I usually text “red sox” to google to get the score and recent games so this was an easy test. But I have to think that after mentioning that to the rep that he looked into my account and flipped a switch.

Were my messages being flagged for some reason? Was this a bug in Sprint’s messaging system? I mean their picture messaging does not conform to other mobile standards, instead it sends you a link where you have to open a web browser to view and then download to your phone. It really sucks so I’m not surprised if something is amuff with their text messaging too.