SCOTT SEMANS

In My Opinion . . . .

      We've all got opinions, and venting them not only makes us feel good, but may aid someone else. Following are mainly products and services which I either recommend, or recommend avoiding. There's no order, and the perspective is that of a consumer and small business owner. My hope in creating this page is that someone researching one of these firms or products will persevere through the sixtillionth page of Google and find my comments useful in shaping their purchase decision. You may contact me at SSemans@comcast.net (bounce backup: SSemans@aol.com)

Hewlett-Packard Ink jet Printers - Bad machines, worse support
Cumulatively, I have spent many hours of frustration dealing with the lower echelons of HP's technical support staff, and since it is now outsourced to India during certain hours, the situation is only getting worse. I have logged nearly 100 calls for technical support on a series of models since 1992, and the best advice I can give anyone planning to use an HP ink jet is, get an extended service warranty including "express exchange". These warranties are surprisingly cheap, and provide for next-day replacement if a problem can not be handled on the phone. As a Mac user with a preference for older operating systems, I have been "stuck" with HP products except for one blessed year when I had a Lexmark that rarely gave me trouble, and featured prompt, helpful tech support. Contrast this to HP where you will work through an idiot voice recognition system, gatekeepers who want to ask you endless and irrelevant questions, then deny that you have a warranty. If you do get past, the technician will claim not to support your system, argue about the warranty, and be suspiciously eager to sell you a $30 14-day support episode (when 2 year contracts are under $40). Long waits in phone queues, transfers to the wrong department, hang-ups, or "going away" leaving a dead line are standard practice. By contrast, the supervisors in the US (not in India) are usually reasonable and helpful, so be sure to ask for the supervisor rather than argue with a technician. In fact, one supervisor upgraded me at no charge from a glitchy "consumer" model to a Deskjet 6122 which does seem to be built to last. Other than some startup problems, it has gone 2 years with one glitch, and that was fixed by simply reinstalling the software, though it took 75 minutes of phone time arguing with six people before I got the advice to do so. And of course, when I called to check on the extended warranty I bought at the time of the switch, they had no record of it. Finally, you will never get an HP machine that consistently pulls in just one sheet of paper at a time!

Husqvarna - service hogs with bad support
As a volunteer for a hiking club I have used the Husqvarna 225LD trimmer or power-brusher, with interchangeable attachments, for several years. These units are good for about 50-75 hours of work before they fail to start, or restart or develop some other problem. One unit got so hot in use that the plastic choke lever melted off its metal pin. After each servicing the unit would begin leaking dirty oil. After paying $250 for a servicing that still left the unit unworkable, we discarded it and bought a Stihl which has worked well. I then made the mistake of purchasing a Husqvarna 326LDX which is the only unit made with a short hedger attachment, more comfortable to use in trail clearing. However, a screw (part 537 12 53-01) at the join of the boom arm and the blade vibrates loose after about a half hour of use. This happened several times, involving screw replacements, replacement of the whole attachment, and visits to two service centers. When I tried to get either Husqvarna or the mailorder dealer (Spokane Power Tools) to deal with the problem, I got a complete run-around - nobody would tell me anything or return my calls. I took it to a dealer who is authorized to service Husqvarna products, but carries only a few items in their line due to Husqvarna's heavy service needs, poor warranty labor payments, slow ship-time for parts, and failure to return phone calls. The service manager advised that the screw should have been fixed in with "locktite" either at the factory, or as part of dealer prep. I've heard that Husqvarna chain saws are on a par with Stihl; my concern would be with the quality of local dealer servicing.

Fully Informed Jurors - educate yourself before serving on a jury
The goal of FIJA, or the Fully Informed Jury movement, is to re-educate the American public on the true role of the jury in the administration of justice. In a democracy, the public participates in the legal system with votes at two levels: in the election of legislators who craft laws, and in the application of those laws to individuals. Just as politicians seek to restrict, expand, or contain voters through various means fair and foul (universal suffrage, redistricting, vote fraud, etc.), so does the legal profession seek to manage juries to its own ends, sometimes promoting, and sometimes thwarting, true justice. Through court decisions, court rules and practices, and self-serving doctrines taught in law schools, the legal profession tries to hide the fact that jurors have not only the right and power, but the historic duty, to render verdicts based upon the merits of the law and the prosecution, as well as upon the facts of the case. Judges, prosecutors, and even defense lawyers seek to improperly restrict jurors to mere "triers of fact" when one of the most significant checks and balances envisioned by the authors of the Constitution was the ability of jurors to counteract bad law and corrupt prosecutions. The unlegislated practice of "voir dire," or jury-stacking, almost unknown in democratic legal systems outside of America, has come into use to eliminate jurors who exhibit knowledge of their full role as jurors. To learn more about the important role of juries in American jurisprudence and to prepare yourself to be a fully informed and conscientious juror, please visit the FIJA website.

Comswitch Phone / Fax switch - Unpleasant tradeoffs
The Command Communications ComSwitch device allows competing devices, such as a telephone and a fax machine, to receive calls on the same phone line, saving the monthly cost of a separate line. After four years use of my ComSwitch 3500 and many discussions with their support techs, I have come to the conclusion that I can not configure the telephone, fax, and answering machines in my home in a way that I find convenient, and still receive fax calls. There are many variables, depending on what type and make of devices you are using, and whether they are routed through the Comswitch or on other outlets, but some tradeoffs you might have to consider include: 1) You will need to dial #91 after picking up the phone on an incoming fax, 2) You will often have to instruct persons (particularly overseas senders) to use their "speed dial" or "memory dial" feature to send a fax to you, and they will not know how to do this, 3) Certain makes and models of faxes will not be able to reach you no matter what you do, 4) You may not be able to use many fax machines currently on the market, because they can not be set to 1 ring, 5) You may have to set your answering machine to pick up after a small (rather than large) number of rings, or may have to use it on the same jack as the ComSwitch rather than in another room, 6) Phones on outlets other than the one with the ComSwitch may only ring once to indicate an incoming call then go silent, 7) You may have to order "distinctive ring" feature from your phone company, which is an extra monthly charge, 8) ComSwitch may have to be hard-wired into your line at a point before individual house outlets branch off. It stands to reason that if someone made a switching device that really worked, there wouldn't still be so many dedicated fax lines out there.

Pandora.com - A customizable radio station
In brief, it's a customizable internet music station requiring a broadband connection, that can be routed to your stereo. Submit a few groups or artists to get it started, then it learns what to play from your feedback. The format is easy to use. I put in about a dozen artists, and was conservative in hitting the yea-nay buttons once the music started. It was mediocre at first, but within about four hours it was playing almost all GREAT STUFF, much of which from groups I'd never heard before. Best of all, it's free so far, but $36/year if you decide to support them. They say it's for U.S. residents only, but I don't see why it won't work anywhere if you enter a zipcode (like 98027). Warning: Licensing arrangements make it unlikely that you will hear any particular songs you enter, so best to put in artists, not songs. Late note: Apparently their catalog of new-age / electronica is quite limited, but alternative rock is strong. Feedback on other genres is appreciated!

Biased News Coverage - why would you want any other kind?
It used to be that NUMedia (National & Urban Media) served as gatekeepers to what most Americans received as news of current events. The internet has changed that. NUMedia has always held forth the lofty goal of objectivity - balance, or lack of viewpoint. No more telling example - nor more poignant absurdity - can be cited than TV's Fox News channel's adoption of Fair And Balanced as an official slogan. The Big Lie lives on! And yet, it's Fox News that has broken the mould and paved the way for MSNBC's Keith Olberman and CNN's Lou Dobbs with their well-defined biases and pet issues. Is the cloth beginning to fall from our eyes, at last? If we are going to gain our understanding of the world from TV sound bytes, why shouldn't those bytes be palatable and entertaining? And what's less palatable than somebody else's bias, and less entertaining than a pretense at objectivity? I say, let's have more biased news coverage, from even more perspectives. The greater danger than thinking news is objective is thinking liberal and conservative (or neo-) are the only two perspectives. Maybe so if your news still comes in the Big Box, but you will soon learn better when you explore the punditry available on the net. So, here's the pitch. My Bookmark called News takes me to Rational Review News Digest and that's because I'm essentially a libertarian. But if you're not, then go fish - really - somewhere out there you're going to find a news digest that honors your viewpoint in the issues it covers, the sources it selects, and the blogs it links to. You don't have to put up with what somebody else decides are the real issues and - heaven forfend - an "objective" take on them.

Shipping and Handling Charges - hidden profits for the seller
When you order something to be shipped to you, "Shipping and Handling" charges are almost inevitable, and when you are buying from a website, it is often hard to find out what this will amount to without giving the seller a great deal of information. Since price is often the sole determiner of who gets a sale, internet sellers have learned to quote low on product, then build the profit back into a handling charge which the buyer does not see in a clear and timely way. Charging for shipping is a legitimate practice and the fairest way to do this is to pass along the carrier's charges exactly. Carriers such as UPS, however, have different rate structures for different shippers and do not show the amount paid on the face of the package, which encourages shippers to overcharge, or create high, blanket charge schedules based on sale amount or units ordered. This results in an overcharge for most customers, and particularly disfavors buyers of light products. To deflect objections over blatantly high shipping charges, many sellers call it "Shipping & Handling" which somehow sounds better, but in fact makes no sense at all. Any retailer is in business to "handle" his product, and a mail-order seller's handling includes packing it up for shipment. When you buy groceries at the market, you do not expect a surcharge at the cash register to cover the "handling" the stock boy did in unpacking the product and putting it on the shelves. So why would you expect a mail-order dealer to charge you extra for taking something off a shelf and putting it in a box? When you price shop on the internet, take the time to compare these much-abused charges. Look for a "calculate shipping" button before you input personal information to the order form. You may find that the #2 or #3 seller ranked by price charges less at checkout than someone who builds his profit back in via overblown shipping and unwarranted "handling" charges.

Fedex, UPS & The Rest - hard to find the rates.
For a while there Fedex was making a play for the ground shipment business with low rates, but that's history. Their rates appear to be pretty comparable now with UPS and DHL (formerly Airborne). I say appear because it's become very hard to predict what the charges will be. None of the private carriers have rate tables like the USPS. The only way to get a quote is to log on to their website, register (or enter the usual password garbage) and run through several screens pumping in information. Or phone them up, fight your way through the prompts, and answer the same useless questions with a live rep. Give me a break! You would think somebody would tie in these quotation programs at a comparison site, but I haven't found an accurate one yet. The "Quick Quote" function here rarely gives the same rate the shipper quotes, but it's usually fairly close. DHL is often the lowest, but they seem to have few shipping outlets, and after all, in the U.S. they used to be Airborne, so expect problems. If you use Fedex ground, avoid Kinkos locations, as they have a different set of exclusions from the Fedex centers and can penalize managers for accepting problem shipments, so the copy clerks ask about contents and look for reasons to refuse your shipment.

BECU, B.E.C.U., Boeing Employees Credit Union - Heads up their Butts
Apparently a bank without the frills, this organization advertises widely in WA state, offering basic banking services such as checking and loans, but without any actual branches. This stripped-down approach means that information about their products is given, and applications taken, via their website or through outsourced phone-bank operators who have only minimal familiarity with their loan products. In order to talk to an "actual BECU employee" one asks a phone banker to send them an email requesting a callback. During a frustrating two week attempt to find out whether I could get a particular type of mortgage, I experienced long wait times, was given contradictory information several times, and was called back only about 50% of the time. Their online application process stalled at several points, requiring more call-ins. I realize that the mortgage banking industry is characterized by deceit and insensitivity toward the client, but at least with a broker or a bank loan officer you can talk face to face to someone who actually knows a variety of products.

IDT Long Distance: Do they really want your business?
A Wall Street Journal article comparing the various providers rated IDT and one other at the top, concluding that while their service wasn't first rate, neither was anybody else's these days, so you might as well go with the cheaper rates. One of them, VarTec, apparently does not offer service in my area. I called up the other, IDT, signed up, went through a verification process with the local phone company, and . . . continued to get bills from AT&T. About a month after signing up, I was able (for once) to get through to an IDT sales number rather quickly and the agent verified that I had indeed signed up. He transferred me to Customer Service where the automated voice told me I had (insert)17 minutes (end insert) to wait. I tried calling back over the next few days and never got announced wait times under 14 minutes. However, one prompt allowed me to check my account status which told me my application had been rejected, "Your regional service is not currently provided by IDT. IDT offers low rates on your regional calls. Sign up today for just (insert) eight cents (end insert) per minute." So is the five cents a minute just a come-on for eight cents a minute service? Over the next couple weeks I continued trying both their sales and customer service lines until, toward 5PM, I got a 2 minute wait time. The person I spoke to said there was indeed a five cent rate, and it was offered in my area, but my local phone company had "rejected the voicepick," which means I would have to call the local phone company Qwest, which I loathe, and argue with them to see if they will allow me to switch long distance providers. If IDT doesn't value my business and the business of other Qwest victims enough to complain to a state regulator when a would-be customer is denied them, then do I really want to go through the grief myself, in anticipation of waiting double digit minutes whenever I need to resolve a service or billing issue? WSJ, I don't think you did your homework on these clowns.

Epson Perfection 1640SU Scanner: Great for thick stuff
This scanner got good mention on the Indian and Islamic coin listserves. I use it for ALL the illustrations on this website and am pleased with it. Purchased in 2000, by now there is no doubt a successor model. It does such a decent job on thick objects such as Ethnographic money, that I have put off buying a digital camera. I have not been able to do text scanning with it, however. One of the programs that came with it for this purpose doesn't work, and the other drops out entire lines of text, even with very plain fonts. The email tech support seems good, however, and my guess is that I could work this out eventually.

Comcast Cable Internet: Too many outages
Comcast is a major provider of cable internet service, in competition with the phone companies' broadband services. When it was attbi it was horrible, when it was AT&T it improved, and Comcast is better still. Even so, in my area I can count on a slowdown or outage about every two months, lasting from a matter of hours to several days. Even though I have spent literally days talking with Comcast employees at all levels, and developing contacts that most residential users do not have, I usually do not get explanations for these outages, nor estimates of when they will be fixed. Sometimes an outage will create secondary problems within my own computer, so I am not able to tell whether service has been restored in my area without contacting neighbors. Once Comcast has taken some action on a problem, they will assume it is corrected; they will not contact you to check. Typically bad weather will create area-wide outages in cable service, but not in telephone service. It is important to know neighbors who have the service, compare notes, and urge them to call in a report, as Comcast repair is completely driven by the squeaky-wheel principle: the more complaints in an area, the faster they respond to that area. Three times in a three year period I have experienced loss of connectivity due to a localized, intermittent, line problem. This is very difficult to track down because it will affect different users on the same node differently, and must be serviced when it is occurring, not "between noon and 5:00PM" the next day, or whenever they have a free tech to look at it. The only way to deal with an intermittent line problem is to get the phone number of your local technical operations manager, who can actually get a line technician to your house when the problem is visible. Your local cable TV regulator is a first step, but you have to get past the Customer Care supervisors, who can not affect the scheduling of repair calls. Even then, you will need complaints from your neighbors to overcome Comcast Repairs "Rules of 3" (3 ordinary tech appointments before they will believe it's a more general problem, and 3 complainers on the same problem before the line techs will schedule it.) This is a big corporation and its internal communications are not good. Until you reach the person in charge of the line technicians, you will be wasting time waiting for ordinary repair techs or dealing with telephone gatekeepers who can't help you. Comcast has a business-grade service which gets a higher level of tech support and faster repairs; it is available to residential customers willing to pay more to not get the short end of the stick.

Comcast Email and Webspace: "We don't support that."
I regularly have problems with webspace and email, and often as not, the tech support is not able to help. Comcast has at least three levels of technical support, but residential customers have access only to the lowest level, the higher levels being reserved for business customers. The level-one techs are trained to solve simple problems, and will deny that higher support levels exist. They will tell you that their only job is to make sure that you have internet access, and while they can often be persuaded to help with other issues, are seldom competent to do so. To get competent support, find out who your local Executive Customer Care Specialist is (or try Agatha Hill, the ECCS in my area: 800-666-3458ext.65510) and ask them to have Denver call you back. This will likely take two working days, and the guy I got acted like he was doing me a big favor, but I have gotten problems fixed this way. And if you're a Mac user, you are doubly screwed, because almost nobody at Comcast knows Macs. In 2005 I began hearing, by letter and via my aol account, from European corespondents who were getting "undeliverable" messages when sending to my @comcast.net address. This remains a problem which Comcast will not take seriously. Read more here. AOL offers a bare-bones $7/month account, and as awful as they are, it is a useful backup to a Comcast account if the telephone system in your area fails less often than the Comcast lines.

Radio Shack: Deceptive Returns Policy
Let's say you go in January 1st and buy something - like a radio. If you ask, they'll tell you you've got 30 days to return it for cash, thereafter store credit. You don't like the radio (I didn't like mine) so you go in January 15th to return it, and see a radio controlled truck that would make a great birthday gift for your kid for just $10 more than the radio. So, you return the radio and have the sales person charge the extra $10 to your card. Turns out your wife already got Junior a fire engine, so that's got to go back, and one thing and another it's February 2 (17 days later) before you get back to the store. Now your only option is store credit, no cash refund. Why? Because instead of RETURNING the radio and making the sales person go to the trouble of processing both a credit to your card for the radio AND a new purchase for the truck, you made an EXCHANGE. That means your 30 days for cash refund dates back to the original purchase, the radio, not to two weeks ago when you bought the truck. Tricky, huh? Apparently this deceptive practice is followed by other large electronics retailers as well. Moral: While 30 days return is standard on electronics products, you may want to favor hardware or general merchandise stores who do not try to cheat their customers with dubious hidden technicalities. If you make a return at Radio Shack, get a refund in hand, walk out the door, and THEN decide if you want to buy something else there. By the way, I never did find a small radio there that would pull in distant stations, nor a sales person who could rate or compare different models for this quality. I discovered the Grundig Mini 300 at a sporting goods store, and it's perfect.

Costco: A good deal all around
By a good margin I spend more at Costco than at any other store, not only for food, clothing, and household items, but work-related goods as well. Generally the quality is adequate to excellent, the prices equal to or better than any other retailers' "specials," the shopping experience is pleasant, and I know I can return anything I don't like without time limit. The food items are not all "jumbo" size; even as a household of one I can buy fresh fish, meat, and prepared meals. I might wish for more variety in features and brands, shorter checkout lines, and better heating in the outdoor food court, but these are minor offsets. As an Executive Member I save more than the modest $100 annual dues on car insurance alone, and get a better rate on credit card merchant service than anyone else offers. This membership level also offers savings on real estate, financial services, long distance telephone, etc., and my local Costco also sells gas a few cents below any competitor. I particularly like the no time limit return policy on all goods, important for computer and electronics items where reasons to dislike a product may crop up only after a period of use. Costco's buyers have been helpful in resolving aftermarket problems with producers and service providers. My main gripe is about the clothing sizes they stock, and this may be peculiar to my local store, which is also the corporate headquarters store: everything is for "tall and fat". Small is just not stocked, and you have to get to a new item very fast to find a medium; usually you will find only L, XL, and XXL. I hadn't noticed that everyone in Issaquah is over 6 Ft tall and 250+ Lbs, but the buyers must have inside information. Suggestions left in the "box" have never drawn a reply or action, but buyers are reachable by phone, and have helped on the few occasions when I have had trouble with a rebate or warranty. Electronics and computer peripherals sold at Costco may differ slightly in features from base models. The MCI phone card they sell is not a good value, and service is impaired partly due to a modification initiated by Costco. More disturbing are some of Costco's known or rumored corporate policies: drug testing of employees, no bare feet allowed even in "beach" cities, no insurance coverage for customers injured on premises, and inducements to local governments to condemn and resell to Costco properties of unwilling owners. However, such policies are not unique to Costco, and I have not sought out arguments on both sides of these claims. As a consumer, I am a Costco booster.
     The best phone contact number (including Costco.com) is corporate HQ here in Issaquah: 425-313-8100, not the toll-free numbers.

Mac Warehouse / CDW: Improving?.
As of 2008, this is old news: Mac Warehouse in Lakewood, NJ used to be THE place to buy Macintosh computers and peripherals. Good prices, no sales tax if you're out of state, and best of all, lifetime tech support. I have no experience with Windows PC's but have used Macs since 1992 and I can count on running into a crash or a software problem almost on a weekly basis, so tech support is crucial. When Mac Warehouse was bought out by CDW, the quality of this support plummeted. It took far longer to get past the gatekeepers to an actual tech, there were very few Mac techs left, and they were much more likely to define the limits of their support narrowly. Blame shifting among tech support specialists has always been endemic: if they are an isp, the problem is in your computer or software, if software support, the problem is your computer or isp, if hardware support . . . . you get the idea. The Mac Warehouse techs were generally above this sort of game, and would do what they could in the gray areas, but since the buyout they began limiting support to hardware and software installation support only. You can always go back through the Customer Service gatekeepers, bitch and moan, and have them contact the supervisors to find a more accommodating tech who knows the particular software involved and will go the extra mile for you, but the process was getting more and more exhausting. And if they just can't figure it out, your recourse is Apple with a $60 minimum charge and no guarantees they can fix the problem, either. After venting my spleen on a customer satisfaction survey, I actually got a call back from someone saying they were hiring more Mac techs and trying to restore the quality of their support.

I.C. System - Collection Agency promises more than it delivers
This is a large collection agency which apparently operates in a variety of fields. My experience was with a unit in St. Paul, MN which uses salesmen to sign up retail merchants. ICS pre-sells the merchant a number of "tickets" each good for one collection effort, which consists of a series of increasingly more threatening letters ending in a negative credit reporting if the debtor fails to respond. The debtor is instructed to pay the merchant directly, and when the merchant reports receipt of funds, ICS bills him for a percentage. I signed up many years ago and used the service infrequently over the years on accounts I had already dunned myself, so I was not surprised that ICS's efforts seldom resulted in a collection. After all, they only thing they could threaten that I hadn't already was a negative credit reporting. I had asked the salesman what happens if the debtor denies the debt or denies receipt of goods, and he advised me to keep an invoice and some proof of receipt. Finally one debtor, wise in the ways of collection agencies, protested ICS's collection letters to his state Attorney General, and ICS dropped the collection immediately, even after I provided the documentation their salesman said would result in a negative credit reporting. Didn't matter. The explanation was that for "business reasons" ICS would not pursue the debt. Then another customer claimed that a Tibetan medal I'd sent him had been "unsolicited" even though I provided a copy of a letter in which the customer asked numerous questions about this unsolicited item in his possession. ICS dropped their collection efforts on that one as well. Just to make sure I'd heard that first salesman right, I made an appointment with a second salesman, who sang the same song, then became very aggrieved when I revealed that I was already an ICS customer, and an unhappy one at that. In retaliation for having wasted their salesman's time, ICS withdrew the negative credit reports they had generated on all my accounts, some of them more than 10 years ago, and has refused to honor the balance of my pre-sold collection tickets. Of course, my State A.G. (Christine Gregoire at the time, now Governor) has no interest in investigating a collection agency that goes easy on debtors; they only go after the ones that make an honest effort on behalf of their merchant clients.

Pizza: Domino's Vs Flying Pie
Hey, I know it's not fair to compare a chain outlet with a mom & pop, but these are two pizza places in downtown Issaquah, and the difference is stark. The first Domino's pizza I had was so bad I just couldn't believe it wasn't some kind of fluke, or that I didn't ruin it myself when I put it back in the oven to actually get cooked. So I ordered again, and got another absolutely horrible pizza - but properly cooked. How do these people stay in business? On the other hand, there's the Flying Pie, which has outlets in Issaquah, WA and Portland, OR and apparently has nothing to do with businesses of the same name in Boise, Chico, and elsewhere in the northwest. Best pizza I can recall having, ever. I just wish they served "slices" all day long instead of lunch. The pesto pizza is especially good. This is my first suggestion when lunching with out of town visitors.

Credit Cards - Banks practice legalized fraud
The first one I heard of doing this was Advanta, then National City Bank, but now they're all doing it: they send the account holder a Terms of Agreement statement that goes into great detail about how your APR on outstanding balance is calculated. But there's another term later on that says basically "We can change any term we want at any time." What kind of sense does that make? I always thought that when two parties signed a contract - even if one of them is as politically connected and legally immunized as a bank - the terms could not be changed unless BOTH parties signed off on it. Pretty naive of me, I guess. A few years ago these contracts gave you the option of rejecting new terms, usually resulting in the closing of the account and paying off any balances under the original terms. Some of them, like Capital One, try to cheat even on this by giving you a short time period to opt out, but apparently new accounts don't even give you this. If they want to bump your 7% APR on a balance up to 25% on a whim, they'll by gosh and by golly just do it - probably after checking your credit report to make sure you don't have room on a lower-interest card to pay them off. This NY Times article covers this and related abuses. Get rid of credit card debt any way you can - it's a bad, bad deal.

RABANCO - Don't send cash
RABANCO is a private garbage removal service with contracts with several Seattle Eastside cities. Billings can be small, so rather than writing a check, I sent a $10 bill to their collection address in Phoenix, AZ. When they stopped picking up my garbage, I checked and found that the $10 had never been credited. Nobody I spoke to at RABANCO had the least interest in informing the Phoenix center. Of course I do not expect them to credit $10 on my say-so, but they could take some interest in investigating an accusation of employee theft.

Outsourced Customer Support - not the best way to visit India
I'm not against outsourcing. If somebody in Mexico, India, or Whereverstan can do a job better or cheaper than an American, then it's only common sense to take it offshore. But when a company outsources without regard to the quality of the product or service they are offering their customers, it's a different story. I've come to the conclusion that some companies like Indian employees better not just because they are cheaper, but because they are more tractable and more likely to enforce company policies at the expense of the customer, without sacrificing politeness. Due to my computer setup and America Online's glitchy software and inability to track down technical problems, I need to correct a billing error about every 3 months or so. Every time I call in and get a Yank, they understand my explanation and it's no problem, but when I get Bombay I know I'm in trouble: can't do it, switch to supervisor who never picks up, disconnected, write to this address . . . . rightly or wrongly they either think that granting customer credit is going to reflect badly on them personally, or they've simply been told not to do it. Same thing with tech support. Hopefully the competence level will improve as the Indian trainees gain more experience. But part of it is language difficulties, and part of it, I suspect, is that the American tech people are more secure in their jobs or have more alternatives, while the Indians are more inclined to please management by spending less time with you, blaming somebody else's hardware or software rather than taking a broader view of the problem.

Telephone headsets
I've always been way behind the curve when it comes to owning the latest telephone technology. The idea of carrying a phone during errands or a hike is completely unappealing. But what I can't understand is why so many people who spend so much time on the phone use a device that immobilizes a hand and requires holding an elbow in the air or doing the neck-strain shoulder clamp. Forget about speaker phones if you care about sound quality. I've used a Plantronics headset for more than 15 years, and would give their products a qualified recommendation, but the brand isn't the point. Get one with a long headset cord for office use and you will be able to type, surf the internet, unshelve and browse a book, or any of the hang-on-a-minute things the person on the other end needs you to do. You'll never go back.

Massage Envy - why won't they show you the contract?
Corporate franchising has entered the massage business! There are four locations in my general area offering a trial $39 one-hour massage, quite a bargain given that other practitioners in the area get $50-$75. After the trial, you are invited to become a member. According to a handout, this costs $59 per month and entitles you to one massage, with unlimited additional massages at $39 (just up from $29 as of 9/1/05). The handout does not mention a minimum commitment period of 6 months. What I find peculiar is that they will not show you the actual contract unless you are ready to sign up based on this information. The contract is not at their website, and they will not mail you a copy. At the location, they say you can sit and study the contract before you sign, but not take a copy home with you unless you sign. The reason given both by local management and the location receptionist was "to prevent a competitor from copying it," a transparently ridiculous concern which only serves to deepen suspicion. The trial massage I got was adequate, but no more. There was a pointed sign on the table urging a tip, and a supply of tip envelopes. My guess is that the staff is made up of entry-level practitioners who quickly churn out to solo practice or market rate employment elsewhere as their skills improve, leaving Massage Envy members in a constant quest to find a good massage at what is undeniably a good price.

Banana Pages - and other fake Yellow Pages
I think most people have figured it out by now, but some of the Yellow Pages out there are true telephone books, and others are just compilations of businesses that have paid to be listed - in other words, they are hardly more useful than the advertising supplements in your Sunday paper that you throw away while looking for the funny pages.

Forgerynetwork.com - a good idea, but poorly done
The goal of this new (late 2005) website, hosted by Mark Naber of Australia, is to allow registered users to post illustrations and comments on fake or suspect world coins, plus follow-up feedback from other users. Counterfeits are and have always been a serious problem in this hobby, but this unmoderated approach to exposure is fraught with pitfalls. While some counterfeits are obvious, the ones a buyer most needs to be aware of are those which can only be debunked by a true expert working with an actual coin. This site allows anyone to post, without assessing their credentials, and without even providing their name. It encourages the formation of opinions based on the viewing of a scan or photograph. The site identifies the owner or seller of a piece yet provides no notification to that party. Already the site has been used in an apparent attempt to embarrass a dealer by a known non-expert with a grudge. The posting was discussed in the relevant Yahoo group with a general consensus that the coin was good, yet none of the real experts bothered to register with Forgerynetwork and leave comments. Unless some effort is made to encourage expert participation and moderate the submissions, this site, despite its good intentions, will be a decidedly mixed blessing.

sucks, avoid, not recommend, bad negative experience, poor service, lack of quality, deceptive unethical practices, consumer complaints, rip off, ripoff rip-off, suspicious, fraud, fraudulent
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