This is what I like about having an old guy for president: Biden is an early Baby Boomer and still remembers what it’s like when people either saved up or used cash to buy stuff. Nothing irritates them more than hidden fees and people fucking with their money. Also this :
It hasn’t always been successful; in May, banks suing to overturn a rule limiting credit card late fees to $8 got a federal judge to block the rule from going into effect.
I fucking KNEW they would try this shit! Explain to me why there needs to be a $40 late fee?! The judge who blocked this needs to be named and shamed. Possibly given a wedgie.
Sort of on topic: read once that ex-employers, major retailers with thousands of employees , and lots of turnover, could buy life insurance policies, unbeknownst to that person, for REALLY CHEAP, and just keep paying pennies of premium, until that (older, sickly) person passed on.
Ta, Dok. Ta, President Joe Biden. We've all gotten those bogus calls that say, "your vehicle's extended warranty is about to expire." Well, yesterday, I actually got a piece of snail mail saying the same. I'm a New Yorker who is only just now learning to drive. I found it hilarious that someone put postage on an envelope for this.
I give it at most forty eight hours before musk brings a countersuit to protect the people* from evil gubmint tyranny. How dare the feds demand that people** treat the serfs better than actual people?!***
*Corporations. Ever since the supreme Court passed the corporate personhood act.
That is the one thing that Democrats consistently fail to do -- tout their achievements. It's sad, really. Politics is a rough business, and you don't get any points for humility. There should be some points for it, but there just aren't. Biden has done some great things in his one term -- probably more than most presidents accomplish in two terms. But most people know little or nothing about those things, so they remain unsung. Meanwhile, Republicans seldom do anything worth talking about in any tone but disgust, yet they never stop shouting about all the glorious things they've done for us. They repeat themselves so frequently that a lot of Americans start to believe them.
Democrats tout their policies all the time, but it doesn’t get clicks. It’s not sexy. As recently as the Seventies, you had guys like Walter Cronkite and John Chancellor who’d go on tv and report the news every night. Now you have a 24 hour news cycle that follows an “Entertainment Tonight “ format. For example: I read about the credit card fee thing and employers having to pay salaried managers more when they work over X amount of hours from this here lovely site Wonkette. I follow a half dozen YouTube channels plus MSNBC and I don’t think I’ve heard either of these stories on any of those formats. Dem achievements are too often swamped by Republican talking points and distractions. We’ve spent a month hearing about migrants eating cats and “Senator Vance, do you believe Biden won in 2020?” Both of those things didn’t require the amount of time they’ve taken up. Imagine a world in which we had breathless coverage of reduced credit card fees. Not very sexy but I guarantee the masses would find this an interesting development and would laud Biden for his efforts.
Well it WILL be easy until the case gets up to the SCROTUS and thanks to overturning Chevron, they'll announce "oh no! a regulatory agency has no right to regulate anything!"
" because they’ve made so many small parts of being a consumer (that is, being an American) so much easier." And conversely, with the wrong people in charge, not only could these changes be reversed, but all sorts of OTHER things, that we even thought of yet because none of us are that snaky, could become _allowed_, introducing a whole new golden age of screwing the consumer.
Call me cynical about American business practices, but all my life it seems that if some business does a good job with someone, refunds, returns, credit, service, quality, anything, they tell people about it surprisingly like they found money in the street! Lucky me!
Cause it is generally assumed that companies are run by assholes, cheats and liars. So when you have a problem, you get the runaround, bullshit, and the bullshit runaround.
If something happens like it is supposed to, I think, huh, well, ok. Maybe I'll do business with them
When I sold my L.A. condo and drove out of state with two unhappy cats (to what turned out to be a super sketchy rental in Tucson while I house-hunted), I didn't call Spectrum to cancel my service until what was, unbeknownst to me, 3 days into my monthly term - due to LOTS OF SHIT GOING ON in my life.
Of course, when I made the call, I was subjected to whole bunch of sales bullshit and none-of-yer-damn-business questions. But since I was moving out of state and would have a different provider in future, there wasn't much upselling they could do. Instead he noted that I was 3 days into the term and informed me of the small print in my contract that apparently stipulated that I would have to pay for the entire month HAHAHAHA, NO. And then he said usually they just end up waiving it.
They didn't, though. So I told them to fuck themselves.
Because (a) hey Spectrum, you gonna then refund me for all of the days I didn't have service over all the years I've been with you?
And worse - (b) it's douple-dipping, because I knew for a fact that the lovely couple who bought my place had already started their service there. So here's Spectrum trying to collect from both of us for the same time period.
They've been harassing me for the $80 for the past year, even after I told them flatly "Yeah, no, I'm not paying you for 27 days after I cancelled. Fuck off." It all goes to junk email and spam texts anyway (I block any number that isn't in my Contacts), so I don't give a crap, and lately it seems like they've given up.
And so far it doesn't seem like they've reported it to credit agencies. My credit is well into the 800's anyway, and I already have more credit cards than I need and own my house and car, so knock yourselves out Spectrum.
Time Warner Spectrum - customer service and just plain ordinary service so terrible that they tried to change the name to make you forget how crappy they are! Didn’t work because they are just fucking bad at their jobs!
lived in LA from 2008-2012 and somehow I knew this was actually Time Warner, even though I didn't know about the name change. They routinely cut Internet to my apartment because they are morons, and it would take days to get it restored. Worst fucking cable company I've ever dealt with, and that's saying something. Comcast sucks but at least they can keep my service on and don't randomly jack up the rates.
When I ditched TW/S to get fiber optic internet from a local provider the customer service rep literally yelled at me and (no joke) told me I was stupid and I’d be sorry. I calmly told him that was a risk I was willing to take. 8 years later I’m still with the same company, and they are the best fucking ISP in the country (literally there was an article in PC Magazine saying so). My monthly cost has stayed exactly the same at $50 for 8 years (time warner constantly, randomly, and sneakily raised my rate), three times they’ve sent me a letter saying they were increasing my speed out of the blue, hooray (I get 500mbs down AND up now), and I can count the outages I’ve had in 8 years on one hand with fingers left over. They even repaired a squirrel compromised wire within 2 hours of me calling about it during finals week when we were all teaching online during the pandemic. For someone who lives in small-town middle-of-nowhere upstate, they’re an incredible company. And I still flip off every spectrum van, flier, and sign I see.
If you’re in central or western New York State, get you some fiber optic service from Empire Access. They’re amazing.
I have one Spectrum account left and all it covers is fiber optic internet at a rental. The original deal was $29 and it went up, and up and up. I finally told the renter that they would have to find their own internet and called up Spectrum to cancel. The “customer service” rep asked me why I was canceling. I told him it was the price increase bit. He said how about we let you stay for $39/mo with no more increases. I said great but if it increases I’m cancelling immediately. That was 4 years ago and it hasn’t changed. The service is terrible and the speeds are worse but I have it for the security/fire alarm system on the rental unit. My last tenant complained and I told him to find his own ISP. He went to Spectrum to try and upgrade and they wanted $80/mo for 500 Mbs. I warned him that’s what was already there and he went with Verizon instead.
In one way or another I’ve been exposed to a lot of the major cable TV outlets. None of them are good but Time Warner was so bad I went back to ATT and got Dish/Direct whatever that is on a rental I managed. They were god awful even by those standards. Now, they come back and send me shit to try Spectrum. No. They only changed the name, nothing else.
Damn, there went one of my main sources of entertainment - interacting with poorly paid people that had to try and head off my inevitable cancellation of their service.
I use the "reasonable and kind" approach - these people spend their days listening to customers yell at them, so having me be respectful and calm usually gets me there quicker just because they are so relieved to not be harangued by someone.
You're telling me that you actually get to talk to a real person when you call customer service? I always get a looping menu of chatbots. I'm sure the biggest use of AI will be to replace customer service chatbots with AI persona that will be as clever as F. Lee Bailey in convincing you that you are wrong about everything.
Yeah, it takes a while to get past the stupid chatbots but I've found that randomly punching numbers usually causes them to glitch and then I get someone in India or weirdly enough in the South somewhere (as far as the accent suggests that is).
Cox is like that...every time I've ever called their support folks I get someomne with a southern accent so thick you can cut it with a knife and slather it on a biscuit like butter :-) But they are generally, very helpful too. (that said I've not yet had to cancel my service with them...)
Hooray for trying to eliminate junk fees. My brother just overdrew his credit union account by a freaking 8 cents and they charged him $15.00. Also, does this mean I can cancel my digital subscription to the New York Times without being pressured? I cancelled the delivery of the print version years ago, but they steamrolled me into taking the digital version (Yes, I'm a wimp.) which I never even remember to read. I've been afraid to try and cancel it because I didn't want to go through the same shit again.
Just cancel online, they will let you do it with hardly any pushback. Then in a week or so they'll send you an email offering you the same service at half the price.
When I tried to cancel the print version online, it couldn't be done, you had to call. That seems to be another way they screw you over. You can sign up online and do everything else online, but you can only cancel by calling. Obviously so they can talk you out of it.
"Might be nice if there were some way to make sure people know who did those changes, because they’ve made so many small parts of being a consumer (that is, being an American) so much easier."
Make sure you execute your voting plans, folks, to ensure that this vital work continues...and bolster it with an upgraded Congress...make it all Democratic!
Some of this is because certain people want to retain their privilege...especially in unreconstructed areas. After all there are those among us who would gladly see another million Americans die so they could have $1.99 gas again so they can roll coal with impunity.
This is what I like about having an old guy for president: Biden is an early Baby Boomer and still remembers what it’s like when people either saved up or used cash to buy stuff. Nothing irritates them more than hidden fees and people fucking with their money. Also this :
It hasn’t always been successful; in May, banks suing to overturn a rule limiting credit card late fees to $8 got a federal judge to block the rule from going into effect.
I fucking KNEW they would try this shit! Explain to me why there needs to be a $40 late fee?! The judge who blocked this needs to be named and shamed. Possibly given a wedgie.
Sort of on topic: read once that ex-employers, major retailers with thousands of employees , and lots of turnover, could buy life insurance policies, unbeknownst to that person, for REALLY CHEAP, and just keep paying pennies of premium, until that (older, sickly) person passed on.
Jackpot!
Dead peasants insurance
Ta, Dok. Ta, President Joe Biden. We've all gotten those bogus calls that say, "your vehicle's extended warranty is about to expire." Well, yesterday, I actually got a piece of snail mail saying the same. I'm a New Yorker who is only just now learning to drive. I found it hilarious that someone put postage on an envelope for this.
I give it at most forty eight hours before musk brings a countersuit to protect the people* from evil gubmint tyranny. How dare the feds demand that people** treat the serfs better than actual people?!***
*Corporations. Ever since the supreme Court passed the corporate personhood act.
**See above
***Rule of three motherfuckers
That is the one thing that Democrats consistently fail to do -- tout their achievements. It's sad, really. Politics is a rough business, and you don't get any points for humility. There should be some points for it, but there just aren't. Biden has done some great things in his one term -- probably more than most presidents accomplish in two terms. But most people know little or nothing about those things, so they remain unsung. Meanwhile, Republicans seldom do anything worth talking about in any tone but disgust, yet they never stop shouting about all the glorious things they've done for us. They repeat themselves so frequently that a lot of Americans start to believe them.
Democrats tout their policies all the time, but it doesn’t get clicks. It’s not sexy. As recently as the Seventies, you had guys like Walter Cronkite and John Chancellor who’d go on tv and report the news every night. Now you have a 24 hour news cycle that follows an “Entertainment Tonight “ format. For example: I read about the credit card fee thing and employers having to pay salaried managers more when they work over X amount of hours from this here lovely site Wonkette. I follow a half dozen YouTube channels plus MSNBC and I don’t think I’ve heard either of these stories on any of those formats. Dem achievements are too often swamped by Republican talking points and distractions. We’ve spent a month hearing about migrants eating cats and “Senator Vance, do you believe Biden won in 2020?” Both of those things didn’t require the amount of time they’ve taken up. Imagine a world in which we had breathless coverage of reduced credit card fees. Not very sexy but I guarantee the masses would find this an interesting development and would laud Biden for his efforts.
I'm looking at YOU Adobe.
But - but - if you actually can cancel at any time, and not pay any extra fees, that will destroy the entire business model of Columbia House!
Well it WILL be easy until the case gets up to the SCROTUS and thanks to overturning Chevron, they'll announce "oh no! a regulatory agency has no right to regulate anything!"
" because they’ve made so many small parts of being a consumer (that is, being an American) so much easier." And conversely, with the wrong people in charge, not only could these changes be reversed, but all sorts of OTHER things, that we even thought of yet because none of us are that snaky, could become _allowed_, introducing a whole new golden age of screwing the consumer.
Comcast execs are dreaming of being able to sign up anyone for their cble shit...even if they don't offer it, with no cancellation at all, forever.
Call me cynical about American business practices, but all my life it seems that if some business does a good job with someone, refunds, returns, credit, service, quality, anything, they tell people about it surprisingly like they found money in the street! Lucky me!
Cause it is generally assumed that companies are run by assholes, cheats and liars. So when you have a problem, you get the runaround, bullshit, and the bullshit runaround.
If something happens like it is supposed to, I think, huh, well, ok. Maybe I'll do business with them
again if I need product X or service Y.
TLDR: Default service is fukoffndie.
When I sold my L.A. condo and drove out of state with two unhappy cats (to what turned out to be a super sketchy rental in Tucson while I house-hunted), I didn't call Spectrum to cancel my service until what was, unbeknownst to me, 3 days into my monthly term - due to LOTS OF SHIT GOING ON in my life.
Of course, when I made the call, I was subjected to whole bunch of sales bullshit and none-of-yer-damn-business questions. But since I was moving out of state and would have a different provider in future, there wasn't much upselling they could do. Instead he noted that I was 3 days into the term and informed me of the small print in my contract that apparently stipulated that I would have to pay for the entire month HAHAHAHA, NO. And then he said usually they just end up waiving it.
They didn't, though. So I told them to fuck themselves.
Because (a) hey Spectrum, you gonna then refund me for all of the days I didn't have service over all the years I've been with you?
And worse - (b) it's douple-dipping, because I knew for a fact that the lovely couple who bought my place had already started their service there. So here's Spectrum trying to collect from both of us for the same time period.
They've been harassing me for the $80 for the past year, even after I told them flatly "Yeah, no, I'm not paying you for 27 days after I cancelled. Fuck off." It all goes to junk email and spam texts anyway (I block any number that isn't in my Contacts), so I don't give a crap, and lately it seems like they've given up.
And so far it doesn't seem like they've reported it to credit agencies. My credit is well into the 800's anyway, and I already have more credit cards than I need and own my house and car, so knock yourselves out Spectrum.
Corrupt assholes.
Time Warner Spectrum - customer service and just plain ordinary service so terrible that they tried to change the name to make you forget how crappy they are! Didn’t work because they are just fucking bad at their jobs!
lived in LA from 2008-2012 and somehow I knew this was actually Time Warner, even though I didn't know about the name change. They routinely cut Internet to my apartment because they are morons, and it would take days to get it restored. Worst fucking cable company I've ever dealt with, and that's saying something. Comcast sucks but at least they can keep my service on and don't randomly jack up the rates.
When I ditched TW/S to get fiber optic internet from a local provider the customer service rep literally yelled at me and (no joke) told me I was stupid and I’d be sorry. I calmly told him that was a risk I was willing to take. 8 years later I’m still with the same company, and they are the best fucking ISP in the country (literally there was an article in PC Magazine saying so). My monthly cost has stayed exactly the same at $50 for 8 years (time warner constantly, randomly, and sneakily raised my rate), three times they’ve sent me a letter saying they were increasing my speed out of the blue, hooray (I get 500mbs down AND up now), and I can count the outages I’ve had in 8 years on one hand with fingers left over. They even repaired a squirrel compromised wire within 2 hours of me calling about it during finals week when we were all teaching online during the pandemic. For someone who lives in small-town middle-of-nowhere upstate, they’re an incredible company. And I still flip off every spectrum van, flier, and sign I see.
If you’re in central or western New York State, get you some fiber optic service from Empire Access. They’re amazing.
I have one Spectrum account left and all it covers is fiber optic internet at a rental. The original deal was $29 and it went up, and up and up. I finally told the renter that they would have to find their own internet and called up Spectrum to cancel. The “customer service” rep asked me why I was canceling. I told him it was the price increase bit. He said how about we let you stay for $39/mo with no more increases. I said great but if it increases I’m cancelling immediately. That was 4 years ago and it hasn’t changed. The service is terrible and the speeds are worse but I have it for the security/fire alarm system on the rental unit. My last tenant complained and I told him to find his own ISP. He went to Spectrum to try and upgrade and they wanted $80/mo for 500 Mbs. I warned him that’s what was already there and he went with Verizon instead.
Like any other criminal, they decided that they needed an alias.
In one way or another I’ve been exposed to a lot of the major cable TV outlets. None of them are good but Time Warner was so bad I went back to ATT and got Dish/Direct whatever that is on a rental I managed. They were god awful even by those standards. Now, they come back and send me shit to try Spectrum. No. They only changed the name, nothing else.
Damn, there went one of my main sources of entertainment - interacting with poorly paid people that had to try and head off my inevitable cancellation of their service.
I use the "reasonable and kind" approach - these people spend their days listening to customers yell at them, so having me be respectful and calm usually gets me there quicker just because they are so relieved to not be harangued by someone.
You're telling me that you actually get to talk to a real person when you call customer service? I always get a looping menu of chatbots. I'm sure the biggest use of AI will be to replace customer service chatbots with AI persona that will be as clever as F. Lee Bailey in convincing you that you are wrong about everything.
Yeah, it takes a while to get past the stupid chatbots but I've found that randomly punching numbers usually causes them to glitch and then I get someone in India or weirdly enough in the South somewhere (as far as the accent suggests that is).
Cox is like that...every time I've ever called their support folks I get someomne with a southern accent so thick you can cut it with a knife and slather it on a biscuit like butter :-) But they are generally, very helpful too. (that said I've not yet had to cancel my service with them...)
I figure that if you get a person with a southern accent then you are talking to a disabled inmate in a prison industry program.
'would you like a free month of STARZ as an incentive?'
In fairness, if that's what it takes to get you to watch Party Down....
Hooray for trying to eliminate junk fees. My brother just overdrew his credit union account by a freaking 8 cents and they charged him $15.00. Also, does this mean I can cancel my digital subscription to the New York Times without being pressured? I cancelled the delivery of the print version years ago, but they steamrolled me into taking the digital version (Yes, I'm a wimp.) which I never even remember to read. I've been afraid to try and cancel it because I didn't want to go through the same shit again.
Just cancel online, they will let you do it with hardly any pushback. Then in a week or so they'll send you an email offering you the same service at half the price.
When I tried to cancel the print version online, it couldn't be done, you had to call. That seems to be another way they screw you over. You can sign up online and do everything else online, but you can only cancel by calling. Obviously so they can talk you out of it.
"Might be nice if there were some way to make sure people know who did those changes, because they’ve made so many small parts of being a consumer (that is, being an American) so much easier."
DEMOCRATS DELIVER
DEMOCRATS DELIVER
DEMOCRATS DELIVER
DEMOCRATS DELIVER
DEMOCRATS DELIVER
DEMOCRATS DELIVER
THANK YOU, JOE!!
More unsung work by this admin.
Make sure you execute your voting plans, folks, to ensure that this vital work continues...and bolster it with an upgraded Congress...make it all Democratic!
www.vote.org
www.iwillvote.com
www.bluevoterguide.org
Mount up!
I had my boss deliver my mail in ballot a couple of days ago and I've already gotten an email saying my ballot has been received. So I should be good.
Well done!
So unappreciated.
Sometimes I get on my "Americans are so entitled" horse.
Sing so much "People should be grateful!", you know who I sound like, lolol
It's true, tho
♥♥♥
Some of this is because certain people want to retain their privilege...especially in unreconstructed areas. After all there are those among us who would gladly see another million Americans die so they could have $1.99 gas again so they can roll coal with impunity.
"unreconstructed areas"
That's going to be a phrase, isn't it