My Sister Got Married!

4_15_08 18_01_13
Originally uploaded by Nivek Aramalap

She looks so beautiful. I'm so very happy for her.

Bad customer service...

So I just spent another 30 minutes on the phone with TiVo.  Here's the background:

Last month my wife noticed that our monthly TiVo bill increased from $8.95 to $14.95 and asked me to look into it.  I checked online and there was no indication as to why the fee had increased.  So I called TiVO.

They proceeded to tell me that the reason behind this was that our "Lifetime Service" TiVo had not connected to the TiVo service for the last 6 months and therefore we were no longer eligible for the "Multiple TiVo" discount.  I found this to be unreasonable as the lifetime unit had not been sold or anything and I had not notified TiVo that I was canceling it or anything.  I explained my case to the service rep and he agreed and told me that he would credit us the $6 and that if we plugged in the TiVo and had it "call home" that our account would revert to the "Multiple TiVo" discount pricing.  I hung up the phone a satisfied customer.  I have been a customer with TiVo for nearly 10 years, a true early adopter and have purchased TiVos as gifts and have recommended them to many friends who have since purchased.

Fast forward to this afternoon.  The lifetime TiVo is happily running and phoning home via my internet connection every fifteen minutes.  The charge hits the credit card again and it is the $14.95 rate.  I'm annoyed that I have to call again but I wasn't expecting the treatment that I got.

I explain the situation to the service rep and sit on hold for ten minutes while she spoke to a level 2 support rep.  She comes back on the phone and apologizes for the problem and tells me that their billing system needs this other TiVo to continue to connect for another month.  I'm OK with this and ask her to credit my account for the $6.  This is where the service falls apart.

She explains to me that she "can't" credit me for this and that while the monthly fee should revert to the $8.95 level in the next billing cycle that I will have to make another call to TiVo to get the credit.  I've now been on the phone for 20 minutes and am very annoyed to hear that they are going to make me make another minimum 10 minute long call to them in a month.  Why not simply credit me now.  She puts me on hold again and comes back to explain that their billing system doesn't allow her to credit an account for the same thing twice. 

Now this is blatant crap.  Every billing system has an override capability.  I know it, she knows it and I tell her that.  I'm trying hard to be polite because I know she is just following company policy.  After I explained that this is very poor service and that I would like to speak to her level 2 person she puts me on hold again and finally comes back and tells me that she can in fact credit my account but that if it happens again next month that they will be unable to credit me again.  I tell her that's fine, I'll just call back again and make the same complaint next month if they don't fix the issue and that I will be forced to re-evaluate my account with them should they attempt to keep $6 that is not theirs to keep.

The whole fiasco took well over 30 minutes.  It cost me more in time than the $6 and it damned sure cost TiVo more than the $6.  I was a big fan of TiVo.  If this happens next month I may very well cancel a service that I have come to rely upon.  I'll be pissed about it and I'll miss the service but I am not going to let them take advantage of me.

Massachusetts

OK, I'm getting really tired of people bashing Massachusetts.  It started with the Dukakis run for President in EDIT: 1988 and has continued for the last 20+ years.  Even our own Governor Romney trashed us during his (thankfully) brief Presidential campaign.

So, let's talk about Massachusetts shall we?  Here are some interesting things about MA.

Massachusetts is currently ranked #3 in the country for "Best Educated"

 Well, of course a state routinely referred to as "Taxachusetts" would have a good educational system, after all those tax monies must be going somewhere right?

Massachusetts currently ranks #13 in Total Gross State Product (5th per capita).  I guess we can afford those tax dollars.

That might be because we are #3 in personal income per capita.

We are the #3 Healthiest state.  I guess those tax dollars are really helping keep us healthy too.

Oh and as far as Obesity goes?  We rank #50.  Least obese.

How about the divorce rate in godless, liberal Taxachusetts?  We rank #50.  Yep. They were right about us.  Oh wait.  Nope we have the LOWEST divorce rate of any state in the nation.

Since we are Taxachusetts we must be spending so much of the money you non-Taxachusetts people earn right?  Nope. We rank 40th for states in terms of Federal dollars spent per dollar paid in taxes.  For every dollar a Taxachusetts resident puts into the federal coffers, we get back 82 cents.  So, you conservative states are a drain on us poor residents of this liberal state.

At the same time us liberal hippy lazy non-working drains on society rank #5 in median household income. I guess those welfare checks are bigger than they used to be. 

Oops.  Wrong again.  It turns out that Massachusetts ranks 25th for households receiving some form of public assistance.

Now, after all of that what exactly are the real tax numbers for MA?  Where do we rank according to the Tax Foundation? 

While we rank high on the total tax burden per capita, this is actually not due to state taxes.  Our high per capita income means that we pay a larger amount of federal taxes than all of you conservative states out there.  Yet, as I mentioned above we take back less than we put in.  So next time Grover Norquist bitches about liberals, remember, we're financing your state services.  On to the stats:

In 2007, Taxachusetts ranked 28th in state/local tax burden.  That's right we pay less in state and local taxes than more than half of the US States.  Yet we manage to accomplish everything I mentioned above.  For Federal taxation burden (and make no mistake, since we get less than we give it is a BURDEN for us liberals to pay for you bottom feeding conservatives).  we rank 4th.  Yep.  You read that right.  We are getting completely screwed over.

For the actual state income tax we rank 32nd.   For sales tax we rank 45th.  Our property taxes are in the top 10.  We rank 7th.  Of course this is mostly due to the high value of housing in Massachusetts because of the high paying jobs, healthy lifestyle and great educational system we have that makes living here so attractive.  Link. 

Of course we get questioned often on "patriotism."  Well on one of the most basic patriotic things a citizen can do, give service to one's country in the military, Massachusetts ranks #23.  

Massachusetts is also the cradle of liberty in the United States.  Here was fired the Shot Heard Round the World.  Home of the Minutemen, Paul Revere, Sam Adams, and the man who wrote the U.S. Constitutions,  John Adams.  Oh yeah, that famous signature?  That belonged to a Massachusetts Patriot as well.

In MA the Boston Tea Party occurred, the Battle of Bunker Hill, we were a center of the abolitionist movement with William Lloyd Garrison leading the charge, Gay Marriage was legalized, and we became the first state in the Union to have Universal Health Care.

So do me a favor next time you hear someone bashing good ol' Taxachusetts.  Set them straight.

This might be the most disturbing thing about Bush yet

From the ACLU

NEW YORK – A newly disclosed secret memo authored by the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) in March 2003 that asserts President Bush has unlimited power to order brutal interrogations of detainees also reveals a radical interpretation of the Constitution's Fourth Amendment protection from unreasonable search and seizure. The memo, declassified yesterday as the result of an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit, cites a still-secret DOJ memo from 2001 that found that the "Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations."

This means that President Bush is saying that if he were to institute a military action inside our borders (even against our own citizens) that the law would no longer apply.  This is a flat out literal repudiation of the Constitution and our the rights granted to us as citizens.

How can anyone continue to support this administration?!

Rant of the year.

Thank you to Pandagon for so clearly pointing out the problem with anyone who has ever used the term "Feminazi" or anything so clearly anti-woman yet having the gall to act as if they are morally superior at the same time.

http://pandagon.blogsome.com/2008/04/02/6990/

I honestly don't think it could have been done better.