Sharper Image is broken

Sharper Image, the retail store that prides itself on selling little electronic wonders, can't even maintain its own computer system. For the past month, when attempting to find the value of a gift card on its automated system, the phone goes dead after entering the information and - about 10 minutes later, reports that a "system error" has occurred. Their system error has been occurring for about a month!

Also interesting, their website doesn't allow you to check the balance of a card - a fairly basic function that most retail websites offer. I can only hope that the gift card will cover the balance when I ring up an electric self-cleaning nose hair trimmer and illuminated drink coaster with built in radio. How embarrassing if I were forced to choose between the two.

AT&T lied to my wife

My wife lost her AT&T cellphone. Fortunately, someone found it and returned it, but not before we called AT&T to suspend the account. We also needed to get ourselves a new sim card, and that's when the lies began. The rep told her that she couldn't just buy a sim card, that she needed a whole new phone - an AT&T phone of course - to run on their network. He was happy to sell her one for just $170 and an extension of her contract.

So, I called them back and explained the situation to a different rep. She was happy to send me a sim card for $25, which I could then call to activate with whatever phone I had. Having averted this disaster, I noticed a few discrepancies with the rep's information.

- An unlocked phone will work on AT&Ts network with any of their sim cards. You need only program the sim card, not the phone.

- Buying a new phone does not require an extension of your contract.

- You need not call AT&T to "activate" a different phone. Just take your sim card, pop it in another phone, and it will recognize the network.

- Any sim card can be programmed with the serial number provided with the card. You can buy a whole phone from Walmart with a sim card included for less ($18) than what AT&T will charge you just for the card itself ($25).

It is important to remember that when calling AT&T service reps, even those who are not in "sales" departments, are usually either clueless about how any of their services actually work, or are so sales driven that they happily dish out misleading information to land some commission. Everyone you talk to is pushing sales.

In fact, if I had not already been using different phones with our sim cards or had not already purchased prepaid GSM phones (I have a couple of extra sim cards and phones that work just dandy), we might have fallen for the first reps story - leaving us $170 poorer (plus sim card, activation, taxes, and other fees of course).

Electric company offers to let me pay more!

My electric company has included a tempting offer in my bill this month. If I sign up for their flat rate plan with a 12 month commitment, including a mere $100 cancellation fee. This amazing plan that will "save me hundreds of dollars" will do so by billing me at a flat $0.142 per kWh.

Wow!

The only problem is that my bill tells me I'm paying $0.139 per kWh. Uh...thanks for the offer?

Comcast: Our 3% price increase is actually 40%

Comcast took over the ground cable business in Houston, Texas. The transition was relatively smooth, with a low percentage of outages and complaints - despite many people with proprietary email addresses being forced to change names. For many people, like myself, there was little difference except the name on the bill.

That of course lasted only a little while. This is a cable company, after all. Soon after they were firmly in place, they began changing their channel lineups and increasing prices. I could care less about TV, as I only have them for my Internet, but my wife likes to watch television sometimes on the weekends so we have basic cable. For about 5 years, we've had the same package - broadband Internet and basic cable which included all local and regular cable channels (CNN, SciFi, History, etc).

Comcast came in and claimed that they were just shifting things around and adding more channels, as an excuse for the slight 1-6% increase in price, but very little else would change. Was this true? Well, this is a cable company after all. Here's what they really did.

They increased the prices of all their services by 1% to 6%. They then began adding High-Definition channels - channels that they already had in standard definition, but apparently that counts as "adding" a channel. Then they cut out several channels completely. Then they did something very clever, they completely gutted the basic service channel lineup, reducing it essentially to local (and HD local) channels. What did this do? It eliminated the basic cable service entirely, because you get very little from it that you don't get from regular terrestrial broadcasts.

This service is now $17 (up from $15)...paying for cable that gets you nothing. Their next up service package, which includes all of the cable channels we already had before the switch, is around $40/mo. That's a 38% increase in the cost of same-service cable, not the 3% increase they notified us of for our basic service in our last bill.

Very clever indeed. This does a few good things for Comcast. For customers like me, they collect slightly more money while providing vastly reduced services, thus encouraging an upgrade to give them nearly 40% more each month for exactly what I had already been getting. For customers without Internet, it encourages them to either upgrade or ditch cable entirely, since it probably isn't cost effective to provide technical and service support to a customer paying only $17/mo. It also encourages people to look more closely at their bundled packages, which would effectively ensnare consumers into having cable/Internet/phone with a single company - not, in my opinion, a smart move.

So my wife and I are considering hooking up the big antenna in our attic and just getting broadcast TV for nothing, cancel Comcast entirely and switch to AT&T (who we already have a landline phone with). This would cut our current bill in half (their best DSL speed - 6.0mbps download is only $35/mo compared to the $70/mo we now pay for Internet/cable).

We'd already discussed this before, but my wife didn't want to cancel the cable. Now that Comcast has effectively canceled it for her already, she is starting to lean towards getting rid of them and accepting local channels. Maybe it's not so bad that Comcast is so bad.

Save on cables, etc

Cables have an enormous markup in retail stores. I thought I would plug monoprice.com, who I have had nothing but success buying cables and other small equipment from. A $30 USB cable at a retail store is about $2 from Monoprice (plus shipping of course).

I have purchased various things from them with satisfaction, KVM switches, mounts, component cables, USB cables, fiber optic audio cables, and much more.

Don't pay ridiculous prices for cables!

(note: monoprice did not contact me about plugging their company, but I believe in spreading the word about good companies that I am happy with)

QuickCert is a telemarketing nightmare

QuickCert is a company that offers information on various computer certifications. I was at one point considering getting an A+ Certification - just for my amusement. The cost turned me away, but not before I had signed up to receive their newsletter. I usually don't sign up for things online, but I figured it wouldn't hurt.

Well, after getting bombarded with emails, I unsubscribed. That didn't stop them, and they just kept sending more. So I had to blacklist them as SPAM, but they keep sending advertisements from different email addresses.

I can deal with spam, but now they've started to call me. A few times a month I come home to a message on my machine from them. The only problem is that I never gave them my phone number. They must have looked me up!

QuickCert is creepy.

Overcomplicated pricing plans

I was in a CVS pharmacy the other day having some photographs printed. A while back the only thing to do at these one-hour photo places was drop off your film, which was put into a little bag, and then come back to pick it up. You paid per roll of film.

Now however there are 5 different ways of getting your photos to them, as well as other ways of getting them back...not to mention about 6 different pricing plans just to get a stack of regular 4x6 pictures. To drop off your photos you can give them a CD, a memory chip, upload them online to their website, give them a roll of film, or give them a hard-copy of an existing photo. In return you can get real photographs, or you can get a CD. A combination of these various options of course yield different pricing structures.

On the advertising sign outside they advertise one price for photo printing. On their board inside they advertise 4 different prices. There are actually 6 different prices, however, once you get to the fine print (not on the board, but on small cards near the register.

You now pay by each photo printed. If you print using the little kiosk, it will cost you $.29 each. If you hand them your disc/roll/chip, it costs $.19 each. But only if you get more than 50. Under 50, which is the typical size of a traditional "roll", and it costs $.25. If you want them in an hour, it will be $.19 each, but only if you use their "club card". If you want them in a few days, it will be $.15 each - but after you read the fine print, this only applies if you upload them online to their website first. Otherwise, the few days option costs $.19 each.

Of course, you'll be better suited calculating the cost on your own. My cashier priced it wrong, at $.29, even though I had gone the $.19 route. The machine apparently defaults to the highest price, via the UPC on the little box they give you, and then must be adjusted down using a small card with various UPCs on it that apply "discounts" in the register POS. No doubt many people end up being charged full price because they were not paying attention.

It was a real headache just trying to figure out how to get the per-photo price that was displayed in huge numbers on the billboard. Its enough to drive you to just buy your own photo printer.

Why does every merchant offer cash back?

I have always wondered why I am constantly pestered for getting cash back at every store I visit. Every store, when using a debit card, prompts for a cash back option. Why? What benefit does turning your cashier into an ATM machine have for the store?

After some searching, I wasn't any closer to a positive answer. I couldn't find any legal requirement (though there may be) so I have to assume there is some other incentive for these stores. On one hand, it doesn't make sense that they would actively encourage cash back. Take a company like Walmart, for example, with banks right there in the store. Sending your customers to the ATM would mean more fees and big profits. What good does it do to offer a free alternative? There must be a reason for this, to either benefit the merchant or the issuing bank. I have a few ideas.

Merchants must treat debit exactly like cash

There could be a regulation that merchants must treat debit as cash. Getting $20 cash back on a $30 transaction would be akin to saying, "I'm giving you a $50 bill, you owe me $20 in change."

Banks want debit purchases higher, to encourage overdrafts

Cash back leads to a higher transaction amount, possibly resulting in more fees for the bank should you overdraft.

research shows that consumers who use debit cards more often are also more likely to overdraw their checking accounts, card-issuing banks can reap an additional $1 million from nonsufficient-fund fees, according to the Mercator report. Another study revealed that customers who used debit cards more than 20 times a year paid an average of $223 in NSF fees annually, compared with $40 for those who didn't use debit cards at all. [source]

Offering cash back encourages debit card use

It could also be that statistically, if you offer cash back, customers are going to use debit more often than their credit cards because of that convenience. This means that the charge isn't racking up interchange fees for the merchant, which improves their profit on the sale.

One place I looked was a company that offered credit/debit services to merchants.

Benefits to Merchants [source]

• Provide an additional payment option to merchants' customers
• Offer less fraud potential than other forms of payment because of the use of PIN's
• Online capture means funds are guaranteed
• Lower risks with the reduction of fraud
• Provide a cost effective method of receiving payments
• Lower transaction cost than credit card processing transactions
• Encourage quick checkout
• Auto-close with funding within 24 to 48 business hours

There are some big benefits with debit use, but nothing specific to cash back.

Can provide a cash back feature, which can increase store traffic

I wonder if this is the only real benefit, increasing store traffic? I just can't find a solid answer.

Why doesn't this company want my business?

I was reading a post on Consumerist and came across a comment from one of their registered members about an unfair cellphone policy that resulted in a loss of business for the company. The short of the story was that he had 2 lines, moved one line, and could not retain his other line with them. He was being cut off and charged an early termination fee. This was their "policy", though it was not even in his contract. He will never do business with them again. They didn't care.

Am I surprised? No...there is a good reason why I believe companies, utility companies in particular, are too large and cannot be trusted.

• 1) When I call SBC, I am not talking to SBC. I am not talking to anyone who gives a rats behind about the company, whether I am retained as a customer, or their ultimate health as an organization. I am speaking with some guy getting paid low wages who only cares about his own job.
  
  "Retention" is only important to him if he has a quota or gets some kind of immediate reward or bonus. If he gets neither, or he has already maxed out his rewards for the pay period, he does not care if you cancel or not. The company could be losing a good customer for life - it doesn't matter, because you really never talk to anyone in the company that cares.
  
  
• 2) Their contracts are a joke. Do you think it matters what is in your contract when you sign up for a cellphone? The only reason the contract exists is to empower the provider. Further, they can break, add, or change the contract at any time with no penalty. They can charge you whatever they want, for whatever reason, or cancel you...or provide lousy service. Even if something is not stated in your contract, they can do it.
  
  Why? Because your only recourse is a lengthy legal process that they know 99% of their customers are not going to deal with. Thanks to new popular arbitration clauses, even the 1% of them that do will only win 5% of the time. If your cell provider charged you an extra $50 for some reason and refused to refund it, what would you do?
  
  Take them to court? The filing fees alone would exceed the balance. Would you not pay it? Then it will go on your credit report - and a collector isn't going to care what your contract says, they will just go back to the company for verbal verification.
  
  
• 3) There is no liability. What can you do if some CSR doesn't hit the right button? Will the next CSR listen to you? Will they believe you, or will they think you are yet another customer calling in trying to pull a fast one? If it isn't on their little computer screens, it doesn't exist. You are at the whim of the CSR and their supervisors. See #1.
  

Companies have too much power over consumers, and we have too little resources to fight them. Indeed, for just about any dispute it comes down to whether you want to fight it on principle - because it will probably cost you more in the battle than to just relent and pay them.

UPDATE! Collecting unclaimed property

On September 12 I reported that I had located $300 in unclaimed money with the state comptroller. Any time a company owes an individual money, they have to turn it over to the state for safekeeping.

You can search online with just your name to find out if you have any unclaimed property by going to http://unclaimed.org/ or http://missingmoney.com/. I did a search myself and discovered a $300 paycheck from an old employer that we had, for whatever reason, not received.

In fact, this turned out to be an old paycheck that was never delivered. We found our information, printed out a form and filled it out, and mailed it in with the appropriate requested identification (copies). On Sept 28 we got a check from the state! A small 1% fee was subtracted, not at all bad considering there were expenses involved in collecting, holding, and mailing the money (although they could also have earned money on it -via interest-, but it is also possible that they are legally prohibited from doing so).

We told a family member about this and they reported having almost $3,000 in unclaimed money!

With the ridiculous state of corporations these days, this does not at all surprise me. Companies can't even communicate with other departments in their own building, yet alone perform complex tasks like locating a customer and calling them on the telephone. Check with your local state comptroller to see if you have any unclaimed money.

Don't trash blank pages in your bill

This is probably a no-brainer, but I am guilty of improperly disposing of some of my private information. Occasionally when I receive a billing statement from So-and-So Corporation, they will leave a blank page at the end - or a page with unimportant information. Sometimes I shred them, sometimes I just ball them up and toss them.

But you need to always shred these documents. On one I noticed that my full name and account number were displayed on the header of the page. Not good information to have out there. On another I noticed the name and account number in tiny print at the bottom corner, not where you would expect to look, but there it was. So far I have yet to see account information on the bill itself, but I would not put them passed adding at minimum the account number to the originating address portion of the return envelope.

So now, as a precaution, I shred the entire bill - envelope and all - except the main pages that I keep for filing.

Product registration cards

Buy any electronic device and you are likely to find with the warranty card a product registration card. After my wife recently bought a toaster oven she asked me whether she should fill it out and send it in - to make sure she could use its manufacturers warranty if needed.

It is interesting that, either by good placement or how it looks or is worded, people assume they must fill out the product registration card in order to validate their warranty. The top portion does look pretty authentic, asking for the date of purchase, retail store, serial number, model number, name and address and phone number. Then the registration card gets ridiculous, diving right into a survey of what kind of hobbies you enjoy and what magazines you would be most likely to subscribe to.

But if you look closely, somewhere on the card in really fine print (below the other fine print) it says the card has nothing to do with the warranty.

So unless you feel like dishing out your address and phone number so the manufacturer can sell it to a marketing company, throw the product registration card in the trash.

Looking for a fuel sipping hatchback?

We're getting more hatchbacks in the US that are great on gas mileage. Unfortunately, most of them were already being built but still not available here. Take for example the Smart car, which has been wildly popular in Europe and has only recently planned on releasing in the US.

I saw a hatchback in the neighborhood where I work and LOVED it. It's a great looking little car, and it appeared to have a Ford brand on it. Curious, I checked the Ford website. Nothing. Maybe I was wrong?

So I kept seeing this car, and finally I got fed up and ran after it while at a stoplight and caught the brand (the owner likely thought I was psychotic) - yep, it's a Ford. Huh?

Turns out Ford only sells this car outside the US. Our own domestic brand sold us out! Here she is: the 2007 Ka. Here's an English review of the car.

FACTS AS A GLANCE
CAR: Ford Ka range
PRICES: £7,095-£9,995 [exc. Streetka] - on the road
INSURANCE GROUPS: 2-6 [exc. Streetka]
CO2 EMISSIONS: 147-189g/km
PERFORMANCE: [1.3] Max Speed 104mph/ 0-60mph 13.7s
FUEL CONSUMPTION: [1.3] (urban) 35.8mpg / (extra urban) 58.8mpg /(combined) 47.9mpg

A bit pricey at $14k US, but hey...I'd buy a used one! Get your act together, US auto makers...bring us some efficient cars! I knew it was a Ford, I knew I wasn't crazy. Sell it in the US, dangit, Ford!

I think my bank stole 54 cents from me

There has finally been a resolution to my auto financing problem. To sum up, the bank decided I didn't have insurance charged me for some of their own, a total of $83.87 that they helped themselves to out of my last payment without telling me (thankfully I always check my payments online).

After faxing over the appropriate paperwork showing no lapse in insurance coverage, it took 33 days to get it corrected - oddly, a day before my next payment was due. $83.87 has been credited to my account and correctly applied to the balance of the loan (the interest was unaffected).

But here's the thing. The insurance payment they took left me with an inflated principle from 8/3 to 9/5. An inflated principle $84 more than it should have. Thus this next payment in which they are going to charge me interest, based on the 33 day billing cycle, is going to be more than I should owe. By my calculation that is a full gain to the bank of 54 cents.

I wonder why it took a whole month to get the problem corrected? I guess they had 54 little incentives to drag their feet.

The obsession with department store cards

It seems like just about every retail store, big and small, is getting into the credit card business. This is no surprise. All a store needs to do is team up with an existing issuer, negotiate a percentage, and hawk the card in their stores to their hapless customers. Who wouldn't want to have a hand in a 30 billion dollar cookie jar?

These cards, as well as their VISA counterparts (which most of them are converting to anyway) represent clear profit. The benefits are immediate. I will use Target as my example, since I recently witnessed something there that surprised me.

Target originally went through Household Financial, as I recall. Now apparently they have either a new division or their own in house financing called Target National Bank. Anyway, by teaming up with a bank they can negotiate or eliminate many overhead charges associated with using plastic at their POS stations, namely interchange fees. Further they get to earn interest on the purchases long after the sale is finished for those customers who carry balances.

That 10% discount they offer? Assuming they have their interchange fees (2-3%) waived and/or the corporation earns commissions from the issuing bank for the number of accounts they open, they've already recouped that loss. If you include the average markup on these items, the store is still making money even with their 10% discount.

So it is no surprise that every time I end up at the Target checkout lane, I am asked to sign up for their card. But we're not the only ones being harassed on a regular basis. Imagine working there!

Back to my experience. I was in Target and noticed a large group of redshirts in a circle dominating a clothing aisle having some kind of meeting. What caught my ear was that they were talking about the Target credit card. Apparently this Target wasn't meeting its quota for the day, so the manager was going around the group asking the employees if any of they had the Target credit card.

At the end (this all happened very quickly) the manager started in on how valuable the card was to the company and that all those employees who did not have a card (he pointed out a couple) should sign up that day and they would get 20% off their purchase, instead of the regular 10%. He then passed around a clipboard (presumably the same one the employees carry around asking customers to sign up).

Imagine! Working at a store and being forced to sit through a meeting where they point you out for not having a credit card and then being coerced on a regular basis to fill out an application.

And Target? It's the clear winner here. From my very short eavesdropping on their meeting I gleaned the following information:

• Employees get 20% off when they open a new card, not just 10% like the customers
• Stores have daily quotas they must meet for these cards
• All employees go through a hard-sale of the card during their employment
• Employees get some discount just for being employees (they did not say what amount in the meeting) but don't get their discount if they use a debit card or a credit card other than the Target VISA.
• Store "meetings" will sometimes in reality be sales pitches for high interest credit cards

Shame on Target, I say! Their employees make barely above minimum wage and - in their demographic of low-income families and college students - are more likely to carry balances and be in credit card debt.

Stores used to offer discounts to their employees as a perk. Now the discount system is designed to earn more profit for the company by coercing their employees to run up debt on their affiliated credit cards!

Complain about bad loans, then advertise them

My local paper loves the subprime mess. They love reminding us that people took out horrible loans, ARMS, IOs, and that the resulting foreclosures are affecting the economy overall as well as the housing market. Not a day goes by that we don't get an article about it. At face value, it looks like the paper is doing its best to educate the public about these bad loans and the consequences of buying more house than you can afford.

Yet on their website right below the articles, on EVERY page (literally every page) they post advertisements for - you guessed it - bad loans. They are just random feel-good numbers with links to creepy lending sites asking for your social security number and other personal information with things like: $250,000 loan for $650 month! 4.9% interest rate!

Um, even at 4.9% a $250k loan at $650/mo would be paid off...well...never. A $650 payment would be adding around $250 to the balance of the loan every month. After 30 years you'd end up owing like $400,000.

The sad part is that just about all these news outlet websites have the same ads. Some are text, some have dancing aliens, all are outright lies. Where is the accountability in the advertising department? How can a credible newspaper claim to help educate the public in one hand and simultaneously trick them in the other hand?

Auto Loan Problem Revealed!

Mystery solved! The finance company no longer had my insurance information. My insurance company no longer had my finance company information. The declaration page didn't get sent for the insurance renewal, and the finance company charged me their own insurance.

The interesting part is that this isn't at all reflected on the payment. The numbers simply don't add up. If I had not checked it, found the problem, called to determine why the money was missing, and called both companies to get the paperwork back in order, I would have continued to be charged this extra insurance while already being covered. I do not know how long the finance company would have done this before bothering to notify me that there was a problem, but I am guessing that they never would have.

In fact, this happened before at the beginning of the loan, but was apparently corrected after 2 months. However instead of taking it from the monthly payment, as they did this time, they just tacked the insurance (I did not ask why their insurance was $2,200 a year) onto the balance of the loan. Supposedly I had not been charged interest during those two months, but I have asked for a full history report so I can check the math myself.

Hopefully this will be taken care of by the end of the week. I have updated the information with my insurance carrier, and with the financier, and had them fax the declaration. It should take 24-48 hours for the fax to go through, plus another 2 days for the financier to update their system and make the correction. I also requested a hard copy be mailed to me so I can fax it to the finance office myself.

Then, I will be having fun all next week checking the account to make sure the remainder of the payment has been properly applied.

So the lesson here is always check your payments, review your statements, and don't finance stuff!

Mismanaged Auto Loan

As if I needed another reason not to want to do business with loan companies, my wife's auto loan has been misapplied this month. I have vowed never to take another loan or finance a car again. When you pay in cash, you aren't dependent on some guy in an office somewhere entering your information into their computer. The more businesses you work with, the more problems you will inevitably have. You will always have human error.

Since I hate my debt and I distrust companies, I always double check my payments and make sure the companies are doing their jobs. Since I started to handle my wife's auto loan, I began checking the deposits made each month. The payment I just made has a problem, a big problem. Out of a $300 payment, only $175 was applied to principle with a $30 interest payment. $95 vanished.

So I went back and looked at all the payments all the way back to the origination of the loan. No other problems. However, I noticed another huge issue.

2 months after she signed her loan, the finance company increased her balance by over $2,200, then credited the $2,200 back 2 months later. For 2 solid months (59 calendar days to be precise) she was being charged interest for an artificially inflated balance. I ran the numbers and determined that during that time, they overcharged her around $25 in interest!

We are calling them this afternoon to try to get this straightened out. Certainly people make mistakes, but knowingly collecting interest that isn't owed without informing the customer of the mistake? That sounds negligent to me. And disappearing money? The numbers don't look like they could be a simple typo, and its quite possible an employee somewhere pocketed it.

Always scrutinize your payments to be sure they've been properly applied. You can't trust other people with your money.

Sitting on a patent should have no reward

More news about ebay and their "Buy it Now" patent violation. The patent is idiotic. Basically, a patent on the idea of selling a product for a fixed price while it is in auction - which clearly shows our patent/copyright/property laws are seriously messed up. This is nothing unique or revolutionary, it's pretty common sense. At any time during an auction if you reach a desired amount you can cancel the auction and just sell it.

The problem is that this company, MercExchange, is a patent troll. It buys up "ideas", sits on them, and waits for some other company to use a similar idea and then it sues. It is a company based entirely on filing lawsuits for profit against other companies. They produce nothing, offer nothing, and do nothing. They are, in my opinion, leaches on the economy and anti-capitalistic mongers wasting time with frivolous lawsuits designed to earn them a buck for doing nothing at all.

Another example is the MS suit against Linux for hundreds of patent violations, most of which boil down to basic intuitive user interfaces. It's like if I patented a simple way of picking up a pencil, and sued anyone who picked up pencils that way without giving me money. Ridiculous.

Thanks, MercExchange, for being a filthy greedy leach and driving up eBay's fees with your garbage business model.

Want my business? Show up.

There is something about the home service industry that is nearly universal. If you need someone to come to your home, meaning they have to do all the leg work, you are going to get a huge window and if you're lucky, they might actually come.

Take my cable internet service, for example. After a week of waiting for their special appointment, they never bother coming. They make a new appointment, and again do not show up. The very idea that I would be upset about this is mind-boggling to them. They assume customers have nothing better to do than sit around waiting for them to do their jobs.

This is always blamed on something. It is not the company's fault, ever. Sometimes it is the weather, or traffic, or another customer was being difficult, or a driver called in sick. The cable company actually told me that the reason they hadn't shown up was because they had too few drivers for the amount of appointments they were making. When I suggested they hire some more employees, they told me that it was simply they way things were done. Okay. Its like corporations are narcissistic teenagers. It's never their fault.

I'm waiting for some roof work to get done. The company always blames the fact that they haven't shown up on the weather. Yet despite having a full week of sun, and that they have been promising they'd be out "tomorrow" or "in a couple days" or "within this week" every time I call, I still do not have a dang construction worker standing on my roof yet. Did I mention that the original appointment was scheduled 2 months ago?

If I hadn't given them a deposit, and if the work was really time sensitive, I would have gone with someone else a long time ago. The problem is 1) I may not get a deposit back, which means I have to dispute the charge with my credit card, which means I will probably have to deal with a collection agency after the company sends it off to them, which means I'll spend several months dealing with it, and 2) I'm pretty sure all the other roofing companies are just as incompetent.

This, folks, is why you should do everything yourself. Even if you do a lousy job and your house explodes, you're still better off than dealing with dim witted contractors.

PS: I know there are plenty of great contractors out there. Thanks for doing such a great job and, well, thanks for just having the decency of showing up when you say you will.