Last month I traded in my car.  This involved having the dealer pay off the remainder of my auto loan which was financed through Chase.  The dealer told me it would be paid off, the account would be closed, and I wouldn’t have to worry about it any more.  Sure enough, the Chase website soon showed my account as closed and paid off.  Great, right?

Well, Chase decided last week to withdraw my usual monthly payment amount from my checking account despite the fact that the account was paid off.  Apparently their auto-pay system isn’t smart enough to know it shouldn’t draw payments when there’s no balance.  Ridiculous to be sure (in the past I’d used Audi Financial and they never had this problem), but I expected I’d just call them and they’d make it right.  After all, the payment shows up on my Chase.com page, complete with a transaction number.

Unfortunately it isn’t that simple.  They’re insisting that I mail or fax bank records and web site screenshots “proving” that the funds were deducted from my account, even though their own website clearly has a record of the transfer.  On the phone they gave me the run around with nonsensical explanations about how they can see all my other payments including the loan pay-off transfer, but not this additional erroneous payment because of “security reasons.”  They refuse to accept any of these details via e-mail or over the phone, and insist that I write a “cover letter” explaining the situation with all of my account details.

This is positively absurd.  If their system didn’t clearly have a record of the transaction I’d be more forgiving, but it knows it transferred the money.  It knows the date and time and has a transaction number!  Apparently that number is useless, and might as well just be a made up figure, according to the server reps I’ve spoken to.

So my question is this… after two 10+ minute phone calls, the time it takes to prepare a “cover letter,” and the time and effort to find access to a fax machine (heck I don’t even have a phone line), can I bill Chase for my time?  What about charging interest?  They’ve obviously been generating interest on my money which they essentially stole from my account.  Has anyone had experience with situations like this?  Is there any viable recourse that will make up for my lost time and money while also perhaps encouraging Chase to get their act together?

Now I’m aware that most 3G users aren’t getting the discounted $199/$299 pricing that new subscribers are getting.  Though apparently some people are getting that deal.  Most others are paying $399/$499 depending on the model.  But $599/$699?  That’s ludicrous.

What’s more, I actually bought another iPhone 3G from the AT&T store at FULL PRICE in February, after my original iPhone 3G was stolen.  Apparently, even though I paid full price, they extended my contract and upgrade eligilibility from that point in February.  I asked very specifically, and was told by the AT&T store staffer, that replacing my iPhone 3G at full price would not affect my upgrade eligibility. 

Well, apparently that’s not true.  Even though I paid the full $399 price for an 8GB replacement phone, I’m now listed as not eligible to upgrade until 7/15/2010.  Seriously.  If I’d been told that buying that full price replacement would extend my contract and upgrade term, I obviously wouldn’t have done it, and would’ve just bought one on eBay or Craiglist.  In retrospect, I probably should’ve done that anyway.

So this afternoon I spent a good 20 minutes going over this with a customer service rep who insisted that I had never bought an iPhone 3G last summer and that I “upgraded” to the 3G from an original iPhone in February at an Apple Store.  The account summary she forwarded me indicates an upgrade and new contract in February but doesn’t indicate what I “upgraded” from or where I did it, so I think she was just making that up.

I told her I wouldn’t care about the contract being renewed if she could just fix my upgrade eligibility, since it should be based on the last time I got a discount on a phone, not the last time I paid full price for a replacement.  She said this couldn’t be done, and refused to transfer me to anybody else.

The best she could tell me was that I needed to take any paperwork I had to the AT&T store in Bellevue and try to convince them to fix it for me.  This means rummaging through boxes (since I just moved) to hopefully find at least the receipt for the new phone, and taking at least an hour out of my time, with very little promise of actually achieving anything.

I’m going to try that tonight or tomorrow.  If they can’t help me, I may have to go take a look at the Pre.

Here is my response to this effort:

You guys are showing the FSF’s true colors with this action.  It is bad enough that you wage this campaign of lies and deceit against the iPhone (half of the reasons on your “5 reasons” list are blatant lies), but now you’re taking action directed specifically at hurting users who have chosen to support a product other than yours.

And as much as you may deny it, that is exactly what you are doing – advocating products and services that fit your particular (and greatly skewed) view of how the world should be.  You aren’t revolutionaries out to overthrow the draconian monarchy.  You’re more like Jehovah’s Witnesses coming to my door to peddle your own obscure brand of morality and a book that’s kind-of sort-of like a more popular one but supposedly better because it’s “free,” but not actually free just free in some pedantic sense using your own book’s definition of free.  That is, you still want me to pay you for it.

Well guess what, protesting against consumers for choosing another product is about as productive as a 5 year old crying at the grocery store because they want a candy bar.  You’re just going to piss off everybody else in the store, and embarrass the only people who have a vested interest in seeing you succeed.

Now why would MediaDefender be trying to put Revision3 out of business? Heck, we’re one of the biggest defenders of media around. So I stopped by their website and found that MediaDefender provides “anti-piracy solutions in the emerging Internet-Piracy-Prevention industry.” The company aims to “stop the spread of illegally traded copyrighted material over the internet and peer-to-peer networks.” Hmm. We use the internet and peer-to-peer networks to accelerate the spread of legally traded materials that we own. That’s sort of directly opposite to what Media Defender is supposed to be doing.

Apparently attacking other people’s computer networks is a legitimate business foundation these days, they even call it an “industry.”

As far as I can tell, their entire “industry” is the internet version of going around and blowing up record shops that have been rumored to give away pirated albums.  How, again, is this legal?

Hmm… I wonder if any of those fancy new anti-terrorism laws could be applied to MediaDefender.

Update: Apparently I misunderstood the timing of this e-mail, and it is actually from last year.  I’ve updated the post a bit to make that clearer and to be a little less harsh, since I don’t know that they’re still sending mails like this.  But the user is still having the same problem, and their web site still suggests the same solution, so it’s likely they are.  If you’ve received one like it, please let me know!

A Neowin forum member brought up what they believed was a conflict between UAC and Trend Micro Internet Security 2007.  After some discussion about it, they received this e-mail from Trend Micro’s support team:

Dear Lexonex,
Hello there! A pleasant day to you! My name is John from Consumer Escalation Team and I will be assisting you on this issue. To keep our records up-to-date, it is very important to RESPOND to this e-mail.

I have carefully read your email and have understood your concern.
Regarding Turning-off User Account Cotrol of WIndows Vista. This feature of Windows Vista is the same as the Suspicious Software Alarm System of Trend Micro Internet Security 2007. Turning-it off really does not harm your computer since you have this kind of feature working in your Trend Micro program. It even allows you not to have that annoying pop-up each time you install or open other programs.

Right-now we don’t have any information yet if there will be a patch for that problem since it’s really about WIndows Vista’s permissions on the programs running in your computer. It’s like Trend Micro not being allowed by Windows Vista to work normally. And for the feature to run, it’s either we turn-off User Account Control or set some exceptions for other programs in User Account Control which right-now; WIndows’ Vista does not give an option.

If ever a patch should be created for this problem, it should be a patch from Microsoft so they can allow valid programs to run normally when User Account Control is on.

But we are not closing our options and are still testing if there is a way that the whole Trend Micro program as a whole can be permitted by WIndows Vista to run normally.
I hope I have answered your inquiries clearly.
I will patiently wait for your reply.
Please let me know if I can close this case already.
VERY IMPORTANT: In order for me to have a history of our correspondence, please do not delete the subject and the contents of this email.
Hope this proves useful and have a nice day
Best Regards,
Consumer Support Team
TrendLabs HQ, Trend Micro Incorporated

Apr 12 2007, 04:12 AM

Did he really just say that?!?  Let’s count the problems with this message:

1. Turning off UAC has a substantial impact on your PC security.
2. Trend Micro’s “Suspicious Software Alarm” is nothing like UAC.  It doesn’t even have the same goal!  That feature, as its name implies, is about preventing malware from getting on your machine.  UAC has nothing to do with malware.
3. It’s impossible for a third-party application or service to do what UAC does.
4. He blames their crappy software design on Vista!  If their developers think this way, you should run as fast you possibly can away from Trend Micro.
5. Every other virus scanner developer has gotten along just fine with UAC.  You know, because they actually know how to write software. 
6. “Either we turn off UAC or set some exception” – you don’t set any exceptions!!! You show an elevation dialog.  Or you run as a service like everybody else.  If your virus scanner is running in user mode, you’ve already failed.

Update: Now it’s been nearly a year since that e-mail was sent.  Have they fixed the problem?  It doesn’t look like it.  They still tell you the same thing on their knowledge base site!

My advice?  Get OneCare, AVG, eTrust, or another offering.  Just make sure it’s from someone who understands security and software development.

1)  That post, and its title, are mainly about the outrageous ways in which people are jumping to Apple’s defense… not Apple’s action itself.

2)  If your argument is that user’s read the dialog and can uncheck the Safari box if they don’t want it, you are delusional.

Consider the recent report that 24% of internet users can’t find Google.  Now think about this from that user’s perspective.  They see a dialog that says, very clearly, “Select the items you want to update.”  Do you really think those users are going to know what Safari is?  Do you think they’re going to know that they don’t already have it installed?

I bet you way more than 24% don’t even know what “Quicktime” is.  I can promise you my sister, her roommates, and my mom all don’t.  They sure as heck don’t know what Safari is.  If they see it in that list, they are going to assume it is something they already have.  Probably something that came with their computer. 

If they’re “good” users, they will know that keeping their software up-to-date is important, so they’ll choose to update everything they possibly can because they don’t want their computers to be hacked, and we keep telling them that the best way to do that is to keep their systems up-to-date.  Apple is manipulating that to their advantage.  That’s exactly what John Lilly, CEO of Mozilla, said yesterday.  He is right.

You can argue that it’s their software, and they can do with it as they please.  I will agree with you, actually.  However, just because I believe they can do this, and support their right to, doesn’t mean I have to like it.  I think it’s a shitty practice, and if we don’t make a big deal about it right now, it’s only going to get worse.

In response, lots of Apple fans have jumped to their defense.  They say that users read the dialog before clicking “update.”  They say users will welcome their new Apple overlords.  They say it’s okay because ”Microsoft is worse” – they make me reboot after installing updates!

Some nutjobs are even saying that Apple distributing new software through the updater is the “cost” of using their product – akin to ads in Messenger or fees for anti-virus software.  I don’t remember signing up for that cost when I bought my iPhone.  That same wacko makes a bunch of other outrageous claims about how it is a glorious achievement that Apple is assimilating your Windows machine without asking first.  You should read it, if only for the comedic value.

I think the disconnect here is simple. It’s just like the disagreement that arose over Apple’s font rendering when they first released Safari to Windows. And that is:

People like the way things work on their Windows PCs. They don’t want one app to have different, blurrier font rendering. They don’t want Apple installing apps on their machines without consent.

Apple and their fans don’t understand this, because they believe they are partaking in some sort of “holy crusade” and “bringing the light of Apple to the underprivileged in Windows land.” It’s an absurd mindset, but that hasn’t stopped them having it. They just can’t understand why Windows user’s wouldn’t welcome Apple’s software and UI.

They’re like the borg, “Why wouldn’t you want to be assimilated – we bring perfection!”

Maybe not, but close enough.  Anything that leads to users unintentionally taking an action is a flawed UI.  That could mean this is a design flaw – but Apple doesn’t make those =)  Besides, the intent is obvious – to get more people to install Safari whether they want it or not.  Rationalize it all you want, but you can’t deny the game they’re playing.Is it working?I’m a software developer, and probably one of the most generally computer savvy people I know. I got very used to clicking “Update” button on the Apple Software Update dialog so that it would keep iTunes and Quicktime up-to-date (along with the BootCamp software on my Macbook).I came very close to installing Safari by accident because of this, and would not at all be surprised to see lots of others clicking it without looking.

The right thing for Apple to do here would have been:

1) Don’t check it by default. You’ve gotten people trained to click “Update” since you don’t have an automatic update system, and now you’re abusing that.
2) The text in the dialog is inaccurate. It says “Select the items you want to update” – but Safari isn’t software on my computer, so how can I update it?

I had Safari installed on one of my machines to try it out when they released it. So it was normal for the updater to want to update it there.  Then when it popped up in the list on a different machine I was confused, and thought I had mixed up which machine I’d installed it on months ago. But I had not. They were trying to trick me.

Oh sorry, they were trying to “show me the light.”

Update:

I just posted a follow-up to this entry.

Today Yahoo announced their “Open Search Platform” – saying that it will “allow third parties to enhance the Yahoo Search experience.”

You might assume that this means they’re doing something cool with OpenSearch – the set of open standards once established by A9 and later embraced by IE / FireFox to hook up search providers, and recently used by Microsoft’s SharePoint and Search Server products as the means by which to support federated search results.

But you’d be wrong.  Apparently Yahoo thinks that by adding a space between “Open” and “Search” nobody will be confused that their offering is not, in fact, OpenSearch compatible.

A commenter I know on TechCrunch even asks if we’ll soon see “Yahoo announced a Really Simple Syndication Platform” that isn’t RSS based?

Change the name, Yahoo.  This attempt to co-opt the OpenSearch label is distasteful at best.  And we’re trying to buy you why?

This is unacceptable.  To review my experience so far, visit: http://brandonlive.com/2007/08/16/boa-is-pissing-me-off/

I just received a response to my last message stating that:

“Please be advised, Online Banking only allows access to Bank of America
accounts located in the same state as your checking account. As a result, we
are unable to add your account ending in -xxxx to Online Banking.”

My checking account has always been in Washington.  My credit account has always been in Washington.  I live and work in Washington, nowhere else.  It’s been two weeks since this issue arose and it is still not fixed.  Please fix this today, or I will have to find a bank with competent customer service.

I just tried to send the following message using their Online Banking customer service e-mail function:

This is my third message on this subject, and I’m quite disappointed at the customer service I’ve experienced thus far.

My personal credit card through BoA has been set up with my online banking account since I got it.  It expired at the end of this month, and so a new card was automatically issued to me.  However, the account disappeared from my online banking profile when that happened.  At that time, I requested that all available accounts be added to my profile, but that did not happen.  Instead I received an automatic message stating that an account number which was not mine could not be added to the account.  Great.

If I try to enter the new credit card number into the Add/Remove Account box, I am given a message that says the card is an MBNA card and that I must go to an MBNA website to access the account.  Upon going to that website, I am told that it is no longer available and that I should come back to this one.  If this were a temporary situation during a merger/acquisition or if I had ever been an MBNA account holder, this might be an understandable error.  However, that is not the case – and this user experience is alarming (and frankly, unacceptable) coming from a company like BoA.

I sent a second message explaining this situation, to which I have received no response at all.  After about a week, I decided I would call the customer service number given in one of the automated replies I received before.  After waiting on hold a considerable length of time, a helpful customer service rep said she would be able to take care of it, but when she made the change to “combine the accounts into the same profile” it had no effect on my online banking account. 

She then said that I would have to be transferred to the Washington State online banking department and that they would be able to help me.  I asked if I would have to talk to them and explain the situation again, and she said yes.  Personally, this bothers me – as I don’t think customers should have to contact multiple customer service departments and explain both their situation and what a prior rep told them.  The support personnel should be able to handle that work by themselves, and simply call the customer back when the issue has been resolved.

I didn’t bother her with that complaint though, and simply asked to be transferred so that I could get my online banking account fixed and make my payment.  After she transferred me and I had selected the menu option for online banking issues, the call disconnected with an entirely unhelpful error message in the voice-controlled menu system (something like “An error has occurred, please call back and try again”).  Needless to say, this is quite frustrating when you don’t know the number to which you were transferred.

Instead of trying to find it and navigate more customer service menus and departments, and waste another hour explaining my situation so far… I am sending this e-mail. 

If I don’t receive a productive response by tomorrow, I’m going to start looking for a new bank.

Thank you,
Brandon

After submitting it, I was told that it is too long and messages must be 3510 characters or fewer.  I pasted the message into Word, and it says the message is 3,052 characters with spaces.

WTF BoA

The friend’s mother is a particularly disturbing figure, she says “to see our own school on there, it just isn’t… isn’t right.”  On there?  Give me a break.  And cut the melodrama.  The first thing any gaming enthusiast does when they get their hands on a map editor is to recreate a familiar location.  I did it, my friends have done it, and several companies won’t hire level designers who haven’t done that.  This is anything but cause for alarm.

In fact, this is easily one of the most frustrating things an FPS shooter could watch happen.  It’s just downright insane.  I see two sides to this issue… One side is the legal perspective.  Clearly, he did absolutely nothing illegal or wrong.  He never made any threats to anybody or to the school.  As far as has been reported, he exhibited no suspicious or menacing behavior. 

On the other side of things, I see a vast gap in understanding which seems somewhat generational.  To those of us who grew up playing video games, Counter Strike and games like it aren’t “simulations.”  Contrary to bat-shit-crazy lawyer Jack Thompson’s claims, kids don’t “train” on these games nor do they play them out of any fantasy of causing harm to others.

It’s more like a sport.  Think of it like paintball.  Are kids who play paintball more likely to go on murderous rampages?  I doubt it.  Just like in paintball, multiplayer games like Counter Strike are essentially elaborate, fast-paced versions of “tag.”  Heck, they bear such little resemblence to real armed combat it’s laughable when Thompson calls them “simulators.”  I have a feeling that no school shootings have ever included “bunny hopping” or having a teammate kneel down so that the shooter could jump on his back and shoot over an object.  What I’m saying is, circle-strafing whiled typing “PWNED!” probably isn’t the sort of skill useful to a murderous maniac.

You might think this disconnect is surprising, considering that the perpetrator of the violence at Virginia Tech never played video games at all.  In my opinion, that fact alone should have singled him out as a target of scrutiny.  What college male doesn’t play either Halo, Counter Strike, or World of Warcraft?  Unfortunately, you have nutballs like Jack Thompson out there trying to get on TV and rally against… something.  So they choose an easy target… one that most parents simply don’t understand.

I hope this kid is permitted to return to school and receives one heck of an apology from the school, police, and the friends’ parents who “turned him in.”  And they better make it good, lest their asses be sued off.

I once did the same thing.

Well, I never actually finished it.  But it was a school project.  In 10th grade or so, I used a Half-Life map editor to build a 3D recreation of an Egyptian pyramid for part of a presentation in History class.  The next year, I decided to take on a 3D recreation of the school.  I don’t even remember if that was Half-Life or Unreal-engine based, but it was one of them.  I created textures from photographs of walls and floors, and built some 3D models for parts of the school. 

It was part of an indepedent-study sort of program I was in at the Albany Academy, where computer-savvy students would take on personal projects and share resources.  My small computer business even donated computer systems to the program (including a massively powerful 700mhz Athlon machine, the first machine in the program that ran Windows, and Linux – instead of FreeBSD).  At any rate, the act certainly wasn’t “terrorism,” it was even sanctioned by the faculty member who led the independent-study program. 

Unless the student they arrested has a history of violence, threatening behavior, or some serious psychological problems… I couldn’t even imagine the simple creation of a custom video game map to be cause for concern.  Cause for arrest is just mind bogglingly absurd, when I consider that I’d once persued the same task. 

The original story suggests that this is a bigger problem because the kid is asian.  Exactly which century is this again?

Apparently he’s been expelled from school and won’t be allowed to graduate, even though he’s been arrested without being charged of any crime.  That’s illegal, right?  Nope, apparently he’s a terrorist.  Good to see the Patriot Act is being put to good use.

Months and months ago I stopped using Napster To Go.  Urge is just infinitely better.  Yet until today I was still paying for it.  I was frustrated to find that there’s no way to cancel online, despite the fact that I signed up over the web.  Personally, I think there should be a law requiring that companies permit you to cancel a subscription via the same mechanism by which they lured you into it.  They accept subscriptions online, 24-hours-a-day.  They accept cancellations over the phone, during their east coast business hours. 

After several attempts to call and cancel, I finally got through to a real person after being on hold (and my tolerance for static-filled country music was at its end when she picked up).  The actual cancellation process wasn’t as bad as some of those AOL horror stories.  She did insist on offering me a free month even after I complained about the cancellation process when she asked what I didn’t like about the service.  Sigh…

The other thing that bothered me a great deal is that my credit card address changed last summer.  I never once updated my information with Napster.  But unlike some other services which e-mailed me and said I’d need to update my information to continue service, Napster has sent something each month since the move to the effect, “We noticed your billing information seems to have changed.  Normally this would prevent us from charging you.  But we think you might be trying to escape our service without sitting on hold for the required period of time, so we charged your card anyway, sucker.”

Okay, maybe it wasn’t worded quite like that.  But that’s pretty much how I read it.  Maybe I’m just oversensitive to these things, or just too damn lazy.  Either way, be careful what you sign up for.  Leaving is rarely as easy as joining.

Now they’re promising to alleviate “shortages” of the PS3 by May.  Apparently their plan involves going back in time to early January and delivering more PS3s than stores can sell.  Holy crap, that means it must have worked!  I’m blown away.  Who knew those crafty japanese had mastered time travel?

Seriously… how stupid are these guys?  And what is their goal?  Do they hope that by pretending there’s a struggle to alleviate “shortages” that some people are going to see a stack of 50 PS3s at Fry’s and think they’ve struck gold?  Despite the signs of retailer desperation that abound?