Bob Greenberger

Dell is awful. I purchased a new Dell computer earlier this year with my Trek sale. It was during one of those "No interest for six months" deals. What they didn't tell you was that you had to refer to the plan when placing the order, otherwise, you didn't get it. I got socked with finance charges after the first month as I didn't speak up.

AOL is another one. For years, I used them for my email and to host my webpage, but one day they wiped out my account as the credit card I used for the last two years with them wasn't the card I originally posted. They were willing to take me back, but not with the email address I was using at the time. I ditched them.

And I just saw a report on Red Lobster. I only caught parts of it, but it had something to do with not listing all the seafood ingredients in a seafood platter, which made one woman ill as she was allergic to crawfish. And rather than correct the error, they were going to train their management to train their staff to ask questions of the guest before offering the platter. Coming from that end of the spectrum, I can tell you their idea of training is an email to the stores warning management to have their staff ready with the questions, which is so much cheaper than printing up new menus.

Um, why are y'all paying an annual fee for your credit cards? There are any number of cards out there with no fee and that give rebates to boot so that, since I pay off the balance each month, I'm making money by using 'em. My current two heavy cards are a Yahoo platinum Visa (1 point per dollar charged, can redeem via a somewhat more complicated than it needs to be but not that hard process for Amazon gift certificates at a 100 points to the dollar rate, so it's a 1% rebate) and a Costco Amex Rewards card that has a 1% general rebate, 2% rebate on travel, and 3% on restaurants. No fee on either one, save that the Amex requires the Costco membership I'd have already.

Let's not forget so-called customer service representatives who are pretty much powerless to do anything but answer the most basic of questions and tackle relatively mundane tasks. In case you're wondering, this is usually done deliberately in the hopes that the customer will give up.

Working for almost three years at Suncoast really showed me that corporations (at least in the retail world) do not provide the tools necessary to adequately help anyone and heaven forbid if you make a decision without input from a manager.

Frightening to see this stuff.

Not sure I want to share any of my stories at the moment...

I'm exceedingly weary of the automated e-mail replies and the endless phone menus. I'm trying to find out if a couple of relatives of mine are still alive without contacting cousins I haven't talked to in years and asking, "Say, is your dad still alive?" Since they both live in the same state I do, I figured that the one major newspaper should be able to tell me if they've had an obituary for either person. I tried calling and found out that you cannot, under any circumstances, make a phone call to anyone working on that section of the paper--you absolutely have to e-mail. Well, I did. A week ago. And there's been no response.
Then there's the notion of e-mailing a company when there's a problem. I have never--NEVER!--received a helpful reply on my first e-mail contact to my ISP, the company that made my computer, or any of the other companies I've contacted via help links on their websites. I always get a response that utterly fails to address my question and points me back to square one. If I'm really persistent, I might get a helpful response to the third or fourth message IF their response utility is set to route a third or fourth reply to an actual person.
I particularly enjoyed it when my ISP was occasionally deciding that certain domains didn't exist (like "ebay.com" or "dccomics.com") in the middle of a session and there was no way to report it except by using the $1.95-per-minute tech support line...

Paul

I think the worst is with the big auto companies which have to wait until enough people die before making a recall. And even when they know theres a potential risk they will not put it public for fear of messing up there projected bottom line.

My wifes car (Nissan Sentra 2002) caught on fire on a major hwy in Canada...Nissan did nothing...the car dealership avoided us. Needless to say don't every buy from Nissan

I live in 11685 Las Vegas, Nevada. Have you been here before?