To The Metal

So my rental of a few days turned into a week, the week is turning into a weekend, and the drama with the VW is turning into 2 weeks.  The wiring is fixed, on my dime.  The gauge cluster is being replaced under the warranty, so thankfully a little more than half of my daily rental bill will be covered by it.

My first rental was a Chevy Silverado 1500.  Great truck.  Plenty of power, plenty of comfort, plenty of thirst for gasoline.  Holy shit, I forgot how much a big truck drank.  We’re talking $20 every other day just to keep it at about 1/4 tank full.  When I realized the rental would be longer than I expected, I switched to a Dodge.

Yea, I know I said I’d never drive another Dodge, but I’m not really buying this one, it’s just a rental.  It’s a brand new Magnum SXT.  I’ll say this – it’s a great car.  It could use better tires, but there’s plenty of pep, a smooth ride, and the transmission is the best I’ve seen in a Chrysler.  The manumatic could shift a bit quicker, but it is what it is and that’s not a manual.

Still currently looking for a beater pickup.  Something that will run me no more than $2,000 with functioning 4×4 and preferably a manual transmission.  I’ve got a line on a Chevy locally that has an automatic which I’ll probably check out in a day or two.

My plans for the next few months involve moving into a new house, and owning my own truck would help.  That, and should another rodent attack my car – I won’t be paying rental fees.

Peace.

I haven’t read Rolling Stone since I found myself bored enough to in High School.

It has nothing to do with the name, although I do have an almost instinctive dislike of the band… I’ve just found the articles to be about as valuable as those in a Playboy, minus the pictures. IMHO, the entire thing is nothing more than smoke and mirrors contributing to the overall level of entertainment industry propaganda composing your average issue.

So apparently, visiting the PNC Bank Arts Center recently got me a free subscription, and I gave it the full attention of one bowel movement. Cover story? Kanye West vs 50 Cent. Sub article? The endless war. A few pages in? An idiotic comment about Alberto Gonzales. Who really cares? I don’t listen to music for politics, I listen to it to be entertained.

Thus… If I’m reading a magazine covering entertainment, I don’t read it for POLITICS.

Ok, there’s an article on iTunes. Wow, so iTunes is the enemy of the music industry because it won’t go out of its way to rip off the consumer on its way to the 3rd biggest music outlet behind Best Buy and Walmart. I find it intriguing that Walmart is #2 considering how much of the music they sell is edited; but I digress.

What I got out of the article is that the Industry is hell-bent on destroying the #3 retailer of their product because Apple won’t yield to their idiotic business model that has been progressively FAILING since the advent of the compact disc. A few record companies and television networks are now talking about pulling their products from the iTunes store.

So the problem isn’t that they aren’t making any money – it’s that they’re not making enough. These complaints are ridiculous as the focus of the article is how iTunes has risen to the #3 retailer of music since it was introduced several years ago.

Another claim – illustrating the breadth of Industry intelligence… One rep assumes that the average iTunes user only has maybe 20 tracks, and that it can’t compete with ripping from CD’s or illegally sharing the tracks.

HELLO!?

I’ve got over 500 iTunes tracks. If I spent that $500 at Best Buy or Walmart I would have gotten DRASTICALLY fewer songs and albums. Anyone I know who actively uses iTunes has many more tracks than 20 – and haven’t bought a compact disc since they came to their senses.

iTunes is a successful business model. Apple may not make much money off it but the industry is. As much as the industry wants to fuck with the model and try to exploit the consumer even more, the only thing they can do – which has been proven by falling sales for longer than I care to remember – is make it fail.  It’s plain to anyone that a key reason that iTunes has succeeded is because they cash in on the only thing the industry has left – quantity.  Lord knows they gave up on Quality the moment NKOTB hit the stage.

So go ahead, kill iTunes. Sales will drop further, and I highly doubt after sucking the 99 cent teet for the past few years anyone is going to waste time at Best Buy or *bleeping* Wal-Mart.

I’ve had a bunch of customer service experiences lately, good and bad.

The good? Dealing with NewEgg.com.  A few weeks ago I ordered an HD-DVD drive for my Xbox.  When the shipment arrived, I received not 1, but 2 drives.  I of course notified NewEgg of the mistake, and they promptly responded with an RMA and a pre-paid shipping label.

The bad? Middletown Motors (formerly Middletown Volkswagen) – dealing with a representative who simply didn’t care about the issues with my car or being courteous in the least.  Redeemed by the OWNER of the company calling me personally to apologize and sort things out.

The ugly?  Best Buy.  Calling a representative in regard to a price match refund, and dealing with someone who either intentionally or by corporate mandate twisted the policy to make sure I did not get my refund.  My complaint?  It received a canned response.  No real attempt to resolve the issue – just a response saying that they keep track of customer comments so they can track trends and find places to improve.

I’m not sure if NewEgg is as big as Best Buy, but going on my personal experiences with both – the customer service at the Egg is far superior.  They’re prompt, courteous, and attentive.  They’re still hungry – as most small businesses are.  Same with Middletown Motors – they’re a small business – when they address a complaint they do it personally.

Quite frankly, I doubt I’ll ever do business with a company that provides canned responses.  I might pay more by using the little guy (in some cases) but at  least when I call or email them I will have a human being on the other end of the line and not a robot.   That’s the difference between BIG and small business.  With BIG business, you’re a number.  With small, you’re still a person.

So last month I bought an iPod, an 80gb video.  Works nice, I’m happy with it.  Last week they dropped the price by $100.  So I decided to check with Best Buy on their price match policy.  Turns out, if the price drops within 30 days of picking up the product – I get a 100% refund of the difference.  Cool beans.  To process the match, I need to call them.  Cool beans.

I call Best Buy and get a representative who I will call… Bennifer.

Long story short – she tells me that since I called outside of the 30 day period from the day of purchase – I don’t qualify.

“Online Price Guarantee
We will refund 100% of the difference if a price on our Web site is reduced within 30 days* of the shipping, pickup or delivery date…”

“You may receive the lower price only by calling 1-888-BEST BUY (1-888-237-8289). We will honor the lower price only if it is displayed on our Web site when you notify us. Our retail stores are not able to process the price adjustment.”

I quoted the relevant parts of their Online Price Guarantee.

Bennifer decided to combine the two, effectively screwing me out of my refund.  I sent the following to Best Buy – I doubt I’ll get a favorable response, but who knows…

Today I noticed that the price had dropped on your website for this same exact model then called 1-888-237-8289 to see whether I qualified for a price match.  Your representative, Jennifer, told me that she did not know when the promotion began and that my purchase did not qualify because I did not CALL within 30 days of my purchase.

Your policy clearly states that if the price on the website is reduced within 30 days of shipping, pickup, or delivery of the exact same product – I qualify for a 100% refund of the difference.  Further down the page it says I can only obtain the price match by calling.  So you first define the parameters for qualifying, and then provide a single method for obtaining the refund, which makes perfect sense. 

After Jennifer conferred with her ‘co-workers’ and ‘everyone around her’ about the discrepancy, she pressed that since I did not call within the 30 days, I do not qualify.  Now considering she denied any knowledge of when the price change went into effect, I find it ludicrous that she would also rely on an obviously incorrect interpretation of your price match policy which only serves to benefit Best Buy.

I find your method of denying liability by demonstrating an unacceptable ignorance of your own policies and promotions completely asinine.  How you stay in business by treating your customers in such a derisive manner is a mystery.  Whether or not I qualify for this refund, your representative made me feel like an idiot by blatantly lying about your policy.  Next time I’ll just go to an Apple store.

Now had I bought the iPod in the store, I would have had to bring the lower price into the store within 30 days.  If I came in on day 31, even if the price change was on day 29 – I’d be SOL.  The online policy has no such distinction.  If the price reduction is within 30 days of the purchase, I qualify.  Whether I call on day 31 or later – there’s no distinction.  I just have to call them.

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I don’t think I’ll ever forget the morning of Tuesday, September 11th, 2001.  The sky was clear and the air was crisp… fairly cool for a September morning IMHO.  Everything just seemed business as usual, I went to work, did my job… and then in the chat room someone says “A plane just crashed into the World Trade Center.”

I wasn’t sure whether it was a joke, an accident, or a terrorist attack at that point.  I recall looking over to my boss and saying what I just read, she had just as much disbelief as I did.  I tried to look around online, but all the typical news sites were slow or didn’t have any mention of it.

Then I get the message – another plane hit the 2nd tower.  At that point, I knew in my heart what was going on – but I felt neither dread nor anger.  I can honestly say I had very little feeling about it – perhaps I was simply in shock.

I continued to do my job, I went out to the Tuxedo library – and on the way out I saw State Police cars on the highway, 3 wide on the median – just sitting there, talking with each other.  Traffic blared by with the same deadpan look on everyones face, nobody getting stopped, everything just going on almost as usual.

I spoke to people that morning at my job sites, all in the same state of shock.  This was all before I had to come up with a way to get 20 something libraries back up and running when the towers fell and took out Verizon’s basement communication hub across the street.

The whole day was almost surreal.  I’ll never forget it.  Nor should anyone.

Latest vacation brought me to Milton, VT and Lake Champlain.  A week off, unplugged, no semblance of Internet access, what more is a guy to do?  Tromp around VT, enjoy the scenery and fresh air, go on a few factory tours and just take it easy.  IMHO there’s no place better to just take it easy and get away from it all than Vermont.

Picture a world were billboards are banned, neighbors look after one another, there are more farms than homes (at least where I was), the air is clean and the asshole driver is normally out of state or Canadian.  That’s VT.

Last Saturday started with a bit of a jolt as I went to start my car, smelled electrical, and then lost my fuel and temperature gauges.  The car still ran fine, and I had an odometer, so we continued out.  I tell ya, those EZ-Pass things are nifty.  I’d rallied against their use for years but finally came to realize that I was tired of not only hunting down the ‘cash only’ lane, but waiting 10 minutes in a line of cars to actually use it.

The 6 hour drive was mainly uneventful, a handful of asshole drivers to keep it interesting an obliterated BMW and subsequent traffic jam for spice.  Once we crossed into Vermont, traffic cleared, roadsides cleared, and most noticeably the air cleared.  It’s a bit of a shock driving in Vermont.  For starters, there are very few traffic lights – plenty of 4 way stops where everyone takes their turn.  Tailgaters?  Aggressive drivers?  Honkers?  Few and far between, like I said earlier, every person I saw honk or drive like a moron were either from NY or Canada.  Not to say it’s slow up there, most traffic did at least 5-10 over the limit.  Police coverage was minimal as well, the only car I actually saw pulled over during my stay in VT was a Civic – the spiffy thing was that the vehicle used to stop them was a fully decked out Chevy pickup.

Talk about culture shock.

Most of the time I spent away from the lake was in downtown Burlington on Church St – the best description I could give is that Church St was like a mini San Francisco.  Sidewalk performers, art galleries, little shops – and the big name stores for the most part were hidden.  Not to say there wasn’t a Quiznos, Papa Johns, StarBucks or Seattle’s Best within view of each-other, but the landscape wasn’t dominated by brand names.

Food?  Well for starters it’s impossible to get a bad cup of coffee in VT, with nearly every establishment serving Green Mountain.  A tour through the Magic Hat brewery also brought about a new appreciation for the micro-brew and dare I say it – there’s nothing like fresh Ben & Jerry’s ice cream straight from the factory.  As far as eating out, I highly recommend the Vermont Pub and Brewery as well as the Church Street Tavern – both have outstanding food as well as local if not in-house brews.  The VP&B put Krogh’s to shame in just about every way possible.

I can’t say I’ve seen so many small businesses thrive in one place, in such a clean an open environment.  Just minutes outside of the hustle and bustle of Burlington where everyone stops at a crosswalk, you’re back amongst rolling hills and mountains, open fields, and farm upon farm stretching out in every direction.

I’ll definitely be going back, as much of a beach bum as I am – I can’t argue with the value of a place like VT.

Had some crazy dreams so far this week.

On Monday, I had a dream that I’d either joined or been drafted to the military, and was going through boot camp.  Everything was vivid, from the drill sergeants to the other recruits, going through boot in a city/urban environment – not the usual military base setup one would see in the movies.

This morning, I had a couple of dreams stacked together, the one that stands out involves Sylvester Stallone in the role of a mad scientist/artist who would tag innocents with a tracking device so if they tried to escape, they’d be chased down by World of Warcraft characters and detonated.  I ended up in his facility which was a maroon house on a hill, almost looked like a gas station from the outside.  I’m walking around looking at all the cut up people (pretty grotesque shit) and as I realize that they’re all still alive I black out.  I wake up on his carving table, and the sedatives wear off while his back is turned – so I trigger the ‘escapee’ tracking device in my arm, stab the crap out of him, then run off as the building is stormed by spiders, ravagers, and other creatures from the World of Warcraft – blowing the building to pieces.

No more Coke Zero before bed I think.