I’ve been a Chase customer for nearly 8 years, counting the time I was with Bank One before they were acquired by Chase.   I started with just a basic checking account, and over the years, I have opened a savings account, credit card account, and switched my car loan to them, keeping everything under one roof.  Last month, I spoke with them about a home loan, and assuming they had a competitive deal, they would have been collecting my mortgage payments by the end of the year.  All seemed well – I figured myself as a poster child for good customers, and had previously been happy banking with them.

That all changed recently, when Chase decided to reward my loyalty increasing  the APR on my credit card by over 80%, unless I decline the change of terms and close the account by November 1st.  Isn’t that wonderful?

They are doing this because the current administration has passed some new legislation that is scheduled to go into effect on December 1, that among other things, prevents the banks from charging you a higher APR on existing balances when they raise your rates.  The solution then, is for them to jack up rates before the legislation goes into effect.  I contacted Chase to let them know that if they insisted on raising my APR, that they were risking losing my business, including my upcoming mortgage.  The customer service drones didn’t care, simply restating my options.

So, fast forward another week or so, and I found a house I wanted.  I made an offer, got a counter, and things were looking good – until I couldn’t get in touch with my loan officer at Chase.  The sellers, as part of the counter-offer, requested a pre-approval letter that had the address on it for the house I was buying.  Why this matters, when I already had a blanket pre-approval letter is beyond me, but hey, it’s what they were asking for.  We contacted the loan officer around 12:30 on Thursday afternoon, and didn’t hear anything back.  By Friday, I was trying to get her on the phone, my agent was trying to reach her, and even the seller’s agent was trying to reach her.  No dice.

Once 24 hours had passed without any signs of life from the loan officer, I was getting pretty pissed off.  I called the branch, and found out she was out of the office until Monday.  My agent pressed further, and got her supervisor on the phone.  He told us she was on vacation all week – which is fine, everyone deserves a vacation once in awhile, but the least you could do is A) Setup an auto-response on your email, B) Give some indication that you are out on your voicemail, and when you will be back, and C) Either have someone monitoring your phone/email in your absence, or give customers the information of someone else they can speak to.  In any case, the supervisor got in touch with her, and she finally called my agent back on Friday night.

That should have been the end of the story, however, the loan officer wasn’t the least bit concerned about my plight.  My agent explained the situation to her, told her what we needed, and as of Saturday morning, we still didn’t have the new pre-approval letter.  We couldn’t get in touch with her, couldn’t get in touch with her supervisor, and were told by the seller’s agent that they had received another offer on the home, and that they were considering it, because we technically hadn’t held up to the counter offer, since we didn’t provide the pre-approval letter in the timeframe specified.

We are essentially dead in the water at this point – my agent called around, and found a local bank that could work with us to get me the pre-approval letter we needed.  We’re hoping that if we can get this letter in, the sellers will still honor our contract, and we’ll move forward – but things are very much up in the air.  The sellers could easily walk away and accept the other offer they received, and I’ll have lost the house, due to the incompetence of the employees of Chase.

Regardless of how this plays out, Chase has lost this guy as a customer.  It’s going to be a hassle to change banks, especially when I have nearly every bill of mine setup for auto-payment, but there’s no chance in hell that I’m going to keep doing business with Chase.  If this is the type of service I can expect when i actually need them to do something for me, I’m better off elsewhere.

This is less of a blog post and more of a public service announcement. World, this is Mandrake. I’d like you to take a good long look at the picture below:

gross

You see that? That’s Joose. You might spot it hiding on shelves in the beer aisle at your grocery store, or maybe in a cooler at a local gas station. Whatever you do… DON’T FUCKING DRINK IT. EVER!

That is all.

It’s a battle for surpremacy!  Only one can be the First Hall of Shame Inductee of the new year, but who will it be?  In one corner we’ve got FSN Ohio, employers of the universally detested Fred McLoud of Cavaliers broadcasting fame.  In the other corner we’ve got WOW Internet and Cable, a company with no reputation and a lot to prove.   Let’s see what happened…

Set Cavs vs Grizzlies on FSN HD at 8pm Jan 8, 2009 to record.

Blue Jackets hockey is scheduled to appear on FSN standard def at the same time; it does appear as scheduled.

Check recorded game, it is Blue Jackets Hockey in HD.

Called FSN; they say WOW is contractually obligated to show the same thing on Standard and HD channels. Insight et al use overflow channels to display different shows.

Called WOW and they say it was a broadcasting mistake; they show whatever FSN sends them and FSN messed up.

I tell them this is not acceptable and they aren’t winning me over.  They ask me what I’d like them to do.  That’s just the question I was waiting for.  Here’s what I think:

Quit jerking me around and TALK with your partners. I’ve got a broadcasting company telling me some distinctly different facts from my cable company.  Both of them make sense but both of them claim the other made a mistake; FSN didn’t broadcast what it was supposed to and WOW didn’t put the correct program on their guide.  So find out who made the mistake before it happens again!

First off, we’ve got to resolve the communication issues.  Nobody at either company has discussed this issue with the other.  If this was the evening news or the presidential inauguration you can bet they’d do something, but it’s just sports, so who cares?  

I care.  It’s nice that you credited my account for the loss of programming last night, but what I want is to have it fixed for next time.  Nobody is promising me a fix.  Nobody is even offering me a fix.  Call them.  Call your partners and discuss it.  I’ve got their number, do you need it?  Call them and find out why there’s a discrepancy between scheduling and broadcasting.  These things MUST be in sync for customer satisfaction and they are not.  Your customer is pissed off.

Problem: defined.  Solution: TBA.  Next Steps: get more information and call me back.

Thank you for calling and have a nice day.

Follow-Up

WOW has not given me a status update but they did give one to my friend at ColumbusCavs.net. Here’s a list he obtained of all the games left in the season that FSN will be showing, including which games conflict with the Blue Jackets and (most importantly) what channel on WOW you can find the game.

Columbus WOW – Cavs vs Blue Jackets

We’ll see after the next game (tonight) who, if anyone, gets to be inducted into the Hall of Shame.

They just had to push their luck! Right when I was starting to feel like revoking their temporary Hall of Shame membership, Burger King had to go an do this.

Yes, friends, Burger King is now in the cologne business. That on its own isn’t too terrible. It could just be a ridiculous little marketing stunt. Hell, I might have even been tempted to buy a bottle just for the sake of novelty. But they had to take it a step too far with this:

The King's New Clothes

That isn’t an image that I want in my head! It is especially bad considering that they are releasing these ads along side their Whopper Virgin campaign. What does this say to me? It says “The King is going to rape the planet!”

For disturbing advertising, I hereby extend Burger King’s Hall of Shame membership!

This is part one of a two part hall of shame post, the second of which can be found here.  First up is Westinghouse.  Last summer, I purchased a Westinghouse 47″ HDTV.  Last night, I broke it.  I accept full responsibility for breaking my TV, however, the lack of customer service is what gets ol’ W this hall of shame nod. (more…)

This is the second of my two hall of shame posts for the day.  I previously spoke of the poor service I ran into with the manufacturer of my now deceased TV, and the problems didn’t stop there.  This hall of shame nod goes to GE Money Bank, fine purveyors of the “Amazon Store Card”, not to be confused with the Amazon Visa, which is issued by Chase. (more…)

I love Burger King too much to demand that they become a permanent member of the Tiny Gods Hall of Shame, but they earned themselves a temporary spot yesterday. I will probably revoke their shameful status the next time I eat a Double Whopper and remember that it is the most delicious thing on the planet.

A Burger King was just recently built right down the street from me. It was the only major fast food franchise that wasn’t already within a convenient distance from my apartment. It is now the closest fast food restaurant to me, which is excellent because it also happens to be my favorite.

I was having a relaxing day at home and enjoying the remnants of the weekend with a beer and some Fallout 3. I decided to grab some lunch at BK. Ok, so I was drinking beer before lunch. DON’T JUDGE ME! I got to the drive-thru and prepared to order my standard #2 combo with onion rings and a Coke. I didn’t get to, though.

“Welcome to Burger King. We are temporarily out of burgers, would you like to try some chicken or fish today?”

Of course I didn’t want chicken or fish! I wanted a flame broiled heart attack! I sat there, stunned, for probably a full minute. I said nothing. “Sir?”

I had to make a decision. The #8 looked like it was chicken, so I asked for that. “I’m sorry, sir, that sandwich is grilled. We can’t grill it right now.”

I felt my face crinkling up in a look of bewilderment that the kid at the window must have seen, because he immediately said, “I’m really sorry. Is there something else that I can get you?”

I had seen the commercials where Burger King tells people that they no longer serve the Whopper. Shit like that makes people upset. I never thought it would happen to me. I was being let down by The King, and I wasn’t even on TV. This was real. I looked sadly at the speaker and said, “Never mind. I guess I won’t get anything.”

I was trapped in the line with cars on both sides, so I had to wait for the line. Before I pulled away from the speaker, though, the kid came back and said that they would grill up my chicken sandwich for me. I smiled and thanked him, I paid for my food, I took it home and sat back down in my gaming chair. I was pleased that they had at least helped me out that little bit. Then I opened the bag.

The fries were stale. So so stale. I have worked in fast food before. I know what it looks like when you refry old fries. Also, they had dropped the fries into the bag upside-down, so they were just all over the fucking place. Thanks, Burger King. Jerks.

I tried to contact Friskies today because they don’t carry a bacon wet food for cats.  9Lives has a Liver & Bacon Dinner that my cat quite likes.  How can you have the option to sell bacon to people and utterly refuse to do so?  The mind boggles.

Anyway, I tried to submit feedback this is what I see:

We are currently updating this site.
Please return later today to enjoy the improvements.

Wow, that was lame.  And after all that “work”!  Name, number, email, address – Friskies needs to know. Really, they can’t listen to my cat food feedback without knowing where I live and how to reach me 24/7.   

So I decided to write this post and I needed the exact error message (authenticity!) so I resubmitted the form.  I put in crap data and it went through fine.  OK, I think, I can submit my comment now.  Not so fast, my naïve self!  The website breaks again when I submit real data.  Fake data works like a charm.

Friskies is a Purina brand, so you can blame the parent company for the website problems, but the Friskies execs need to get on the bacon train.  Here are my original comments, which Purina refuses to accept:

Why don’t you have cat food (canned) with bacon in it?  My cat’s love the 9Lives “Liver & Bacon” and I love feeding it to them because I also love bacon.  Friskies has no bacon food that I can find, and I feel this is a mistake.  I prefer 9Lives to Friskies because of the selection.  And btw, the Indoor Selects line makes my cat throw up.

Update:

I replaced the ampersand above with “and” and substituted K for C in select(ion) and the submission was a success:

Thank you for contacting Nestlé Purina PetCare Company.  Your email has been received by our Consumer Affairs Department.  One of our team members will respond to your email as soon as possible.

This does not make me especially happy, because they have proved their previously theoretical incompetence.  Their SQL injection scrubbers are overzealous to the point of brutal retardation.  And here’s some more bad news, Friskies: I’ve gotten another cat, so now you’re losing DOUBLE the profits.

I see piss poor examples of “journalism” on a daily basis, but what I saw today goes above and beyond and is just downright irresponsible.  If you haven’t heard anything about this Clark Rockefeller fellow, then by all means click that link and get caught up before continuing.  It really is a fascinating tale, complete with false identities, murder, and kidnapping.  The fact that it is REAL and not a script for a movie is scary.  I’m sure the Hollywood types are already in talks to acquire the rights.

The Boston Globe (among others) have reported that this man may have married a woman in 1981, in order to get a green card, and left town the following day.  Really, that is all there is to the story.  I say he may have married her, since they have no official proof that Clark Rockefeller is the man the media says he is, though it looks highly likely.  So, the little writeup with the globe talks about how this woman is shaken by the experience of finding out who this man is and what he may have done, and for whatever reasons that she has gone into hiding (probably to avoid being hounded by the media).

In a move that leaves me guessing what their motives are, the Globe then goes and publishes detailed information about where this woman lives, what kind of food she grows in her garden, and where she works.  This is what was posted at the end of their article, with the offending bits replaced with less revealing information.

WOMAN and her husband live in a COLOR two-story house with COLOR trim on a dead-end street shaded by maple trees in a working-class neighborhood of CITY. WOMAN and her husband have a garden overflowing with corn, squash and wildflowers. She is a POSITION at RESTAURANT, a trendy restaurant near LANDMARK in CITY’s DISTRICT.

All I can say is what the fuck?  Why in the world would you publish something like that?  That she grows corn, squash and wildflowers in her garden means nothing.  The color of her home, the restaurant where she works, all completely irrelevant to the fact that she married a man over TWENTY FIVE YEARS AGO so he could get a green card.

I’ve put in emails to both the reporter and her editor asking for their reasoning for publishing this information.  If I hear anything back, I’ll update this post.

Booking with Flier Miles

They employ a fairly terrible call center in India for booking flights.  Jessicas, Johns, Jennies one in all.  My English is fairly unintelligible to them.  They apologized often and repeatedly routed me to a ‘specialist’ who was no better equipped to handle the call than the person before.  The final specialist was special in that she had the ability to say “I’m sorry, it doesn’t look like I can help you.”

Confirming the Flight

I was asked to confirm my flight by phone (days after the above fiasco) when the holder of the frequent flier miles booked the flight and needed me to pay the remainder with my credit card.  I was asked to confirm my flight.  I asked for the details of my flight, she said she didn’t know and her question, “Do you want to confirm your flight?”  “Can you tell me the details of the flight before I confirm?”  “I can transfer you to someone who can help you with that.”

Flying (waiting)

I was running a bit late.  I do blame myself, but I didn’t know the consequences would be so high.  My flight was to board at 7am and depart at 7:30am.  I didn’t get to my gate until 7:22am.  The plane was gone.  I was placed on the next flight to Charlotte and was told I was put on standby for the 4:15pm flight to Jacksonville, NC.  When I made my way to the gate for the 4:15pm flight I was informed that I wasn’t on the standby list.  I then put my name on and was 6th in line.  They then announced that they overbooked the flight and they were looking for people to forfeit their seats, they’d be rewarded with a flight voucher and a seat on the next flight to Jacksonville.  The voucher could get you anywhere in the main 48 states or could be used as a $200 credit to fly outside of the 48.  They needed two volunteers, which meant really I was 8th in line.  There was a girl (Amanda) I started hanging out with as she was 2nd in line and didn’t get on.  We killed time together.  She did have a ticket for the 6:20pm flight and I was placed on standby (third in line) over there.  Then things get fun.

Of course the 6:20pm was also overbooked.  Amanda was in zone 3 and tried to get on.  The boarding agent told her to wait.  The 1st in line for standby boarded and the flight left.  Amanda nearly broke down.  The boarding agent was a little annoyed and told her that was the peril of standby.  I told the boarding agent that Amanda had a ticket for that flight, with a seat number and everything.  Boarding agent was confused and looked at the ticket, looked through the computer system.  “Oh, I show that she boarded the 4:15pm flight.”

Should be here noted: Amanda needs anti-seizure medication and epi shots.  She takes the anti-seizure medication daily at about the same time.  Someone from US Airways in Chicago told her she had to check her medicine as it involved needles.  The boarding agent, when pressed, admitted to not knowing where Amanda’s checked bags were (and accordingly her medicine).  Amanda started breaking down the rest of the way as she anticipated having a seizure and having to go to the hospital and missing her 10:30pm flight.  I pushed matters with the agent and Amanda was richly rewarded with a $10 food voucher for the airport.

Amanda called her airport ride/husband who was sure this was all her fault no matter what was said.  I was of the belief that if people who voluntarily give up their seats when they overbook get a free flight voucher, they should probably give one to a person who was forced by US Airways’ mistake to give up their seat.

I got on the 10:30pm flight, so did Amanda, she didn’t have a seizure.

The quickest of reviews on the Jacksonville, NC National Car Rental

When it became clear that I might be later than my 2:30pm reservation for my car rental I notified them that I might be as late as midnight.  The guy responded “As long as planes are still arriving, I’ll still be here.”  I’d been relieved.  When I got off of my plane at 11:30pm and went to retrieve my car National Car Rental was closed.  I called the number and watched the phone at the airport counter ring.  I called the 800 number.  It told me that the help line was open 8am – 10pm seven days a week.

So… I’ll try to avoid US Airways and National Car Rental from here on out.