why i will never switch to verizon

these are the people who charge you for phone service.  be afraid.

0.002dollar = 0.002cent

snow finally

yay!  we got some snow yesterday.  i realized this morning that if i didn’t take any pictures of it, i’d regret not capturing the one moment we ended up with the white stuff (not the white stuff in the middle of an oreo).



a friend of mine took a few more pictures of the snow.  check out her shots at flickr.

sprint screws up…and me

back in november, i decided to add a line (for my sis) onto my account.  it was thanksgiving afternoon.  i called them up and asked them what they could do for me.  the sales lady told me she could add the extra line for an additional $15.00 per month.  before i agreed to the changes, i asked her to confirm the total cost per month for me.  she gave me the amount as i understood it.  i ended up asking her to give me this total twice.  both times, it was the rate with only $15.00 added.

this past week as i was looking over my sprint bill, i found that instead of adding a line to share the minutes, sales lady had added a second phone plan to my account!  i was being charged over $75.00 for that particular line.  so, i found sprint’s chat feature and started conversing with a customer support representative.  when i told her what had happened, she checked on things, found we should have been sharing minutes, and told me she could fix this. my blood had started to simmer when i first saw the bill.  this turned down the pressure.  but then she told me that the best she could do was to adjust this amount down to $25.00 per month for the line, not back down to $15.00.  it seems the system they use won’t allow for those adjustments.  i asked for a manager.

i was transferred and proceeded to explain my situation to him.  he looked things over and told me the same story that the previous customer service rep had just told me:  the best he could do was $25.00 per month for this line and the system wouldn’t allow for any lower.  they will make an additional $120.00 this year if this cannot be changed because their system prohibits them?  in addition, they technically are in violation of the verbal agreement i made back in november.  and if they are technically in breach of this agreement, i could get out of my contract sans penalties.  the sales lady screwed up and screwed me.

he kept asking me if the reduction was something i wanted to do.  what i wanted sprint to honor the agreement they made to me.  since that wasn’t going to happen with these two employees i told him i’d accept the price adjustment down to $25.00 and the reimbursement for the overcharging and to put a note in the ticket that i was not pleased with this solution and would further pursue holding them to the promise.  having done this in a chat session, the whole conversation is logged.  my mistake was calling them to handle ordering the phone in the first place without recording the conversation.  from now on, i will either deal with the sales reps over a chat technology, in person at the sprint store, or using some recording method (like skype) when i must call over the phone.

shattered contact

ever shatter a contact lens?  this was my random act of dumb for the weekend.

dog-free month

about a month ago, sir barksalot disappeared.  i don’t know where she (yes, sir is a she) went, but i have to tell you that it has been the best month of the the past ten months.  in fact, the past month has been so peaceful that it has felt like a it’s been a year since dog went mia.

i can only pray that this change is permanent.  of course, this whole move took its toll on me and required multiple calls to the sheriff’s department and to animal control.  and that will have to resume if doggy ever returns.

but for now, peace.  ahhh.

local footage on conan o’brien

i found out today that one my random girls at the knoxnews.com is having some of her video footage aired on conan o’brien’s late night show tonight. erin is pretty stoked about that. i have to say that i am too.  ken mink is going to be on conan.  the footage will be used with that interview.

watch the clip here and then watch conan tonight to see it in a national setting.

update:  erin told me later that conan found some other footage and might go with that. tune in tonight to see what footage is used!

the whole story

this weekend, i sat down with my friend tara who had only seen the original star wars movie and watched all the movies in story order from beginning to end including the animated (not cg) clone wars.

we started on friday evening with the first two episodes.  i came back the next morning to pick up with “the clone wars” which lead right up to episode three.  we finally finished up around 10:00p saturday night.  i don’t remember every watching the original three (episodes four, five, and six) in one sitting because that would have been too much.  this was different since tara didn’t know the back story.  watching with someone who hasn’t seen is much more fun.  even though “i’m your father” was not a surprise to her, a couple of other aspects were:  following palpatine as the emperor and finding lando to betray han.

bacon bread for saturday morning and chili in the afternoon fueled us for the weekend event.  and for those who are going to ask (and probably whine about it in the comments), we watched the revised versions of the “new hope,” “empire,” and “jedi.”  i do have the versions of those movies in their original theatrical releases.  the updated versions include some extra scenes edited in which i tend to favor.

i had a good feeling about this.  it was a fun weekend.