Tag Archives: rant

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Deluxe Corp – Your Checks in 30 Days to Never

  By Scott • 2014-12-19
My Final Check Design

What, another rant? Yup! This is my style of catharsis, with the usual vain hope that Deluxe Corp. will read it in full. TL;DR I’m long-winded. I know that. Here’s a synopsis: Deluxe’s Chase-branded website is old, slow, and painful to use. The website doesn’t send out emails. No order confirmations, no shipment confirmations. Nothing. They also don’t provide any order tracking when logged in via Chase’s site. They screwed up my order and I never received it. It’s been a month. Their “newer” website’s feedback form is a Kafkaesque nightmare, and they don’t respond to customer inquiries. They don’t tell you how many checks you’re getting in an order (“a box”), so you can’t effectively comparison shop. I’m pretty … Continue reading

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Cisco WebEx Customer Support: Blech.

  By Scott • 2014-10-09 ,
webex_contact_support

I want to briefly describe a recent encounter I had with Cisco’s WebEx support. I do this only because this sort of script-based customer service is, while efficient when training new reps, grossly wasteful in situations not covered by the script. And by wasteful, I mean it pointlessly uses up hours of the customer’s time. So here’s the deal: After months and months of WebEx working flawlessly, the client application started crashing during the meeting setup process. This occurred on all of our users’ workstations. I knew that between the time it had been working and the time it stopped working I had pushed out no Windows updates and I made no changes to the network (firewalls, IP ranges, NATting, … Continue reading

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FedEx: Still Rubbish

  By Scott • 2014-09-12
FedEx: Rubbish Again

Never a good experience It seems like every single FedEx delivery I receive has something wrong with it. I haven’t ranted about this in a few years, so let’s look at this week’s experience. But first I’d like to say that my local FedEx delivery guy is top notch. He’s friendly, and I’ve seen him loading and unloading his truck outside our building and he doesn’t violently throw packages about. Check this out… So…? That looks pretty normal. They delivered a package from Texas to New York via ground in 4 days. Pretty good, actually. Well that’s what the tracking screen looks like now that the package has been delivered. But while it was in transit I wanted to do … Continue reading

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Netgear LG 6100D LTE Gateway for Sprint Review – Bad Device, or the Worst Device?

  By Scott • 2014-08-25 , ,
Netgear Joke 9000

I recently obtained a Netgear LG6100D LTE Gateway from Sprint as a backup for my hard internet connections. The device seemed perfect on paper: Cellular connectivity for the home or business network! I’ve used some bad consumer routers in my day, but this is one of the worst I’ve encountered. Or maybe it’s that it looked so promising at first and then let me down so hard. Update (2014-08-26): I found that you can access the native Netgear web GUI. It has a heck of a lot more features, and solves many of the complaints I have with the “correct” way of configuring this device. Upon logging in the user interface is clean, fairly informative, and I noticed that the … Continue reading

ARIA Resort and Casino Mega-Review (Las Vegas, NV)

  By Scott • 2014-07-01 ,
Relaxing at the ARIA after the room was cleaned

I don’t usually post hotel reviews, but when I do… I’m not sure how much MGM paid for the ARIA’s Five Diamond award from AAA, but I’m sure it must have been a lot. Note to lawyers: My previous statement was intended as hyperbole, and not as an accusation of bribery on the part of MGM. That’s how poor the service is at this hotel: They’ve left me with the impression that they’d sooner sue me to take this review down rather than improve the overall customer experience. If I could sum up the attitude of the hotel staff in one word it would be uncaring. I stayed at the ARIA for 4 nights encompassing 3 different hotel rooms. I … Continue reading

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Oh, Pebble! You have a great product that’s being ruined by your support.

  By Scott • 2014-06-16 , ,
pebble_case_24XXXX_mq_sanitized

Two important things before I get started: I really like the original Pebble Smartwatch.  I’d probably like the Steel as well, but I haven’t tried it. I have a lot of respect for Pebble as a company.  It came into being through crowdsourced funding and actually delivered the product it promised. However, after about 6 months of ownership, my watch stopped vibrating.  Trying to resolve this issue was my first interaction with Pebble support, and hopefully will be my last.  Their process is slow, detrimental, and offensive. You may wonder at that last one:  “Offensive?” My gripe isn’t with the particular customer service person that handled my case.  (In fact I’ve redacted their name from this post.)   The CS … Continue reading

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HTC One (Verizon) Nitpick Review

  By Scott • 2013-08-27 ,

Unfortunately, if you want a subsidized phone today you’re stuck with carrier bloatware. I’m replacing a Samsung Galaxy Nexus with an HTC One, but if I had my druthers I’d have ordered the Galaxy S4 Play Edition. The problem is that I can’t bring myself to effectively spend $510 on stock Android; software that’s free. The Galaxy Nexus is a great phone. In two years of case-less operation, it hardly has a scratch on it. It survived drops, bumps, bangs, and all the other rigors of daily use. It has a replaceable battery and an SD card slot. In fact, Samsung’s bloatware was the only thing that stopped me from getting Verizon’s Galaxy S4. The Unboxing Like I said, this … Continue reading

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The Rackspace-Batman Deodorant Debacle

  By Scott • 2012-11-19
Rackspace Anti-Smell Kit

What follows is a series of emails between myself and Rackspace, which is now one of my favorite companies. Some information has been redacted to protect the good citizens of Gotham (and/or San Antonio).   Anything in italics is a note for the blog, and not part of the email chain.   From: “John XXXXXX, Rackspace” <john.XXXX@rackspace.com> To: scott@scott Sent: Tuesday, November 13, 2012 8:09:23 AM Subject: Time to Protect Your “Hero” Server Hi Scott, The secret is out. We know the “Batman” server is your favorite. Know how we found out? He’s always at capacity and working up a sweat. Give the poor guy a break! With Cloud Load Balancers, you can add more servers & balance traffic across … Continue reading

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I propose a new approach to email reputation that allows the (legitimate) little guys to compete

  By Scott • 2012-09-28
spam_score_ss

I have a problem… I administrate roughly fifteen domains that send email on a regular basis.   Outbound email is handled by two corporate (and one personal) email servers running Zimbra and Exchange, as well as a couple of mail exchangers that handle automated email from web servers. I also don’t send spam.   All automated emails include a clear unsubscribe link, which is a single-click mechanism resulting in an immediate blacklisting of the user’s email address.  Automated emails also include the name and mailing address of the company from which they were sent, as per US federal law.  Corporate and personal emails are used responsibly;  In other words they are not used for blind solicitation nor for any other purposes … Continue reading

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Chevy Volt Counterarguments: Price, Government Subsidies, and Operating Cost

  By Scott • 2011-06-12 ,

I guess for better or worse, I’ve become a Volt advocate.  I’m no fanatic, however.  Only time will tell whether the Volt is a win or a loss, either for me personally or for the nation at large.  Will the batteries fail as soon as the 8-year/100,000 mile warranty is up?  Will GM still be in business to honor those warranties?  Will this first leap into mass-market electric vehicles (including the Leaf and Tesla) drive technological improvements and economies of scale? I can’t answer those questions. But I do love our Volt.  My wife and I bought it not because it was an electric vehicle, but because it fell into the criteria we set for price range (with rebates), performance, … Continue reading