First World Problems

I gotta start off by saying that I know that this is an extravagant waste of time and resources. I didn’t make this video because the K575 was slightly annoying, but rather because it baffles me that they became worse at designing coffee machines than before.

It’s doubly confounding because Keurig has based their marketing on the K575 being a “2.0” brewer. As in a (supposedly) new-and-improved follow-up to their original line.

Yes, it has a couple of advantages over the older B70 Platinum that I used for comparison. However, it seems that they increased the features without increasing the cost. That says to me that they designed these new brewers on a budget. A schizophrenic software interface and flimsier hardware seems to bear out that theory.

What’s in a Name?

Besides their software being a bit slapdash and unpredictable, their naming convention was a bizarre and confusing choice. The new brewer that I’m discussing in the video is called, as the thumbnail says, the Keurig HOT 2.0 K575 Plus Series Brewing System. What a mouthful!

And what’s my problem with that name? Well, for one, it’s inherently confusing.

First off, that’s what it was called on the box. That’s also what it’s called on Bed Bath and Beyond’s website (where I purchased it). So that’s the name I’m talking about. However, Keurig’s own website simply calls it the Keurig K575 Coffee Maker (at the time of this writing). It goes on to say that it’s a “Keurig Hot Brewer”. But notice that the word “Plus” is nowhere to be found. So is this the plus version (it is), but if not, what’s the difference between the standard and the plus? (There is no standard version of this model.)

If this is the HOT version, does that mean there’s a COLD version? No. Or, if there is, I can’t find it.

And why bother saying “2.0” in the first place? As I say, I understand that’s to differentiate Keurig’s new brewers from their old line. Fine. But the model numbers are completely different, so there’s no need to further differentiate them. If this were the B70 2.0 then I could understand it.

Last of all, sometimes the K575 is referred to as a “brewing system”. Now — on Keurig’s website — they’ve taken a step back from that and simply call it a “coffee maker”. Personally I think that it’s more relatable as a coffee maker. The hoi polloi don’t know what a brewing system is, outside of Keurig’s own marketing materials.

The only thing HOT about this brewer is that it’s a HOT MESS.

The Problems

I’ll give you this: All of the problems I examine in the video are actually just minor annoyances.

However, twenty minor annoyances is, to me, equal to one major problem. And, like I said, it appears that their “1.0” brewers were better designed. Aside from a couple of new features this is a step back, not a step forward.

Update, 2017-10-20

I'm upgrading the @Keurig #K575 to "utter shit" because UNLIKE THE OLD ONE, this "improved 2.0" version doesn't auto-shut-off if you leave the lid open. For the last few months it's been wasting juice staying hot all day long.

(And I leave it open so that the kcup hole dries.) pic.twitter.com/wP1z1g05aS

— Scott Dot (@ScottDotDot) October 20, 2017

I found this particular complaint to be catastrophically bad design. For what is it a catastrophe? For my power bill.

I have the Keurig’s auto-off timer set to something like 1 hour. That means that it should shut itself off promptly after one hour of disuse. And that’s exactly what the old B70 Platinum did.

However, and for no reason at all, leaving the lid open on the K575 “pauses” its brain. Or something. At any rate, if you walk away from it and leave the K-Cup receptacle open, it doesn’t auto-shut-off. Again, I habitually leave it open on purpose so that the orifice that accepts the K-Cup can dry out. It gets steamy in there, and who wants mold in their Keurig?

Since I didn’t know that (and wouldn’t have imagined it to be true), this claptrap of misprogramming has been staying on all day, keeping its reservoir hot even when no one wants coffee because we’re at work.

Here’s the thing: I don’t need to contact Amazon’s customer service often, but when I do they’ve always been responsive and extremely helpful. So I’m not going to lambaste Amazon in this post, but I do want to tell a story of a horrible customer service experience that’s not just a result of a bad rep but is indicative of a deeper problem.

The Toilet

In an incident that was far less dramatic than you’d hope, my toilet tank cracked and was leaking slowly onto the floor.

Obviously the ideal solution would be a new tank, but I had an Eljer triangle toilet that’s discontinued, and there aren’t a ton of options for a triangular corner toilet.

Needing to have a working crapper, I ran out to Home Depot and bought a relatively cheap standard toilet as a temporary solution. It works fine, but the placement isn’t quite as nice as that of a corner toilet. Hence I went to my favorite online retailer and found an American Standard Cadet 3 Triangle Toilet that looked like it would fit the bill.

Amazon’s product photo of the toilet. Looks like an elongated bowl, right?

It turned out to be the wrong toilet for me. I’m not exactly a small guy at 6’4″ and 220lbs. I constantly have problems at hotels where my .. carriage .. doesn’t fit inside a toilet without .. dipping and/or touching the front. (I’m trying to be polite, which is hard to do when talking about why a toilet doesn’t suit my needs. Not that you really needed to know, but whatever.)

The point is that I hate round bowl toilets because there’s not enough space front-to-back for my taste.

The full name of the toilet on Amazon is American Standard 270BD001.020 Cadet 3 Right Height Round Front Two-Piece Triangle Toilet with 12-Inch Rough-In, White. When I read “round front”, I thought that meant the front was rounded for aesthetic reasons as opposed to another hypothetical model which might have a more squared-off front. I’m no expert on toilet styles. Besides, “round front” sounds different than “round bowl”.

And to be fair it’s also the wrong picture of the toilet on Amazon’s product page. But to be super duper fair to Amazon, it’s probably American Standard’s fault because they have the wrong photo on their website. Check out this side-by-side of the “Round” version versus the “Elongated” version:

It’s rather hard to read, but you can click on the image for the full-size version.

Both of these pictures look the freaking same, and both look like elongated bowls. The point of my telling you all of this is that I don’t think it was 100% my fault that I ordered the wrong thing. But because I felt somewhat foolish at misunderstanding the “round” terminology, when it came to giving a reason for the return I put something like “I no longer need this item”. At any rate, I indicated that the return was my fault and so I was charged around $40 for shipping (which is pretty reasonable for a heavy, bulky, two-package order).

Lord of the Toilets: The Two Packages

I was issued a pre-paid UPS label for return because I’d opted to drop the toilet off at my local UPS Store. Pickup was quite a bit more expensive, even though I thought that it would be way easier.

But there’s the crux of the problem: I was issued one label for two packages. That didn’t seem right to me, so some communication ensued:

July 30

Hi,

I’m trying to return order [order number redacted], and the return was approved and a UPS label issued. However, the item (toilet) is split into 2 packages, so I need two return labels. (Unless I can use the same one twice, but I don’t believe UPS allows that.)

Thanks & regards,

Scott

Amazon replied promptly with the following:

July 30

Hello,

Thanks for contacting us.

I understand that you want to return the item and the item was split in to two packages.

In this case, you can use the same return mailing label twice on the both packages and you can return the item. There is no need to concern. UPS will accept the package.

If you want free UPS pick up to return the item, please let us know using the below link. We’ll create free UPS pick to return the item. So that UPS will pick up the item from your shipping address.

Please visit the following link to provide the information we requested:

http://www.amazon.com/rsvp-mi?c=[redacted]&q=o2r

We look forward to seeing you again.

We’d appreciate your feedback. Please use the links below to tell us about your experience today.

Best regards,
Reshmi [redacted].

The link provided in that last message was some kind of generic feedback form. It’s not valid anymore and so I can’t get a screenshot, but it basically asked for information that was redundant to what Amazon should already have in relation to this return. It had a comments field where I explained that I’d like to change from a drop-off to a pick-up on that order.

Then I waited. And waited. And waited some more. After 10 days with no response, I contacted Amazon customer service again:

August 9, 2016

Hi,

I used the link provided in your email, filled out the form, and requested a UPS pickup. But I haven’t heard anything back yet. This item is pretty bulky, so I’d much prefer a pick-up rather than having to drop it off at a UPS Store. If it’s not going to happen, please let me know before the return window is over.

Thanks & regards,
Scott

Amazon responded to that message right away with the following: (You don’t have to read the whole thing, just look at the bold bits.)

August 9

Hello,

Thank you for taking out time and writing back to us.

To make this right for you, I have arranged a UPS Pick-up for the item “American Standard 270BD001.020 Cadet 3 Right Height Round Front Two-Piece Triangle Toilet with 12-Inch Rough-In, White”.

UPS’s first attempt is typically made the first business day after a request is made, but it can take up to three business days for them to receive the pickup request. UPS will attempt the pickup at the address where the items were shipped. They’ll make three attempts to pick up your return if you aren’t available when they arrive.

When you request a UPS pickup for your return, the UPS driver will bring a pre-addressed, authorized return label. If the package has been opened, please repack it in a way similar to when it arrived.

Don’t worry; packing slips aren’t required to make a return.

UPS does not provide unattended pickup. You can contact UPS to see if they can give you more specific information about the timing of the pickup; their phone number is 1-800-PICK-UPS (1-800-742-5877).

Please reference this tracking number if you call them: [redacted]

We greatly appreciate your patience and understanding.

We look forward to seeing you again soon.

We’d appreciate your feedback. Please use the links below to tell us about your experience today.

Best regards,
Divya K

I was quite grateful that they finally arranged the pick-up, but was still a bit concerned that they were still talking about “a” return label. I figured that wasn’t really my problem (yet). I was a bit bummed that I’d have to be home, but fortunately my UPS driver usually comes between 6PM and 8PM.

But my next message to Amazon 6 days later sorta summarizes what happened in the meantime:

August 15

Hi,

This has turned into quite a problematic return process. I really do appreciate you arranging the UPS pick-up, because this is a bulky item and it saves me the hassle of bringing it to a UPS Store.

However, a couple of things: The instructions from Amazon said that I’d have to be home for the pickup. Unfortunately my UPS driver came at 5PM one day, 2PM the next, didn’t come at all the following day, and came today around 7PM. So it was difficult to coordinate. I contacted UPS on Twitter, and they said that I would NOT have to be home, and that I could leave the packages on my porch for pickup.

Today the UPS driver happened to come when I was just getting home from work, and he told me that he was only issued one return label — but this order came in 2 packages. If you look back in the history of this inquiry, you’ll see that I started off by asking if I could use the same UPS label for both packages. You guys said “yes”. The UPS driver says that cannot be done, and two separate labels with different tracking numbers would have to be issued.

He cancelled the pick-up in the meantime.

I really want to get this returned, so whatever help you can give me would be appreciated. Either I or the UPS driver would need to have 2 return labels issued.

Regards,
Scott

In my irritation, I also took to Facebook. I tagged UPS and Amazon, but they couldn’t be bothered:

But in the end Amazon really came through, offering to let me keep the toilet and the refund! It’s really generous, though I honestly don’t know what I’m going to do with the toilet. Also that’s not the end of the f$(*!ng story.

August 16

Hello Scott,

I am sorry to hear about the problem you had in returning the item “American Standard 270BD001.020 Cadet 3 Right Height Round Front Two-Piece Triangle Toilet with 12-Inch Rough-In, White “.

As you are our valuable customer I request you not to return the item back now as we do not want to cause you more trouble in returning this item to us. You’re welcome to keep donate dispose the item according to your choice.

Also you can see that already a refund is issued to you for this item.

Rest assured that you will not be charged for the same. Please do not sorry about the same.Your issue will be taken care of.

It is our privilege to have you as our valued customer and we want to make sure you are always taken care of.

If there is anything else you need help with, please feel free to contact us at any point of time. We are here 24 hours a day and 7 days a week for your assistance. Here’s a link to our Contact Us page:http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/contact-us/general-questions.html

Thank you for choosing Amazon. We appreciate your business and look forward to serving you again in the near future.

We’d appreciate your feedback. Please use the links below to tell us about your experience today.

Best regards,
aditi

Of course I responded with a very kind thank you note! I felt like that went above and beyond what I expected, and was a ridiculously good example of Amazon’s customer service.

But I don’t think it’ll take much imagination for you to guess what happened next, though it moves our story forward by almost a month:

September 16

Hi,

Again, I really appreciate the sentiment. But I was just re-charged for the purchase.

If you want me to send the toilet back, I’m still OK with that, but please let me know.

Regards,
Scott

The Refunded Refund

That’s right, Amazon unceremoniously pulled $270.74 out of my checking account a month after saying that the matter was settled.

The transactions related to all this nonsense.

Look, I’m not trying get one over on Amazon. I wanted to return the toilet. I really did. It’s been sitting in my living room for over 2 months, having not been pooped in at all.

But they offered to let me keep the it. That was their choice. But notice they kept the $39.04 for the return shipping. I mean, fair enough, because 40 bucks is a cheap price for a toilet. But for a toilet that I don’t want and will probably just donate to Habitat? Meh.

But they’ve now charged me $309.78 for an order that was originally $270.74. (Two $270.74 charges minus just $231.70 in the refund.)

The worst part is that their customer service has responded to my other emails in a matter of hours, yet it’s now been 4 days, and I’m starting to get worried.

I’ll update this saga when there’s some kind of resolution. I’m happy to return the toilet. I’m happy to donate the toilet. Whatever you want, Amazon. Just please let me know so I can put this to rest.

Here’s A Bullet List of Issues for People That Like Lists

• The photo on the Amazon product page was incorrect.
• Amazon only issued one shipping label for a two-package return.
• Amazon never responded to the feedback form that I was superfluously asked to fill out.
• Amazon insists that one shipping label can be duplicated onto many packages. UPS strongly disagrees.
• UPS says that I can leave return packages on my porch for unattended pickup. Amazon strongly disagrees.
• Amazon was quick to promise that I wouldn’t be charged for the toilet, but I was. A month later.
• Amazon still charged me the return fee of $40, even though I never returned it.
• This whole thing started with an order on July 4, and it’s now September 20.

I started off this post by saying that this indicates a deeper problem than just a bad rep or a one-off experience. Amazon really needs to get on the same page as UPS. I don’t know who’s right and who’s wrong, but I’m thinking that Amazon is wrong. If they’d issued two labels and let me leave the packages unattended for pick-up, this would have been resolved over a month ago with minimal fuss.

Then again, since I’m dealing in hypothetical “what if” scenarios: If they’d simply shipped the toilet pictured in the listing, I’d probably be pooping in the corner of the room like god intended instead of jammed up against the wall like an animal.

There’s a fundamental accounting problem if their system can bill me an extra $40 in this way. If this was my credit card and not my debit card, I might not have noticed the discrepancy because the transaction volume is higher and it would’ve spanned two statements.

And finally, I don’t think that the feedback form in question actually does anything. To this day I’ve received no acknowledgement of having sent a message, aside from the confirmation page on Amazon.com after I submitted it.

Some of This is My Fault

In fairness to Amazon, I did slow down this process a bit on my own. I didn’t unpack the toilet until a couple of weeks after delivery — I’d been waiting for a spare weekend to install it. In retrospect I should have taken it out to inspect it right away, but I didn’t.

I also took a while to get around to actually trying to bring the thing to the UPS Store. My car isn’t big enough for both packages, so it was going to take me two trips and over an hour. I procrastinated out of laziness, and I was really grateful for their offer of a free pick-up.

(Incidentally, I would have made the cutoff dates for the return despite my delay.)

My UPS guy also came at weird times when I was trying to give him the package. I couldn’t take a full day off of work just to facilitate this return, and though I did leave work early on those days, he came even earlier. It’s not his fault, of course, but it’s just one of those flukes of bad timing. I’ve seen him in my neighborhood after 7 PM quite a few times afterwards.

Also, I take some of the responsibility for ordering the wrong item. However, even though it said “round front”, the picture clearly shows an elongated bowl. It looks nothing like the actual item. American Standard’s site seemed to back up the fact that I was ordering an elongated bowl.

Your Feedback is Important to Us…

…and will be answered in the order received.

Seriously though, if you think I’m being an ass about this, let me know in the comments. And regardless of the long rant, I’m not all that worked up about it. I have confidence that Amazon will come through in the end.

Just for reference, here’s a screenshot of the Amazon listing with the incorrect picture. Looks like I bought at a good time, because it’s now $100 more expensive!

I’m a leftie, but all my life I’ve used right-handed mice in my left hand. I needed to replace my old Microsoft Optical Mouse, and found the DeathAdder Left-Handed Edition. It’s the perfect size and shape for me, but they did the weird thing of switching the left- and right-click buttons.

It’s easy enough in most any operating system to swap the buttons in settings. However — at least with Windows — the buttons are only changed locally. So when connecting to other hosts via Remote Desktop the buttons revert to their hardware configuration. That’s a no-go for me, but I liked the mouse so much that I decided to mod the hardware instead.

Fortunately, it’s very easy to reconfigure the buttons in the DeathAdder. The buttons are on a separate circuit board from the sensor and control circuitry. The boards are connected by a ribbon cable, and it’s just a matter of swapping two conductors on that cable.

Razer Support

I don’t make use of companies’ customer support too often, because I prefer to solve most problems myself. Plus, I’m more often than not completely disappointed by support interactions.

Razer’s support committed one of the cardinal sins as far as I’m concerned: They didn’t actually read my original email, and replied with a cookie-cutter solution (which didn’t solve anything).

Another pet peeve of mine is that they wouldn’t address the issue on Twitter, and instead directed me to their web-based support form on their site. I’m grateful that they responded quickly on Twitter, but the useless support response took over 24 hours.

.@RazerSupport Re the left hand DeathAdder; It's great, but are reversed buttons typical? Sadly changing in sw doesn't translate over RDP :/

— Scott Dot (@SCOTTdotdot) September 1, 2016

Basically what happened was that in my support submission I explained my issue with the buttons and their not working in RDP despite changing the buttons’ purpose via Control Panel, and more importantly asked the very specific question: “Is there a way to change the buttons in hardware?”. (There’s a button on the bottom of the mouse to change profiles, so I was hoping that it had an undocumented or poorly-documented ability to do that.)

The response that support gave was step-by-step instructions on switching the buttons around in the Windows settings. And that’s it.

I wrote back to them, briefly expressing my irritation that they didn’t actually read my original question, and asking again if the buttons could be switched in hardware.

The answer was no.

And that’s why this video exists.

The Background

The Missus and I flew to Florida a couple of days ago, and as usual we took JetBlue. The only eventful part of the flight was a pleasant arrival 30 minutes ahead of schedule. The flight crew had mentioned that the satellite TV was out of commission, and that all in-flight movies would be free for the duration.

I thought that was a good way of handling the issue, and figured that was the end of that.

However, the next day we both received emails from JetBlue stating that we’d been signed up for their Travel Bank, and that a $15 credit had been applied to both of our Banks in exchange for the inconvenience of the malfunctioning TV service! That kind of proactive customer service is fantastic, and one of the main reasons that we fly JetBlue.

Hello SCOTT

Thank you for choosing JetBlue.

The following credit has been applied to your Travel Bank account number: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX ^{(Ed. Note: Account # redacted)}

Service Credit: InFlight Entertainment 15.00

We‘re sorry that DIRECTV® service didn’t work during your flight—we know this is one of the many reasons our customers choose to fly with JetBlue. Please accept our sincere apologies and this flight credit for the inconvenience you recently experienced with us.

This credit, which expires 365 days from the date it is issued, is available for use on future travel with JetBlue and is non-transferable.

To book a flight using your Travel Bank credit, visit jetblue.com and choose Travel Bank as your form of payment.

You can check the balance and transactions of your Travel Bank account by clicking here. For more information about Travel Bank and your credits, please visit jetblue.com/help/travelbank. We thank you for your understanding and look forward to a future opportunity to welcome you onboard.

Sincerely,

JetBlue Airways

Plain-Text Passwords

Here’s where the story turns dark, at least from a security perspective: Because this Travel Bank was a new service for both of us, and because JetBlue likewise had to create accounts for us, they sent us a password to get started.

Unlike — oh, I don’t know — every other website in the world, they didn’t send us randomly generated passwords. No.

THEY RE-USED OUR OUR TRUE BLUE ACCOUNT PASSWORDS, AND SENT THEM TO US IN PLAIN TEXT.

Click on this image for the full-size version.

This is a big deal for three reasons, the last of which is maybe a little less than obvious to most:

When emails are transmitted across the internet they are generally not encrypted. This means that your password would be visible to any server or router between JetBlue and your email service. It might be stored, intercepted, or otherwise snooped at any point along the journey.

Perhaps more importantly, anyone that gained access to your email account would know your password. That may seem unlikely (after all, you probably don’t have a crack team of international hackers trailing your every move), but anyone that happened across your phone could see the password.

If that doesn’t sound important, then in my opinion this last point is the worst faux pas of all. Wait, it’s not a faux pas. It’s more an act of pure ignorance and/or negligence: It’s obvious that JetBlue is storing your password in plain text, or at the very least with reversible encryption.

This means that, were hackers to get access to JetBlue’s user account database (unlike you, JetBlue may indeed be targeted by their friendly neighborhood team of international hackers), they could see your password.

And you may store your credit card info in your True Blue account. If so, anyone with access to your account could book flights to your card. Moreover, how secure is your card number if your password isn’t properly secured? That’s the kind of question I shouldn’t have to ask of “New York’s favorite airline”.

And I’m betting that you use that same True Blue password for at least one of your other accounts, perhaps even something critical like your banking or credit card accounts.

Change your Password

The moral of this story is that you should change your password. Not just with JetBlue, but make sure you use a different password for JetBlue than any of your other accounts.

Actually, it’s a best practice to use different passwords for each of your online accounts. Realistically that can be a huge pain in the ass, so even I don’t do it 100% of the time.

The moral of the story for JetBlue: For the love of internet security, use non-reversible encryption to protect our account information! You should never be able to know my password. That principle comes straight out of a community college Web Design 101 course, and you’re an international airline!

Air in a Can

This is a follow-up of sorts to my Bullsh*t Product: Boost Oxygen video. If you don’t know what that is and you’re too lazy to click the link (is that click-baiting or just click-dicking?), Boost O2 sells oxygen in a can for various phony baloney health benefits.

I mentioned in the video that Boost wasn’t the only company shilling this sort of thing, and indeed I was right: News stories about Vitality Air have been making the rounds on social media in the last few days. And the stories are on relatively legitimate websites like CNBC, Fortune, and CNN.

Fortunately the stories have primarily been about how clever a business model it is to sell cans of air to dying Chinese people, and have not been about the “health benefits” of sucking down air or O2 from a can.

Are they Serious?

According to the story in Fortune, Vitality Air got its start selling Ziploc bags of air on eBay for 99 cents as a novelty.

A space emperor inhales from his can of Perri-air, circa long ago.

Eventually the founders of the company moved up to compressed air in cans (along with compressed O2) with a direct-to-customer sales strategy. They changed from a “novelty” company to a “kinda sort health” company, business has picked up, and Vitality Air can’t ship this stuff out fast enough. And it’s becoming popular in the Chinese market.

As I long belabored in my Boost Oxygen video, cans of Oxygen (let alone regular air) like the ones sold by Vitality Air, Boost Oxygen, Oxygen4Energy, and Oxygen Plus are completely useless. They won’t help a beleaguered middle class Chinese guy as he hacks his way towards an agonizing and cancerous death.

Their Pitch

Vitality Air looks like they cribbed their pitch directly from Boost Oxygen. Or maybe it was the other way around; I really have no idea, but I’m pretty sure that Boost came first. Either it’s a case of the one ripping off the other, or (more likely) there’s only so much to say about supplemental oxygen that a lawyer will let you put on a website.

Here’s what they have to say for themselves, taken right from their homepage:

The human body, and all living organisms alike cannot function at its best without a regular supply of high quality air/oxygen. The human body can easily live without food and water for weeks, and without sleep for around 7 days, however the effects of lack of oxygen can happen within minutes!

That’s almost an exact quote from Boost. And so I’ll inexactly repeat myself, too: We’re not living in an Oxygen-deficient environment. Neither are people in Beijing. So while you’re not wrong in those claims, they are completely irrelevant.

Our bodies require a regular supply of premium oxygen in order to function at its peak performance. By supplying our customers with fresh clean air as well as oxygen, we allow them to boost energy levels in a natural way, helps with hangovers, alertness, and working out!

“Premium oxygen”? What the shit is “premium oxygen”? Oxygen gas is specifically something that cannot come in varieties of “premiumness”. It’s either O2 or it ain’t.

And once again: For a healthy individual, supplemental oxygen does not provide any additional energy. A normal, healthy individual in a non-oxygen-deficient environment will have all 100% of their hemoglobin bound to oxygen. The best thing that they will accomplish by using supplemental O2 is to significantly increase the dollar (or yuan) cost of their exhalations.

Inhaling “fresh clean air” likewise will do absolutely nothing to increase energy.

And no, hangovers are not an illness that can be cured or improved by supplemental oxygen. (The placebo effect? That works wonders!)

As we continue to live in highly polluted areas, we are your solution to pollution!

YOU ARE NOT THE SOLUTION TO POLLUTION. If you want to argue this point, then answer these two questions: What is “tidal volume”, and how many liters of oxygen (or air) are in your cans?

For those of you that don’t know, tidal volume is the quantity of air that you inhale (and exhale) with each breath. Your own tidal volume will mostly depend upon your lung capacity and your level of activity. For example, a person with a lung capacity of 4 liters can inhale 4 liters of air (or oxygen) on each breath: That’s if they breathe in fully and deeply. At rest they will inhale and exhale a lower quantity of oxygen. Let’s say 1 liter.

If these cans of bullsh*t oxygen had a flow rate that matched the rate of a user’s inhalation (they don’t), and if their delivery mechanism allowed for a tight seal to the user’s face (they don’t), the user would get about 8 inhalations from one of their large 7.7 liter cans, at rest. At a cost of ten, twenty, or thirty dollars for each can, that’s a hell of a way to waste your money. A few extra lung-fulls of oxygen or clean air isn’t going to help you out in a toxic environment.

The reason that Vitality, Boost and all the others make grand claims such as “lasts up to 150 one second inhalations” is because the nozzles on the cans put out gas at such a low rate that barely any gas is emitted. So even if you believe the hype that oxygen or fresh mountain air is good for you, remember that you’re hardly getting any of it into your lungs on each breath.

Meaning that if you’re in a polluted environment and you’re sucking on one of these cans, you’ll be breathing something like 95% polluted air and 5% clean air (or oxygen) each time you inhale.

Oh, and that’s to say nothing for the oh-so-ironic environmental damage that results from shipping cans of air all around the globe.

Speaking of Irony…

I myself have been obsessively critical of FedEx on this very site. But S.co.tt is branded as some random jerk on the internet, not a snake-oil salesman trying to appear legit.

And so that’s why I don’t think it’s too hypocritical to share one of Vitality Air’s Twitter rants:

I’ll just leave that there. Take it for what you will.

If you have any experiences with Vitality Air’s products, good or bad, I’ve love to know about it in the comments!

I get it. At this point you’re probably thinking “What the hell is this guy’s problem? Two videos??“

It’s not like I’m obsessed with Boost Oxygen. In fact, I’ve already moved on to my next fecal-laden product. But when I was shooting the Boost video I decided to go over some of the incoherent ramblings of idiots reviews on Amazon and Sports Authority that I found while doing research on this product. (Yes, I did a modicum of actual research believe it or not.)

What is This Thing?

Hopefully you haven’t heard of Boost Oxygen. Hopefully you haven’t been tempted to plunk down your hard-earned cash on a useless tin can containing 95% pure nonsense.

Did I say “nonsense”? Sorry, I meant that’s it’s full of 95% pure oxygen. According to the manufacturer it’s the “source of life”, so you better go out and buy it now!

The manufacturer also loosely implies benefits to sports performance, general health and wellness, hangover recovery, and altitude sickness. That’s all bullsh*t, of course. Watch the video to find out why.

And Another Thing…

The video discusses two main reasons why this product is unadulterated B.S., but one thing I didn’t mention was the Food and Drug Administration.

You see, supplemental oxygen is used in medicine for all sorts of valid and useful reasons. In fact, it can save the life of someone if they’re ill. But medical oxygen requires a prescription, and Boost Oxygen, LLC is more than happy to point out that they can now sell oxygen in a convenient and practical manner — over the counter.

Yet they fail to mention that oxygen can be used to help you if you’re sick.

If they made a claim like that, then they would be selling a medical product and the FDA would be entirely up their ass about it. Instead, they can only make vague and unsubstantiated claims about the product’s benefits. The FDA exists for a good reason, and although they might be poorly funded and their enforcement powers may have been robustly castrated, they prevent companies like Boost Oxygen, LLC from promising life-saving effects that they can’t deliver. And that avoids killing the suckers that might buy it instead of their prescribed O2.

The bottom line here is this: Do your own research into any “health and wellness” product before you buy it. Hopefully that’s why you’re here, reading this post.

Don’t Forget the Links

I referenced some research papers, reviews, and websites in my video. You can find all of them here, which I’ll try to keep up to date when I get more information.

http://plr.io/1rb

And last of all, please let me know if I’ve made any mistakes or left anything out either in the comments below or on my YouTube video.

Apparently I was so distressed by the non-metal “metal” Defiant power strip from Home Depot that I made a video about it.

If you hate videos but love text, then mosey on over to my previous post about this travesty of a product, and follow my adventures getting pissed off about their HDX Whatever Something Light.

They’ve Rejected Another of My Fine Reviews

As regular readers of s.co.tt already know (basically just me), Home Depot had previously rejected my valiant attempt to warn other consumers about the fire hazard posed by one of their crap lamps.

Now, I’m publicly complaining about it being done yet again. This time they’ve rejected my upstanding and surely excellent review of their "Defiant Metal Surge with 4 ft. Cord".

Two Days Ago…

Before I present my review, let me take you back to a special and turbulent period of time in my life: Two days ago.

I went to my local Home Depot to pick up a couple of power strips. Rather than go for the cheaply-made five dollar plastic ones, I spotted a couple of power strips that were made of metal.

Not only are metal power strips more durable, they’re also safer in the event of an internal short. Metal doesn’t burn (at least not at reasonable temperatures) unlike the plastic of a lower-quality strip. So a short circuit doesn’t necessarily mean an electrical fire: It more likely would mean a short to ground and a tripped circuit as the insulation melts off the internal wiring.

Hence I was willing to spend about three times the price for a metal power strip (not all surge protectors are power strips, and not all power strips are surge protectors, by the way; This one just happens to be both).

Here’s the item that was on display:

This is taken straight from HomeDepot.com, and is exactly what I saw in the store. Click image to enlarge.

See that? Clear as day it says Metal Surge Protector. That grey top part of the power strip is clearly made of metal.

Yes, there are obvious plastic end caps covering the metal both at the top and bottom, but to me it seemed wise to wrap the metal in dent-resistant plastic. Surely that was an extra sign of quality.

Then I took the power strips home, and here’s what one looks like out of the box:

Needless to say, I was pissed off. This is not a metal surge protector. This is a plastic surge protector with a thin bit of metal over the top.

In of itself I have no problem with this product. Plastic power strips aren’t the worst thing in the world. My problem is that it’s clearly advertised as being made of metal when in fact less than 30 percent of the casing is metal.

At what point does a power strip start being "metal"? I mean, does the copper in the wiring and contacts count? Because if so, then all power strips are "metal".

To my mind a "metal" power strip is one in which the entire shell is made of metal. Such power strips do exist; I didn’t just invent the freaking concept so that I could get myself all frothed up. A little bit of decorative metal on top does not make it a "metal" power strip.

The Review

Needless to say, I gave this a 1-star review on HomeDepot.com. Here’s the original text that I submitted:

I prefer the durability and safety of metal surge protectors/power strips.

I bought this instead of a less expensive power strip because it proudly proclaims on the box that it is a “metal surge protector”.

Well, it has a metal cover plate. And that’s the only part of the power strip that’s visible from outside the packaging, so there’s no reason to believe that every other part of it is made of plastic.

There are two plastic end caps, and the entire base/chassis is plastic. Otherwise it seems like a power strip of reasonable quality. But I can’t recommend it because it’s sold as a “metal surge protector” and the majority of it is plastic.

Home Depot clearly did not agree with my stance on this issue, because they rejected my review a couple of days later.

I understand why they wouldn’t want to publish the review. It’s not flattering in the least. But that doesn’t make it any less of a valid review. Let me explain:

When reviewing a product, it has to be judged on the basis of reasonable expectations. In other words, it would be completely unfair to give a poor review to a Honda Civic simply because it won’t go 190 miles per hour like a high-end Ferrari. Yes, they’re both cars, but there was never a reasonable expectation that a Civic could go that fast. And so each car could receive an equally valid 5-star review because they meet (or exceed) the relative expectations of their respective customers.

Likewise, if Honda claimed that the Civic could go 190 MPH and someone bought it solely on that basis, they’d be perfectly justified in giving it a bad review when it could barely reach 125. (This is in my most humble of opinions, of course.)

So, if this product never said that it was a "Metal Surge Protector" then I may have given it a decent review, or at the very least left it alone.

However, they set a clear expectation that it would be made of metal, yet it was not. That means that the product doesn’t live up to the manufacturers claim, and it fails to deliver on expectations. It fails hard.

What do You Think?

Am I being too curmudgeonly? Would this product meet your expectations based on what you see? Let me know in the comments.

The Amazon Dash Button: Stupid or Dumb?

If you’re not an avid Amazon shopper then you may have missed their latest foray into consumer electronics: The Amazon Dash Button. It’s basically less than you can imagine: You press a futuristic garage-door-opener-type-thing and Amazon orders some crap to your door.

I’m not exaggerating. It’s a small device with a single button, and its only purpose is to order a single product of a single brand. My comparison to a garage door opener is quite apt, except that instead of opening a door you’re spending an arbitrary amount of money. Maybe it’s more like a reverse raffle.

And hey! If you did already hear about the Dash Button, then maybe you want to know what makes it tick, eh? Well, here’s your chance because I cracked one open and showed you the gooey, creamy center.

In the first place, it’s embarrassing just to admit that I get my hair cut at Supercuts. There’s a stigma associated with that brand: They call their locations “salons” (I wish there was something better than quotation marks to indicate derision), which is not manly enough for some men. And for women they’re seen as a bargain basement alternative to an actual salon.

I guess it’s not a problem for the child demographic.

But yeah, I get my hair cut at Supercuts. It’s not a considered choice but a matter of pure inconvenience.

I’m about done with your brand

Dear Supercuts: First let’s talk about your website. You redid it recently and added some interactive functionality. There’s now an “estimated wait” and “check in” for each location. That’s great, in theory.

It would be even better if either of those functions had any bearing whatsoever in reality.

Estimated Wait

There are two Supercuts locations within about 7 minutes of my house. I’d love to just go to the one with the least wait. And since you rolled out the new site some months ago, I’ve been a good customer and diligently checked the wait times before leaving my house.

Those wait times have been accurate once. But I’m pretty sure that was due to coincidence and not some stroke of genius on the part of your infrastructure.

Let’s take today by example. I checked the wait times. The location that’s closer to me estimated a 15 minute wait, the farther location 10 minutes.

I tried to check in online at the closer location, but I’ll get to that failure in a minute.

When I arrived, I counted eight people waiting for a cut versus two “stylists”. Now, I’m no expert in hair cut scheduling but there’s no way that two “stylists” could get through eight customers in 15 minutes. That would verge on an hour at best.

So I did what I usually do in that situation and headed to the other location, the one with the “10 minute” wait.

There were only two people in the waiting area. Score!

Except I was greeted and told by one “stylist” that it would be a half-hour wait, and that they would be closing in half an hour. The other “stylist” looked at his watch and said something like, “yeah, we close in 35 minutes and there are still two people waiting, sorry.

As long as I’ve segued to real life from the internet, let’s talk about something which you clearly don’t understand. Maybe you’re confusing this term with the infamous song by Semisonic:

Closing Time

To be clear: Your customers don’t care in the slightest what time your employees’ shifts are over. So why do you publish that time on your website?

Instead, why not post the latest time at which a customer is welcome to walk in the door?

In the example from today — when I was told that the location closed in 35 minutes and I was turned away — I had actually walked in at 4:20 PM. The location closed at 5:00 PM. Why do you want to actively piss off your customers by turning them away even a minute before the posted closing time?

If your employees go home at 5 PM on a Sunday that’s absolutely fine with me. Of course they don’t want to be stuck there all night. They have families and better things to do. So why not just post on your website that the location closes at 4:30 PM?

Because again, as a customer, I don’t give the slightest bit of bull plop as to when your people go home. Just tell me when I can no longer get my hair cut.

And if your useless website hadn’t sent me to the first location with false hope, I would have been at the second store 10 minutes earlier and probably would’ve had a shot.

“Closing time?” It’s not the first time.

If this was an occasional thing then I wouldn’t even bring it up. But in other instances I’ve arrived at one of your stores anywhere from 20 minutes to 45 minutes before “closing time” to find the doors locked and people inside getting their hair cut.

I think that I’ve made my point. Let’s get back to your useless website.

“Check in”

I’m not sure what the issue is, but take a look at this screenshot:

Click for full size. (Note the time says 16:47. I took the screenshot after I got back from jackassing around town trying to get my hair cut.)

I filled in my information with no problem, until I got to the “Your Time” field. Touching that field caused it to be outlined in blue, as with the dropdown above. However, no options were displayed and nothing else happened. No error message, no loading indicator. Nothing.

I figured that it might not be a required field, so I hit the “CHECK ME IN” button. Again, nothing. No response at all, not even a message telling me that the time field was required.

I can guess what your response will be, oh Supercuts “Tech Department” (remember, I’m using quotes to indicate derision): It’s probably something on your end.

Nope. I’m kinda between phones right now, so I tried this on both a Motorola Nexus 6 and an HTC One. Both running Android 5 (Lollipop), and both running the latest version of Chrome.

Maybe you’re going to say that I’m “using an unsupported browser”, but that would be a stupid excuse.

Mobile Browser Market Share – May 2015 (Source: www.netmarketshare.com)

And don’t blame my internet connection, either. I can write an entirely new post on why that’s unlikely to be the problem.

Finally (before I put this particular matter to rest) I see that you’re strongly pushing your mobile app. The answer to that questions is, “no, I’m not installing an app just so that I can get the occasional haircut.”

Such an app is pointless. It’s going to need an internet connection to (theoretically) obtain wait times and to allow users to check in. I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that it doesn’t need advanced graphics with native calls to a GPU. So ask yourself why did we spend money developing an app in the first place?

At least you listen

I write these kind of posts for my own catharsis, even though they generally turn a small waste of time into a massive waste of time. A few months ago I posted to your Facebook page about another issue, and I’m glad to see that it’s since been fixed.

Click for full size.

In Conclusion

I don’t know how much you spent on that new website, but one thing is for certain: It was either too much or not enough.

Let me see if I can successfully delve into the past to discover what happened…

You outsourced the development of your new website. Those developers work on Macbooks. They use iPhones. Your site works really, really well on Safari.

Please let me know if that’s true.

(Yes, you do even need to test your mobile website on BlackBerry OS and Windows.)

Yes, FedEx again

I’m waiting on yet another delivery from FedEx, and this time it’s arriving via their SmartPost service.

And so I’m writing yet another tirade about their incomprehensibly incompetent approach to package delivery.

As far as I understand, their “Smart”Post service works like this: The merchant from whom I ordered gives the package to FedEx and pays them. FedEx then brings the package to a post office near to the recipient, and lets the good ol’ USPS handle the “last mile” of delivery.

I fail to understand the point of this service. I mean I get that it saves FedEx the cost of bringing a truck to my house because the mailman is stopping at my house anyway.

How-frukking-ever, it doesn’t actually make anything more efficient. The United States Postal Service already has the infrastructure in place to move my package over the long haul, so why not just let them do all the work?

This more “cost effective” (somehow) service simply introduces a second point of failure. Now instead of just worrying about FedEx screwing up my delivery, I have to worry about both FedEx and the United States Postal Service screwing up my delivery.

Not only that, but it’s far slower to make the delivery this way.

Here’s an example

Do you see that? Eight days in transit with FedEx followed by “one or two additional days” for the USPS leg. That’s only 1200 miles, or a 19 hour drive according to Google.

But guess what: USPS would deliver the same package end-to-end in 4 days, assuming a ship day of Friday! And it would only cost $3.58 (via First-Class Mail Parcel). How much less could FedEx SmartPost possibly cost? I’d gladly have paid a dollar more for a 7 day reduction in delivery time!

And as usual, FedEx can’t even meet the expectations which they themselves set: “Transit Times typically 2 to 7 business days within the contiguous U.S., based on the final destination ZIP code“. What a joke.

And I had to look this up because I’m no expert on Minnesotian geography:

That’s right, it took FedEx roughly 44 hours to move a tiny package 53 miles. That’s an average of 1.2 MPH.

Literally — literally — an old lady with a cart full of groceries could make a faster delivery.

For the love of all that’s holy, get your head out of your ass, FedEx.

Logging into Verizon.com

I log into Verizon’s Small Business portal once a month to pay my bills. Generally speaking, their site is atrocious. It’s clearly the product of committee thinking and their fractured corporate structure.

They recently implemented a redesign of the login portion, and somehow they resurrected good ol’ Frank Kafka and put him on the committee.

I may have buried the lede of this story. So unless you just enjoy reading my rants, skip right to it.

The initial login screen

As with many banking and commerce websites, Verizon has implemented a separate page for your username which precedes the password entry page. This is good security practice and so I have no problem with it in general.

Just for the example here, I’m using the username whoopswrongspelling. What really happened was that I transposed two characters in my username, so it might as well have been whoopswrongspelling. That was my mistake, of course, but it’s a mistake that’s sufficiently common that it shouldn’t cause the website to malfunction.

And so I’m prompted for my password. Perfectly normal so far. I’d realized that I had misspelled my username, so I did what a normal user would do and hit the back button.

I correctly entered my username (again, I’m obviously just using okrightspelling as an example here, though maybe that’s what Tori Spelling uses as her login).

No, that’s not a re-post of the first screenshot.

Even though the first username I’d entered was completely invalid they chose to store that information and ignore the correct username I’d since entered.

The Solution (is Obvious)

Of course, it’s not a completely circular corkscrew of illogic. There is quite obviously a “Sign in as a different User (sic)” link on the password entry page. However, I was never signed in as the user whoopswrongspelling and I can only assume that such a user doesn’t exist.

Despite there being an obvious solution, there are still two separate bugs causing this problem:

They shouldn’t be saving an invalid username in the session (or via cookie and database — whatever). That just doesn’t make sense.

Also, a subsequent login attempt should overwrite the prior login attempt. Once I’d entered okrightspelling and hit “Sign in”, that should have obviated the existing login. That’s both for reasons of privacy and security as well as practicality.

If Only I Could Tell Verizon…

I’m going to post a link to this rant on Verizon’s Facebook page. But otherwise there’s no official channel by which I can report website bugs.

There’s a section on their website to report security vulnerabilities but the issue at hand more represents a frustration and a lack of best practices than a security vulnerability. Actually, this is a security vulnerability.

If you want to talk to Verizon, their customer service infrastructure is where Josef K would feel right at home. Do you have an issue with a POTS line and your FiOS TV? Oh, that’s two different departments, so I’m going to have to transfer you. Or, you’re a business customer, huh? Well, you’ll have to call the business center back between the hours of 9-5 Monday through Friday.

The Security Vulnerability

When logging in on my home computer, I’d checked the box to “Remember My ID“. I assumed that was why my username was being saved, but it turns out that I was wrong.

I just opened a clean private browsing session and did the same test. The results were the same.

That kinda ruins the whole point of improving security via a two-step login process.

This indicates to me that if you were to attempt to login to Verizon’s site on a public or shared computer, the next user would be able to see your username, even if you did not opt to have it saved.

Of course, this only is a problem if you fail to login. But this would effect anyone that forgets their password and for whatever reason doesn’t complete the “forgot password” process. That seems like a rather improbable case, but consider that Verizon has tens (hundreds?) of thousands of small business customers, so even if that only effected 0.1% of users it would effect a lot of people.

Make that: “Millions of Customers”

Their residential customers uses the same login forms. So if they have 10 million customers that can login to their internet portal (which is not an improbable number) and this bug effects only 0.01% of them, that’s still ten thousand customers.

Test it for Yourself

Make up a couple of really improbable usernames, and go to the login page.

But Wait! There’s More!

This is the security bug to end all security bugs (that I’ve found so far).

Try this:

Step 1: Open a fresh, clean, private browsing session and go to Verizon’s small business login page.

Step 2: Enter a username and click the “Sign In” button. I found this bug using my real username, but it also works with a fake one, so enter whatever you want.

Step 3: Wait 10 minutes. That’s right, have some patience and just let your browser sit on this page for about ten minutes. I don’t know that 10 minutes is a magic number, just that I personally don’t have the patience to try decrementing time intervals to find the floor of the time frame.

I’ve entered "secretpassword" in the password box.

Step 4: Now that it’s been 10 minutes, enter your password in the “password” box. Use a fake password, though. Again, when I first found this bug I was using my real user ID and my real password, but a fake one works just the same and is recommended for reasons that will become obvious.

Step 5: Observe that your password is displayed in plain text under the words “Your User ID is”.

I swear that I’m not making it up. These are actual screenshots that I took while going through those exact steps.

Oh man, that’s a doosie.

I can only imagine that Verizon’s servers have some sort of timeout after which they confuse the password field with the username field. But how in the holy heck did the developers even manage that? And how little testing and code review did they do before pushing this code out for use by their millions of customers?

Again, this won’t effect everyone, but I fell upon it by accident when I got a phone call in the middle of the two-step login process. If I was trying to login at say, an airport or a coffee shop (I hear that’s where normal people go to web browse), anyone looking over my shoulder would have seen my password.

But wait! There’s EVEN MORE!

Since I originally posted this rant, this Verizon thing has been nagging at the back of my mind. One burning question, actually: What else is there?

There’s no way that they could have made both a buggy and sloppy login process as well as one that’s secure and trustworthy. I’m no "hacker", so I don’t want to delve too deep into this and risk any kind of legal action, however…

Just a guess that they might use Oracle

That’s what they call SQL injection. You put a piece of SQL in a website’s input box, with the hope (or in this case worry) that it will be executed.

I should note that the SQL query I injected was not destructive and would not reveal customer data to me. I’m not trying to compromise Verizon’s database maliciously, but rather trying to see if it could be compromised.

It produced a username of null.

That doesn’t look like a big deal, right? No secret data was revealed, and there was no catastrophic failure.

Well, as a developer that has written many a login form, let me tell you that it is a big fracking deal.

The word “null” should never be shown to the end user in this sort of context. Never. When a null is spit out by a database or some user interface code and makes it to the user’s screen, that means that something completely unplanned went wrong.

What should have resulted was a nice, polite error on the second login page along the lines of “I’m sorry, but there was an error with your login attempt. Please try again”. Period. End of discussion.

And SQL injection attacks are extremely common. So it’s something for which every web developer (let alone the development team at a multi-billion dollar company) should forsee and for which they should plan.

While this simple emission of “null” from the website is superficially minor, it tells a story: That they didn’t do even basic testing on this login process. It also may mean that my SQL injection did work, but the results of my injected query didn’t percolate up to the user interface.

But something like a DELETE statement doesn’t need to return a result set.

Next, I figured I’d take a peek at the HTTPS traffic going back and forth with Verizon. There was nothing earth shattering, but there is this:

Looks like I probably guessed correctly that they’re using an Oracle DB.

It is bad practice to put the type, let alone version, of your webserver in your response. Why? A few reasons, but chiefly because it tells potential attackers exactly which vulnerabilities to try exploiting first.

Certain versions of certain web and application servers have particular vulnerabilities. Knowing which one they’re targeting is a huge leg up for a malicious “hacker”.

Moreover, because I now know that they’re using Oracle iPlanet and Oracle OpenSSO, I can be reasonably certain that their data is stored in an Oracle database. It only makes sense, right? So now a black hat would also have a solid starting point for any kind of SQL-centric attack.

Do you trust these guys with your personal information yet?

Another crazy thing is that the login form seems to allow for unlimited characters in the user ID field, and there is no pre-processing to truncate the field. It will POST the entire string.

Interestingly, if I threw a ~1,000,000 character string of zeros into the field I was immediately 302 redirected to another login page. (The browser truncated my input to ~27,000 characters during the form submission.)

Again, that should result in a user-friendly error, not a mysterious redirect.

By the Way, Verizon

At least keep your capitalization and punctuation consistent. I don’t grammar-police people on the street, because rules are meant to be broken in casual conversation and in rants on s.co.tt. But you are a multi-billion dollar company writing a very formal website. Details should matter to you.

If it were one tiny mistake out of pages of text, of course I’d forgive you. But in these two simple portions of what should be two simple web pages, you frucked up quite a lot.

• In all the other places that I’ve seen it mentioned, your portal’s branding is “My Business”. Yet you’ve omitted the space between those two words in the sentence “If only all business were as easy as MyBusiness”.
• Speaking of that same sentence, there is no period at the end of it.
• One more thing about that sentence: You’ve consistently used the word “business” in the context of “my [small] business”, meaning a company; A singular noun. Yet here you’re using it first in the plural sense of activities of a business-like nature, then in the sense of “MyBusiness”, the implied form of a singular noun. The point is that it seems out of place here and reads poorly due to too much cleverness and too little utility.
• The phrase “Keep me signed in” ends in a period, but neither “Uncheck if using a public/shared computer” nor “Remember My ID” ends in one.
• To again contrast two of those phrases: The word “My” is capitalized as if part of a title, but the preceding option label did not capitalize “me” nor “signed” in a similar style. It’s just an odd discrepancy seeing as they’re contextually identical.
• The text of the “Forgot User ID” link capitalizes the word “user”. User is neither a proper noun, nor is that phrase part of a title. (I realize that you may be referring to some kind of perceived elevation of the User such that it’s become a proper title, however that doesn’t jibe well with me.)

Sorry to go on, but I have a few simple design points as well:

• Why is “Where do I enter my password” a link? It just opens a tiny popup with two short sentences of explanation. Why not just put the explanation on the page, and not make the user work for it?
• The “Forgot User ID” link is not aligned with the “Sign In” button. It looks like it’s lost in space.
• This is more of a preference than a rule, but generally (which is to say on every other website) temporary field values are in grey or another non-input-entry color. In other words, in the “User ID” text box, the phrase “User ID” should be a lighter or different color to the text of the user ID entered by the actual user.

As for this page:

• I can’t help but notice that the login on the previous page was entitled “MY BUSINESS SIGN IN”, yet here the title is “Sign In to My Business”. It’s just inconsistent is all. I’d be accepting of either, but not both.
• The word “in” should not be capitalized in the title of this page.
• Again, you seem to be suffering under the misconception that I am the Official and Only User and that I have a User ID.
• I see that Password has also been elevated to the position of an Official Title. I feel so important! (This occurs twice on the page).
• There’s a sentence on the right side of the page that bothers me. It ends in the words “your My Business”. I’ll grant that it’s clear and correct that “My Business Account” is the title of this area. (Or is it? Until now you’ve never added the word “account” after the title “My Business”.) Anyway, my point is that “your my” sounds bizarre. A better turn of phrase might have been simply “[..] online security of your account”.
• “Sign In as a different user”. Again, your Capitalization Addiction rears its Ugly Head. (I’m still trying to get over my hyphen-addiction, so I feel for you.)

I only have one design note for this particular area:

• Whereas on the previous page I complained that the default text in the “User ID” box was the same black as a user’s entry, in this page you’ve completely switched styles to a border-less grey box containing a darker grey default text for the “Password” input.

I know that I’m nitpicking. I like to nitpick. But it makes the point that even with giant committees, billions of dollars, and a labyrinthine corporate structure you can still miss the details. It also sends a bad message.

Haphazard and slapped together is not what I want to picture when thinking of my telecommunications carrier.

Update: 2015-04-22

It’s been about a week since I posted the above rant. Today I received an email from Verizon stating that my account may have been compromised and that my password has been changed.

Of course my first thought was that this was a phishing email (I don’t know my own VZ account number offhand to confirm). And by the way before you click on a link in any email, check the bottom of your web browser window to confirm the destination. I did that, and they were in fact linking me to verizon.com.

While it’s completely possible that my account was coincidentally compromised within a week of my rant, I like to think that it just took them a week to catch up with all my crazy login attempts that I made while testing out their login process. Is that the case? I’ll probably never know.

It Keeps Getting Worse

In that email they advise that I can easily and securely reactivate a Primary account online at verizon.com/bizchangepassword. Great! Let’s do that.

The link that they provided in the email redirects to signin.verizon.com. As you can see from the screenshot, that site is down. And just so you don’t think that my internet connection is faulty, I opened up a ping to verizon.com. Unfortunately signin.verizon.com wasn’t responding to a ping, though it did resolve in DNS.

That’s very disheartening. My ISP’s site is down. Meanwhile, my personal rambles on this blog are perfectly accessible. Guy with servers in his basement: 1, multi-billion dollar national corporation: 0.

Just to be clear, Home Depot: Your terrible, terrible light has not been libeled.

The Rejected Review

I know that I tend to be harsh in my criticisms, but this is the most recent review that I tried to post to Home Depot’s site regarding their HDX 150-Watt Incandescent Clamp Light CE-300PDQ:

Very rarely do I wish I could give a product a negative number of stars, but this is one of them.

I know that for under ten bucks I shouldn’t expect an extremely high-quality, durable item. I know that at this price the light could fall apart completely after a bit of use and it wouldn’t be a huge deal.

But what it absolutely shouldn’t do is cause a fire, which is what TWO out of the SIX of these I own was about to do.

Let me explain: I bought six of these in total from 2 different Home Depots in my area for some hobbyist videography lighting. The point is that the faulty units came from different stores on different days, so they might well have been from separate lots.

The first faulty light that I bought developed a problem after about 3 weeks of very light use (no pun intended): The bulb wouldn’t illuminate unless it was wiggled into a very specific position. It wasn’t a problem with the contacts or the bulb — the issue was inside the socket assembly, which is riveted together and inaccessible.

With a bulb in just the “right” position the fixture would work. Except that after about a month of occasional use the bulb would flicker, and along with flickering it would make the sound of an electrical arc. Again, not the bulb’s fault — I swapped out the bulb more than a couple of times and the problem was the same. The contacts looked good, the wire was secure in the base, the switch seemed OK.

The second bad fixture worked for a little while. Then suddenly I went to plug it in and got no light, but really loud arcing quickly followed by smoke. It was doing this regardless of whether the switch was on or off. Needless to say I unplugged it, but being curious I removed the bulb and plugged the fixture back in. I still got the loud arcing.

This is clearly a problem with the units themselves.

These fixtures never left my basement. They were never dropped or abused; In fact, they were probably used for a total of a few hours. I was using 24W CFLs, too — not something that would generate a lot of heat. And those same CFLs worked (and still work) absolutely fine in other fixtures.

That’s why I’d recommend strongly AGAINST buying this product. If I’d have left either of those fixtures unattended or on a timer, I’d probably wouldn’t have time to write this review since I’d be too busy haggling with the insurance company over the price of a new house.

If you already own these, don’t leave them unattended. They may be working fine now, but just wait…

And the guidelines cited by Home Depot when rejecting my review:

• Focus on the product. Yup, I did that.
• Avoid writing about customer service issues – instead, contact us to discuss your concerns. I did not write about customer service issues.
• Do not mention competitors or the specific price you paid. I did mention that it was “under ten bucks”, but that is most certainly not the specific price.
• Do not include any personally identifiable information such as your full name or address. I’m OK here, too. I was tempted to post my social security number, but I refrained because I’ve heard that there’s crime on the internet nowadays.

I’m guessing that they didn’t appreciate my hyperbole at the end. But there’s nothing in their guidelines regarding sardonicism either, so I should be clear on that front.

By the way, let’s take a closer look at the third item in that list.

Why the fug can’t I mention competitors in my review? I assume that they mean competitors of Home Depot, not the product’s manufacturer. However, in this case HDX is a Home Depot brand. They are forbidding me from comparing this item to another item just like it from any other manufacturer.

That’s absolute horse hockey. There’s no way in hell that you can have a fair review section if you forbid comparison to similar items. Some of the most useful negative online reviews are ones that mention an alternate, better choice to satisfy the same need. Not on HomeDepot.com.

And I’m no fool. I understand that they don’t want you saying something like “just buy it at Lowe’s, it’s cheaper there!” Fair enough because even though that information could be valuable to another customer, prices fluctuate constantly. Price comparisons in reviews don’t hold water for very long.

But their guideline is far too broad. It would forbid a perfectly reasonable statement like “Lowe’s sells basically the same socket set under their Kobalt brand, and IMO it’s much better quality.” Ed note: That’s not my opinion, it’s just an example. I’ve never used a Kobalt socket set, but I’m quite happy with the Husky (HD’s brand) sockets that I have. Despite the fact that Husky is a very, very, very stupid brand name.

That’s a very useful bit of consumer advice, and is only fair if the reviewer indeed had experience with both tool sets. Yet I’m sure it would be immediately stricken from Home Depot’s site. Hey, prove me wrong Home Depot.

Not a word of that review is a lie.

If they want to sell an Instant Electrical Fire Kit, then at least put it on the shelves next to the fire extinguishers. My only regret is that I threw out the fixture that was arcing and smoking, because now I’d love to have made a video showing it causing the inevitable fire.

I hope you don’t mind, but I’m going to throw in some keywords…

…such as re-iterating that the model number is CE-300PDQ and telling you that the internet number on Home Depot’s site is 100354511 and that the store SKU is 277894. The light (if it didn’t malfunction catastrophically) is great for DIY projects, photography, videography, shop lighting, and temporary lighting. It’s commonly called a clamp light, but sometimes it’s called a work light, clip light, dish light, or wacky monzelfrazen.

Phew, hopefully that will cause this post to show up somewhere reasonably high on the Google results. If they don’t want the review on their site then I’ll gladly let people view it here.

Finally…

It wouldn’t be a rant on s.co.tt if I didn’t mention some problems with their website:

They strip out carriage returns and line feeds.

Even though I took the time to format my review into paragraphs, they turned it into one fat blob of text. That’s a big pet peeve of mine, and a surprising number of sites do it.

They send too many emails.

After I’d submitted my review, their site prompted me to answer other customers’ questions about the product. I was in a giving mood, so I did.

The question was “does this lamp has a regular outlet plugin? (sic)”

They sent a separate “verify your email address” email for each of my 4 answers. That’s on top of a verification email for the review. The verification should be on a per-address basis, because the address doesn’t change.

Their reviews are powered by bazaarvoice.com.

I don’t trust Home Depot with my personal information, especially after their various — how to put it politely? — oopsies with their customer’s data. But who the frack is bazaarvoice.com?

Well, they are a legitimate company, and they must be doing pretty well to have Home Depot as a customer.

However, Home Depot fails to mention that you’re sharing your email address with Bazaarvoice, Inc., at least in any obvious way. The Bazaarvoice service is white labeled, so it fits in somewhat seamlessly with the design of HD’s website. When submitting a review, I could only find Bazaarvoice mentioned once in the terms and conditions.

Just because I became morbidly curious, I quickly looked in their “Privacy Security (sic)” page for any mention of Bazaarvoice. No mention.

However, as soon as I clicked the link on the product page to “Write a Review“, there were tons of HTTP requests to Bazaarvoice’s site.

The review (and your email address) are sent to them as well.

Bazaarvoice was actually the one sending the needlessly repetitious email verification messages.

This is exactly the sort of thing I had in mind when I made Instance Mail. There’s no reason to give these people your real email address. In fact, they ask for lots of demographic information as well, which I assume they aggregate and resell for marketing purposes. (Personally I provide all fake information, but I believe that the fields are optional.)

And that’s about it. (Maybe.)

I suppose that I’m done ranting about Home Depot for today. I’m sure that I’ve got more somewhere deep inside, but I’ll save it for another day.

Newegg was, and still is, the best online retailer of computer components in the US.

I stand behind that statement. But they’re trying to be Amazon, and they’re not doing a very good job of it.

The Good

Just like Amazon, Newegg allows other merchants to list items for sale on their website. They take a cut of 8-15 percent of item sales and intermediate disputes between customers and third-party sellers.

But here’s the thing: I always shopped on Newegg because I liked Newegg. Especially when they opened their distribution center in Edison, NJ and my ground shipments started arriving in under 24 hours. I also liked the responsiveness of their customer service and the clarity of their search results. I particularly love their Power Search, a feature which Amazon sorely lacks when looking for things like memory, HDDs, or other hardware with very particular specifications.

There is, however, a tremendous difference between the two retailers: Amazon handles the logistics for a huge number of its third-party sellers whereas Newegg does not.

This means that Amazon offers a much broader selection of items backed by Amazon’s shipping, returns, and customer service. It also makes for far more Prime-eligible items versus Newegg’s Premiere program.

Newegg Premier: The Tangent

Hey Newegg: Now I’m really annoyed. In the interest of fair blog-journalism (oxymoron, I know) I decided to try out Newegg Premiere, your equivalent of Amazon Prime. After all, I should be comparing an apples-to-apples shopping experience. But I submitted my payment details for a 3-month Premiere membership about 10 minutes ago. I’m still not a Premiere member, and have yet to receive a confirmation email. Did you know that the same sort of thing is instantaneous on Amazon, right? You understand that it’s 2015 and digital orders should be delivered immediately? Oh, you don’t? That’s a shame.

Since the ten minutes have passed, in my account it now says the following:

Thank you for signing up for a Newegg Premier Membership. Your membership registration is being processed at this time. Please check this page again shortly. We appreciate your patience, and look forward to providing you with great service and savings through the Premier program.

Jeez Louise. What are you processing? I’ve been a customer for 11 years. I gave you my credit card. What more could you possibly need? A blood sample? A copy of the deed to my house?

Hallelujah! I’m now a Premiere member, and it only took 22 minutes to process!

Sorry for the tangent; Now back to the article at hand.

The Customer Service Difference

Perhaps the most important difference between the two online retail giants is the way in which they handle customer complaints and/or disputes with their third-party sellers.

I recently had my first experience ordering from the Newegg Marketplace. I was on a Prime hiatus for a couple of weeks and decided to give a NE Marketplace seller a try. Compared to Amazon, it was a complete disaster.

My order was for a two-pack of vitamins (two bottles), and the package arrived (undamaged and unopened) only containing one bottle. OK, that’s not Newegg’s fault. That’s the seller, Web Vitamins, Inc.‘s fault. And it shouldn’t be a big deal. I’ve had similar issues with Amazon over the years, and it works like this:

1. I contact Amazon to explain the issue.
2. In (usually) less than 2 hours they respond and issue a refund or re-ship as appropriate.

And that’s one of the reasons I love Amazon. I once had an issue with a freaking desk chair and shot off an email to them. In less than half an hour they emailed me back saying that a replacement chair was on its way and that they’d cover return shipping costs. Simple.

Newegg? As we’ve seen, they love processing. Here’s the process as I’ve seen it:

1. I contact the third-party merchant (via Newegg’s website) to explain the issue.
2. A week passes with no response.
3. I contact Newegg’s customer service to explain the issue, mentioning the previous step taken to resolve the issue*.
4. Three hours later a Newegg customer service rep responds to request more information about the issue.
5. Six minutes later I send back an email with the requested information (confirming shipping address, etc).
6. Forty-seven hours later a different Newegg customer service rep from their Seller Services side copies me on an email sent to the third-party seller asking them to follow up. The email includes instructions to me to wait forty-eight hours for a response before again following up with Newegg.
7. I waited 5 days, because Good Friday/Easter weekend fell in that time and I figured I’d give the merchant the benefit of the doubt on that.
8. Having received no response, I emailed Newegg to advise them of exactly that.
9. That was six eight hours ago, and I’m still waiting for a reply I guess I was too quick to post because I just got a reply promising a refund.
10. Four hours later the refund is processed and I receive an invoice as proof.

So far the delay on Newegg’s end is 62 hours, and I still have yet to hear back from them. It’s actually been 110 hours when you count the 48 hours they had me wait for a response from the seller, after I’d already given the seller a week to respond (which I’d told Newegg about in the first place).

The mot juste on on the etymologist’s turd sandwich? The refund was described in my invoice as a “Customer Courtesy”. I’m sorry for the foul language, but that’s quite the horse hockey.

I know that there’s no substantive difference between this refund and a refund by any other name, but in customer service parlance a “courtesy” refund is given simply to appease a customer that’s in the wrong but complaining loudly.

May I remind you that I received exactly half of my order? Refunding half of my money isn’t a freaking courtesy, it’s a necessity.

*And something else that really ground my gears about this whole thing is this: I couldn’t even fully describe the problem when contacting Newegg’s customer service people, because their contact form only allows for 300 characters.

“Yes, hello? Oh, hang on.” “Newegg! It’s for you! I have 1998 on the phone and they want their error message back!”

It’s further aggravating because they don’t tell you about the character limitation until after you try and submit the goddamb form!

So not only did I waste my time typing out two paragraphs which I was then forced to delete, but the information that I had to cut out was exactly the same information that the customer service rep asked for when he responded to my inquiry. They found two ways to waste my time in one simple contact form, a problem which could have been solved by a database that’s from the 21st century and a tiny bit of JavaScript.

Here’s the thing about the order itself: The screw-up with the merchandise was probably just a fluke. I’m not even mad about that. Everyone makes mistakes, sh1t happens, luck of the draw, [additional platitudes go here].

What provokes my ire is that the process I’ve described seems to be de rigueur for Newegg. Their customer-facing service people are disconnected from their seller-facing people, and the customer-facing people apparently have no authority nor ability to actually assist a customer. They also aren’t proactive about getting in between the seller and the customer to facilitate a resolution.

Their number one solution to any dispute seems to be to contact the seller and wait. I’m OK with that on eBay, because they are strictly a marketplace. Not so much on Newegg.

I’m sure that when seller is responsive this all works out fine, but when it’s a shitty one like WebVitamins, Inc. that both screws up orders and then ignores customers, Newegg should be right there behind me. It’s their name on the website, their name on the order confirmation email, their name on the tracking information email, their name on my credit card statement, and so it’s their name all over this post.

I shouldn’t have to deal with the third-party merchant at all. That’s in fact why I’d ordered from Newegg in the first place, rather than from webvitamins.com.

I also want to discuss a niggle that I’ve always had with Newegg: They do not process payments in real-time. In the vast majority of the instances this isn’t a problem, but recently I placed an order on Newegg and “accidentally” used an expired credit card stored in my account.

(I say “accidentally” because for some reason it wound up as the default card when I was placing my order. Besides, why would they let me submit the order with an expired card in the first place?)

If you’ve shopped on Newegg you know that they send at least four follow-up emails after you place an order. One confirming the order, one saying that your card has been charged, another with tracking information, and at least one more which is an invoice for some reason.

The point is that I’m so accustomed to seeing those emails that I don’t bother looking at them; That includes the one which said that my payment was declined.

For the love of god Newegg, process payments in real time (or at least validate the payment method in real time — if you want to hold the charge until shipment that’s OK with me). In 2002 this kind of thing was somewhat understandable, but it’s now 2015.

The Secret Prime Discount

One glaring difference between Prime and Premier is the pricing: An annual membership is $99 on Amazon, but only $49.99 on Newegg.

Besides the fact that I think that Prime is still a better deal, here’s a little something I figured out that can save you a few bucks:

Cancel your Prime membership.

No, I’m not being snarky. Cancel your Prime membership the day before it’s set to renew.

If you don’t have a Prime membership, then sign up for a free 30-day trial and cancel it on day 29.

Once you’ve cancelled, wait a week or two. You’ll get an email (or visit “Your Prime Membership” under “Your Account” when logged into Amazon) wherein they will offer a year of Prime to you at $49.

Once you go Prime they don’t want you to go back, and they’re willing to go down to half price to keep you in the fold.

I’ve done this for my initial membership and two renewals and it’s worked so far.

At least it’ll work until they catch on to my trick, so shhhhh.

Edit: So am I a Premier Member?

It’s been about a day since I signed up for Premier. In my account they acknowledge that I am, yet every page has a header entreating me to “try Premier“.

If I click on the “try Premier” graphic, it takes me to the signup page for the service. It invites me to sign in if I’m already a member… but I am signed in.

I know that this is probably just a bug. Some developer forgot to hide the banner at the top of the screen… I guess? And they forgot to put some tiny piece of code on the Premier signup screen that would detect if I’m logged in… I guess?

Those seem like pretty big things to miss. Given the slow process of membership approval, I’m kinda doubting whether or not I am a member. (Don’t worry, it turns out that I am. But I had to go into a shopping cart to check.) It’s just sloppy is all.

Edit: Enough with the Freaking Emails

15 emails. Fifteen emails to place and then fix a $10 order. That’s excessive by my measure.

Order confirmation: Fair enough. But how about charging me when the item ships and just sending one email instead of separate Payment Authorized, Payment Charged and Order Tracking Information emails?

Letting me describe my issue in your contact form and giving your customer-facing service personnel a modicum of authority would have eliminated another 3 emails.

And seriously, you could have combined the Refund and Invoice (for the refund) into one email. Or actually, how about not sending me invoices? I can log into my NE account and retrieve them, aside from the fact that I have no use for an invoice.

The straw that broke the camel’s back and made me lengthen my tirade is the email right at the top of the above screenshot: “Rate Your Recent Newegg Marketplace Shopping Experience!“

That would be reasonable were it not for the fact that I already fu¢king rated the seller hours ago.

Again, there’s more than a little sloppy coding going on over at the ‘Egg. I don’t know about other customers, but I hate to be nagged by my retailer… especially about something I’ve already done.

Speaking of sloppy work and a lack of attention to detail, look at my completely useless invoice, one of the three emails garnered by my signing up for Premier:

The image is really long, so open it in another tab or something if you want to follow along with my list below.

1. The “Shop Around” menu is inconsistent to the website: PC & Laptops links to the Computers & Tablets category, Home Theater to TV & Video, Cameras to Digital Cameras, and More to Newegg Specials.
2. The image at the top does not display (and note that the other images do appear — so it’s not being blocked by my email client, which customarily renders Newegg’s emails just fine).
3. Shipping information is irrelevantly shown for this, a digital order.
4. It says “1003” underneath my name for no conceivable reason (that number appears nowhere in my account settings nor address book).
5. There is no space between the comma after my city and the two-letter state abbreviation.
6. The invoice is dated 2:57:13 PM, but the time zone isn’t specified (it’s likely that it’s Pacific Daylight Time).
7. The invoice date is around 3 PM PDT. I didn’t receive it until 7 PM PDT (or 10 PM EDT as it says in my email’s heading). I checked the SMTP headers, and it wasn’t delayed. It took them 4 hours to generate and send a simple invoice.
8. THEY CALLED THEIR OWN PRODUCT "3 months’ the premier"!
9. Not only is the product not, to my knowledge, called “the premier”, their use of the apostrophe is baffling and they failed to capitalize the proper name of Premier.
10. They called my Mastercard a payment term. That’s not so absurd as 3 months’ the premier, but “term” in this context would mean a period of time. Payment terms implies a method and time frame of payment.
11. It simply says “Online Services” after the totals. I don’t know what they mean by that. It’s not the signature to the email, because it’s later signed by “Your Newegg Customer Service Team”. So without any context I’ll assume that it’s just there as a general declaration of Online Services.

I know that I’m nitpicking, but this 3 months’ the premier really got me going. Plus with almost $3 billion in revenue (2013), my expectations are high.

That’s all for now.

Edit: Some more emails (2015-04-28)

I just placed my first order since becoming a Premier member.

I bought two WD Elements 4TB USB 3.0 3.5″ External Hard Drives (WDBWLG0040HBK), each supposedly containing a WD40RZRX 3.5″ SATA drive.

While I was on NE’s site, I happened to take a look at a monitor that they were advertising. My actions garnered me a shocking eight email, plus the three regular promotional emails.

That’s a whopping eleven emails in a period of less than 24 hours. Even with my spam filter off I don’t get Viagra offers that frequently.

The thing is, I want to get their promotional newsletter. Sometimes they have really good deals on things that I actually need want.

Here’s the problem: There is insufficient granularity to their subscriptions. It’s kinda all or nothing. I’m not subscribed to everything. In fact, here are my settings as they’ve been for quite a while in My [Newegg] Account > Newegg Notifications:

Unfortunately, the Newegg Newsletter option actually subscribes me to far more than just the newsletter. If I want the newsletter, but don’t want “sweepstakes and giveaways from top brands” then I’m out of luck.

I don’t know where or when I gave them permission for the “Enjoying Your Recent Purchases?” emails. (By the way, those two “recent purchases” emails were separate for the two identical items that I purchased in one order. The second email is nothing but pointless spam.)

I also don’t know why I’m getting the “Shopping for …” emails. They’re not newsletters and they’re not product voting. They’re nothing.

For the love of all that is good and holy Newegg, I want to like you guys. But you’re making me feel like I’m friends with a Russian spammer.

Another Pet Peeve

OK, I’ll admit it. I jumped the gun a little bit. There is a link at the bottom of the “enjoying” and “shopping for” emails to unsubscribe.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still irked that they don’t allow me to manage that subscripition along with the others, and that it’s an opt-out mailing instead of an opt-in mailing. Frankly it’s BS that they snuck another type of email in on me without my consent.

But that’s not even the pet peeve that I was referring to in the header of this section. My pet peeve is right here:

That’s right, three business days for this change to be reflected in their system.

BULLSH1T.

You just want to weasel your way into sending me an extra few emails before I quit, in the hopes that I’ll come back like some desperate crack addict.

First off, assuming that it does take some time to process my removal from the list, computers work right through the fracking weekend.

Do you take your customers for idiots?

If you’re going to lie, at least lie convincingly: Why is it “business days”? I know why. It’s so that if someone unsubscribes after Wednesday at 5 PM you get to send them more spam all weekend. That averages out to a lot more marketing for ya, what with your millions of customers.

Unless your entire subscription system was coded by retarded gorillas chain smoking doobies, it should take no more than about 50ms to process an unsubscribe. If you tell me otherwise, you better also explain in grave detail why that’s the case or I will call you a liar. (Let your lawyers know that this is, of course, in my opinion.)

How do I know? I have actually coded more than 3 separate bulk email application suites in 3 different languages on two different OSes and two different database platforms. All of them were or are in production environments and have sent out millions of opt-in, non-spam emails. I’m not saying that to brag, only to make the point that this is my wheelhouse.

I have no tolerance for spam, and so I make my unsubscribe process a single click and immediate affair. As soon as the page is done loading, the person is unsubscribed. If there were already emails for them that had been previously queued up, they are unqueued.

Unless an email is stuck somewhere in MX limbo, the unsubscribe is immediate and absolute. (And SMTP servers also do not obey “business days”, so don’t say you’re hedging your bets against SMTP problems.)

Edit: Does nothing work??

It’s been a couple of weeks, but I just felt the need to reply to an “answer” on Newegg’s site.

Call me a jerk for picking on Ronald if you want, but he answered three questions in an objectively useless way.

Just like Home Depot (but unlike Amazon), Newegg’s customer Q&A section is powered by a third party. In this case it’s TurnTo.

The bothersome thing about the third party service is that there’s no single sign on mechanism. So I created a nice, fake account rather than providing TurnTo with permission to harvest my Facebook information or what have you.

Anyway, here’s the bug:

After submitting my comment, I was sent a link to confirm my email address. That’s great; I have no problem with it.

Aside from the subject ending in a question mark, Newegg calling themselves NewEgg (pick one), and their calling an address bar a “window”, this email looks perfectly normal. But let me ask you this: Where would you imagine that link would take me?

If you guessed “a page thanking you for confirming your address” then you’d be a veritable expert in web design. You’d also be completely wrong.

Of course! Why wouldn’t it take me to an obsolete Sony camera that’s no longer even sold by Newegg?

And that is not the product I was viewing when I submitted my comment. To each their own, but I wasn’t shopping for cheap PAS cameras from 2008. I’ve never viewed that listing (AFAIR), so why did they think I’d find it interesting?

I could see them linking me to some hot, new product as part of their marking efforts, but this is just baffling.

Edit: One of Us is Out of Time

Please, look at this screenshot. Take a moment to really soak it all in.

As usual, click for full size.

We’ve detected the time on your computer is out of sync with your time zone. Please update your clock settings to match with www.time.gov for optimum performance.

Wat?

There are a few reasons that I’ve taken the time, months later, to update this post:

• I’ve been using the good ol’ World Wide Web since it sprang forth to the public from the bowels of CERN. Never have I seen a website complain about this sort of thing, either correctly or incorrectly. Certificates and stuff like that, sure.
• Obviously they’re complaining incorrectly. By now you, dear reader, should know that I’m anal enough to ensure that my time is properly synced to a quality NTP server.
• The first sentence is technically (and I am, again, very anal retentive) incorrect as well as being grammatically flawed. The time on my computer could indeed be out of sync with the correct time for my time zone, but not out of sync with the time zone itself. That’s just a geographic area, and not a time.
• The second sentence is actually worse than the first. www.time.gov is not an NTP server. Nor does it even contain the address of an NTP server. For that you might want to go to http://tf.nist.gov/tf-cgi/servers.cgi.
• Further, I’m using a Windows 7 machine that’s a member of a domain. Without going into the registry I can’t update the NTP server in my clock settings. I’m the domain admin, sure, but there’s no way that they can know that.
• “[..] for optimum performance.” I cannot for the life of me figure out what that means. Will the website respond more slowly if the time on my computer is off by a millisecond? Even if my time were a month off the actual time, that shouldn’t effect the performance of my web browsing experience.
• The absolute best part of this is that the error message was likely produced because the time on one of their web servers is out of sync with their time zone. Perhaps they should consider updating their clock settings to match with time.nist.gov for optimum performance.

All of this is fairly irrelevant, seeing as I was able to login just fine. However I had the primal urge of complaining and felt obligated to make note of this remarkable message.

Edit: I’m back!

I’d forgotten to cancel my “3 months The Premier” membership, and just got billed today for another 3 months. I’m not complaining; It’s perfectly reasonable.

However they’ve managed to baffle me yet again during the cancellation process:

If Premier Membership benefits were not used during the period, then you will receive a full refund. If any Premier Membership benefits were used, then you may continue to take advantage of the program until your expiration date, but you will not be eligible to receive a full refund. Remember, if you change your mind, you can reactivate your membership.

YOUR MEMBERSHIP WILL END ON 10/06/2015
Your credit card will not be charged and you will no longer receive Premier benefits.

As usual, there are a few things wrong here.

First off, I’ve been a member since 4/6/2015, whereas they only show me as having been a member since today, 7/6/2015. Not a big deal, but again it’s sloppy coding on their part.

Secondly, I can’t believe that they’re batch processing this, too. I haven’t used my “Premier Membership benefits” in the 30 minutes since my membership was renewed. You, dear reader, would have no way of knowing that. But NewEgg’s server definitely should! I see no reason why this has to be a long, drawn out process based upon easily-verifiable conditionals.

Even though they’ve needlessly left the state of my refund up in the air, they seem to have decided that I will not receive a full refund, because they go on to say that my membership will be active for another 3 months — until 10/6/2015!

Newegg, Newegg, Newegg… Why, oh, why do you insist on yanking your customers’ chains and being completely passive-aggressive about everything? On the one hand you say that I will obtain a full refund (given that I haven’t used my Premier benefits today), and on the other hand you say that I won’t get any refund, and that my membership will continue for 3 months. WHICH ONE THE F&$K IS IT?????

Sorry, I got a little angry there. But surely you can see why: Right now I’m in limbo. I guess that would be fine if I were a criminal waiting on the deliberations of a jury, or if I was at the DMV. But you should not put your customers in a position where they’re comparing their experiences with your business to a court or motor vehicle office. You’re doing something wrong here.

And what I mean about “limbo” is that I don’t know the state of my account, and so I don’t know what to do next (other than complain publicly about it on the internet). If I will receive a full refund — as I should — then this matter is closed, and all is well. If my membership will indeed continue on to October, then I have to email your customer service and [slowly] get this resolved.

Finally (or maybe not), I’d like to take a quick look at Newegg Premier’s terms and conditions. (That’s a snapshot of their T&C as of today — Live version here).

There’s nothing that I find too objectionable about the terms and conditions, but there are some oddities and fishy smells:

We created Newegg Premier (“Premier”) so loyal Newegg.com customers can get the extra attention and benefits they deserve like free and fast shipping, free returns, no restocking fees and more.

Loyal customers, eh? Since the only condition for becoming a Premier member is a Newegg account and a credit card on file, loyalty really has nothing to do with it. For example, if someone had never used Newegg before, they may sign up for Premiere to place one order that would otherwise have had shipping charges greater than the cost of a membership. They could then never again use NewEgg. So this program has nothing to do with loyalty.

After you register for Premier, you will enjoy all membership benefits for a full year. Your membership will automatically renew on your annual membership renewal date, unless you tell us to cancel your membership.

Here’s where I play armchair lawyer: Their official “Terms & Conditions”, to which one must agree in order to become a Premier member, specifically and only discuss an annual membership term. It does not make mention of a shorter term (i.e. the 3 months for which I signed up).

Assuming that these terms and conditions form the basis of our mutual understanding, one of three things could be inferred from this (if I wanted to be a pain in the a$$ about it):

• My membership is void. Newegg violated its own Terms and Conditions by granting me anything other than an annual membership in the first place.
• My membership is overpriced. If the only term outlined in these T&C is an annual term, then my 3 months of membership should have been billed at the annual rate. That is to say one quarter of the annual price of $49.99 ($12.50), not the $19.99 that I’ve paid.
• I should be bound to an annual term. After all, I agreed to these terms and conditions, and they clearly spell out the fact that my membership term is an annual one. However, if that’s true then it’s a clear example of bait-and-switch advertising because Newegg suckered me in with a promise of a 3-month membership.

Like I said, I’m just playing an attorney for the sake of satire and point-making. However, it’s pretty clear to me, a layperson, that an attorney didn’t draft the language of the Premier T&C.

There’s one more thing about the T&C that’s actually a pretty big problem, and should prevent anyone from agreeing to it:

You can find information on the current Premier annual membership fee on the Premier FAQ page.

No big deal, except that the link doesn’t work. What’s the fee to which I’m agreeing? Oh, 404? That seems high.

I’m migrating a bunch of corporate websites hosted on Win2k8 and IIS7 to a new server running exactly the same. I’m sticking with the same environment because there are some things I really don’t want to risk breaking — we just needed faster hardware and more spindles.

I figured I’d use MS Web Deploy 3.5 to move all the IIS settings from one server to the other (a task that was gloriously simple in IIS6).

Web Deploy adds the following option to the IIS Manager context menus for the server and individual sites:

Oh goodie, I can deploy!

It looks great! Simple and straightforward. Export or import.

Indeed it’s a simple interface. I wanted to export everything, so I chose to deploy from the server level.

But..

But it’s never really that simple, is it? (Well, except in IIS6.)

Here’s a redacted view of the package contents selector. It’s actually about 50 items at the top level, but annoyingly the box cannot be resized (though it does scroll horizontally by itself which is super annoying):

OK, it looks like all the settings and crap that’s in IIS. What it doesn’t show, and hence what’s not selectable, is that the file system contents is included in the package. I had already robocopied the file system over, thinking that I’d just be exporting and importing the IIS settings. It generated a 25GB zip file.

It was a horrible waste of time, because it forces you to encrypt the contents of the package (even though I was exporting it to the local file system and would be copying it across a private LAN and there’s no sensitive customer data in there). I can copy the uncompressed files much faster than compressing and encrypting something like 40GB of content.

Whatever, I can deal with that. Except there’s no way to cancel the operation! The cancel button is greyed out. The “X” in the upper-right to close the dialog is clickable, and in fact does close it. Except that the operation keeps running in the background, which is not made clear anywhere in the UI. I didn’t realize that and went back to messing around with options, and eventually saw that a 25GB file had popped up in my temp dir!

Now for the import..

I temporarily moved some hardly-ever-accessed directories out of the web hierarchy so that I could run a faster export. A nice compact 2.7GB file was the result. I moved that over to the new server, and did the ol’ Deploy -> Import. It started, and then crashed right away.

The operation failed with the most user-unfriendly, borderline-useless, college-project error message possible: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

Click for the full monty.

We’ve all seen that error message before, but on a mature product from a multi-billion dollar company? Phhht. What am I talking about, it’s Microsoft after all.

At least they included the stack trace! That at least gives a clue!

System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
   at Microsoft.Web.Deployment.CertStoreSettingsProvider.Delete(Boolean whatIf)
   at Microsoft.Web.Deployment.DeploymentObject.DeleteOperation(DeploymentSyncContext syncContext)
   at Microsoft.Web.Deployment.DeploymentObject.Delete(DeploymentSyncContext syncContext)
   at Microsoft.Web.Deployment.DeploymentSyncContext.HandleDelete(DeploymentObject destObject, DeploymentObject sourceParentObject)
   at Microsoft.Web.Deployment.DeploymentSyncContext.SyncChildrenOrder(DeploymentObject dest, DeploymentObject source)
   at Microsoft.Web.Deployment.DeploymentSyncContext.SyncChildrenOrder(DeploymentObject dest, DeploymentObject source)
   at Microsoft.Web.Deployment.DeploymentSyncContext.ProcessSync(DeploymentObject destinationObject, DeploymentObject sourceObject)
   at Microsoft.Web.Deployment.DeploymentObject.SyncToInternal(DeploymentObject destObject, DeploymentSyncOptions syncOptions, PayloadTable payloadTable, ContentRootTable contentRootTable, Nullable`1 syncPassId, String syncSessionId)
   at Microsoft.Web.Deployment.DeploymentObject.SyncTo(DeploymentProviderOptions providerOptions, DeploymentBaseOptions baseOptions, DeploymentSyncOptions syncOptions)
   at Microsoft.Web.Deployment.DeploymentObject.SyncTo(DeploymentWellKnownProvider provider, String path, DeploymentBaseOptions baseOptions, DeploymentSyncOptions syncOptions)
   at Microsoft.Web.Deployment.UI.InstallProgressWizardPage.OnWorkerDoWork(Object sender, DoWorkEventArgs e)
   at System.ComponentModel.BackgroundWorker.WorkerThreadStart(Object argument)

As you can see from the second line, it’s trying to delete something from the Certificate Store (I suppose). A quick Googling found a German guy that was experiencing the same error. That lead to a red herring post about different .NET framework versions (I have the same versions of .NET installed on both machines, so that’s not my issue).

Unfortunately I had closed the error dialog, but I tried running the process again and I noticed this:

There’s the key that’s causing all the faff.

So it’s trying to delete HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/Microsoft/IIS/CentralCertProvider, which doesn’t exist on either the source or destination server. In fact, the entire IIS key doesn’t exist. The solution seemed obvious to me:

That’s right.

That’s right, I just created the key and added a nonsense string value for no reason. It then ran past the point of the NullReferenceException.

But wait, there’s more!

It crashed again, with an error message and stack trace even more useless than the first:

Click for full size.

I can’t sigh enough at this one. I’m not asking for the world here, but at least say what file and line you were processing when the exception was thrown. This is Computer Programming 101 level stuff here. Not what you’d expect from version 3.5 of a utility meant for enterprise use. Even when I half-ass programs for my own personal use (which I do quite often), I have better error handling.

System.ArgumentOutOfRangeException: 'count' must be non-negative.
Parameter name: count
   at System.String.CtorCharCount(Char c, Int32 count)
   at Microsoft.Web.Deployment.XmlElementProvider.GetIndentWhitespace(XmlElement element, XmlWhitespace& before, XmlWhitespace& after)
   at Microsoft.Web.Deployment.XmlElementProvider.AddChild(DeploymentObject source, Int32 position, Boolean whatIf)
   at Microsoft.Web.Deployment.DeploymentObject.AddChild(DeploymentObject source, Int32 position, DeploymentSyncContext syncContext)
   at Microsoft.Web.Deployment.DeploymentSyncContext.HandleAddChild(DeploymentObject destParent, DeploymentObject sourceObject, Int32 position)
   at Microsoft.Web.Deployment.DeploymentSyncContext.SyncChildrenOrder(DeploymentObject dest, DeploymentObject source)
   at Microsoft.Web.Deployment.DeploymentSyncContext.SyncChildrenNoOrder(DeploymentObject dest, DeploymentObject source)
   at Microsoft.Web.Deployment.DeploymentSyncContext.SyncChildrenNoOrder(DeploymentObject dest, DeploymentObject source)
   at Microsoft.Web.Deployment.DeploymentSyncContext.HandleAddChild(DeploymentObject destParent, DeploymentObject sourceObject, Int32 position)
   at Microsoft.Web.Deployment.DeploymentSyncContext.SyncChildrenOrder(DeploymentObject dest, DeploymentObject source)
   at Microsoft.Web.Deployment.DeploymentSyncContext.SyncChildrenOrder(DeploymentObject dest, DeploymentObject source)
   at Microsoft.Web.Deployment.DeploymentSyncContext.ProcessSync(DeploymentObject destinationObject, DeploymentObject sourceObject)
   at Microsoft.Web.Deployment.DeploymentObject.SyncToInternal(DeploymentObject destObject, DeploymentSyncOptions syncOptions, PayloadTable payloadTable, ContentRootTable contentRootTable, Nullable`1 syncPassId, String syncSessionId)
   at Microsoft.Web.Deployment.DeploymentObject.SyncTo(DeploymentProviderOptions providerOptions, DeploymentBaseOptions baseOptions, DeploymentSyncOptions syncOptions)
   at Microsoft.Web.Deployment.DeploymentObject.SyncTo(DeploymentWellKnownProvider provider, String path, DeploymentBaseOptions baseOptions, DeploymentSyncOptions syncOptions)
   at Microsoft.Web.Deployment.UI.InstallProgressWizardPage.OnWorkerDoWork(Object sender, DoWorkEventArgs e)
   at System.ComponentModel.BackgroundWorker.WorkerThreadStart(Object argument)

Moreover, is this even a recoverable error? It looks like it’s trying to count the characters using CtorCharCount, which is some kind of private or protected method (?) called in the String constructor (apparently):

CtorCharCount is one of those optimizing implementation details that can get kind of confusing if you try to expose it to users. It’s called as part of the string ctor in some cases. (Source: social.msdn.microsoft.com)

It’s constructing some string while adding a child to an XML node (?) during some kind of sync (?) process, or something. If this were based upon open source code I could figure it out pretty easily. But it’s most definitely not open source.

Work around?

Nope. I figured I’d start by trying to export and then import the sites one by one to see which one causes an error. Well, if you export a site you can’t import it unless that site exists on the target. It treats the site as a Web Application, even if you’re exporting the entire site.

I tried de-selecting all the locations except for one very simple website in the server export, but it still failed.

And now…

I don’t care anymore.

I’ve already wasted too much time on this. More time in fact than it will take me to manually recreate the handful of websites and web apps on the new server. So I’m done. I hope that if you were encountering the NullReferenceException this helped you.

Otherwise it was cathartic for me.

I wouldn’t be so hard on the developers of this tool if I were doing anything weird or unexpected. But I’m trying to migrate the settings from one instance of IIS to another, which is what the tool is alleged to do. The sites and web apps I have to migrate are few, and they’re not very complicated. This should have worked right off the bat.

If anyone has a solution, please let me know. Maybe I’m just being blinded by irritation and I’m missing something simple. But like I said, it’s time to go and do this the old-fashioned way.

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 sure that their prices are more than double that of their competition (Vistaprint specifically).
• I should mention that Chase themselves, when I complained about the issue, responded to my online inquiry in 10 minutes and provided a refund no questions asked. I’ve always had a great experience with Chase’s customer service.

There’s a lot to back up what I’ve said. Please travel with me back in time to the heyday of the Information Superhighway and take a closer look…

Deluxe Enterprise Operations, Inc.

Their logo says Deluxe Corp, but the footer of their website says Deluxe Enterprise Operations, Inc. I’m not sure what the deal is; Maybe one is a parent of the other.

But you probably know who they are already. They’re the people that make checks, as in good ol’ fashioned bank account checks.

That's right, I went very serious with my design. I even have a 1980s corporate globe logo!

I don’t want to order checks, and I don’t want to use them. Heck, I’d ordered about 100 checks in 2003 and only just used them up! It’s 2014, and let’s be honest, they’re less useful than a newspaper. So before Deluxe goes out of business due to obsolescence let’s see if I can demonstrate why they should go out of business due to incompetence!

From start to finish, my order took over 30 minutes to complete, only about 3 of which was me looking for that globe logo. Otherwise it should have been just a matter of my entering my shipping address and etc.

The Initial Order

First off, I didn’t “choose” Deluxe. They’re the only provider that Chase links to from their website when I’m logged in. I figured I “might as well” use them, because they’re reputable and Chase transferred my bank particulars right to them.

To test it out again, I’ve just clicked on the link from Chase’s website to Deluxe’s. Now we wait… 21 seconds later: The page has loaded!

That’s right, 23 seconds to load a single web page in the year 2014. (Not to be immodest, but I just ran a test on Ookla’s Speedtest and got these stats: DL: 57 Mbps, UL: 29 Mbps, ping: 9ms. So the problem is not on my end.)

And that’s nothing new. In the process of completing my order I went back to Deluxe’s site a few times, and the initial page load took anywhere from 10 to 45 seconds. Subsequent page loads were quick enough, so I’m guessing it has something to do with establishing a new session.

Here’s what greeted me when I first hit their site:

Click for a full-sized image

Where to start with this screenshot?

From a pure style perspective it looks like it was last updated in 1999.

They’re pushing out an unsigned Java application. Sign your application!

Since I use this machine for development, I don’t always update my Java right away. By default, an out of date JRE will not run their unsigned app. (Yes, keeping Java up to date is an absolute best practice. But in the real world, how many people would not be able to use this site because they don’t abide by best practices?)

I had to update Java to use this site. Why is this even in Java, and not HTML5? Oh, right, because it’s 1999. And I couldn’t just make a security exception for it; Java wouldn’t allow me.

This was completely my fault, but nonetheless added to my irritation: At the end of the Java installation I was prompted to do something like “uninstall all outdated versions of Java”. In a hurry and frustrated as I was, I clicked yes. There goes my dev environment. (Yes, I know.)

What were they doing with that Java?

I jumped through all those hoops just to see a tiny thumbnail preview of my checks.

That is actual size.

Are you as wowed as I am? You can really see the exquisite care and detail that will go into my financial instrument. And it’s so realistic. I hope there’s no spacing between my name and the border in the actual printing!

Really, that’s it. Was borking my whole Java environment worth that? (No.)

Let’s go through the steps!

I just want to show you the millennial design of their menu one more time before I get started:

Glorious.

Also note that there’s no wizard-style “get started” button. That flummoxed me more than I would’ve thought, but then I re-oriented myself to Windows 98 thinking and clicked the Design option.

I don’t really want to say 1999 again, but it’s unavoidable. Here’s how you choose your designs on this, the website of JP Morgan Chase’s exclusive check printing partner:

As usual, click for a full-size version.

This doesn’t just look bad. It’s overly time consuming to use as well! You have to click on each of the 18 categories to see anywhere between 3 to 23 checks on each “page”. There’s no “view all” option, no way to filter results, no way to search. No nothing.

Choosing your binding is no big deal. Very straightforward.

When you want to choose your lettering (font), it does get a little hard to understand their design decision:

Actual size. Ugh.

OK. I get it, really I do. That image is 450px wide. When the lowest common denominator monitor of the web browsing public had a resolution of 640×480 you had to keep things tight.

But of course the fonts are so small that they’re barely legible. And they put the sample check images on a rakish 30 degree angle just to make them even less legible. Brilliant!

The part to select a monogram isn’t too bad, but selecting a symbol is another morass of difficult navigation. It’s just like the check design chooser, but this has 17 categories each containing a whole lot of symbols. Again, no filtering, no searching, no “view all”.

Then it’s more of the same if you want to add a message to your checks above the signature line. There are only nine categories, but it looks like there are hundreds of phrases! I didn’t even want a message, but just to get an idea of what they were on about I read through many of them.

There are such gems as these…

• Ask me about my grandchildren
• Proud owner of pocket protector (sic)
• Life is too short to buy green bananas
• BE YOUR OWN HERO
• The Pledge of Allegiance (No, not the full Pledge, just that phrase for some reason.)

…plus many more heartwarming sayings that your 80-year-old grandmother would just love to have on her financial documents!

Inexplicably, coffee is a recurring theme:

• Got Coffee?
• I love Coffee!
• Wake up & smell the coffee
• GIVE ME COFFEE AND NO ONE GETS HURT!

More so than any other theme, the coffee messages have the most aggressive capitalization and punctuation, even to the point of being Grammatically Incorrect.

All of these steps and categories and page reloads wouldn’t have been too big of a deal were it not for the fact that they were plagued with slow-loading pages and server side errors (probably timeouts).

Oh, and I’ve been typing up this post with Deluxe’s site open on another screen. Their session timeout is shorter than Chase’s. I haven’t timed it, but it’s probably about 5 minutes.

First off, who do they think they are that they need a more aggressive timeout than the actual financial institution from which they’re linked.

Secondly, if one of their customers dares to step away to get a cup of, let’s say, coffee, the state of their order is not saved. They’d have to start navigating the menus all over again. This could also happen if, say, they have to spend a few minutes updating Java (ooh, coffee again).

And that’s that… or is it?

Not much else about the design process is remarkable. It ends in a standard early-web form wherein all the input boxes are the same width. Unusually there is only one field for “City, State, Zip” in the alternate shipping address field.

All that remains is to click “Place Order” in the robust menu at the bottom of the final summary.

But wait, there’s one thing that didn’t bother me until after my order was submitted.

I never received a confirmation email.

Weird, right? Well, maybe their email server is just slow. Or maybe it’s that they never collected my email address. That’s right, their site has no email capabilities.

My usual M.O. is to wait until I get a confirmation email before closing my browser and losing my order details. However, since the site had been painfully slow and occasionally timed out with server side errors the night of my order (it seems to be OK now), I closed it immediately out of frustration. Whoops, I guess I was supposed to print my order information.

Maybe I can have it faxed to me?

The delivery…

…that never happened.

Having no ability to email updates to the customer (things like “shipment confirmation” and/or “tracking number”), I waited around for my order. And waited. And waited some more.

OK, to be fair this was low on my list of priorities and I kinda forgot about it. Until I realized that I’d ordered on November 18th, and it was suddenly December 11th.

I went back to Deluxe’s site via the link from Chase’s website to check the status of my order. I figured that even though I hadn’t logged into the Deluxe site they’d have my personal details from Chase.

They did have my information, but there is no way to track your order.

Chase links to ico.deluxe.com, so I decided to go to straight to deluxe.com. I was pleasantly surprised to find a relatively modern website!

When I clicked on the menu item for CHECKS -> PERSONAL I was immediately prompted to enter my bank account details:

As usual, click for the full-sized image.

The “login” form

Let’s look at this from a security perspective for a second.

The very first thing they ask for is your bank account information. If I was unfamiliar with the Deluxe brand, I would find this to be absurdly sketchy at best. It reeks of an overly-bold phishing scheme.

Your account information appears in plain text. Not one of those fields is a “password” type of input box.

Finally, think about this: Your routing number, account number, and zip code are on every check that you send out. Any one to whom you’ve ever written a check could come onto this website and assume your identity. They can view your order history, and ORDER CHECKS IN ANY QUANTITY TO BE CHARGED DIRECTLY TO YOUR BANK ACCOUNT.

I had to put that last part in all caps. It deserves to be yelled. Again, anyone that has ever handled one of your checks can charge an arbitrary amount of money directly to your bank account, anonymously through the internet using this “reputable” site.

So what about my order?

As I said, you can magically view past orders via this new website. I did exactly that. My order date was 11/18/2014, and the checks were shipped the next day on 11/19/2014. So where were they?

Well, the order details had the answer. I had the checks shipped to my office (so they wouldn’t be sitting outside my house all day). The office has a suite number, but there was no second address line in the details of my order history. The package was probably undeliverable.

That’s my fault, right? I thought so, too. Except that I went back through the ordering process on ico.deluxe.com and my suite number autocompleted in the second address field. It was a form-specific autocomplete, as the other address fields’ autocompletes didn’t contain options for my home (& etc.) addresses that I’ve entered on other sites.

Of course I can’t prove that the mistake was on their end, because they can’t send an order confirmation.

Regardless of that, it’s unbelievable that they didn’t do anything to contact me or assist me when my package was returned to them.

And then there’s the cost

Deluxe charges me $23.19 for a box of checks with no add-ons and no improvements. (Depending upon your bank and your relationship with that bank, you may be quoted a different price.)

They do offer free shipping, but the free shipping takes an astonishing 14 days for delivery and it’s not trackable. Again, 1999 is on the Motorola flip phone, and the call is for you.

The next-best shipping option costs a staggering $13.25 for 4-day delivery! I know for a fact that USPS flat rate priority mail is trackable and will deliver in 2-3 days (Saturday included) for a little over five bucks.

If you want next-day delivery, be prepared to pay as much as the price of the checks over again at $21.50.

How many checks in a box?

Let’s talk value-for-money. For the sake of this article I was trying to compare prices at Vistaprint with Deluxe.

It is impossible to comparison shop. I don’t know if they’re being purposefully cagey, or if this is some kind fraudulent marketing practice, but Deluxe is selling me a box of checks.

Nowhere on their website do they say how many checks are in a box.

In fact, I’m not the only one to wonder about this. There’s at least one question on Yahoo! Answers about it, and another blogger at John’s Tech Journal wrote about the same issue back in 2008!

The worst part of this is that I can’t find a definitive answer, and John writes that even Deluxe’s customer service people were unable to give him a definitive answer! Apparently it’s somewhere between 120 and 150 checks, but I won’t really know until I get my order.

Who runs a business like this?

Vistaprint (which while not perfect is a company with which I’ve never had a significant problem) will sell you 150 checks for $10 with only $4.99 for 8-day delivery. You can upgrade to 5-day delivery for $5 more. So for a mere $19.99 I can get my checks in 5 days from Vistaprint compared to $36.44 for the same product in about the same amount of time from Deluxe.

And I’ve ordered checks from Vistaprint for a different account. Their quality is on-par with that of Deluxe. There was no reason to have ordered from Deluxe in the first place, other than to waste my time complaining about them and feeling like an idiot for overpaying.

Contacting customer service

On ico.deluxe.com there is no online contact method. I was doing all of this after hours, so I was not enthused about calling the 800 number listed on their site:

No, really. That's the entire web page, top to bottom.

Oh, and that number? That’s the number for Chase’s customer service. Maybe they could help me with technical issues on Deluxe’s website. Maybe not. I didn’t want to waste time trying.

Fortunately orderpoint.deluxe.com (the more modern iteration of their e-commerce solution) has an actual “Contact Us” form. Unfortunately, it’s a pile of crap. Here’s how that went:

Click for full-sized image.

There’s a wonderfully obscure error message at the top of that screenshot:

We are sorry. For security purposes, our site does not accept one of the characters you entered. Please remove the characters to continue processing your feedback. (Error message DLX-OPT-0055)

What? Here’s the message I was trying to submit:

Hi,

I’m just writing to inquire about the status of my order. It’s marked shipped as of 11/19/2014, but I have yet to receive it. Is there any kind of tracking information?

Thanks & regards,

Scott

There are no weird characters in there, right? Nothing that shouldn’t appear in a customer service inquiry, surely.

Finally I fudged around with it and managed to send it. I’ll let my next message to customer service speak for itself (yes, I was extremely frustrated to the point of being rude):

This was after I stripped out all the formatting. That's why it's a wall of text.

I put the CRLFs back in for your easy perusal:

Let me start off by saying that your website is horrible.

It took me 30 minutes to order my checks, mostly due to server errors and necessary Java updates on ico.deluxe.com, which by the way I can see hasn’t been updated since -probably- 1998. It also takes about .. 45 seconds -I just counted- to load in the first place.

That aside, I still haven’t received my order. In fact, I just submitted an inquiry. Which is to say I tried to submit it 7 times, each time getting the error ‘For security purposes, our site does not accept one of the characters entered… -Error message DLX-OPT-0055-‘.

Why so many times? BECAUSE THE ERROR MESSAGE DOESN’T MENTION WHAT CHARACTERS ARE UNACCEPTABLE. First I tried removing the single quotes, then the commas, then the dashes, and etc. until all the punctuation was gone.

It was then that I realized it must be the carriage return/line feeds. I’m sorry, but I’ve been a web developer since before you guys had a website -probably-, and I know of no situation where CRLFs are a security risk.

And even if I’m wrong, at the VERY LEAST the error message could mention that. Oh, and every. single. time I resubmit this form I have to re-enter my order number and order date. Not my account number though. Strangely the sensitive information remains.

I don’t know if you know what I’m talking about. Please forward this to your CTO, and tell him I’m available on a consultancy basis. I can actually implement this form in JS and AJAX, two brand new technologies since 1998.

Thank you.

Oh lord, I just submitted this form again and it gave the same error. This time I didn’t use CRLFs. What character is it? I wonder? Hmmm, I’ll have to spend about 10 more minutes on this issue JUST TO COMPLAIN ABOUT THE ISSUE.

Seriously, forward this to your CTO. You just lost a customer over what is trivial nonsense to get right.

OK, I’m submitting this again. It wasn’t the double quotes.

This time I’m taking out the parentheses and replacing them with dashes.

The forward slash? Nope, what next? I’m pretty sure that all these characters were in my last message.

As I said, I was incredibly frustrated. And why they require your routing number and account number in order to complain about their website is beyond me.

Their response

In response to my first message, the one which actually concerned my order that was paid for with my hard-earned money? No response. It’s now been just over a week since I submitted that message, and all I have to show for it is this canned reply to my email address:

Thank you for the comment you provided through our website. One of our customer service agents will respond to your message shortly. This is a courtesy notice: no action is required on your part. Thank you again for your feedback! We appreciate your business.

My rant about their website? It got a response:

Dear Customer,

Thank you for contacting Deluxe.

We value customer feedback, so I have forwarded your comments to the appropriate area. We continually make innovative changes to our Web site to improve its functionality.

We apologize for the inconvenience and will make every attempt to serve you better in the future.

Again, thank you for your comments.

Regards,

Heidi
Your Deluxe Customer Care Representative

Emphasis above is mine. That’s a good joke, Heidi.

I just sent another inquiry about my order. It’s now December 18th, so we’ll see how that goes.

December 21, 2014

Still no response from Deluxe.

It’s been over a month since my order, so I’m giving up.

I contacted Chase via their Secure Message interface on chase.com and described my problem:

Date: 12-21-2014 20:15:55
To: Chase Online
Subject: Account Inquiry

TOPIC:Purchase Inquiry
MERCHANT:Check or supply order
PURCHASE DATE:11/25/2014
PURCHASE AMOUNT:$27.19

Hi,

On 11/18 I ordered checks from Deluxe, which I linked to from the Chase website. The fee for the checks was debited from my account on 11/25 PPD ID: 1410216800 , but I have yet to receive them.

I sent Deluxe an inquiry about my order and haven’t heard anything back in over a week.

I would like to have that fee reversed. I will order my checks from a third party merchant.

Thanks Regards,

Scott

And here’s the response I got back from Chase:

Date: 12-21-2014 20:26:26
From: Chase Online
Subject: Re: Account Inquiry

Dear Scott,

I apologize for any inconvenience you have experienced. I
am more than happy to take a look at your account.

After reviewing your account, we’re giving you a courtesy
refund of $27.19 on December 21, 2014.

Please let us know if there’s any other way we can help
you. We appreciate your business, and thank you for being
our customer. Please e-mail us through the Secure Message
Center while you are logged on to chase.com, or call us at
1-800-935-9935, if you have any questions.

Thank you,

Isabel [Last name]
Internet Service Center

There are two important things about what Isabel wrote: First, she responded in less than 11 minutes. On a Sunday. After business hours. That’s unbelievably good.

Second of all, she gave me a refund no questions asked.

That goes beyond “good” customer service. It’s downright excellent. I don’t have my checks, but I didn’t pay for them either.

I ordered my checks a few minutes later from Vistaprint. And hopefully that puts this whole issue to rest.

December 30, 2014

I got my Vistaprint checks! It only took 6 business days for the checks to be printed and delivered. And that’s with the cheapest shipping option. Not bad at all!

Click for the full-sized image. I redacted personal information, but it was all accurate.

Thanks

Thanks for reading. As I said, this has been cathartic for me, but moreover I’m hoping that this helps customers to avoid frustration from Deluxe in the future, and that it may lead them to update their websites.

Everyone makes mistakes, and nothing in this world is perfect. If I only had one problem — or a couple of minor issues — with Deluxe I wouldn’t have bothered with this laborious review.

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, etc.)

I was pretty sure it was a bug in their application, and having no way of fixing that I had the user call WebEx support. After about 30 minutes of no progress and my constantly entering the admin password to re-install WebEx software packages I took over the call.

The first thing I asked the rep: Have you recently pushed out any software updates?

His response: Absolutely not.

I didn’t look at the release notes until later, but it appears that he was lying or ignorant of this fact. Either way that’s a scary prospect, because looking at the notes they made a lot of changes in this release.

I should note that our conversation occurred on October 2, and the release is dated September 12. They must have issued a minor release during that time, as the release notes are for version 1.3.9 and the current version of the software is 1.3.9.0.8.

The rep then went on to insist that we must have made some kind of “network” change that caused the client to stop working.

He took control of the computer, and spent a great amount of time changing browser/internet settings in both Chrome and Windows. He insisted that it was a browser problem, and that the WebEx add-in was crashing or “being blocked”.

I asked: It looks to me like the application is running outside the browser, so why would it be a browser issue?

He insisted that the application was running in the context of the browser and that it was the browser settings causing the trouble. With me entering the admin password when prompted, he proceeded to weaken the security settings of the browsers to near-nothingness.

Even if that had worked, making my workstations less secure is not a viable solution. Nor would it be in any corporate environment.

He disabled our antivirus program and Windows Firewall. All of this was to no avail.

But all this faff over the browsers was completely tangential and pointless because the app would crash at the same point when starting a meeting in the WebEx Productivity Tools. This is done without the use of any browser.

So over an hour of our time was wasted trying to “fix” various web browsers when it was provably not a web browser issue.

Then the rep asked me to log him into the local administrator account. I did, and he was able to create a meeting without the application crashing.

HE THEN INSISTED THAT IT WAS A NETWORK ISSUE.

Not a permission issue, not a profile issue, not a bug in their application, but A NETWORK ISSUE.

At first I thought that he was perhaps confusing “Active Directory” with “the network”, but no. He directed me to a WebEx knowledgebase article about opening various outbound ports on a firewall.

We have never restricted outbound firewall ports, and more importantly if it were a network issue then the application would still crash when logged in as an administrator.

Also, I find it hard to believe that their application would crash due to a lack of connectivity. (And by “crash” I mean full-out “send error report” style crashing.) If it were a network connectivity issue then the app would likely give an appropriate error.

The worst part is that I can guess as to what’s going on:

The app probably has a bug wherein it tries to modify something to which it doesn’t have permission (a registry key, a file, Windows Firewall settings — whatever) in such a way that Windows does not ask the user for appropriate (e.g. admin) credentials, and then the app crashes rather than handling the permission exception properly.

Obviously that’s just my 2c, but it seems likely based on what I observed.

To summarize, here’s what really aggravated me about this encounter:

• The support rep claimed that there were no recent changes to their software, despite there having been a release with significant changes less than 3 weeks prior.
• The support rep insisted that we had made changes to “the network” despite that fact that I told him unequivocally that I had not, and that I’m the only person that would have the ability to do so.
• The support rep’s ultimate diagnosis of the situation was that our network was at fault, despite blindingly obvious evidence to the contrary.

All in all Cisco wasted about 2 hours of my and my user’s time.

Today we gave their support another try. Despite a different rep doing much the same as the first rep there was no progress. Their rep promised to call us back “between 12:00 and 12:30 EST”.

It’s now 13:50 and we’ve received no call back. I’ve also now missed lunch waiting for this phantom call.

The rep said that he leaves work at 14:00 EST, and I’m not very optimistic about getting a call from him in the next 10 minutes.

Update (2014-10-11):

Needless to say, I never did receive that call back.

Another amusing-slash-irritating find on the WebEx site: They apparently did not get the message about all the post-2000-era TLDs.

There’s a big difference between a fake email and an invalid email. I’m assuming that there’s no lumpy.bacca@hoth.guru, but it is plausible.

Yet good ol’ Cisco doesn’t believe in .guru, nor do they believe in a number of other perfectly valid (though stupid) TLDs. I guess that’s fine, because giving them a fake .com email is just as easy as giving them a fake .museum. (Speaking of which, don’t forget to submit a really, really improbable fake email. Poor john.smith@gmail.com must be sick of getting all those notifications!)

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…

Click for the full-sized image

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 something crazy: Track my package.

Tuesday, September 9 (2 AM)

Me: I got a ship notification with the tracking number.

FedEx: This is not a valid tracking number. We have no record of it.

Actually: It was picked up by FedEx about 16 hours prior.

Wednesday, September 10 (Evening)

Me: After checking a few times today, around 56 hours after the package was picked up I finally got some info using my tracking number.

FedEx: “Shipment information sent to FedEx.” No indication that it was picked up nor en route.

Actually: It was already en route to New Jersey from Texas.

Thursday, September 12 (Just after midnight)

Me: Tracking info finally looks normal…ish.

FedEx: Now showing the pickup time and that package went through NJ a few hours ago.

Actually: Makes sense.

Delivery!

Once the package was delivered most of the tracking information was there.

I say most because they still forgot to log one key piece of info: That the package ever left Texas. Check out that image again; It was in tracking limbo from TX to NJ.

I haven’t even opened it up yet, but the box is undamaged. So at least they got that right.

It’s not even consistent

Both of these snippets were pulled from the screenshot at the top of the page.

See that? The data isn’t even consistent within the same tracking report.

On the one hand the “Ship (P/U) date” is listed as 9/11/2014.

On the other hand it was “Picked up” on 9/8/2014, three days prior.

Of course it seems likely that the pickup date was genuinely the 8th, as that would have made sense for a ground shipment. But hey, maybe they lost the package in TX for a while and were forced to air ship it to make up time.

Scott, why are you so mad?

I’m not really. But the one thing FedEx is supposed to be really good at is tracking.

USPS is not good. Often I’ll get a package before their system even updates and recognizes the tracking number (though they have gotten better).

I expect the postal service to be slow and feckless (unfortunately), though I’ve had great luck with their priority mail service. FedEx built their reputation on logistics and tracking.

As for UPS? I’ve found that they tend to under-promise and over-deliver. Often when they say that the transit time for a package is 5 days I’ll get it in 4. They are either on-time or under-time. FedEx I’ve found to be quite the opposite. I’ve also had nearly 100% of my UPS tracking numbers show accurate information immediately following a pickup. (I know because I ship out via UPS with some frequency.)

If this were the first time I’ve seen mis- or under-informed tracking information from FedEx then it wouldn’t be a big deal. But I find their tracking system to be useless often enough that I’ve come to expect it.

In the 1980s computerized logistics and tracking were very impressive even at minimal levels of functionality.

Still using the same technology in 2014 is just embarrassing. (And if they’ve updated their systems and software since then, it’s even more embarrassing that they haven’t gotten it right).

It’s also very frustrating to customers when their package is in a black hole state of limbo for three days.

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 is going to be a nitpick review. The phone is efficiently and pleasantly packaged, though I find that to be completely irrelevant. The phone itself came out of the box with a tiny scratch on the aluminum back, and the SIM slot looked like it had been very lightly jimmyed with a screwdriver. I don’t know if that’s a quality control issue on HTC’s end, or if Verizon pre-loads the SIM card after HTC passes the phone on to them. Either way, it’s disappointing.

It’s also not quite enough reason to return the phone, because I’ll probably scratch the delicate aluminum surface in a few days. (Unlike most fanboys, I prefer a plastic case. Plastic bounces back, whereas aluminum will simply dent.)

The Activation

This section should be titled The Lack of Activation. I went through the “switch/activate phone” process on Verizon’s website and then booted up the device. I waited, and waited, then waited some more. I rebooted, and waited again.

HTC One Waiting for activation

“Please wait while your phone connects to Verizon Wireless and automatically activates” is the only user experience I had with the phone in the three hours of ownership.

I already have one pet peeve with the One, which is probably a Sense issue: If the screen goes into standby and I immediately hit the power/unlock button, it sends me back to the lock screen. On the Nexus (stock Android), it would give a grace period of a second or two where the unlock button would simply turn the screen back on. That’s a great feature when you’re waiting for something to download or, for example, waiting for a phone to activate.

Still no activation after two hours. I tried chatting online, but none of their representatives were available. There’s no option to enter a queue, so I guess I could have just hit F5 until I became bored.

Since it appeared that the online activation hadn’t worked, I called the activation phone number that VZW provided with the phone. It politely told me that activation may take up to 20 minutes. I waited 30 minutes with no result, and so reluctantly called VZW’s customer support line.

I was pleasantly surprised that, after trudging through some menus, a very helpful rep picked up on the first ring. She went through the activation process on her end, and while we were waiting told me that whenever she got a new [Verizon] phone the web-based activation wouldn’t work, and she’d have to call in. Their website is terrible, but this customer support person was fantastic.

Activated and Happy

My last two phones — the original Droid and the Nexus — both ran stock Android. In fact, that was one of my primary purchase considerations. I hate bloatware, and with many phones the problem is doubled by the carrier and the manufacturer each adding tons of their own irrelevant nonsense.

The HTC Sense UI and feature set isn’t terribly annoying. Verizon included some apps, of course, but all of them can be either disabled or hidden away. I chose to skip the creation of an HTC cloud account.

The Feel

In my hand, the One feels cumbersome compared to the Nexus, but I think that might just be new-phone-itis. The two devices are almost exactly the same height and width, the Nexus being a little thinner at the top and thicker at the bottom. I think the problem is the aluminum back on the One. It’s slippery compared to the textured plastic of the Nexus, and the Nexus’ thicker bottom makes it feel more planted in my hand.

The obvious solution would be to buy a case for the phone, but I don’t believe in cases: Manufacturers spend millions of dollars on R&D to make phones small, sleek, and pretty. Then consumers spend millions of dollars covering their phones in lumps of plastic and neoprene. It’s mind boggling. If a phone is well made, it’ll survive drops, scrapes, and bangs. If it isn’t well made, then it should be taken off the market. Of course I understand that someone with a physically demanding job may need extra protection, but when I see and office worker holding an iPhone 5 that’s twice as thick and half a centimeter wider and longer than it should be, I wonder why Apple even bothers to spend money on industrial design.

The Home Screen

The default home screen with the feed of things that other people are doing is not for me. Though it can’t be removed, it’s easy enough to set another panel as the default home. With that done, the phone already has a much more stock ‘droid feel.

However! This brings me to one of the stupidest, most asinine, and illogical design choices of the sense UI: The home panel(s) have a grid size of 4 x 4, and it can’t be changed. That means 16 app icons or a few widgets, maximum. On a phone with a 1080×1920-pixel screen!

By comparison, the Nexus with stock Android has a 4 x 5 grid size with a resolution of 720×1280. The HTC screen has more empty space on it than it does icons! I wouldn’t mind if that were just the default, but not being able to change it is absurd.

The Ports

This is another pet peeve of mine: Port placement. Laptops, cell phones, and MP3 players rarely get it right.

The One has two ports: A USB port and a 3.5″ TRS jack. The USB is on the bottom, and the 3.5″ TRS is on the top. That’s very poor design for any use case where you’d want to use both jacks at the same time and have the phone sitting vertically. Particularly if you put the phone in your car’s cup holder and want to both charge it and listen to music.

The Nexus has both the USB and audio ports on the bottom which meant that the phone would have to be awkwardly upside-down, but at least it wouldn’t put strain on either connector.

(Laptop manufacturers can’t stop themselves from putting ports on three — sometimes four — sides of their devices. USB plugs end up sticking out over the mouse pad, and forget about sitting cross-legged!)

The Screen

Obviously moving from “720” to “1080” is a huge difference as far as image crispness and font rendering go. But I’m already missing the deep contrast of my old OLED screen. While the HTC One’s IPS panel is nothing to sneeze at, just looking at the home screen icons side-by-side on both phones is like looking at a 1960s photograph and a modern day print.

For example, the GroupMe icon on the Nexus is a rich, vibrant blue. On the One it’s just bland cyan. The color wheel of the Chrome icon is boring on the One, and eye-catching on the Nexus.

Of course, on the Nexus I can actually see each pixel, whereas on the One the icons look like a solid surface. It does make me wonder what I’m missing on the S4’s 1080 OLED screen, which supposedly has been improved since the Nexus.

It’s the same deal with photos and videos: Because of the higher resolution on the One, detail is much finer but contrast and color reproduction just isn’t as good. I suppose that the OLED vs. LCD argument is very similar to the old plasma TV vs. LCD TV argument. I’m definitely in the OLED camp, though.

My final gripe in this section isn’t really about the screen itself, but about the way it’s used.

At work I use an older Dell Precision M6400. It has a Core2 Duo processor and 7200 RPM SATA drives, but for coding I don’t need a terribly fast system. What I do need, want, and like is a lot of visual real estate and it’s one of the few laptops out there with a 1920x1200 display.

The HTC One has 1.15 MILLION more pixels (over twice as many) as the Nexus, but it seems to display just as much, or less. Yes, I can set the font size smaller and it still looks good, but I want to scale everything smaller. I want smaller (and therefore more) icons on my home screen, more emails listed per page, more photo thumbnails, and more of everything else. My eyes aren’t good, but I wear glasses so that I can see things that are small.

Of course I could install a custom ROM or an aftermarket app manager. But options like display scaling should be built in from the start.

The Ringtones

I’m not a big ringtones guy. The only custom ringtone I use is Chev Chelios’ ringer from the Crank movies. Usually I’m satisfied with the stock rings and notifications. But! The Galaxy Nexus (and likely other Sammy phones) has some great notifications. Nice, soothing tones that are plainly audible, but not startling. That’s what I like for my email, particularly.

I get a lot of emails from various servers telling me when processes complete, and when there are problems. Emails come in morning, noon, and night, so I don’t want sounds that are too intrusive. The Samsung’s were spot on, but the HTC’s are mostly too sharp, too loud, or both. They’re very audible; Great for urgent messages, but bad for everything else.

So now with a quick copy, my One sounds like my Nexus, and I’m happier.