Or then again, maybe you will, given my luck lately for dealing with extraordinary levels of ineptitude of companies that are clearly letting the computers that do their thinking for them run completely amok.

I’ve just been overbilled by the New AT&T. No, it isn’t a joke. I only wish that it were.

For those keeping score, here’s the recap, updated to this latest snafu:

• In mid-July, I signed up for “Auto Draft” service, which allows the New AT&T to automatically debit the payment due from my checking account on the due date. One less thing for me to worry about, assuming they don’t screw things up. I received an email from them thanking me for enrolling. So they clearly knew I had done so. Just sayin’…
• In August, I got an email saying my payment was past due. I went to the website and saw that the payment was due. So I attempted to pay it online and a box popped up warning me that since I was already enrolled in Auto Draft, I should not proceed with a payment because doing so could result in my checking account being debited twice. So I followed their website’s instructions, and waited for them to just debit the money as I had previously instructed.
• They didn’t. My telephone service was suspended. I called — on my cell phone — and explained why I hadn’t paid, and reminded them that they had my account info: just debit the payment and be done with it! They informed me that it takes at least a full month for Auto Draft to kick in, no matter what the website says. So I paid. Phone was back on that day.
• September’s payment was due on Wednesday, Sept. 10. They authorized a debit from my account on Thursday, Sept. 4th for the amount due plus a $30 reconnect fee for my prior month’s “late” payment. On Saturday, Sept. 6th, they suspended my internet service for “non-payment,” despite the fact that they had already authorized the auto draft two days before that for a payment that still wasn’t due for another four days. When I called and pointed all of this out, they told me there was nothing I could do until the billing department returned the following Monday. I asked for a supervisor, and my internet was restored that Sunday.
• Fed up with two months’ worth of foolishness, I cancelled my home telephone service on Tuesday, Sept. 9th.
• At the end of September, I received October’s bill, in which they charged me $31.40 for long distance service they clearly knew I didn’t owe, since the local telephone service that would utilize long distance was no longer active. Somehow, their computer system was able to reason that I shouldn’t be billed for local service, but couldn’t quite jump to the same logic when it came time for long distance. I called, and they assured me that they’d credit not only the erroneous long distance service, but the $30.00 reconnect fee they charged me for “non-payment” despite my being enrolled in Auto-Pay at the time that fee was erroneously billed.

My high-speed internet service runs $47.95 a month, plus a few taxes and minor fees. Nothing like the fees they tack on to a telephone line, but I expect that to come any day now. So at most, my bill ought to be $51 or so.

When you know what they’re supposed to charge you, it becomes pretty easy to spot an error.

Figuring that I should owe about $51, and that they owe me the $30 reconnect fee they billed me in September, I was expecting a bill for about $21. I’m lousy at math, but even I can get that far.

So imagine my shock — or lack thereof — when I get my bill for November and see that the amount due is $79.66.

It appears that they credited me $31.40, from the previous month, which would take care of either the long distance or the reconnect fee, but clearly not both, and only charged me $51.11.

But they have billed me $31.71 for another month of long distance service. And they still know that I no longer have that telephone service because they still didn’t bill me for local service. And if I try to make a call on that line, nothing happens.

I think it’s going to be a long day.  Not necessarily for me, but for the operators at the New AT&T who get to sit through this sordid mess.

Again.

Last month, I mentioned that my apartment complex entered into an agreement with Comcast, my local cable provider, to get basic cable service for all of its residents.  In exchange, Comast lowered the monthy fees to $40, down from a total of roughly $56 or so (which includes taxes and fees), and we now pay that $40 as part of our rent.

In the end, it’s saves us all money if we already had Comcast service.  I’m all for that.

The only missing ingredient for this to actually work, of course, is Comcast adjusting our bills so that we don’t get charged the old rate.  And that isn’t happening.

This new billing procedure went into effect on October 1st, which means that when I paid rent this month, I paid $40 more, and I no longer owed Comcast a cent.  But I got a bill from Comcast saying that I owed them $58 for service.  I called them and was told I would have to get my apartment complex to call.  I did.  In fact, I was there when she called to get everything straightened out.  They assured her that the bill I got in October would be corrected so that I wouldn’t owe them anything.

Oh, yeah.  You know exactly where this is going.

Yep.

I got my Comcast bill yesterday.  Not only did they not correct last month’s billing error, but they charged me an additional month’s service, so I now have a total balance of $116.  I called them again and was given the standard, “Have your apartment office call our business office” line, and was told that they’d have this whole mess straightened out in time for November’s bill.  The problem, it seems, was that they didn’t get all of the information they needed to get the billing straightened out.  They did, however, get all of the information they asked for, which leads me to believe that it’s their screw-up.  It doesn’t help at all that their attitude of “have your people call my people” means it’ll be another full month before I get a bill that shows what I already know:  that I owe them nothing.

Is it too much to ask that a business you pay money to actually fixes a problem when it’s first pointed out?  No waiting around, no failure to act, no blaming someone else for not doing something they weren’t even asked to do.

Just fix it.  I don’t think that’s too much to ask at all.

As hard as it may be for you to believe, I’m without internet service again. This time, the New AT&T claims that there is some power outage and that my service won’t be restored until tomorrow at 2:30pm.

You know you’ve had bad service when the tech support guy calls up your account, and, upon reading recent notes, says, “Wow, you HAVE been through a lot lately.”

I could hardly dispute such wisdom.

Fortunately, this is the 21st century, and one can blog, when necessary, from laptops and cell phones when one finds his home high-speed Internet service to be inexcusably sub-par.  And I can’t ignore the marvelous irony that I can pick up my iPhone — an AT&T Wireless product, or go to Barnes & Noble and sign on to its AT&T Wifi Hotspot for free (since I pay for home internet service) and update it as well.

I’ll be calling the billing department on Monday once again, this time to demand a credit for the time that I am without service.

And if they’re less than cooperative, I’ll point out that Comcast also offers high-speed Internet.

I’ve had nightmarish problems with Comcast in Richmond, but not here in Charleston. In any case, Comcast can’t possibly be worse than the New AT&T.

I got an interesting peice of mail yesterday from a bill collecting agency hired by my apartment complex.  The amount due was more than $2,000, but it wasn’t until after I opened the letter — and after the moment of initial shock — that I realized that the bill was addressed to someone else!

Someone else who, apparently, once lived at my address.

I’ve had the displeasure of having businesses get a wrong address before: it takes months for them to get it straight if you don’t stay after them.  Stamping “No Such Addressee” on the envelope doesn’t help; I’ve tried.

So I called the number listed for this national debt collection agency.  The man on the other end answered with a simple, “Hello.”  No name of business, nothing.  Just hello.

I explained that I had received a letter at my address that was addressed to someone else, and that I wanted to let them know that there was no such person living at this address.

The guy said, “So you’re telling me that you opened someone else’s mail?”  Way to miss the point that the letter his little company sent was misdirected.  Let’s stick to the real problem here, shall we?

I resisted, though I’m not sure how I resisted, the temptation to begin my response with the words, “Look, jerk…” and said, “Yes, I sure did.  I was going through my mail and paying bills and frankly, I didn’t look at the name until I had already opened it.  But it did come to my address.  It’s not like I raided a neighbor’s mailbox out of boredom.”

“Do you see the account number?”

Oh, I thought, so now it’s suddenly okay that I opened “someone else’s” mail now that you actually need something!  Funny how that works, isn’t it?

I gave him the number and he looked it up.  He read back an address to me and asked if it was mine.  It wasn’t.

He explained — get this! — that the guy’s address had apparently changed, so they sent this to the old one.

“So then you already knew that this was the wrong address when you mailed it?”  Couldn’t let that one slide.

“Uh, yeah.  That’s just a security precaution.  You can discard the letter.”

Riiiiiiiiight.

From now on, I’ll be tempted never look at the name on a letter again.  Out of spite.  But I probably still will.

The ongoing drama with the New AT&T continues.

First, let me recap:

• In mid-July, I signed up for “Auto Draft” service, which allows the New AT&T to automatically debit the payment due from my checking account on the due date.  One less thing for me to worry about, assuming they don’t screw things up. I received an email from them thanking me for enrolling.  So they clearly knew I had done so.  Just sayin’…
• In August, I got an email saying my payment was past due.  I went to the website and saw that the payment was due.  So I attempted to pay it online and a box popped up warning me that since I was already enrolled in Auto Draft, I should not proceed with a payment because doing so could result in my checking account being debited twice.  So I followed their website’s instructions, and waited for them to just debit the money as I had previously instructed.
• They didn’t.  My telephone service was suspended.  I called — on my cell phone — and explained why I hadn’t paid, and reminded them that they had my account info:  just debit the payment and be done with it!  They informed me that it takes at least a full month for Auto Draft to kick in, no matter what the website says.  So I paid.  Phone was back on that day.
• September’s payment was due on Wednesday, Sept. 10.  They authorized a debit from my account on Thursday, Sept. 4th for the amount due plus a $30 reconnect fee for my prior month’s “late” payment.  On Saturday, Sept. 6th, they suspended my internet service for “non-payment,” despite the fact that they had already authorized the auto draft two days before that for a payment that still wasn’t due for another four days.  When I called and pointed all of this out, they told me there was nothing I could do until the billing department returned the following Monday.  I asked for a supervisor, and my internet was restored that Sunday.
• Fed up with two months’ worth of foolishness, I cancelled my home telephone service on Tuesday, Sept. 9th.

This brings me to last night, when I received an email from the New AT&T stating that I owed $82.  Eighty-two bucks for just internet service?  Yeah, something’s wrong.  Again.

So this morning I call them up and try to get answers.  It turns out that while they credited me money for the local phone service, they just went ahead and billed me through October 2nd on long distance service.  Did you catch that?  I’ve still got unlimited long distance through October 2nd on a dead phone I cancelled on September 9th.

I asked why the same computer system that could see I’d cancelled my local service and could issue a credit for that was somehow able to miss that detail on the long distance service.  She didn’t have an answer for that, which didn’t surprise me at all.  There’s no explaining a series of screw-ups this large.

And to make matters worse, they can’t correct the problem until the next billing cycle — after they just go ahead and debit the extra money they already know I don’t owe them from my checking account in October.  They’ll give me a credit in November, but they still will have shorted me in October.  Guess times must be tough at the phone company, too.

But the one good bit of news is that after the customer service rep sat through this story and read all of the notes previous reps had left as they sorted through this comedy of errors, she did credit me the $30 reconnect fee I should never have had to pay to begin with.  There’s just no way to know whether that will drop the amount they debit from $82 to $52, or whether I’ll see that $30 in November along with the extra long distance.

I don’t know what’s going on with the “New AT&T,” but I sure wish we could get the old one back.

I’m just waiting for them to send me one of those silly little surveys about their customer service.  I can’t wait to tackle the question about whether or not I’d recommend the New AT&T to my friends!

Okay, I’ll admit it: when the iPhone first came out, I was among those who asked, “What’s the point?” I wondered why anyone would need all that stuff on a cell phone. Email? iPod? GPS? Come on! Just give me a phone that allows me to call people and I’m happy.

Then, at some point last year, I broke down and got one. It started when Verizon, the cell phone company I had been with for years, sent me a circular in the mail offering me the opportunity to buy their Voyager, which seemed to be a ripoff of the iPhone. Trouble was, when I went to the Verizon store to take them up on their offer, they told me that I wasn’t eligible for the offer since my contract wasn’t up. (The circular said nothing about that.) They told me that I’d have to buy the phone for almost twice what the circular said it would cost.

I called that the old “bait and switch.” And I told them what they could do with their little offers. And their phone service.

So, out of spite, I bought an iPhone. I quickly realized that we all actually do need all this stuff in a cell phone. No, really. We do.

If you don’t have one, you’re missing out. Trust me on that.

On the other hand, there is “too much of a good thing.” A recent report from WCBS-TV in New York calls Blackberry (and I imagine some iPhone users, too) have become a little too attached to their gadgets.

Eighty-seven percent of users say they bring their devices into the bedroom. (Insert your own joke here.) Another 84 percent say they check their emails one last time before bed, and 80 percent check them in the morning as soon as they get up.

In my case, it’s guilty, guilty and guilty.

I have a good excuse for bringing my phone into the bedroom now. Since shutting off my land line phone service — because of the New AT&T’s remarkably-inept billing department that debited money out of my account six days before the due date then suspended my service two days before the due date because they thought I hadn’t paid my bill — the cell is my only phone. In an emergency, I want it close by. And if I get a call early in the morning, I want it in the bedroom so I’m sure to hear it.

I also use it as a backup alarm clock. (Yes, it has an alarm function, too.)

As for the email thing, well, not that I get a lot of email, but when I do, I hate to miss out. Especially if it’s from one of you nice readers who have decided to comment on a post I’ve made. (Not that I’m hinting or anything.)

Most disturbing, I think, is the number of people who would choose their PDA over their spouse if they had to pick one or the other. The number’s not as high as those who take the Blackberry into the bedroom, but then it ought not be higher than zero.

So what about you? Do you take your cell phone into the bedroom? Check your email before you go to bed or when you get up? Do you consider yourself a gadget addict?

The gas station I normally buy from adjusted its price per gallon by about twenty cents amid the sudden panic that there would be no more gas because of Ike.  But several gas stations around South Carolina decided to take advantage of the opporunity and reportedly raise their prices above the $5.00 mark.

But now South Carolina’s attorney general is on the case.  A little-known law in South Carolina allows the attorney general to prosecute businesses for price gouging any time an emergency is declared (even in another state) by the president.  Bush declared emergencies in Texas and Louisiana last night.

This law comes into play if a commodity’s price might be affected by some sort of emergency situation, and targets businesses who raise prices too high.  There was no concrete definition provided for what makes a price high enough for prosecution, but if I owned a gas station and I raised the price per gallon by a buck or more in a single day, yeah, I’d be worried.

Well, this morning I did it:  I called the New AT&T and made my displeasure about their erroneous suspension of my internet service for non-payment of a bill I didn’t even know, their cavalier attitude about it, and their failure to follow through with a promised courtesy call, known.

And I found out one more interesting fact:  this payment that was supposed to be due tomorrow, September 10th, was ordered from my account on September 4th, two days before they suspended my service.  The money didn’t actually leave my account until Monday, but they authorized the payment through their auto-pay service on the 4th, then suspended my service two days later because they thought I didn’t pay.

That’s organization, isn’t it?

I disconnected my land line telephone service, thereby joining many people in the 21st century who haven’t had one in years.  I’ll happily rely on my iPhone for all telephone service.  (Yes, I do realize that the iPhone is also an AT&T property, but it’s out of AT&T Wireless, a division that seems completely separate and far better at customer service than the New AT&T seems to be.)

I did retain my internet service at home, and even though there’s a $5 fee for having internet service without an accompanying phone line, I don’t have to pay all of the taxes and FCC costs that go with the phone service, so I’m still ahead.  I figure, counting telephone service, the calling plan with the features I needed to block annoyance calls, and my unlimited long distance plan, I’ll be saving somewhere around $80 a month, plus about another $15 or so from cable.

That’s money I can use to pay off a credit card sooner.  I can live with that.

I received a note from my apartment complex office today that referenced the situation with Comcast, the local cable provider.  As you may recall, just days ago, I was considering the “unthinkable” action of canceling cable service to get some bills paid.  The letter says, in part:

“We have entered into an agreement with Comcast to provide its Digital Starter service as a new amenity for our residents.  You will continue to receive a monthly bill for any services and equipment that you obtain through Comcast that are in addition to the Digital Starter service.  The channel line-up for Comcast’s Digital Starter service is attached.”

What that says to me, unless I’m missing something, is that everyone gets this lineup, and since it’s a “new amenity,” it ought to be covered in the rent; that is to say, I ought to get that service for nothing.  If I subscribe to cable internet, or cable HD or cable anything-else, which I don’t, then I should have to still pay for that stuff separately.

Does anyone else read anything different?

I’m not sure that’s what they mean, but that’s how I read it.  In any event, there appears to be no way to opt out, so it is what it is.  If it’s truly free, that will save me about $50 per month.  If it’s discounted at all, I’ll take those savings, whatever they are.

Meanwhile, on Saturday, after raising a stink with the New AT&T over their abrupt suspension of my internet service when I in fact had a zero balance with my account, I was promised that my service would be restored and that I would receive a courtesy call from a billing representative by Monday morning at the latest.

It’s no longer Monday morning, as far as I can tell, in any part of the world.  The call never happened.  While my service quietly came back on hours after my call, there was no apology, no explanation, no offer for discounted service to compensate for their inconvenient blunder.

I called their billing department this evening just to find out the logistics of canceling local telephone service but keeping internet service.  I learned that if I do internet-only, it will work out to be about $50 per month.  But that beats the roughly $130 a month I’m currently paying for local telephone service, unlimited long distance (which I really don’t need), internet, and the complete choice package that allows me to block a lot of telemarketers and fax machines, but fails to block them all, anyway.

The office that would have to cancel the telephone service, conveniently, wasn’t open.  Typical.  They can take payments any time, but they restrict the time you can cut your service.  But tomorrow morning, I’ll take a leap into the 21st century by dropping my land line and maintaining cell phone service only.  (I never realized how many other people have already eliminated land line service!)

So if I’m right about the way I read the cable letter, between that and my phone service, I could be saving up to $125-130 a month, which will be a nice chunk of change to pay off a few bills early, particularly that little transmission bill.

I’m all for that.

• UPDATE:  Of course the “free” idea was far too good to be true.  Cable will be $40, but based on what I’ve been paying, that’s still about $15 bucks off the bill.  Every little bit helps, right?

Yesterday afternoon, I suddenly found myself without internet service here at home.  I’d been online a good bit of the day, writing and reading without any difficulty.  Then, at about 5:16pm, pages stopped loading.  Email stopped coming in.  Errors began popping up, advising that this page or that page was not responding.

I checked the little modem supplied to me by the New AT&T, which took over Bellsouth, and noticed that the internet light was red instead of green.

I unplugged the modem, waited about ten seconds, and plugged it back in, knowing that if I call them, this is one of the first pieces of advice their tech support people would offer.  (In TV, we call the act of turning something off and then back on again the “primary engineering solution” because that’s generally the first thing that’s tried, no matter what the problem actually is.)  In this case, the internet was still out.

So I called the tech support line and after entering my telephone number, I received a recorded message that my account had been “referred to billing which was closed for the day.”  I soon learned that billing on Saturday closes at 5:30pm, and they suspended my internet service at 5:16pm.  They’re not open on Sunday, so Monday morning would be my first opportunity to find out what was wrong.

But if you know me, then you know that I’m not the kind to sit back and wait patiently until Monday.

The other odd thing is that back in July, I signed up for the New AT&T’s convenient auto-draft service, which means that each month, when my bill is due, they just automatically deduct it from my checking account.  That way there’s never a late payment and it’s one less thing I have to worry about.

Except for last month, when they suddenly suspended my telephone service — that time it was just the phone, the internet worked fine — for “non-payment.”  I called, pointed out that I had already signed up for the auto-draft service, and was told that the auto-draft service takes more than a month to begin, so that my payment that should have been auto-drafted wasn’t.  “It would have been nice,” I suggested, “if somewhere on the confirmation email that welcomed me to the auto-draft program, it pointed out this little delay.”  The operator agreed and apologized.  She then assured me that the September payment, which she said was due on September 10th, would be auto-drafted and there would be no problem.

So here I was, on September 6th, (which most of us would likely agree occurs before September 10th has a chance to roll around), with no internet service and the accusation that I was somehow a deliquent.

I called the tech support number back and when it asked for my phone number, I said, “Agent.”  This eventually got me to a human being, albeit a human being with a thick foreign accent that made the conversation more difficult.  This person, after suggesting several tricks to try to get the internet service back up, finally looked up my account and told me it was a billing issue.  I explained the whole auto-draft thing and she said that there was no way she could access that information with my account since she was tech support only.

I then asked the big question, one that they’re probably sorry I asked:  “If I drive myself to my office, go online there, and pay whatever amount the New AT&T seems to think is past due, will that get my service restored automatically?”

She told me she couldn’t promise that, but that it was a possibility.

So I drove to work, signed on to the New AT&T’s convenient online account management system, and was met with the following piece of information:

BILL SUMMARY:

Due Date:  September 10

Current Balance:  $0.00

I actually printed out that page before I left work, and went back home to get back on the phone with tech support.  Needless to say, I was livid.  Livid because I knew I didn’t have a past-due balance, livid because I had taken the step two months ago of signing up for auto-pay so that there was no way a past-due balance was even possible, and livid because they cut my service while accusing me of not paying a zero balance that isn’t even due for another four days!

And the irony that since they now have my checking account number, and can now auto-draft my payment when it is due, and could therefore have automatically drafted whatever they thought was past due without cutting my service, was not lost on me, either.

I immediately asked for a supervisor this time around, explained the problem, read off the information from the printout, and said that waiting until Monday for the correction of a screw-up that was clearly not my fault was thorougly unacceptable.  The supervisor promised to send an emergency email dispatch to a billing manager, and that I should expect a courtesy call back between now and Monday morning.

Within the hour, my internet service suddenly, magically, inexplicably came back on.  The little red light became green again, like the dawn of a new day.  And as for the couresty call, it has yet to occur.

No explanation.  No apology.  Nothing.

I’m sure they’ll blame some random computer glitch.  I’m sure it won’t be anyone’s fault.  But I think they owe me the courtesy of that much at the very least.  And I’m sure they’re going to like it if I have to be the one to make the first contact on Monday morning.

Remember that little song?  I thought of it this morning.

Because I forgot to pay my phone bill.

Actually, I didn’t forget to pay it…I just got the due date for that bill confused with the due date for my electric bill.  The new AT&T, which doesn’t seem to be much of an improvement over the old one, and which delights in emailing me any time there’s something they want me to spend more money on, didn’t email me to warn me that my phone service was about to go bye-bye.

But this morning, the phone was suddenly out of service.  Still thinking I had a few days before the bill was due, I started my day and checked my email blissfully unaware that my phone had been “temporarily disconnected” until I got a call on my cell from mom, who told me that she couldn’t get through.

So I signed on to my account and checked:  sure enough, it was past due.  (Oddly enough, the same bill also covers online service, but this worked without a problem.)  So I authorized a payment of slightly more than was past due, just to show them that it was an honest mistake and that I meant to rectify it quickly and completely.

Then came the error:  “Your account requires special handling.  Please call AT&T at….”

Call?  With what?

Naturally, I didn’t call them until I got to work; I don’t do account information over a cell phone.  And as for “special handling,” they took the same information I gave their website.  They had no answer about exactly what kind of “special handling” they were performing.

Or why their site didn’t just cooperate to begin with rather than directing me to use a phone that it knew didn’t work.

I keep getting someone else’s mail. It is actually a neighbor of mine, according to the address. But it’s not mine, so I’d just as soon not have it making surprise appearances in my mailbox.

This neighbor, named John, seemed nice enough when I handed him past months’ credit card bills and politely suggested that he call the credit card company, Capital One, to get the address corrected. But on the other hand, I don’t know for sure that the person who claimed to be John actually was; I just asked for John, and when he came to the door, I handed him the bill. This has happened twice before.

Prior to that, before taking a close look at the address and realizing the simple mistake they’d made, I just used my trusty “Return to Sender/No Such Addressee” stamp and dropped the bill back in the mailbox. That didn’t seem to work.

The mistake I mentioned, incidentally, is extraordinarily easy to fix. They just don’t seem interested in doing anything about it. Let’s suppose, for the sake of argument, that my address is 523 Charleston Avenue. And let’s suppose that John’s address is 522 Charleston Avenue. The mail coming to John is addressed this way:

522 Charleston Avenue
#523

That second number, unfortunately, is what the letter carrier is using for delivery purposes. But it seems such a simple fix: just make both numbers 522 and all is well. John gets his bill, Capital One gets their message through, and I don’t have to be bothered with this little exercise in credit card commerce.

I called Capital One this afternoon and asked them to look up the account. Surprisingly, I was able to give them the account number without opening the envelope because it was clearly visible right below the address through the envelope’s address window!

I explained before I gave them the number that this was not my account, but that I needed to advise them of an address correction. I read the number, and they immediately asked me for the last four digits of my social security number. (Way to pay attention, operator!) I repeated that it was not my account, and that I therefore had no idea what the social security number might be. I then read the address that they surely had in front of them — which they were hesitant to confirm or deny at first.

I pointed out the fact that the two different numbers were causing the post office to put John’s mail in my box.

The operator said she understood the mistake, but said there’s nothing she could do about it. The conversation then went something like this:

ME: So you’re telling me that after I’ve told you that I’m getting one of your customer’s credit card statements in error, you’re just going to keep sending me his bill with his account information?

HER: Well, could you walk the letter over to [John]?

ME: I’ve been doing that. But that’s not solving the problem. I don’t want to have to keep dealing with this month after month.

HER: Well, if you could ask him to call us, we can change it if he calls us.

ME: I have asked him to do that. He either hasn’t gotten around to it, or you guys haven’t gotten around to fixing it.

HER: Well, sir, the problem is that I don’t know who you are. I can’t confirm that you’re [John].

ME: Right. I told you that to start with. I’m not him. This is not my account. I’m someone else. If I were going to lie about who I was, I’d be claiming to be John, not a neighbor.

HER: Well, we can’t confirm that.

ME: You mean you can’t confirm that I’m someone else?

HER: Yes. Um, I mean no. That you’re not him.

Rocket scientist.

I was waiting, because I just knew this next line was coming. Sure enough…

HER: If you would just ask him to call us again…

ME: I’ll ask the person I give the bill to, for the third time, to call you. There’s just one problem with that: I can’t confirm that the person I’m giving the mail to is actually John.

HER: (Pause) You don’t know him?

ME: No! Do you know all of your neighbors?!? The only thing I know about him is you guys seem to think he lives were I do. When I walk it over to the other address, I don’t ask the guy for his ID. He says he’s John, but I don’t know if he is or not. I just want to stop getting his mail.

HER: Well, there’s really nothing else we can do.

I asked to speak to a supervisor, who told me she wanted to put me on hold long enough to research procedure in such matters. After about thirty seconds on hold, we got cut off.

So I’m left with, “there’s really nothing else we can do.”

Sure there is, Capital One: You call John. You tell him that there is a question about the address on his statement. You then advise him that you are placing a block on his credit card until he calls the number listed on the back of the card itself — so that there’s no question that he’s calling a valid, real Capital One number — to confirm his address. You then advise him that if they do not hear from him in five business days, the account will be closed, thereby changing the interest rate to the default rate, which will probably cost him a hell of a lot more money. (That’s the incentive for him to get this fixed, even if they have no real intention of doing that.)

That way, he calls them, he gives them the information rather than them having to ask him, they get the right address, he gets his statements hereafter, and I don’t get bothered.

Problem solving doesnt have to be that hard.

I was doing a Google search for a plug-in option that would further assist my spam filter so that I could weed out spambots without having literally hundreds of suspected spam comments to sift through to make sure no legitimate comments were misdirected.

I came across a website with a plug-in that wasn’t really what I was looking for, anyway, but I couldn’t help but notice the big bold message at the top of the page:

“This plugin project is on hold. Why? Because hundreds of people asked for this plugin, so we created it. However, when we asked for donations to fund further development we gathered a whopping $20. So, it seems that while people are chomping at the bit to make money with our code almost none are willing to share their revenue by making a reasonable donation. Therefore we give the existing code away only to those that deserve it. For the rest of you, write the code yourselves.”

Wow. So somebody is surprised that in this day and age, a large number of people want something for nothing? Particularly when many of Wordpress’s users don’t pay a cent for Wordpress itself?

I wonder if they get that “asking for donations” is like asking for a favor, and that a request, or even a plea or demand, does not force someone else to hand over a donation. A donation, the last time I checked, refers to something that is given voluntarily, usually in the form of a gift. There may be a moral obligation that some people feel, but if it’s voluntary, it’s a little unfair to get bent out of shape if everyone chooses not to take part.

We do live in a lazy world, after all. And with gas prices about a dime away from the $4.00 mark, we’re beginning to live in a stingy one, too.

There’s no question in my mind that this this person made a very wise decision in limiting access to the product…especially if there’s that much anger that donations haven’t rolled in faster. But with a message like that, I can’t admit that I’d feel generous enough to make myself one of the “deserving,” either.

More power to ‘em.