Just had an interesting conversation with a woman named “Reman” from Continental Airlines.  To make a long story short, she told me that it is Continental Airlines policy not to offer any compensation for bad customer service if the problem you encountered was merely rudeness.

I was trying to get a complimentary seat upgrade, to the “more leg room” type of seat, based on a bad customer service experience that involved several phone calls without resolution, lies, and bad service, the pinnacle of which was being hung up on after 75 minutes on hold.

With most reasonable companies not named Comcast, that type of experience would get you some paltry token compensation.  Hell, with Comcast you can usually get something like free HBO for a few months.

Continental Airlines?  Rudeness is just to be expected, I guess.

I had to ask to clarify, because I was so taken aback by the plain way she stated the policy to me.  This is a direct quote, not a paraphrase: “It is our policy not to offer compensation if the problem you encountered was rudeness.”

Yesterday was a GREAT day.  I ditched my Comcast, worst company on Earth, TV service in favor of DirecTV.  Given my hatred for Comcast, the worst company on Earth, DirecTV could have given me a shoebox hooked up to an old rabbit ear antenna and I would have been happy, but I’m going to do my best to objectively review their service.

So, let’s start at the beginning, with setting up the service.

The Phone Call

I have adopted a new tactic recently, which some may think is not politically correct, but if I call a call center, then hear a voice on the other end of the phone that my gut tells me will not be competent, I hang up and call back.  When I don’t employ this tactic, I usually regret it, as you’ll see when I write up my latest Comcast experience.  I only had to hang up and call back once before I found a voice I could trust at the other end of the DTV line.  That’s a pretty average experience when it comes to large call centers.  The second person I called was quite competent, a fluent speaker of American English, and mostly knowledgeable about the DTV products and services.

I am an AAA member, so I called a special AAA line.  The cool thing about this was that I got the regular DTV promo price (same as on the website), plus an additional $10 off per month.  Too often these “membership” type deals end up being a worse deal than you can get online, so I was pleasantly surprised.

All in all the call took about 20 minutes, and the person I was talking to answered all of my questions competently.  She got a bit confused when I wandered into overly technical territory, but I got the info I needed.

I was also pleased that she recommended the same package that I was thinking I needed- the middle tier service, and didn’t try to jam me into a higher package than I need because her commission would be bigger.  Comcast, you slimy bastards, I’m looking in your direction.

The Install

I called on Monday afternoon.  The service was fully installed by Tuesday afternoon.  I could have opted for Tuesday morning, but I had some other stuff going on.  Time from call to install was less than 24 hours.  It’s impossible to complain about that.

I was a little annoyed by the 4 hour window (let’s get that down to 2 hours, guys) but their automated system did call me about 10 minutes into the window to let me know that the guy was on the way and would be there in 45 minutes.  That was cool.

The installer was on-time, courteous, competent and professional.  He didn’t try to sell me anything, didn’t wreck anything, and when he left everything worked.

Installation was mostly free- I guess I paid like $20 for a handling fee or something.  Obnoxious, but not unexpected.

The Equipment

Here’s one of many places where DTV totally kick’s Comcast’s ass.  We got the “Whole House DVR” which allows us to watch recorded TV in any room.  It’s frickin’ sweet.  There’s no other way to describe it.  The DVR has a huge hard drive, and if we run out of space, we can attach an external hard drive to add more space.  THAT. IS. SO. COOL.

Price

I’m paying less than I was for Comcast for a similar service.  DTV still employs the obnoxious intro pricing, which is on a first 12 months/second 12 months scheme, and requires some sort of rebate.  That’s annoying, and I wish everyone would just adopt the strategy of Cox, our cable company in Phoenix, which just had simple pricing and no promos.

The follow-up call

I have a DVR downstairs, and a HD non-DVR upstairs. We can view the recorded TV upstairs, but we can’t pause live TV and the options for setting up recordings are kind of limited.  So I called back today to ask how much it would be to get a second DVR instead.  They told me free!  The girl who I talked to entered it as a correction to my initial order, so next week I’m getting a second DVR for no cost, and the same cost per month.

Bottom Line

Objectively, my experience with DirecTV so far has been an A, not quite an A+.  If you grade on the Comcast curve, it’s about an A++++++++++++++++++++++++++, but I don’t think it’s right to allow Comcast to tank the scale by sucking so much.  If your competition is the worst company on Earth, it would be easy to set your sights at the “just above worst” level, but it’s obvious DirecTV is better than that.

I plan further reviews as I use the system more, including figuring out how their OnDemand feature works.  And of course, the dreaded first bill, where we see who lied to me.  Do you see what you did there Comcast?  You set my expectations so low that I assume everyone is lying to me.  Fingers crossed this first bill turns out right to restore a bit of the faith Comcast has sucked out of me over the past 20 or so years.

A Funny Post Script

When I made mention of my hatred for Comcast, the DTV installer told me a few funny stories.  He said he’s noticed a lot of people get quite a bit of joy out of returning their Comcast equipment.  This includes one guy who left in the middle of the install because he just couldn’t wait.  He returned his Comcast stuff in the DirecTV box.

I’ll be returning my equipment tonight, and you can be damn sure it will be in that shiny new DirecTV box when I walk in there.  I’m almost giddy thinking about it.

Betty McCollum does.  She’s the moron MN Congresswoman who tried to make it illegal for the Pentagon to sponsor NASCAR events.

The Make-a-Wish-Foundation, on the other hand, doesn’t share Ms. McCollum’s hatred of people from the South.  They are honoring four people for a rather astounding accomplishment: granting over 200 Wishes each.

The four:

• John Cena, WWE Wrestler
• Hulk Hogan
• Jeff Gordon
• Dale Earnhardt, Jr.

Not being honored- the Barefoot Contessa.

So, I just reloaded the laptop, and installed Google’s Chrome browser.  (I’d rather not, but being in the web development world it’s best to have a variety of browsers installed.)

I installed under the local user, then I joined my corporate domain.  When I logged on as a domain user, I couldn’t find the Chrome executable.  Looked in C:\Program Files, then searched the C: drive.  Nothing.  WTF?  Where did Chrome go?

So I went over to my desktop to see what my shortcut was pointing at.  Ah.  The answer.

C:\Users\[UserName]\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe

Again. WTF?

Apparently Chrome installs itself to the user’s AppData folder (which is hidden – thus not searched – by default).  After reading a bit online it seems that it installs this way so users without Admin privileges can install the application.

Great for people in the corporate environment who want to get around IT, not great for those IT departments.  Also not OK for people who set up, say, their parents, with non-admin access to their own PCs so nothing gets “accidentally” installed resulting in a long-distance service call.

I had no idea you could just bypass the admin requirement by installing to a different location.  Not cool.

This install scheme means that if you and your wife share a computer, but have unique logons, each of you would have your own version of Chrome installed.  So you’d each have to update your instances separately.

There may be some merits to “user-based” application installs, but I’d rather not have Google make that decision for me, without my knowlegde or consent.  But I suppose that’s their style, isn’t it.

“Hey baby, we’re not evil! Trust us!”

I won’t rehash them, but I came across two very interesting articles about middle schools, and how they are another factor in our pathetic public education system.

I went to Junior High, which is different.  I guess different enough that it makes a difference.

Here’s a quote or two to entice you to click:

“The Bermuda triangle of education,” former Louisiana superintendent Cecil Picard once termed middle schools. “Hormones are flying all over the place.”

“If you are the warm, nurturing, motherly, grandmotherly type, you are made for early childhood education. If you love math or science or English, then you are the high school type. If you love bungee jumping, then you are the middle school type.”

Check them out: Stuck in the Middle and The Middle School Mess

This is one of those stories that hits a little close to home, as I have some experience with the subject matter:

Four Wal-Mart employees have been fired after management said they violated company policy by disarming an alleged shoplifter who had pulled a gun inside the store.

It’s really a tough story, because both sides have valid arguments.  On the Wal-Mart side, you can’t have employees acting like heroes.  If a shoplifter or a robber pulls a gun, you let them go.  Most businesses have similar policies- banks, restaurants, etc.  When untrained employees act like heroes, people get hurt.

On the other hand, no corporate policy can encompass every situation- especially situations like this.  The four men involved in this incident make the argument that based on the situation, they had no choice but to disarm the bad guy- there was nowhere to retreat to – and besides, they didn’t want to release an armed gunman into a store full of people.  That sounds pretty reasonable to me.

If you’re going to put employees into dangerous situations – like apprehending shoplifters – then you owe it to them to have reasonable policies to deal with situations that go bad.  “Zero-tolerance” policies don’t help anyone.  Instead, they harm loyal employees, and make your company look bad in the press.  A “Zero-tolerance” policy is a cowardly way of dealing with tough decisions.

Everyone has the same goal here- making sure nobody gets hurt.  Assuming the newspaper report is accurate (and that’s a BIG assumption), these were not the actions of rogue employees that thought they were cowboys.  They did the best they could in a bad situation.

Wal-Mart should do better.

It’s been a whilessince I’ve had a good Comcast bashing post.  Here we go again.

Over the past few days my XFINITY(!!!!) digital voice service has been routinely dropping calls.  It starts with the person on the other end of the phone unable to hear me, then a few seconds later the call is dropped totally.  Eventually I was sitting next to the modem when this happened, and saw that it was rebooting after the calls were dropped.

Last night, after it happened several more times, I called Comcast’s customer support line.  The guy on the other end of the phone did some useless troubleshooting which was unrelated to my issue, then told (rudely, of course) me “there’s only so much he can do over the phone” and that he’d have to send a tech out.  He started the scheduling process.

(As a quick aside, I love instructing support techs on how to do their jobs.  He asks me “when was the last time this happened?”  I replied “doesn’t your system log that type of activity?”  “No. I can see your modem uptime though.”  “Why don’t you look at that then?” “Oh, it looks like the modem rebooted itself about 9 minutes ago.”  “That would be your answer.”)

Then, predictably, the phone went dead, and the modem rebooted itself.

After waiting about 20 minutes, thinking the tech would be smart enough to call me back since he had my info pulled up, I called back.  I explained what happened, and we got to go through a different set of phone troubleshooting that was unrelated to my issue.  To her credit, though, the second woman (at my prompting, naturally) did take herself out of the call queue so that she could call me back in the inevitable situation that the phone disconnected.  The phone held though, and she scheduled me an appointment for today (yesterday’s tomorrow) between 3 and 5 PM.

So of course today, I get an automated phone call reminding me of my appointment tomorrow between 3 and 5.  (I guess she got the time right, but not the date, so half credit, I suppose.)  That message said if there was any issue with my appointment time, I was to call back a different Comcast call center.  I did.

I told the guy who answered the phone my appointment was for today, not tomorrow.  He proceeded to ask me a bunch of questions, in yet another unsuccessful attempt to troubleshoot by phone.  Eventually he got around to telling me that he didn’t have access to change the appointment, so I needed to call 1-800-COMCAST again and ask to speak to the local dispatch office.

So I called 1-800-COMCAST again, and ended up in IVR hell, as I tried to explain to the automated voice lady that I needed to speak to the local dispatch office.  “I didn’t get that.  Please repeat your request again.”

Eventually I got to a live person, who confirmed my Friday appointment (grrrr…) and then told me that they didn’t have the authority to contact dispatch, so they’d have to call me back after speaking to their supervisor.

About 15 minutes another guy called me back and said the tech will be at my home between now and 5 PM today.  But give him until 5:15 before you call back to complain.

He has 3 hours and 7 minutes to show up.  We’ll see.

The Department of Homeland Security will be running ads in over  500 WalMart stores  in the upcoming weeks².

“If you see something, say something” ad campaign has been featured in the Mall of America and is supported by the American Hotel & Lodging Association, Amtrak, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, sports and general aviation industries, and state and local fusion centers across the country¹.

Walmart Managers are now our frontline for terrorist defense? …
Canadian Citizenship Information

1: Here

2: Here

The Wife^® and I have been having ongoing discussions regarding the ever-increasing crudeness of the “Breast Cancer Awareness” movement.

It started, as far as I can remember, a few years ago.  I started noticing those awareness ribbons emblazoned with slogans like “Save the Ta-Tas.”  It was a bit shocking, but probably effective, since it was certainly memorable.

Things have gone down-hill rapidly.

The other day I was invited to sponsor a Breast Cancer walk team called “Walkers for Knockers.”   The “I Heart Boobies” bracelet movement has caused some issues in schools.

And now, courtesy of New Zealand, we’ve taken the next logical step down the slippery slope: send in a pic of your boobs to my website.  It’s like totally for cancer research and stuff. (Link is decidedly NSFW)

I’d venture that I’m as pro-boob as anyone, but I’m not really sure that we’re on the right path here.  But maybe that’s just me.

Update: Maybe I’m not alone after all.  The following update was posted to the boob site today.

Tuesday 7th December 2010. The New Zealand Breast Cancer Foundation have requested we clarify any reader confusion and state that the ‘lovely pair’ campaign is in no way supported or endorsed by The New Zealand Breast Cancer Foundation.

I was going to just post this in the headlines, but decided it needed some introduction.  It’s one of the most surreal and bizarre things I’ve ever read, yet it’s like the proverbial trainwreck- I couldn’t look away.

To sum up- Curtis got slapped by a white teacher.  And his mother (I mean, sovereign mother, intellectual property owner, creator and caretaker) is not happy.  She has a short list of demands to make this right, including a $1500 Wal-Mark gift card, every year for the next 9 years, an annual 7 Day all expense paid trip to Disney World, and of course, a personal audience with President Obama and Nation of Islam founder Louis Farrakhan.

Oh, and it’s real.

I think you’re caught up.  Now click, but you’ll need a spare half-hour or so, because you just can’t stop reading this.  (Sorry about the annoying ads)