Fresh, Hot Wastes of Time

They also support making the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban permanent, as such weapons belong on foreign battlefields and not on our streets.

The Pink Lady does not approve.

I called back because I had one more day before my year anniversary of getting this battery and 1.5 hours of battery life ain’t gonna cut it. They forwarded me to a product specialist who made an exception for me and is shipping a new battery as I type. Now that’s what I’m talking about.

Normally Apple’s excellent with their tech support, but my call to 1-800-APL-CARE today has me flummoxed.

I replaced my MacBook Pro’s battery under Apple’s battery exchange program last September. Since then, I’ve racked up 96 charging cycles, and my battery is now at a max capacity of 4528 mAh. That’s 82% of its maximum. Two days ago it was at 4589 mAh – 83% of maximum. My battery life sucks and the battery’s not right.

I called Apple today to replace it. Apparently they have an arbitrary number that must be hit in order to do so. I need to have under 300 charging cycles (check) and be under 80% of my battery capacity. The guy refused to do anything for me at this point.

I said, “So I’m supposed to call you back in a week when this battery’s low enough for you to take action?” and the answer was yes.

They could have made a customer happy this week about an issue that obviously isn’t going to solve itself, or they could have just told me to run along and play. They chose poorly.

Perhaps I should try a Genius Bar. They’re generally very helpful. Unlike tech support dude.

If it were April 1, I’d be happier about this article.

Weekly Ketchup: Flash Gordon, Highlander Remakes Announced

They’re planning on remaking Flash Gordon, Highlander, Red Dawn, and Robocop.

Laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaame.

Thanks to my Uncle Carl, I now have a huge craving for peach cobbler. Warm. With ice cream.

Two recent experiences I’ve had with customer service:

1. Woot.com had a fake Wootoff on April Fool’s Day. Interspersed with the mundane battery sales were bags of Random Crap. For Woot neophytes, the Random Crap is like a holy grail: usually it really is crap, but some lucky folks get jackpots like Wiis, Xbox 360s, or 60″ televisions for their $8. I tried to order when it came up but my order was stuck in the “Processing” screen for hours. While it was still stuck, another bag of crap came up. I tried to order that one and it said I couldn’t because I’d already placed an order for that item. Basically, a bug. It happened to 2500 people. Woot said the next day that they would make it right and give bags of crap to the people who really would have gotten them, and give a $5 gift certificate to everyone else affected by the bug.

I never heard from them. I emailed them and asked about it; they curtly told me they had addressed it on their forum (in a 200 page thread) and that I got no crap. I emailed back and basically said hey, fellas, that was a little snippy – didn’t I even get a gift certificate? No answer. A couple of weeks later I emailed again reminding them about my case and expressing disappointment that one of my favorite websites did me wrong. Nothing. Hell, they could even have said “We have no record of your attempt and so we’re sorry that we can’t extend you a lousy $5 gift certificate,” but instead, they were grumpy and then ignored me.

I haven’t totally sworn off Woot, but I honestly feel betrayed. I evangelized their damned website to everyone I knew. I wasn’t even asking for something for nothing; I was just trying to clarify. Whatever.

2. I ordered a Salton Jewelry Spa from Improvements Catalog, because I like sparkly things that, well, sparkle. When it came today, I noticed it was missing some random stuff like the tweezers and scoop, and Hub noticed that part of the housing was broken. Their invoice already has a return label attached to it, which I dig, but I was confused by part of the form so I called their 800 number to clear it up. The nice lady on the other end of the phone said not to worry about sending it back in; she would just ship me out a new one. Wow!

THAT’S the way to do it.

It’s a shame that “Dee Cook Haters” didn’t do as they promised the police investigator and undo what they’ve done in terms of online postings, mail list signups, etc. This was really the work of a 9 year old?

The ironic part is that people searching for Good Morning Tree Company are going to come across this campaign of threats and harassment in the search results now.

Thanks to everyone who’s contacted me. At the moment, the situation appears to have cleared up. We’ll see how many other mailing lists I was subscribed to (although I must give PETA props for being really friendly and helpful – thanks, guys).