Retail Experiences Archives - Page 8 of 10

LendingTree.com

I’m on the market to refinance my home. I already had intentions of letting my current mortgage holder participate (my bank) but I wanted to get some other quotes too to ensure that I was getting a reasonable loan rate (and those closing costs!).

Anyway I signed up with lendingtree.com to get a few more quotes. “They’ll be competing for your business” is the way the jingle goes I think. Anyway, they *did* put me in touch with ONE lender who was very competitive. But I was a little surprised to only get the ONE. I live just North of Atlanta and there is a bank on pretty much any corner that doesn’t have a Starbucks or a church parked on it. So why only the one?

Just thought I’d through that out there.

Linksys PLE200 (PLK200??) Powerline Ethernet Adapter and wireless mouse?

After the disaster that was the Netgear Powerline Ethernet Adapters I was trepidatious about the technology. But, when I returned the Netgear adapters I went ahead and picked up the (much more expensive) Linksys PLK200 powerline adapters. Hmm… the box (and price) say PLK200 but the adapters themselves indicate that they are PLE200…

*sigh* looks like another trip back to Fry’s.

But the adapters still work really well. Trying Speakeasy’s test gets me 4-5 Mbytes throughput which is miles ahead of the Netgear adapters. Even letting them sit overnight (to get nice and hot) they didn’t get NEARLY as warm as the Netgear units. After I threw a Linksys 5 port switch onto them the throughput was still fine. So I’ve managed to network most of my new media center to the web. Even watched part of a “Coupling” episode via Netflix’s streaming technology.

Coincidentally, my wireless mouse has not been a happy camper for the past couple of days. It tracks along just fine but left-clicking (and even right-clicking) is just not… definite. Sometimes the click works sometimes not. I replaced the batteries a week or so ago and the mouse dialog indicates that battery and signal are fine so… I swapped out my own wireless mouse for Michelle’s USB wireless mouse to see if it was to do with my mouse itself. Nope, it does exactly the same thing.

Then, to make sure it’s not the computer running amok I grabbed the usb wired mouse from my server in the back room and… it works perfectly.

The only thing I can think that would generate EM radiation that might affect my wireless mouse seems to be these new powerline adapters. I unplugged the one closest to my mouse and it didn’t help at all but I realized a few minutes ago that I probably needed to remove both to be absolutely sure.

You don’t suppose it could be my Linksys 5 port switch?

MetroPCS phone for Michelle or why limited competition and walled gardens suck

I’ve had a Sprint account since about 2001. They weren’t bad and they weren’t great and the plan was only modestly expensive (about $52/month).

This gave us a very basic 500 anytime minutes each month for two phones with 50 roaming minutes and the usual long distance, etc.

I don’t need my own phone anymore as I use my company provided phone (Blackberry) nowadays. I found it really inconvenient to carry two phones and, since my cell phone number really doesn’t matter since I use GrandCentral, I can be phone agnostic.

So I did some research to get a phone for Michelle. What I wanted was for her to have all the phone features she’s used to plus text messaging and web access.

Sprint, like the other big carriers, charges a ridiculous amount for unlimited text messaging, $20/month.

My brother just got back from about 6 months in the UK and he was telling me exactly how reasonable cellular phones are over there which served to galvanize me even further.

I stumbled on to MetroPCS quite by accident. I was going to check out a T-Mobile shop and ended up in the wrong strip plaza. So I asked them what they had.

For the same $52 per month ($45 plus all those useless taxes) Michelle gets unlimited minutes, unlimited text, unlimited picture messages (take a picture and send to anybody), unlimited web and the usual long distance in the US. Another plus was, with a prepaid card, she can now call Canada for 2 cents a minute. Sprint would charge about 60 cents a minute to Canada. We have a calling card that she was using that gets that down to 7 cents a minute (from TTI National).

When I called Sprint to cancel my account after porting Michelle’s phone over to the new service they made the usual pitch to try to retain me (Boy, I think I’m going to tell the IVR system that I want to cancel my account EVERY time I call a business, no waiting to speak to a representative at all!). But the guy kept missing the point entirely as he kept offering me more expensive plans that didn’t even come close to the MetroPCS offering.

Now, as with anything in life, nothing is 100% perfect. What we lose in going with MetroPCS that we had with Sprint is a) we simply CANNOT use the MetroPCS phone at all in Canada, and b) there is some question about how well the phone will work outside of a metropolitan area.

For item a) above, the cost of using the Sprint phone in Canada was prohibitive enough that we used them sparingly. Michelle is ALWAYS with someone who has a local cell phone anyway so she just used theirs in the past to make a quick call. So there isn’t much lost there.

For item b) if we keep some extra cash on her MetroPCS account then she can always call from those “roam” areas if she needs to. Again, she’s seldom in those areas without me and my phone goes anywhere. So there is little or no expense to be had there. And if it’s an emergency, all modern cellphones can work in all systems regardless for calling 911 unless you’re just simply in a truly dead area and then it doesn’t matter what plan you’re using.

So, we had to search for a plan and a company that came closer to treating us like something other than a sponge to be squeezed for every penny we could pay. I have a very low opinion of all of our cellular providers since they have always been so adversarial rather than a consumer-partner. They need to realize that there is a LOT of money to be made even at a fair cost for services and that customer loyalty must be earned by treating the customer… um, fairly.

Even Verizon, widely considered one of the best for service and coverage (and the one I use for my work phone) I discounted because I’m still ticked at them for disabling the GPS in my blackberry – a feature intrinsic to the phone with no impact on the cellular network – so they could indulge in the blatant money grab of coercing their customers to pay a monthly fee for Verizon’s own flavor of navigation software.

And ALL of the big companies seem to take a perverse glee in massively overcharging for international long distance services. With the increase in cell phone usage, there has been a marked DEcrease in available pay phones or other alternatives for making such calls. So they use the Hotel model of the captive customer to nail you hard against the wall for such “luxuries”.
Also, text messaging has gotten *more*, not *less* expensive over the past few years. Not bad for a form of communication that is built into the infrastructure and is of absolutely no cost for the cellular companies. Every data signal going to and from your phone carries the space for SMS messaging whether you are sending messages or not.

I’m not saying that these things should be provided for free, but there is a reason that pretty much everybody hates their cell phone provider. They are viewed, not as a great service and a good value, but as an adversary who will absolutely crush you if you misstep. Ask any parent who didn’t have an unlimited texting plan when their kids discovered SMS…

Ritter’s Restaurant in Marietta

Ritter’s is an excellent restaurant that has great food but seems a bit confused about its identity. I sent the following letter to them after receiving one of their emails again offering that theirs is the place to bring the whole family.

I am pretty sure that I am not alone in wishing for more adult-ambience in my dining choices. It used to be that you simply went to a pricier restaurant and you could get what I’m looking for. However, it seems too many people have more money than propriety these days and don’t seem to understand that, once the food is eaten, their kids are simply bored stiff waiting for the old people to finish yakking and drinking. The only thing to do is to start making a fuss or playing.

I wish I could just advocate for more common sense / consideration, but these parents obviously lack those capacities. Maybe by expressing some concern to the restaurant owners we can sway them into encouraging a certain atmosphere or, at the very least, they can guide their staff to perhaps group different kinds of parties to different parts of the restaurant?
Maybe couples are generally seated over there, larger parties over there, and maybe families over there?

Anyway, here’s the email I sent:

Hi There,

Just a bit of feedback from a confused customer.

First, let me say that I love the food. Ritter’s offerings are always top notch. My favorite is the Filet Mignon which is always cooked perfectly.

And the martinis are excellent as well.

The décor and layout of Ritter’s is also very appealing, not too dark, not too flashy, exactly what I want for a pleasant night out.

Now my confusion, from my perspective Ritter’s is a fine dining establishment. A little upscale and perfect for a quiet, pleasant night out with my wife.

But it seems that the ads that are sent out are always trying to position Ritter’s as a family place where folks can bring the kids.

It seems to me that the “Paper Mill Grill” is a bit rowdier and caters more toward children (louder ambience, more rustic décor).

If I were looking to take the kids someplace I think maybe it would be Paper Mill Grill or maybe I would just recognize that, once fed, they get bored easily and I need to take them someplace with lots to keep them occupied while the adults finish their meals.

Once the decision is made to head out for an enjoyable evening sans kids, I find myself looking for places that cater to an adult-to-adult atmosphere.

But the message I get from Ritter’s is very mixed. One of the last times I ate there, the Maitre’De decided it was a good idea to alternate couples’ tables with family tables. The adults at the family tables were clearly embarrassed as they could tell how their little one’s activities were impinging on the couples while the couples were obviously not super thrilled that their quiet night out was now just another “finish eating and let’s go” experience.

I thought you might appreciate a perspective from one of your patron’s point of view.

Marc

Am I completely out to lunch on this?

Blaupunkt Melbourne SD27 Installed at Fry’s Electronics

I’ve owned my venerable Honda Odyssey for just under 12 years now. It’s exactly what I wanted in a vehicle size-wise and performance-wise. The original stereo that came with it sports a cassette player that’s worked very well all these years.

I’ve been using a headset-jack-to-cassette adapter to listen to my podcasts for the past three or four years. A couple of weeks ago the adapter started acting up, causing the tape player to simply turn off. Also, the lights on the radio had failed and I was growing tired of the half-a$$ed adapter solution anyway since nearly 100% of my listening is of the iPod.

So I did some research looking for a replacement radio that catered to my iPod needs. There are some pretty slick devices out there, even some where the faceplate folds forward and allows you to slide the iPod into it.
But such a design definitely limits you to certain iPod models and I’d hate to have to change out my car stereo every time I update my iPod. Also, I really like the well thought-out menu system on my iPod and take advantage of how it functions to listen to my podcasts in a way that works well for me already. Many of the car stereo systems offered their own menu system and controlled the iPod directly and, according to reviews on Amazon and other places, poorly.

So I settled on the Blaupunkt Melbourne SD27. It’s VERY basic, it has AM/FM (I conceded that I may someday actually need to listen to the radio), no CD player, no tape player. It *does* have an SD/MMC slot that I’ll fill with a chip containing pleasant driving music someday when I can woot a huge capacity SD chip cheaply. I also opted for the optional iPod cable so I could listen to / charge the iPod while still using its menu system. I actually have a holster already mounted on my between-seat console that allows me to safely park the iPod when I’m not handling it.

I headed over to Fry’s Electronics on Highway 9 at Webb Road. I *love* Fry’s, I could wander around inside there all day browsing the cool electronics that they offer. And that’s saying something because I’m not really known as a retail shopper…

The interior staff were very helpful, when they didn’t know something they got someone who did. Shortly I was outfitted with my new radio, mounting bracket, cables and my optional iPod cable. I elected to have them do the installation as well recalling from my youth the joys of hanging out under the dashboard fiddling with wires and connections while maintaining some yogic “Z” pose between the seat, the doorjamb and the fusebox. The radio itself cost only $50. By the time I was finished the tab was $150. $40 of that was for installation.

So I had a guy working on my car, let’s call him “Nick”, I hand him all the pieces and walk away. About 40 minutes later I catch him walking rapidly away from the install bays (he has a lunch date with a comely lass from inside the store) and he lets me know all is ready to go.

I head back to the install bays, stopping at my car before going in and checking out the new stereo. The iPod side works great, but I can’t get any radio stations. So I head inside and meet the other guy who works there, let’s call him “Johnny” and he comes out and pulls out the radio to find that the antenna is not connected. “Problem solved” I think. I check and all the stations that I normally would care about are coming in loud and clear.

So we head inside where he realizes that the post-install checklist hasn’t been done. He asks if I’ve checked the power outlet (old / retarded people will call this the cigarette lighter – what a bizzarre concept..). I’m kind of in a hurry now, but I figure this is a good idea and go back out and… no… it’s not working. Johnny’s not real happy that Nick’s libido has left him with this extra work. So he comes out and dismantles the lower part of my dashboard again and hooks up the power outlet.

We head back in and he say’s, “Oh yeah, is the air conditioner working?”, again I’m tempted to say “I’m sure it is, let’s just call it a day.” but I head back out and the air conditioner is working fine. However, the hot-to-cold lever is stuck. Looks like the cable is binding. So Johnny, looking even less happy now comes back out, dismantles the lower dash again and corrects this little ‘nit.

When he’s done he goes back inside and I decide to check out the radio again. As before, the iPod still works great but my radio stations are gone. I head back in to let Johnny know and he, obviously tired of the whole affair, tells me that the radio reception in this area is really poor. I tell him that it was fine the last time he hooked up the antenna but he is insistent. About this time Nick comes back, looking rather happy so I suppose his lunch went well, and he joins in with Johnny about how terrible radio reception is in Alpharetta generally and that the building is probably blocking the reception. So they move my car in the parking lot to a spot where the reception should be better and play with the radio settings. Sometime during this Johnny has disappeared, apparently it’s his turn to head out to lunch.

So, after further discussion Nick again removes the radio and, sure enough the anenna is no longer attached. Apparently there is a weakness in the adapter between North American antenna connectors and those used by the Germans. So he adjust things and plugs everything back together.

I check ALL my systems and finally everything appears to be working. So, nearly 3 hours later (and being the only install being performed during that time), I finally get to return to work from my “Lunch”.

So far things are working, although in all honesty I haven’t used my radio since then (about a week and a half ago). But, worryingly, I went through Wendy’s drive-thru and when I went to my little coin holder in the dash I found, along with correct change for a hamburger, a lone screw that presumably came from my dashboard. Spare part I suppose?

I also note that the radio doesn’t dim when I turn on my lights even though I know it’s supposed to. Fortunately, since I’m one of those oddballs who actually turn on my lights during the day, this works out for me as I find the lights inside my car too dim during the day anyway and the display is not an issue for me at night so I’m leaving well enough alone. The car is old enough that I want folks monkeying around with it as little as possible.

Overall, I’m very happy to have a direct iPod connection with no more worries about the iPod battery becoming exhausted. The radio looks very attractive, to their credit the Fry’s installers managed to not damage the dash or the radio mounts in any obvious ways so I’m very pleased with that. But I post this as a warning. Make sure you check EVERYTHING you can think of in your dash before you leave…

Trust and the customer

I recently had lunch at the Atlanta Bread Company (the one on Old Milton near Northpoint Parkway). The food was good and the experience enjoyable enough. Later in the day, when I was cleaning out my pockets, I happened across my lunch receipt and was about to discard it when I saw that they had overcharged me for both my meal and for my drink. The amount was not great about 40 cents for the meal and 20 for the drink, but it irked me that they should be so cavalier or careless with one of their customers. Admittedly *I* was also careless in not double-checking my receipt but the price was in the right ballpark and I was thinking about other things at the time.

Even though the amount is not great, I do not like dealing with people and businesses on whom I need to keep a watchful eye.

For me, this is not limited to being overcharged. I’m also not at all happy when the error is in my favor. If I look at a price-list and the final receipt is for less than I expect. I am left to wonder if we both are agreeing to what we think we are agreeing to. Certainly if the other person tells me “We’re having a 10% off promotion for these items today.” and then goes on to apply it then I’m satisfied (ok, ok pretty happy that I lucked into their offering) but the mystery is gone and I know with certainty what is going on.

That fast food drive-thrus began using those confirmation screens where you can see your order forming as you place it is great boon. I’d say probably 1 in 4 times using it I end up making corrections since I can see where they have either not heard me correctly or they have made bad assumptions about my order.
Recently, the Wendy’s restaurant that I eat at a couple of times a week for lunch has stopped using their confirmation screen. Now I’m finding that my order is wrong about a third of the time and I need to check it at the window before driving off. Little things like cheese on a hamburger, wrong condiments, etc. But the point is that now it’s something that I need to be alert for.

My expectations have been raised over the years and those expectations are:

I’ll get what I paid for
I’ll pay what we agreed (based on price tags or posted prices)
I’ll get it when we agreed

If I detect a problem, I’ll correct it or have it corrected by speaking up to the person with whom I am dealing.
If I don’t notice the problem until later or if it will be awkward for others with me I’ll often send a message to the business involved to let them know. Where I receive a satisfactory response, and even a “we’re sorry, here’s what happened” can be sufficient, I can be mollified.

But violate my trust or ignore my complaint and I simply vote with my dollars. The Atlanta Bread Company item above is a situation where it’s not worth my time or the hassle of rectification, I simply will not go there again for a long time. Probably 6 months or a year. It’s not a matter of holding a grudge, it’s a matter of not wanting to feel irked and there are plenty of other places with which to do business that there is little loss to me in simply eating somewhere else.

I like to think that others do likewise and that businesses that do not treat their customers respectfully ultimately feel the pinch as other folks likewise elect to patronize places where they do not need to be on their guard and can devote those energies to other, more productive aspects of their lives.

Am I being OCD on this? What do YOU do?

DirecTV or not DirecTV (or Netflix is in the wings)

I received an email today from DirecTV listing the current pay per view offerings for this week and saw a movie that Michelle said she wanted to see. OK, OK it’s Mike Myers’ “The Love Guru”, call me a wuss but I’m gonna enjoy it too.

So I went to my Tivo to set it up to record and I noticed a new flag on the confirmation screen indicating that the PPV movie will expire at Noon tomorrow. Since I seldom watch a movie I’ve recorded in even the same month I recorded it much less the next day, I was somewhat perturbed.
So I went to the DirecTV website and looked this up and can see that my recording will probably last for a long time provided I don’t view it. Once I begin playing the movie, the clock starts ticking and I will have 24 hours within which to finish viewing.
There are plenty of movies that I will start to watch and then decide to finish days or weeks later. I don’t have an issue waiting to see the ending and I can remember the beginning well enough that I don’t lose anything across that gap.
What I have now is my satellite company (or, more probably, the content provider behind them) dictating how I will view my recording.
One of the reasons I use PPV is for exactly this freedom. Renting a movie from a Blockbusteresque source comes with the explicit contract that I need to return this item in a day or a week depending on popularity. But PPV has always been more ephemeral than that and the added flexibility (plus the lower cost and avoided trip to the store) have always been of great value to me.
Continue reading DirecTV or not DirecTV (or Netflix is in the wings)

Shaving your head

I got this letter a couple of days ago based on a comment I made in flickr :

Hello Marc,

My girlfriend found this message you had on a photo message board about

you having your head shaved. I am curious to know, as you said you had

your head shaved, what was it like? I am about to leave for a five week work

project and always wanted to peel off all my long shaggy hair to a total shaved

bald head look (of course then use sunscreen while outside)….but what is

it like to be totally shaved bald…or was your’se just super clipped buzzed or’

actual razor smooth bald like what I want to do next week? And how did you

best get a perfect headshave without cuts, nicks, and razor burn? Couple

friends said to just get a super buzz bootcamp cut, but if I am going to take

all my hair off for this summer, I want to go totally shaved bald. So any tips,

experiences and other info you have from when you did it, that would be great.

Nervous to loose the long hair for shaven scalp, but can’t wait too..!!

[Name withheld as I don’t know if he wants me to publish it]

PS–how long did you actually keep the cool look….and ever would do it again?

To which I responded:

Hi [Name removed],

I just posted some pictures on my flickr site so you can see what I ended up doing (http://www.flickr.com/photos/marc-bourassa/sets/72157605978167162/). Back in 2003 I had direct access to the Usenet newsgroups and was able to glean a lot of helpful information regarding how to go about shaving one’s head.

My motivation for shaving my head came from the appearance of a thinning patch (that ol’ “male pattern baldness” I suppose) at the back of my head. I wasn’t sure how fast it would spread so I wanted to see what my options would be. Since I am not so clueless as to think that a comb-over fools anyone I figured I’d like to see if the bald look would suit me.

Most surprising to me were the number of products out there dedicated to helping maintain a shaved head, everything from special bladed shavers to recommended products (pretty much all of which I forget now).

For myself, I ended up picking up a Norelco electric shaver. I already had some electric hair clippers that I used for the initial cropping.

I actually had a bit of fun with it before cutting all my hair off. I took the opportunity to see what a bunch of different cuts might look like on the way to baldness. I shaved it very close on the sides and left it long on top, then I went for a Mohawk of varying lengths. Basically I played with it for probably an hour or so (with my wife rolling her eyes at appropriate intervals) before I clipped ALL the hair off and then took out the Norelco and brought it skin-close.

I never did use a razor on my entire head. The most I ever did was up the sides (where I could see fairly well) and up the back, just extending where I was used to shaving my neck for my normal hair style after a couple of weeks.

From the pictures you can see that I was about as close as you can get to “Chrome Dome” without that final razor step. Also, having dark, thick hair makes it much harder for one’s “dome” to remain “chrome”. I had a perpetual 5 O’clock shadow. I did shave it pretty much every day (I almost always shirk shaving on weekends). But with electric shavers, once the hair gets past a certain length it’s a real pain to get the shaver to properly shave it back to the skin.

I had a pretty active childhood (read “whacked my head and gotten stitches a few times”), that plus a formidable number of crowns (which my barber was always complaining about) and a couple of moles made my head look a lot less like, say, Patrick Stewart of ST:TNG fame or Yul Brynner and a lot more like one of Frankenstein’s lesser successes 🙂 but I would consider doing it again. I just haven’t had the inspiration to do so recently.

Notes:

It was very cool feeling the air on my scalp, if you’re the type of person who gets cold from drafts then I imagine this could be disconcerting. It didn’t bother me at all though.

I also found folks treated me very differently in retail situations. I’m not a particularly menacing looking guy normally, but the shaved head causes folks to have expectations. Of course, once I open my mouth their reaction changed again as I’m a pretty mild-mannered guy. But the more deferential initial attitude from strangers was something I would have liked to retain after growing my hair back! 🙂

Time saved not washing your hair is almost exactly equaled by the time spent shaving your head.

I shaved my head in late October so I didn’t really encounter the realities of needing sunblock on my exposed dome.

Your hair wicks a LOT of oil from your head, and sweat too which you will find the first time you work out after shaving. Sweat that you could just run back through your hair while running just pours down some other part of your head. Maybe it was just me, but I kept a towel nearby when I used the stationary bike just to keep the sweat out of my eyes. I still can’t bring myself to wear a sweatband…

It’s a complete myth that your hair will grow back thicker, it only seems that way for the first little while ’cause it’s so short (which makes it seem stiff). Once it’s grown in it’ll be the hair you were used to whether you liked it or not.

My hair grows pretty quickly so it really only took a couple of months before it was back to a “short normal”. You can always grow it towards the Buzz cut if you don’t like the bald look, how long it takes is up to your head. For me that would be about 3-4 weeks.

That’s about all I can think of to offer you for your project. I *love* change so I definitely say you should go through with it.

Good Luck, and take some pictures, even if only for yourself. You won’t regret them!

Marc

Roto Router and my water main

Kind of a dry posting but I just wanted to put up a kudos for Roto Router after they repaired my water main.

Normally our water consumption is about 4-6K gallons a month. Probably even lower since I replaced all of our toilets with low flow (1.6 gallon) models while renovating the master bedroom last year.

I received a bill a couple of months ago where the bill had jumped to 13K gallons – not a disaster but definitely a problem. Looking back over my bills I saw that the water consumption had been gradually increasing even before this telltale leap but a shower here, a bath there, who knows what’s *really* normal.

Anyway the first thing I did was to contact the water folks (Cobb County Water) and ask what they could offer and what my options would be. They said they could send somebody out to verify if the issue is theirs or mine and to inspect the place generally.

Basically they just confirmed that there WAS indeed water flowing even with everything turned off in the home and they left behind some blue tablets to use to check the toilets (useless for my new toilets) to check for leaks there.

Insultingly, a few days later I received a note from the water folks informing me that they’d uncovered a water leak and that I needed to repair it and fax (who the heck uses *fax* anymore?) them the receipt or they’d consider cutting off my water… nice.

One bright spot, a few month ago my neighbor had the same kind of problem but it cost him 40K gallons twice. Once on his first surprise bill, and then again on the next months bill. The time lag between when the meter is read and the bill arriving was the cause of a lot of that excess consumption. I’m rather surprised there isn’t *some* mechanism in place to flag certain consumption patterns so that the owner is notified A.S.A.P. when a probable leak is in process. I’d say a 100% or more increase in your water use, especially during a drought, is probably a good red-flag.

Interestingly all our water meters were replaced not so long ago, I guess the shock of ripping out and replacing a meter doesn’t do 30+ year old pipe much good..

Anyway I had both “Rescue Router” and “Roto Router” out to give me estimates and we determined that the issue was probably the portion of the piping supplying water to the faucets at the side of the house under my driveway. The good news is that shutting off the water to this portion of the piping mostly eliminated the leak and didn’t affect service to the inside of the house, so I did this right away and then considered my options.

Both plumbers gave me similar estimates and were within $100 of each other. Rescue Router offered to match any other price that we got, but it was going to be a bit of a hassle just to get them down to what Roto Router was already offering so I elected to just go ahead with Roto Router.

In the end, I needed to have a ditch witch dig a trench through my front yard, had a couple of nice 90 degree ball valves installed, had my poorly-insulated outside faucet in the front yard replaced with a proper hydrant-style faucet and disconnected the other faucets on the leaking line. The plumber, Mike Olah, did a pretty good job of repairing what landscaping could be repaired once the pipe had been laid. The only real sign of work was where the grass was dug up and that will just take some time.

All that for the tidy sum of $2,8785. It’s OK, I was wondering what I should do with all that petty cash lying around 🙁

I need to make arrangements now, for an additional $150 (very reasonable actually), to have a new faucet installed on the side of the house fed off of the laundry room. Unfortunately, most of the cost there will be in repairing the drywall that needs to be damaged to route the pipes.

Jiffy Lube Scam and why you may be better off just driving your car into the ground

Back in October of 2001 I had a radiator flush done by Jiffy Lube. Problem was, the geniuses there forgot to tighten the hose clamps and a couple of days later one of the radiator hoses just fell off, spewing radiator fluid everywhere!

Fortunately I was near a strip mall where I could get some more radiator fluid and continue on my way.

But it’s always been a concern for me. Too many uninspired people too isolated from the customers to feel any responsibility for their actions. You seldom see or meet the people working on your vehicle anymore. I often think that the risk of the damage they are doing to my car through carelessness might outweigh any good I’m doing by following my car’s maintenance plan.

I’ve had someone forget to tighten my oil pan screw and had the oil literally flowing out of the oil pan onto the garage floor. I always open the hood and inspect the work that’s supposedly been done, but who can tell if the valves have been properly shimmed (I used to be able to tell when I’d adjust my tappets on my motorcycle – apparently car valves make just as much noise after they’ve been shimmed as before). Anything other than newly replaced oil filters, or wiring is pretty hard to spot when you’re anxious to get on your way.

I once brought a car in because there was a strong smell of gasoline in the passenger compartment when I would brake hard. After a full servicing, the mechanic said he could find no cause for the smell. Getting off of my butt I went over the engine and found… the PCV valve was just sitting loosely over its rubber seal. Pushing it properly in place made the smell go away permanently.

I could go on and on, but I *hate* taking my car in for servicing. I have no problem paying the money but I want to feel confident that the car will be somehow improved afterwards.

One of my friends’ folks used to buy their cars and just drive them until they stopped working. The last little while with those cars was simply miserable (I recall when their little car only had 3 cylinders firing). OK if you’re a starving student, but not if you’ve got a family to haul around.

Anyway, here is Jiffy Lube being caught red-handed. I especially liked the chickens#!t district manager who kept pretending he wasn’t himself. Those unethical buggers need to be slapped upside the head and then forced to work for minimum wage for the next 15 years with all proceeds from their work that would let them enjoy life taken from them and passed back to the people they bilked.