Budget Rent-a-Car slime move

*Updated July 29, 2008* I should probably change this item to “Elite Excursions and the Banks team up to relieve you of your money..”. Anyway, Clark Howard – a local consumer advocate – just posted an item that I thought relevant to this whole fiasco:

The Berkeley Center for Law and Technology analyzed corporate America to see which companies have the highest incidence of ID theft. The No. 1 company? Bank of America.

*End Update*

Is anybody else getting tired of these companies picking on our less savvy citizens?

I just received this in the mail from Budget Rent-a-car and find it eminently distasteful that they use this tactic to fool folks into subscribing to their “Elite Excursions Membership”.

budget_slime_tactic

The fine print under the cash amount says “Cashing this check activates a membership in the Elite Excursions program.”.

I’ve seen several of these over the years and every time it galls me that they appear to be specifically targeting folks who are either too trusting or too dumb to understand that this is not a check without strings attached.

As with all terrible advertising – this one is headed for my shredder.

This reminds me of the time I received an envelope from Circuit City with “Final Expiration Notice” boldly printed on it. The idea being for me to urgently open the envelope and respond to their Extended Service Policy offer.
I was so incensed that I wrote them a snail-mail letter (this was back in 2000 after all). I told them what I thought of their tactics ending with,

I am certain that I am not alone in my sentiments and wanted to at least let you know that your tactic has led me to shop elsewhere for fear of receiving yet more undeserved “Final Notices”.

I really can’t abide misleading or sensational (shock) advertising and just wanted to rant.

Regaining Flight Currency

The weather finally was agreeable this weekend and I had a gorgeous day for flying. Astron’s warrior was in for its 100 hour inspection so instead I ended up taking out one of the C-172’s.

I had a perfect crosswind today, sometimes blowing at 50 degrees off the runway centerline at up to 10 Knots. This gave me ideal conditions for practicing my crosswind landings which I’ve been doing a lot of reading up on lately.

Then off to Winder airport to do some simple and short field landings and finally off to Blairsville for a beautiful trek over some of the North Georgia mountains to do a quick touch-and-go before heading back home again to Gwinnett airport.

The sun was out, the temperatures were mild (about 16 degrees centigrade on the ground) and the spring foliage was lush.

All-glass Undersea Restaurant

Just found this article about an all-glass undersea restaurant on Fark.com, this looks like it would be a great once-in-a-lifetime thing to try out. I can’t imagine what a meal must run but, if you’re vacationing in the Maldives, I suspect cost is not your primary concern.

This prompted me to recall our silver-service dinner at the base of Ayer’s rock (Uluru) in Australia when we visited back in 1999. A formal meal served on formal dishware in the open desert. Trés cool. It was followed by a local describing Aboriginal legends surrounding the moon and followed up by an astronomer highlighting some features of the Southern Hemisphere night sky. His two telescopes (and the lack of ambient light pollution) allowed us an amazingly clear view of a couple of galaxies and other objects that he pointed out.

I also thought the restaurant technology looked familiar so pulled up a couple of pictures of one of the walkways that went through the Sydney Aquarium (in Australia).

Sydney Aquarium Tunnel

Sydney Aquarium Tunnel

Wolf Camera Digital Photo Printing

Since I like to use my computer for almost all things entertainment, and since my focus has been on importing into rather than exporting photos from my PC I haven’t done a lot of photo printing since the prices became reasonable.

Today we wanted to print some photos and send them to my Grandmother who does not frequent the internet. We picked 10 pictures, uploaded them to Wolf Camera’s website (run by RitzPix.com) and then prepaid a whole $3 to have them printed at a local store. We then went out to lunch at one of our local Panera Bread Restaurants and then swung by Wolf Camera and picked them up. I can’t believe how handy this is!
*Much* cheaper than buying a photo-capable printer and, for the minuscule volume that I intend to print, very cost effective too.

As an aside, the last I heard, Panera Bread was claiming to have the largest network of wireless hotspots in the United States. I would have guessed that some place like Starbucks would hold that title.

Beware Paypal!

Am I wrong about this? I believe that PayPal has not dealt fairly or correctly with me. I have a personal PayPal account.

I recently ordered a movie through eBay (The Incredibles – great film by the way) and did not receive it. So I followed up with the seller and received an automated response from them. I then contacted PayPal to retrieve my money. Here is a summary of my contact with them and their response.

Reason for Dispute:
Non-Receipt
Buyer’s Comments:
Seller tells me that both PayPal and eBay have questioned their legitimacy as a seller and have frozen their assets to allow purchasers to recoup their money. I include an excerpt from his response here:
To all of my Ebay Customers: As of March 29th PayPal and Ebay have forced me out of business. They saw my successful DVD auctions with 200 sales in 3 days as “suspicious” activity, at which point PayPal froze my access to all of the money you have paid me for your DVDs and other products. Even after 2 days on the phone confirming every piece of information that Paypal asked for… including proof of enough product for all customers that have ordered… Paypal still froze my accounts. They have informed me that they will hold all monies for 180 days (6 months) for you to ask for refunds. Of course, this whole time they will be earning interest on your money. I am seeking legal action against Paypal and Ebay for their actions these past few days and for forcing me out of business even after proving that I am a legitimate dealer and answering every question they have asked. In the mean time, feel free to ask for your money back from PayPal, as they are the ones with your money, not me. I am sorry that you have been caught up in this. I have done my best to protect your interests in this sitution, but you can’t fight big business sometimes. Thanks, J.M.

Date of Complaint:
Apr. 14, 2005
Status:
Case Closed
Status Details:
We have completed our investigation of this case. We attempted to process a refund from the seller’s account to your account. Unfortunately, the seller’s account does not contain the funds necessary to cover this refund. We were able to recover $0.00 USD. We have taken action against the seller and are working to recover the remainder of your refund. We will contact you when we have more information. No further action is required of you at this time.

The amount of money in question is only $10. But I’m rather disappointed to find that I have no protection and no recourse under Paypal’s system. Prior to this I was comfortable and confident that Paypal’s service offered some degree of protection. Below is their buyer protection statement available here (you may need to log into Paypal to see this online).

As I read it PayPal is underwriting the purchasing risk to the tune of up to US$1000. But that is not what they are telling me.

At PayPal, your security is our top priority. PayPal Buyer Protection is offered as a way to make our online trading community even safer and more secure.

With PayPal Buyer Protection, qualified purchases are eligible for up to $1,000.00 USD coverage at no additional cost. Additional coverage may apply for purchases made with PayPal Buyer Credit.
When a buyer files a claim through PayPal Buyer Protection, PayPal works with both the buyer and the seller to gather the details of the transaction. We investigate the facts of the case and make every effort to come to a fair conclusion.

Buyers

* Items Covered by PayPal Buyer Protection
* PayPal Buyer Protection Rules

Sellers

* PayPal Buyer Protection Eligibility
* eBay Listing Requirements
* Tips on Protecting Yourself from Buyer Claims

Buyers

PayPal helps you buy with confidence on eBay. Before filing a claim, we encourage you to work with your seller since most issues can be resolved through direct communication. If you find it necessary to file a claim, your transaction may be covered by either PayPal Buyer Protection or the Buyer Complaint Process.

Transactions Covered by PayPal Buyer Protection

If you paid for an item and never received it or received an item that was significantly not as described, your transaction must meet each of the following requirements to be eligible for PayPal Buyer Protection:

* The PayPal Buyer Protection icon must be displayed in the Seller Information box on eBay
* Your purchase must be a physical item — services and intangible items are not covered
* You must use PayPal to pay for the item and must use the seller’s email address associated with the listing. To make sure of this, use the grey Pay Now button you’ll see when the listing closes on eBay.

PayPal Buyer Protection Rules

* You may only file one claim per PayPal payment
* Claims must be filed within 45 days of the PayPal payment
* You may not file a claim if you are simply disappointed with the item you have received. Items must be significantly not as described or never received.
* You are limited to three PayPal Buyer Protection refunds per calendar year.
o Refunds issued on PayPal Buyer Credit transactions may apply towards this limit. Learn more by reviewing the PayPal Buyer Credit Policy.
* You must be willing to provide information during the investigation process. If we are unable to obtain the necessary information, your case may be cancelled without a refund.

For specific terms and conditions please review the PayPal Buyer Protection Policy in our User Agreement.

Here is the listing on eBay (it should be available for a little while yet). To my mind it meets the requirements outlined above.

Given the amount of money involved I don’t know how far I’ll pursue this – I suspect the PayPal folks rather count on this – but I am certain that I will not be using PayPal for transactions in the future.

I am posting this as a warning to anybody who would think to trust PayPal for any substantial transactions in the future. And if you are interested in the opinions of other disgruntled folks, check out the PayPalSucks.com website. for more stories and problems. They seem like they are a little over the top but they do represent the dark side of what had at one time promised to be a safe way to purchase on eBay.

Oh, and of course you may wish to be cautious of the seller too (madmonkeytech@cox.net). I don’t know who is really at fault here but I do believe you will wish to be cautious dealing with all parties involved.

Podcast – IT Conversations

is a wonderful collection of interviews, conference keynote speeches and various series all under one roof. When you go to subscribe you have the choice of limiting yourself to particular series, conferences or topics of interest.

I have elected to receive "Everything!" in AAC format. My plan was to simply discard anything that was of poor quality or wasn’t of interest to me. I have to say that in the past couple of months of listening, there have only been a tiny handful that just didn’t happen to interest me (usually gaming specific or Mac specific).

The production quality of these podcasts is excellent and members can (and do) vote to indicate which they found most interesting and/or worthwhile. Everything is tied together by Doug Kaye who presents a weekly synopsis of all the most recent additions along with member ratings to help you decide which may be the most worth your valuable investment in podcast-listening time!

As someone who genuinely enjoys attending cons and listening to the keynote and topic presentations I *really* appreciate the offerings at IT Conversations. So much so that I have actually donated to the tip jar that they make available on the web site to hopefully help them continue to provide their offerings with a minimum amount of advertising going forward.

Well worth checking out.

agp440.sys and dead XP system

I recently had my system apparently die on me and wanted to share the symptoms and the apparent cause in case anybody else comes across this issue.

Symptoms:

  • Tried to reboot my computer (first a warm reboot – restart, then a cold reboot – shutdown, wait, power up again) saw the POST (power on self Test) then saw the initial Windows logo with the little animated “runner marquee” at the bottom. Then this cleared and… nothing. What should have happened next was that my blue XP “Click your username to login” screen should have appeared. I needed to kill power to my PC in order to do anything in both cases.
  • Then resorted to starting up in Safe mode – in XP you don’t even need to fiddle with the F8 key, you are presented with this option if the system detects a failed startup attempt – simplifies things. When starting in safe mode you get to see all of the drivers being listed as they are loaded. And each time I attempted this (I tried a couple of times) the last driver loaded was agp440.sys.

System:
So you know the environment that I am using to know if the solution below is relevant to you:

  • Powerspec 8922 – from Microcenter
  • 2.6 GHz Pentium 4 processor (with HT technology)
  • 1 Gbyte of RAM (upgraded from default 512 Mbytes)
  • 120 Gbyte 7200 rpm ATA/133 Hard Drive
  • ATI (VisionTek) XTASY 9600 graphics card (to drive dual monitor configuration)
  • Belkin USB 2.0 hub
  • Windows XP Home edition – with SP2 applied
  • SanDisk Cruzer Mini USB 1 Gbyte Thumb drive

That’s everything that’s relevant to this issue – of course there is the usually panoply of routers, monitors and other USB devices.

Solution:
I grabbed my wife’s laptop and did some Google searches on agp440.sys and found that this appears to be a red herring. I believe it just happens to be the last of the drivers loaded before services start being initiated.
Several folks did some experiments where they renamed or otherwise disabled the agp440.sys driver and found that the failure then occurred on the next previous driver.

Someone then mentioned that they disconnected their USB mouse and things seemed to work after that for them. Others mentioned that they had to perform chkdsks which found and corrected bad sector info on their hard drives.

Anyway, I had plugged my thumb drive into the computer to check some stuff a while ago and hadn’t bothered to remove it.
I had just shut down the computer and then turned off the power to my USB hub, routers and modem as I wanted to reset them. I did this by powering off my UPS. I suspect this was a harsh shutdown for the thumb drive, even though it was not talking to the computer anymore.
With my computer in safe mode just sitting at the agp440.sys I reached over and just yanked out the thumb drive. *Presto* the computer then continued to boot up in safe mode.

Apparently there was some issue initializing the thumb drive and as long as it was plugged into my usb hub I wasn’t going to be using my computer any time soon.

In safe mode I instructed the system to do a chkdsk /R on my only drive (C:) and then restarted. Cannot get a lock on the primary partition’s NTFS formatted disk after the OS has been set up.

WOW! It takes a long time to chkdsk a 120 MByte drive when about 70 Gbytes are in use… expect this to take a couple of hours at least.

Anyway I let that run overnight and in the morning everything was right as rain.

Later I inspected my thumb drive – hmmm… no problems here. Even did a chkdsk on it (not sure how relevant that is…). But I can only surmise that there was some inconsistency caused by the harsh shut down of the thumb drive.

Hopefully this information can be useful to other people who encounter this issue.

Rant – Traffic Lights in Atlanta, GA

OK I have to ask this. Does anybody out there think that their traffic signaling system is actually worse than that which we have here in Atlanta, Georgia?
I cannot believe that there has been any thought at all given to the timing of these lights unless they are to specifically favor the direction of travel of some city council member.

I recognize that there can only ever be a single direction of signal optimization in any area. But I have not been able to discern any pattern beyond “random” around my area. It is the nature of people to find patterns in even the most chaotic systems (hence the popularity of Numerology and other silly past times) but here we have a system so chaotic, so random that I have never met a soul who claims to discern method in this arena.

I visited San Francisco back in 2000 and it was immediately apparent that somebody had put a lot of thought into the traffic signalling system there. Even if the lights were not optimized in the direction that I was going, it was OK with me as I understood that the traffic was as good as it was going to get. Optimizing the busiest direction will naturally decongest every other direction of traffic anyway by preventing gridlock.

Every time any of our traffic signals are altered here in North Atlanta, it is inevitably to make the phases longer (greater duration) in every direction. And this isn’t just my subjective feeling either. Faced with an incredible number of mis-programmed signals on my daily commute I have plenty of time to take out a stopwatch that I now keep in my car for exactly that purpose, and I time the lights to see how long they actually do take. And, after adjustments, I can tell you that they are always set to greater durations than they were before.

I’m not sure who the wa-hoo is who’s driving this philosophy, but when folks sit around wondering why Atlanta drivers are so discourteous, and why they run the red lights so often here, I can give you a partial answer right now. BECAUSE THERE IS NO REWARD FOR OBEYING THE LIGHTS. If you actually do obey the yellow signal – at the risk of being rear-ended – your reward for this is a very long red light and that’s it. There is no knowledge that you’re participating in an organized traffic system, no assurance that you will now be able to proceed unhindered in a well thought out traffic flow. Only the knowledge that you’ve stopped at one randomly set traffic signal and that, at the next signal you will face yet another random chance at stop or go.

If any planners are listening and you actually do put some thought into how these signals are timed and synchronized, I know that I for one would like to know your rationale (assuming there is one) and I’m sure that communicating it to the general public will make great strides toward making drivers feel like they are participating in an organized system rather than the carelessly evolved mess that it appears to be.

This may seem like a trivial concern with so much of import happening around the globe. But I put it to you that it is truly the littlest things that have the greatest impact on us. Who here has not had a great day at work, maybe even garnered an award or some recognition and then hit EVERY-RED-LIGHT-ON-THE-WAY-HOME? Tell me that this seemingly trivial occurrence did not suck the joy out of an otherwise great day and leave you feeling annoyed and disconcerted.