And I quote:
Month: November 2011
To Stamps.com tech support
Ok, first up is a basic customer service thing: NEVER EVER berate a customer for neglecting to tell you a piece of information. A simple “oh, ok, that makes a difference” is plenty and trust me the average customer will take a hint. NEVER EVER EVER berate a customer for neglecting to tell you information when the customer in question has ALREADY told you, TWICE, that they JUST went over this with the guy who transferred her to you. Its not her fault that you and your co-workers don’t communicate properly. Its not her fault you not only didn’t ask the same set of question as the last person, but instead jumped to a conclusion without giving her the chance to explain fully.
And on to the reason to my call to you:
First off, this particular error code has been appearing off and on since mid-August, and its now mid-November. As you can see if you’d bother to look at the history on the account. Every other tech support person has told me this is an on going problem that you all are working on. Which I can appreciate, but its been 3 months, and this particular error means I can’t download the latest orders for shipping from our online store untill such time as it temporarily fixes itself. THIS IS BAD. Can I work around it, yes, does it make my life more difficult, YES.
2nd: after telling me that this has been an ongoing problem, every single tech support person (including you) has informed me that error code means the exact same thing. That one of the international “to” addresses contains an “invalid” character resulting in the download hanging. Now, I have personally seen your software handle ALL SORTS of non-standard characters, everything from the umlaut over some letters, to Russian Cyrillic, to Asian characters. In every case, where the software is unable to render the “letter” correctly it replaces it with a “?” and keeps going. So you know what? I don’t believe you. I believe that’s what you were TOLD that error code means, but I don’t believe that’s the actual problem, and if it IS then you need to fire all your programmers ASAP and hire someone who actually knows what they’re doing, like a first year college programming major. (actually considering some of the other choices your programmers have made that’s not a bad idea over all)
3rd: Telling me that the only fix for the problem (as you, and all your previous associates have done) is to go up to the online store access and manually go through each and every order checking the address to be sure they don’t contain any “unusual” characters is not a solution. It’s especially not a solution when I have 500 orders pending for download that you’re telling me I have to go through, but its not a solution even if there were only 50. The reason is simple, you can’t tell me WHAT the problem character is, so how in hell am I supposed to figure out what it is, especially considering what I HAVE seen your software handle just fine. Also, after 3 months I would hope your programmers would have come up with a better solution.
THAT is why I hung up on you this morning. And THAT is why you got a VERY nasty (and yet perfectly polite) email, informing you that if you don’t get your asses in gear and FIX THE GODDAMN problem before Christmas season properly hits I WILL be finding new software to use.
(on the other hand I amused the heck out of my co-workers as I displayed my language proficiency after I hung up the phone, I guess I’ll take what I can)
Today’s links
Facebook flooded with things you don’t want your kid to see. Part of me says so whats new? The rest of me wants to point out that if you didn’t click on every link then the viruses wouldn’t spread, so would you PLEASE THINK BEFORE CLICKING YOU IDIOTS (just like remembering that not all you find online is true, you should think before you click). Thank you.
As much as I hate to side with Zynga on anything, I gotta agree with this one.
Open carry advocate arrested, again. The last time the city paid her, bets on how much she’ll get this time?
I could rant so hard on this one. I won’t. Lets just call it another example of banks throwing more money on bad investments.
Judge rules city can bar the OWS folks from camping out in Zuccoti park. Seriously, what does camping some place have to do with your freedom of speach??
I forgot to take the video camera
and I shouldn’t have. Took Apollo over to my brother-in-law’s today to play with their dogs. I’ve posted video of him there before, though its been a while. They’re the two dogs, one’s a 100lb mastiff/golden cross, the other is a 12lb shitz-shu. Last time I posted video, he was about half the size of the larger dog. We’ve been over there several times in between, but its been a month or so since the last time, and today it finally struck me how much he’s grown. He barely weighs 100lbs himself, but he makes the large dog look small. The difference was striking. His size just hadn’t struck me before today, cause I’m so used to him. But wow. Poor Loki looked so small, and he was NOT amused at the fact that Apollo was bigger than him. Apollo got reminded of his manners a couple times. Rosebud, the shitz-shu, however still thinks Apollo’s the greatest playmate ever, the two of them play tag around the fenced yard at (Rosebud’s) top speed, having a blast. Gotta remember the video camera next time!
There was snow yesterday
Apollo was quite thrilled, me not so much. At least it was all gone this morning!
Well I WAS going to link to the Atomic Nerds
cause I wanted to post on something they’d done a great write up on, but either their blog is wonky this morning, they’ve converted to Islam and decided to help spread the good news, or they got hacked?
Edited: and since I’m sure they’ll fix it as soon as they figure it out (unless I’m right about the convert to Islam thing), here’s a screen grab of the current page:
Lets repeat: just cause you found it online doesn’t make it real
I’m NOT reposting this one, its nasty to look at.
But really, a photo of a pair of young men holding a puppy off the ground by a string around its neck is horrifying yes, and I appreciate that you want to help possibly catch the two shown in the picture. But maybe you need to stop and look around first. The photo in question appears to have been originally posted online as far back as 2008, and there are reports that it was passed around via email for several years before that, AND that its possibly been “retouched” a few times. Reposting it everywhere you visit asking people to “help spread the word so we can find these people” is not effective, and makes you look stupid and alarmist to folks who know how to look up such things.
Leash rack
So, Apollo has gathered an impressive collection of leashes and collars for a single dog. 1 30′ leash, 1 6′ leash, and 1 4′ leash, plus his prong collar which also needs to be stored between outdoors occasions and his spare collar for just in case. So I went looking for a leash holder, or rack of some kind. I knew they made them. I wasn’t prepared for the prices on them. $30 and up, usually very fancy, or with cute decorative carvings. Totally not what I was looking for.
So today I went down to my local Lowes, and spent just under $19 in supplies, and then spent about an hour total between a single coat of stain on the wood (not counting dry time), and putting it all together and hanging it.
Gotta dig out the 6’leash and spare collar from wherever they wandered too, but I think I’m prepared now!
(couple of the hooks ended up not quite straight, and the whole thing ended up just a hair off level on the wall. We’ll see how much it bugs me before I’ll bother to pull it down and fix it.)
Intact male dog
In rut (since Tibetan Mastiffs only have one breeding season. Techinically he’s fertile any time of the year, but breeding season is better). So far we’ve not had TO much trouble with the local bitches (though the psychotic GSD female almost got a visit the other day…..), but I HAVE noticed he’s smelling ALOT stronger than usual this past month. As in, he got a bath early cause I couldn’t stand it any more. It COULD just be the antibiotics he’s been on, or maybe he rolled in something extra pungent, but could it be the rut season too? I tried Google, but since most domesticated dogs don’t have a true “breeding season” no one appeared to have an answer. I suppose I could ask his breeder…..