Rants

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)

…..who’s name starts with A(BC). If, when I click on a link to your site, you show me a page telling me about your new nifty iPad version of the site “click here to go to the iPad optimized version of our site”, then you can damn well ALSO give me an option to NOT go to the new nifty iPad optimized version. And when I go back and try the link again do NOT automatically load the iPAD optimized version of your site. Mobile versions of sites suck, your’s is no different.

Ok, hate IE, have for ever.  Only have it on the computer cause there are things that just don’t work right on other browsers.

Usually use Firefox (latest greatest updated version, bleh).  Except ever since the last update Firefox insists on loading some pages from the cache instead of from the server, and so things aren’t updating right (like, when I head over to the Gun Blog Blacklist, and it shows me post listings from two days ago….) unless I force Firefox to reload by holding shift while clicking refresh.  And I can’t find the setting to tell it to auto clear the cache when I close the browser (haven’t actually dug that hard yet, its been one of those weeks months).  Grrrr

Have Chrome, but I’m pissed at Google, so I prefer not to use it, but Firefox locked up for 15minutes when I forced it to clear the cache, so I want to download Opera to play with, except when I try to download the install file Chrome tells me Opera is an evil virus that’s going to kill my system (ok, I paraphrased). 

Finally get Opera installed, attempt to log into to Blogger to make this post…..and Opera freezes up and I end up Ctrl-Alt-Del to make it go away (Windows has a fix would you like to see it? There’s an updated version of this program availilble…..BS I JUST DOWNLOADED THIS VERSION, arg).

At about that point Firefox unfroze and I could vent my frustration to the world.

All this after attempting to install the latest greatest version of Yahoo Messenger cause the version I was using broke, and it took a half an hour because first it wouldn’t download (check your firewall settings, reboot and try again), then it downloaded but wouldn’t install (so I turned off the virus scanner too), and then it wouldn’t download again…..(so I turned everything back on and tried again, and PRESTO it downloaded and installed no problem)

Remind me again while I like computers??

Ok, so a year or two ago I bought Spore to play on my computer.  Enjoyed it, but don’t play it all that often.  Course EA required me to download their manager software to play it, which always drives me nuts, but I’d already bought the game and opened it before I discovered THAT fact so what the heck.

Then just recently EA “updated” their manager software, now named Origin.  And pissed me off again once I read the EULA.  I’ve not played Spore since, cause I’m sure it’ll require me to update to the new software.

One thing I HAD done, not to long before EA did their update, was confirm that my email preferences with them were up to date, basically: DON”T SEND ME A DAMN THING.

So whats in my email box today??  Spam from EA about Battlefield 3. And there isn’t even an “opt out” option in the email.  They get around that by having the line “If you have opted out of Marketing Communications this is the only email you will receive”.

Seriously EA??  Are you TRYING to piss off the world?  I highly doubt I’m the only one looking at that email and thinking “WTF??” 

It gets even better when you realize that the ONLY game I’ve played through them is Spore which is rated E10+, and Battlefield 3 is rated M17+.  Yes, these games are JUST alike!!

Cause I have no tolerance for stupidity right at the moment, and maybe if I rant it out here I won’t there?

As any hunter who’s done their homework is likely aware there is a disease in some deer populations called Chronic Wasting Disease.  At this time it is not believed that this disease is transmittable to anyone but another deer or related species (or a laboratory mouse that has been genetically modified to be susceptible to it), but to be safe the .gov recommends some basic safety techniques for hunters to be sure they’re not spreading the disease.  First off is to not shoot or eat any deer that looks sick (duh), the rest basically state to take some extra precautions in how the deer is butchered, including trying to avoid cutting into the bones, spinal cord, or brain of the deer and making sure that certain organs aren’t consumed.  There is also note that the disease appears to be present in the antler velvet (see above link).

Nice and straightforward huh?  Except that with the rise of using deer and elk antlers as possible chew toys for dogs there has been a massive alarmist movement that OMG the DISEASE is PRESENT in the ANTLERS so you could be MAKING YOUR DOG SICK.  Unfortunately a huge number of people believe this, including some vets, so a basic search for “dog chew deer antler cwd” will get you all kinds of alarmist posts stating that antlers aren’t safe due to possibly giving your dog CWD, including all kinds of official sounding and looking articles by vets.  Yet not one of them can actually tell you WHERE to find this information actually saying this beyond their alarmist tendencies.

I can’t find a single instance of the disease being identified in antlers.  I can only assume that the misinformation is the result of one or more people reading antler velvet, and the suggested instructions for removing the skull & antlers for trophies and misunderstood it.

If she was stating that she didn’t want to give HER dogs antlers due to the possibility of breaking teeth, and because the possible potential of CWD worries her I’d be ok with it.  Instead, every time someone mentions dog chews (regardless of the TYPE of chew in question) she has gone out of her way to find several articles (and repeats of the same articles), some of them written by people of very dubious backgrounds, to prove that YOUR DOG COULD GET CWD FROM THOSE ANTLERS!!!!!!!eleventy!!!! So you should NEVER EVER GIVE THEM TO YOUR DOG!!!!!

The ignorance I can deal with, thats solvable, but the outright stupidity frustrates the heck out of me.

Edited to add: and I’m right!

…..that I occasionally wander through: just because you found it online does not make it true. Just because the author says they’re a vet, doesn’t make it true. Heck, even if the author really is a vet doesn’t mean their opnion is gold, especially when that opinion is based on old information. You have been repeatedly shown that you’re wrong, that even the CDC says you’re wrong. Reposting the exact same information over and over just shows how stupid you are. Reposting the exact same information in the form of reposting the entirety of the same multipage article, instead of just quoting and linking, over and over, not only shows how stupid you are but also leaves you, and the forum as a whole, open to complaints of copywrite violation. If I were mod I’d have already banned you for that last fact alone. If you really are the adult you say you are then just stop it already!