I Believe Two Things

When I moved across the country earlier this year, I bought comprehensive “we’ll replace anything that’s damaged” insurance from Mayflower, but opted for a $250 deductible.

Then this happened:

Mayflower Fail

I don’t know what happened on the road, but after watching the way my movers were plopping these “Fragile” boxes on the floor, I’m not surprised they’re torn up.

In the end I lost about $250 of assorted belongings, which conveniently means that if I filed a claim I’d get nothing but Mayflower’s sympathies.

My advice: pay slightly more and go without the deductible.

I called T-Mobile to transfer my fiancée’s phone from the family plan it’s on now to a new individual plan. The call, with “Michelle” in India was unimpressive from the start, but really hit bottom when she started asking for identity information.

T-Mobile Customer Service: Let me have you full social security number, please.

Me: I’m sorry, I don’t give out my social security number.

T-Mobile: We’ll need to do a credit check to verify that you are eligible to have an account with us. We’ll need your social security number, driver’s license or passport number, and date of birth.

Me: I see. Well, I won’t give out any of that information, but I’d be happy to pay the contract in full today instead.

T-Mobile: You want to cancel the contract and pay the early termination fee?

Me: (stunned) No, I want to pay you. The remaining cost of the contract should be about $500, and I’d like to pay it in full, right now, to alleviate any concern about my credit history.

T-Mobile: You’ll have to speak to our cancelations department. Just a moment.

First, phone service providers have no truly legitimate reason to solicit identity information. The operating theory must be that people who have purchased the phone at a discount have taken out the difference as “credit,” but in practice that’s quite absurd. Like all other utilities, they may reserve the right to terminate my service if I should fail to pay. That’s sufficient.

But second, is the notion of people paying their bills so entirely alien that customer service representatives mistake it for a cancellation request?

(And for the record, I have excellent credit history; I just don’t like people prying into it.)

Mayflower Moving Truck

A week ago, two movers from Mayflower Transit came to my apartment to load my belongings onto a clearly-branded Mayflower Transit truck (shown at right driving down Commonwealth Avenue).

This afternoon, a driver from United Van Lines called to inform me he’d be dropping off my belongings at our new apartment.

So, at some point between Boston and Colorado, did you two meet up and swap? Did the United driver hijack the Mayflower truck partway here? Or did you just repaint the truck en route?

Through deep and detailed research (i.e., reading one Wikipedia article) I now know that both are owned by the same parent company, but that doesn’t make the initial phone call any less confusing.

In preparation for moving, I needed to cancel my Verizon DSL account.  Naturally, I Googled “cancel Verizon DSL” to get instructions, and the first page of results is filled not with information from Verizon, but with horror stories.  That’s never a good sign.

Sighing, I searched “cancel” in Verizon’s help system and immediately got the 800 number to call — so far, one click.  I called. After a few quick voice prompts, I got transferred to Kelly: an agent working in a United States call center, who already knew the phone number I had given the computer earlier (which isn’t the case in some call centers).

Kelly: How can I help you?

Me: I’m moving, so I need to cancel my service.

Kelly: Do you need to transfer your service to another address?

Me: No.

Kelly: You have a two-year contract, so there’ll be a $99 early termination fee.

Me: Yep; I expected that.

Kelly: Okay.  We’ll turn off your service on Wednesday.  Is there anything else I can help you with?

Me: Nope.  Have a nice day!

Start to finish, the call was under six minutes.

I struggle to see how that could possibly have gone any better.  Either Google lied to me through ranting, or whatever problems Verizon once had are fixed.

The Harvard Pops gave a delightful baseball-themed concert tonight, including Boston’s own baseball favorites like Shipping Up to Boston and Sweet Caroline.  ”Sporchestra” commentators narrated the event, providing (for example) play-by-play analysis of Beethoven’s 5th symphony:

The brass section has the theme… and now the basses have it… and now nobody has the theme!  The audience can’t find the theme!  Wait… what’s this… he’s introduced a new theme!

Mengruo Yang performed a mesmerizing and technically impressive solo on flute in Fantasie Brillante from Carmen (performed here, perhaps even more impressively, by 7 year-old “Emma“).

Megan Savage narrated the poem Casey at the Bat as Adam Lathram brought it to life.  The Boston Pops had included this poem in their own baseball-themed concert last year, but I honestly liked conductor Allen Feinstein’s original music from tonight’s performance better.

My favorite line of the evening came when Adam Lathram was about to start a rigorous training routine for his upcoming bullfight in a montage set to the music of Rocky:

You’d better get a move on.  You only have 163 measures.

All this begs the question: where were you while all this was going on?

Time spent preparing paper tax returns and doing math on five forms: 15 minutes.

Time spent clicking “Next” four thousand times in order to file my already-prepared paper returns online: 90 minutes.

I applaud things being online, but I still don’t understand why people insist online returns are easier or faster.

My girlfriend recently got this message in her voice mail:

This is Darren from Grand Canyon University admissions.  I just saw your application and wanted to know if you have any questions.

What a nice gesture!  It’s a friendly, no-pressure call to applicants, humanizing the institution and making the admissions office more accessible.

I have just one tiny suggestion.

See, Grand Canyon University has already made an appearance on this site once before, when in February of last year it published the Best PDF Ever.  At that time, I was researching the university’s commencement schedule so that my girlfriend and I could fly to Phoenix and I could see her graduate.

And that’s exactly what we ultimately did.  We flew to Phoenix.  We stayed at a hotel downtown.  We ate at neighborhood restaurants.  We even ended up walking seven kilometers in the desert heat on account of a poorly drawn map.  And on Saturday, May 2nd, I sat in a stadium and cheered while she walked across the commencement stage and got her Master’s degree.

So my suggestion to the admissions office is this: try to solicit questions from applicants sometime before they’ve graduated.

My girlfriend and I decided to visit the casinos in Black Hawk and Central City, Colorado — old mining towns that legislation turned into gambling destinations in 1991.  After our summer trip to Las Vegas, we were anxious to try our luck at craps and Monopoly slots again.

Black Hawk casinos can’t compare in scale to the towering, monolithic resorts of the Vegas strip, but they have the same games, and they’re just a short drive from Denver.  And the best part: due to Colorado’s “Clean Indoor Air Act” (of about 2006), smoking is prohibited indoors, including at casinos!

Instead of suffocating under a cloud of cigarette smoke while we played, taking years off our lives and making part of the experience unpleasant, we got to stay for hours breathing clean air and loving every minute.

Thank you, Colorado, for having faith that gambling can exist independent of smoking.  We may still visit Las Vegas again, but we’ll be spending far more time in Colorado’s mountains.

I made a typo while doing some paired programming with a colleague, writing “border: 1px” where I actually meant “border: none;”  I joked:

Me: (indignantly) I know the difference between one and none!

Colleague:  That’s good… since that’s what binary is…

The man’s got a point…

Dear Bank,

Back in May your fraud prevention department contacted me to report what ultimately turned out to be a routine Peapod purchase for a little over $100.

It was humorous.

When you called me again today to report another possibly fraudulent transaction on my card I was less amused.  I assumed the lunch order I placed today for over $100 (covering my colleagues, who paid me back in cash) was the offending transaction.

Imagine my surprise when you confirmed what had really gotten your computer’s attention: a single online purchase from Peapod for a little over $100.

Peapod.

You know… Peapod.

Peapod!

Haven’t we been down this road before?  I know I recognize that tree.

In the future, please assume that all charges from Peapod are legitimate until I notify you otherwise.  I promise to alert you before paying someone else’s grocery bill.

Sincerely,
Someone who just wanted to buy food