I (did) have the 550 family talk plan and was trying to add an additional line to that – apparently that is not possible as that plan has a 3 line limit (wtf?). I was getting a message that said there was a “Unidentified Problem” with my account. O rly? How do you know there’s a problem if you can’t identify it?

Once I found out there was a 3 line limit on the 550 min plan, I changed my plan to the 700 minute family talk plan (5 line limit). I tried to add a line again – same error. Kind of annoyed now. Called 611 (customer support) and tried to go to the Sales number – they’re closed. Sorry, but if I’m on a Business plan (discount from work), you should never be closed – especially when it involves me trying to give you more money.

Found another number that said it was 24/7 – turned out it led me right back to the same 611 line. OK, let’s try something else… went to the “other account questions” option to see if they could tell me why I was getting the error on the website. First time I tried this it seemed to transfer me OK and then a message came on that said they could not answer my call due to an unknown problem and then I was just randomly disconnected. Getting more annoyed now.

Called back again… selecting the same account option. Finally got a real person. He said there was a known issue with the website and they’ve been having ongoing issues and they are working on it. OK, I can accept that… He then proceeded to tell me he couldn’t help me with adding a new line but would transfer me to the people that could. Cool. Maybe this will actually work.

Though in the back of my head, my first though was “this ass better not just transfer me to the same sales line that is closed right now” … ya, he totally did. The message came on and said they were closed and to call back and then hung up on me.

Now is it too much to expect this guy to KNOW that their sales line is closed at this hour? I don’t think so. I would be slightly less annoyed had he just said “normally I would transfer you to our sales department, but I do believe they are closed at this time – if you’d like to call back tomorrow I’m sure they can help you.”

But no… he transferred me right over there and I accomplished nothing. Now I have to wait until tomorrow and try all of this all over again.

Thank you AT&T. For nothing.

I’ve noticed many stupid things with these printers (and HP) that I really do not understand. Here are a couple examples…

I was looking up replacing a large color printer and was eying the CP5525dn. The problem is that it needs to be on its own stand and needs 1 additional tray (total of 4, including manual feed). HP offers no configuration like this. They sell the printer with a total of 3 trays (CP5525dn) and they sell a stand with a total of 3 trays (CE725A). And they also sell a printer on a stand with a total of 6 trays (CP5525xh). They also sell the additional trays individually.

Problem 1: There is no option of ONLY buying the rolling cart for the printer. You either buy it with the 3 extra trays or you don’t buy it. WTF? I do not need 3 additional trays and do not want to pay for them. Not to mention that it’s $1300 for the package. I confirmed this in a chat session online with an HP support person.

Problem 2: To buy the printer that includes the trays and stand already (CP5525xh) is $4400. To buy the printer separately (CP5525dn) and then buy the stand with the additional trays (CE725A) it comes to $4000. What? It’s $400 cheaper if I buy the printer and the stand package separately? Are you serious? Why would anyone want to buy the CP5525xh to begin with?

Dear HP: Get your shit together. Both of these things are absurd and retarded. I don’t want/need 3 extra trays with the cart to roll my printer around and I also think you’re absolutely asinine to charge more for what would be considered a bundle of multiple items.

Top tip: If you’re going to bundle two things together that would normally be purchased separately – typically that bundle should be cheaper than they are separately. It’s like buying a combo meal at a fast food place. I can buy a burger, fries and a drink separately… but it’s cheaper to order a #1 and get the same exact things.

Please ease up on the “royal wedding” coverage. IT IS JUST A WEDDING. No, I don’t care where this girl grew up. Nor do I want to watch an interview with one of her former preschool teachers talk about how she was such a good kid and she knew she was destined for great things and blah blah blah (I just made that up – but I’m surprised that hasn’t happened yet).

Look, I get it, it’s a happy time for them. Awesome. Let them be happy and enjoy it. With the amount of news coverage this is getting in the US (where they have absolutely zero presence), you’d think they were descendents of George Washington or something.

I can understand this kind of attention in the UK… you know… where they are from? But can I please just go a day without checking a news site for ACTUAL news and getting plastered with crap about a royal wedding that I could not possibly care less about?

Is that so much to ask?

Sincerely,

Me

Now, believe it or not, I think the option of a “streaming only” plan is awesome – for some people. Only $8 / month to watch all of the streaming content you can handle? That’s a great deal.

What I DON’T think is awesome is passing on the extra cost of offering those plans to the existing customers through a price increase! Ya, we’re going to now absorb the extra cost that it takes to offer such a plan. I got an email from Netflix today stating that the price for my 3 at a time plan is going up another $3 / month. That doesn’t sound like much, but essentially it’ll cause my $23 bill to jump to around $27 after taxes.  The way I look at it, just over $20 / month for 3 at a time is a decent deal… but nearly $30 for those same 3 at a time is highway robbery.

From my perspective, I have two options… 1) Leave it be and see if my plan is “grandfathered in” at the same price and stays that way as long as I don’t try to change it. Or option 2) I’m dropping my plan to 2 at a time. I don’t even care if I get fewer movies when I want them… that kind of an increase OUT OF NOWHERE is pure bullshit on Netflix’s part.

It’s bad enough that Netflix users have to get fucked by the movie studios “delaying” movies to Netflix for a whole month (WHICH IS TOTAL FUCKING BULLSHIT, BTW)… but now Netflix is going to fuck everyone over again!

GRRR!

“Hey, look, a commercial for XYZ! Oh, wait, I’m not interested in that.”

*more tv show*

“Hey, look, another commercial for XYZ. Nope, still not interested.”

*more tv show*

“Oh joy… Another XYZ commercial. Hey wait… I’m interested now… Oh wait, strike that, no I’m not.”

Is that really how they imagine it going? Do people get browbeaten with 30 commercials of the same thing and suddenly want to buy that thing? Why does it have to be that way? I realize there aren’t enough unique commercials to fill all of the time slots… But is there really no other way?

Why do I have to see all of the same commercials at every commercial break?

This 28 day wait thing is total bullshit. I don’t care what Warner Brothers says it is doing for their sales… the increase could be ANYTHING. Maybe they actually released a few decent movies recently that people actually wanted to buy? Maybe people had a little more disposable income in that time frame? How the hell would WB know?

Even if the 28 day new release delay IS helping, I still think it is stupid. If anything, I would like to say it has the opposite affect on me. Ideally (for any studio), the idea of this delay is to get people to go out and spend money on new releases since otherwise they’d have to wait a month to get it from Netflix. The thing is, these studios make me NOT want to buy things from them just for screwing over Netflix users.

I would rather be able to get a new release immediately from Netflix – and if I think it’s a good movie and might want to watch it again, I’ll go buy it. Now… it’s more of… “Eh, I’ll eventually get it on Netflix. I don’t want to buy it and give these assholes anymore of my money.”

Dear WB, Sony, and everyone else that is screwing Netflix customers, I HATE YOU.

Then there are times when you’re just not sure if someone is fucking with you because it wouldn’t make any sense. Like trying to buy a car for example? Why would they want to dick with you? They’d potentially lose a sale. Sure, they can be less than cooperative to try to sell you something else on the lot, but that only works with some people.

I’ve gotten such varied and wild responses from Subaru dealers recently that I’m actually starting to question if I made the right decision…

First dealer that I’m still talking to won’t take my money or request a car for me because they don’t have the accessory pricing yet. Why this prevents them from sending in an order for the car I want, I don’t know. Just get it on its way so that it gets here faster AFTER we do the pricing stuff. WTF?

A closer dealer (with a shitty reputation) is another option. I sent an online request through their website to find out if they’re ordering 2011s yet and how much one would be with the options that I want. I got two canned responses and no actual information – more than a week ago. Again… WTF?

I even went a little farther out of the area – about an hour and a half away, the supposed #2 Subaru dealer in the country would seem like a great place to start. I sent another online request through their website and actually got a real response back – but it was a bit …. confusing, to say the least. To their knowledge, Subaru isn’t even starting 2011 production until November – expecting mid-late December delivery. Um… WHAT THE FUCK? I know for a fact that people are receiving their 2011 WRXs already. Like, keys in hand, car in driveway. There is no possible way that information is remotely accurate. Fail.

There is ONE dealer that’s more than happy to take my money… and it is SEVEN hours away in New Hampshire. It’s great the they’d love to help me out, but that just seems like an absolute logistical nightmare. And then when I asked how it would work (that I’m so far away) I basically got no actual information on what would happen… “Oh, we do it all the time, it’s no big deal.” Um, I’m sorry, but it is for me – and without telling me how it actually works and what to expect, you pretty much just lost my interest. I’m not going into something like that totally blind after I asked for specific info.

There is still ONE more option I haven’t tried yet… but I’m afraid to ask them as I might get an even more different story. I have not yet talked to the dealer in Williamsport that I went to for my test drive. Maybe they’ll be cool and take my money… I don’t know. Like I said, I’m scared to ask.

You’re killing me here, Subaru. I want to give your dealers money for a car – but no one wants to take it. That makes me sad.

I don’t remember having this much trouble last year when I bought my 3GS but this was certainly what I would label an “ordeal” … if there ever were such a thing.

It’s just a preorder, right? How bad could it be? That bad.

It seems the iPhone 4 went live in the Apple.com store around 4am ET this morning and apparently from then on, Apple’s and AT&T’s servers both just bent over and gave up. Both sites were up and down most of the morning. So much so that when I woke up at 7am and tried to order (unaware they were already up 3 hours earlier), I got the usual “Apple store is down” post-it note. I assumed they just hadn’t gone live yet (most people were expecting 8am ET).

A little bit after I got to work I had been periodically checking apple.com and the store finally opened again around 8:30am. Now was my chance.

Go all the way through with the order to the Add to Cart button… fail. “Oops, there was an error.” WTF do you mean “oops” … I’m trying to buy your shit, let me have it. No “oops” necessary.

This happened a couple times actually – never actually going through. Eventually it just got worse. I was lucky if I was able to enter my AT&T account info on the Apple.com store. Usually got some sort of session error after that.

I had read that a lot of people had better luck ordering through AT&T… thought maybe I’d give it a try – if even hesitantly. My biggest reason to order directly through Apple is that I know you can “pre-sign” for their FedEx deliveries so you don’t have to be home to sign for it. A risk, I know… but I am NEVER home during the day when these things deliver – so that is a nice option for people like me.

Anyway, logged into my AT&T page and was able to get to the upgrade page. Selected the 32GB model for preorder and was even able to get to a checkout page. Then it just hung there. I think it was the absolute last page that I had to click on and it did nothing. I don’t mean for 20-30 seconds… I’m talking 10-15 minutes. I eventually gave up and closed it – having not seen a confirmation number or confirmation email or anything from them. Safely assuming (so far) that my order did not complete.

I continued to try through the morning always with the same shitty results (both at&t and apple.com). I even went through our Employee Purchase Program link and it failed there too – though I did end up ordering the dock and an orange “bumper” for it without any issue (though they are not set to deliver until after 7/3 – which will probably be when I’m in Salt Lake City).

Eventually I logged into my account on apple.com to check my order history and cart. Maybe I was missing something… and bam! Two iPhones in my cart waiting to check out. While my first thought was definitely “WTF?!” … my next one was “CHECK OUT!”

Of course I had to remove one of them from my cart (1 phone limit per available line) but was then able to complete checkout and have my 32GB iPhone 4 preordered. Again… what an ordeal.

Now I just have to wait another week + to get it. Then I can even sell my 16GB 3GS. Hopefully still being able to get $200+ for it.

The promise of a fairly affordable, fun, good-looking, rear wheel drive coupe was salivating… it would just take time. I honestly can’t remember how far back the rumors go. Probably at least 2 or 3 years at this point. The concept debuted some time last year and we were ready.

By “we” I mean the rest of the world that wanted to get their hands on this car. Production version to debut in 2010 was the rumor. On sale at some point in 2011 as a 2012 model was the rumor. Fine. I can accept that. At that time it was still a long ways off so they seemingly had plenty of time to get it rolling and kick things off.

Then there was the recent rumor that they’re likely to target a little higher age group and a little higher budget (around $23-$25k). This is fine. I don’t give a shit what age group they’re targeting and that budget is still on track with what I initially anticipated – if anyone really thought this was going to be just a $20k car, they were mislead from the start or seriously kidding themselves.

Word comes today that there now may be an even longer delay (of up to 2 years!) before this car is ready as they may again be looking at changing the design or considering a hybrid (um… have you not seen the fail that is the CR-Z?). As much of a fail as a design change would probably be, what the fuck is with the delay? What is the big problem with this car? What is holding them up? Sure, this is all rumor… but what the fuck?

It would be much easier if we could just get a straight answer from these people. Are they going to build it? Or are they just fucking around? Two years ago, I wanted this car yesterday. If it were to come out tomorrow, I’d be at the dealer to put a deposit down first thing in the morning.

But now? Fuck that. I’m not waiting another 3 or 4 years to hear that it is going to be delayed again. Fuck you Toyota. You can keep your likely-to-be-watered-down-sissy wagon. Either you release that shit ASAP or I’m out.

The new tC still seems to be fail enough… why fuck this up too?

(not my image)

I don’t care what friends of my friends think.

I clicked “like” on something one of my friends posted yesterday. Throughout the day I continued to be notified of new “notifications” that someone had commented or liked the thing that I liked. These were people I do not know, have no reason to know, and do not care what they are doing.

I don’t want to know if 500 other people “like” what I just liked. And even if  I did, I don’t want a stupid notification about it from the Facebook app on my phone every time.

I DON’T CARE.

I even turned my iPhone notifications to only show Badges for Facebook. Even that is annoying if I have to put up with this crap all of the time.