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I Opted Out Of AT&T’s Yellow Pages And Still Got Hassled

// November 19th, 2011 // No Comments » // annoying, marketing

Sometime in the past twelve months, I found the opt-out site to tell AT&T that I don’t want to receive their yellow pages phonebook. I immediately filled in my information, feeling rather good about myself, primarily for ridding myself of one more piece of trash that gets left on my doorstep, but also feeling a bit more green, as I was theoretically saving trees by not getting a huge stack of dead ones delivered. The opt-out website makes a big deal out of how much better and earth-friendly the YP.com apps are, and all that jazz.

You can imagine my surprise last week when I received a phone call ON MY CELLPHONE. It was AT&T letting me know that they had recently delivered phonebooks to my area, and wanting to confirm that I indeed, had NOT received one. First off, if you call my personal cellphone and it’s not just to say hi or tell me that something is ready for me to pick up, you’ve hassled me, and you’re now on my bad list. Especially if you’re a business. So, while a bit perturbed that they had actually called me, I was partially impressed that they wanted to make absolute certain they had honored my original request.

This was until I came home that afternoon to find the door hanger below on my doorknob:

There are several things that make this a huge fail in my book:

1. I specifically went out of my way to request that AT&T not leave dead trees on my doorstep. That also includes leaving dead trees on my doorknob to confirm that there were no dead trees left on my doorstep. Yes, I realize that a door hanger is significantly less dead tree than a whole phonebook, but a dead tree is a dead tree, and I have to throw them both away, so they’re equally a hassle.

2. If you’re going to call me to confirm that you didn’t accidentally give me a phonebook, why on earth would you ALSO leave me a door hanger confirming that (with a number on the door hanger to call in case I needed one)? You’ve now hassled me TWICE in response to me asking you not to hassle me once.

3. As an AT&T customer (we have U-verse for our Internet) I’m now slightly annoyed that they’re wasting money. Instead of paying for a single print of the phonebook and one person’s wages to deliver it, they’ve now wasted the printing costs of this door hanger (cardstock paper, multiple colors, two-sided), along with the costs to have one person deliver the door hanger and another person use a computer and a phone line to physically call me.

I realize this is a great example of a first-world problem and all that. I do. But still. Also, I really really really hate door hangers.

Why Is Netflix So Anti-Social?

// June 21st, 2011 // 3 Comments » // annoying, Social Networks

I’ve been a Netflix subscriber since September of 2008 – that’s nearly 3 years – and I’m a heavy user of the service. I actually use the streaming feature more, but I do the DVDs occasionally, as well (I’m horrible at remembering to return them). Thus far, I’ve rated over 200 movies, and I’ve spent quite a while telling the service my preferences, using the handy (if not a bit limiting) ‘Never, Sometimes, Often’ rating scoring system. I really thoroughly enjoy testing Netflix’s ability to recommend movies that I’ll really enjoy, so I use that feature the most.

Unfortunately, there’s one thing that Netflix absolutely sucks at – being social. By that I mean that the service makes no attempt whatsoever to allow me to connect to my friends. There is some rudimentary Facebook support, but it’s only used (as best I could tell) to share my ratings. It’s not enough, and it limits the fun of the service, especially in bringing the community feeling back to movies.

How Could Netflix Be More Social?

For starters, Netflix could offer me the ability to find friends of mine who are also using Netflix. Many other online services make it easy for me to connect my Google, Twitter, or Facebook accounts to see if I’ve already connected with someone there, and then let me add that person as a contact on the service. This is a great feature that I often use to quickly build a contact list on a new service.

There are a handful of reasons I might want to connect with others on a movie service such as Netflix. For starters, I’d like to see what movies my friends are watching, as well as what rating they gave the movie. Clearly if 5 of my friends watched a movie and all rated it 2 stars, I’d rather avoid that film, even if it would otherwise match my preferences or viewing habits. Likewise, if several of my friends gave a movie a 5 star rating, but the movie didn’t really match my preferences or viewing habits, I might like to check it out, since so many of my friends liked it.

With an established buddy list in Netflix, I could also recommend movies to my friends individually – services like GetGlue and GoMiso already allow me to ‘check-in’ to various media – such as a movie – and a contact list in Netflix could offer me a similar experience. With Netflix’s Stream Instantly service, I could be offered the chance to share my movie selection to Facebook/Twitter/etc. either at the beginning of the movie or at the end with just a click of the remote.

As it stands, Netflix is a complete island. The movies that it recommends are solely based on me and my past history. While this often results in some good recommendations, it’s entirely limited.

Why I Bought An iPod

// August 27th, 2010 // 5 Comments » // annoying, Mobile, technology

In college, I bought a 4th generation 20GB black and white iPod at Sam’s Club (the HP Edition, actually). Back then, my music collection was only 10GB, and I figured that gave me plenty of room to grow. While using that iPod, I developed a pretty simple, yet strict method for keeping my music library clean and fresh. This system requires two pieces of metadata – star ratings and playcount/last played – to be synchronized between my portable device and my desktop computer.

For star ratings, I use this differently than most people. When I’m listening to music, if I come across a track that, for whatever reason, I don’t want to have in my library, I give it 5 stars. Why 5? Because on an iPod, that’s the easiest rating to give something, no matter what else you’re doing (driving, walking, etc). I can use my iPod all day long, rating tracks, and then synchronize with my computer, sort by star rating, and delete the 5′s. Super easy, and I’ve still got 1-4 stars for an actual rating system.

Playcounts/last played come into effect when I want to keep things fresh. My music library is now coming up to 20,000 tracks, and let’s face it – there’s no easy way to manage that. What I’ve done is setup playlists for each genre – these smart playlists are automatically populated with tracks that I haven’t listened to in the past XX days. The timeframe isn’t really important (sometimes it’s 30, sometimes it’s 60), but what’s important is that it’s music I haven’t heard in a while, conveniently packaged in a playlist.

These playlists are also useful on phones that have limited storage – rather than painstakingly trying to figure out what to transfer (or worse, risk the ‘random’ sync and take up space with junk), I can limit these playlists to ~1GB in size and have several of them on an 8GB microSD with plenty of extra room.

Since that original iPod died several years ago, I’ve tried in vain to replicate that system using various phones as MP3 players. I’ve tried every version of Windows Mobile since 2005, Symbian (various versions), Android, and even BlackBerry, and no phone that I’ve found is able to synchronize star ratings and playcounts/last played back to the desktop, which is the core requirement for my system to work.

Windows Mobile does synchronize this, but Windows Media Player on the desktop is such a pain to use, I just couldn’t handle it. My last-ditch effort was to try the new DoubleTwist player on my Nexus One. They advertise full synchronization of both ratings and playcounts back to iTunes, so I figured it was worth a shot. I’ll be honest, I never synced my phone twice. The DoubleTwist app on my computer is slow as molasses – it has to re-load *ALL* of my music every time I launch it – that takes quite a while when you have 120GB. Further, once it’s done loading all your stuff, it has to talk to iTunes to find out any changes to your media there. It’s easily 30-45 minutes of ‘loading’ before I’m even able to use the app, much less synchronize anything with it.

Thus, after fighting it for several years, I finally broke down tonite and bought the 160GB iPod Classic. I’m not really happy about it, and I’ve had to switch from MediaMonkey back to iTunes for my desktop solution, but I finally have just that – a solution, instead of a clunky workaround. I bought the 160GB iPod Classic mainly because it’s pretty mellow – there’s no frills, and this is purely a functional toy, I don’t need a touchscreen or any apps and such. Second, I bought it because, at least currently, I can fit my entire 120GB music collection on it – which means I always have my entire collection with me, which is something I’ve missed since I’ve been using my phones, even the N97 which had 32GB of internal storage and a microSD card slot.

It’s really unfortunate, honestly. There are so many benefits to using your phone as your MP3 player that it’s not even funny. I really find it quite depressing that no one in the mobile industry is working to address these two small (but incredibly important) issues. I’ve spoken at length with the http://blog.ovi.com/2009/11/12/welcome-to-nokia-ovi-player/ team about this, and they’ve simply (repeatedly) said it’s just not on their roadmap right now.

I’m keeping my eye on DoubleTwist, though – with a few speed improvements, they could finally be the key that I’ve been looking for. In the meantime, I’ve got my 160GB iPod Classic, and I’ll be using it to weed out the crappy music tracks I’ve accumulated over the years, until someone else is able to compete.

Have you found a way to synchronize ratings and playcounts/last played with anything other than an iPod? What do you use to keep your music library fresh? Have you given up on locally-stored media and gone cloud-only with Last.FM or Pandora?

Yesterday’s Fail Brought To You By AT&T And Chase Bank

// June 2nd, 2010 // No Comments » // annoying

Yesterday was a day from Hell, mainly due to two companies – AT&T and Chase Bank. Normally, I’m a huge fan of both – I’ve been a customer of these companies for a decade, which says a lot.

It started with AT&T. We setup a POTS line at home for our new security system about 30 days ago and received a welcome pack but no bill. Friday we received our first bill – a disconnection notice, letting us know the service would be terminated if we didn’t pay by.this following Friday. I tried to pay the bill online, but you have to get an online registration code to do so, and this can only be obtained by either a phone call to your home or through snail mail. Given we don’t have a a home phone hooked up (recall its only for our security system?), snail mail is my only option. First fail.

In the meantime, I need to make a payment by phone to prevent disconnection. I called the number on the bill, which of course is an automated voice recognition system. No matter, I have a college degree and healthy amount of patience, I can do this. I get through the entire system, slowly reading out my credit card info, only to be told its declined. I know for a fact there are plenty of funds. I tried again, then pressed zero until I got a live person on the line. I pilotely explained the situation and that the automated system was apparently having issues with my card. The representative didn’t apologize for my trouble but did inform me she could process the payment manually but there would be a $5 ‘convenience’ charge. I told her there was nothing convenient about the entire situation and confirmed that she was telling me I would have to pay $5 just to be able to pay my bill. She said yes, and I promptly hung up. I called back to get a different rep (commonly referred to as ‘Rep Roulette’) and got Antoinette – after having to go through the entire automated process again. She was very helpful, and said that if it was their system not taking my payment, I wouldn’t be charged the convenience fee (finally).

However, when Antoinette tried to take my credit card as payment, she received an error, too. We tried my other Chase Bank debit card, but got the same result. I then asked if she could do a check-by-phone if I gave her my routing number and account number, which she could. This went through, but now I needed to call Chase Bank to figure out why my cards hadn’t gone through.

I first logged into my Chase Online account and found that there were several ‘pending’ charges on both cards – obviously the attempted charges that the automated system couldn’t process. Apparently, even though I have 3 other AT&T bills that I pay *EVERY MONTH*, Chase Bank decided these were potential fraud, and so blocked them and locked my debit cards – both of them. It’s a good thing I was home and not out on the road trying to use them for something important, like gas. While on the phone with Antoinette, I had missed a call from a 1-800 number on my other phone, and the voicemail confirmed it was Chase Bank’s fraud department trying to confirm things. I decided to call them back to get things cleared up, and this is where it all went to pot.

Chase’s fraud department starts with an automated line. There’s no shortcut, that I could figure out, to get to a live person – you have to suffer through all the prompts. This includes confirming your identity by answering 2 or 3 multiple-choice questions about your credit history. After you’re confirmed, the system goes through and reads out every single potentially fraudulent charge – with no way to skip around. You’re then given the option to press 1 if all of the charges are OK, or press 2 if one or more are fraud. There is no option to press X for an operator – only by pressing zero about 15 times does the system ‘offer’ to connect you. At this point, I’m already quite pissed off – I’ve wasted roughly an hour on this whole stupid process. After exiting the automated Chase system, I’m given hold music, with a promise that someone will be with me shortly. After 15 minutes of hold music, the automated voice comes back on and, I kid you not, says something like, ‘I’m sorry it’s taken so long – we don’t have any available representatives at this time. As soon as one is available, we will have them call you back on this number’ and then it simply disconnects – there is no option to keep holding, at all. I had to go through this process three times before I FINALLY got a representative! After explaining the situation to him, he confirmed that I had both of the cards in my possession, but was unable to prevent the duplicate charges from going through to my account. He simply said, ‘If their automated system said it didn’t go through, you *should* be OK’.

Excuse me, you’re my bank, I’m your customer, and you’ve got all my money in there, and you’re telling me it ‘should’ be fine, and there’s nothing you can do otherwise? Are you freakin kidding me? There was basically nothing I could do, and I’d already wasted 2 hours of my day off jacking around with this, so I confirmed that both of my cards were unlocked and able to be used without hassle.

Both companies meant well, but here’s some ways this could have gone better (in case either of them are reading this).

1. AT&T – an ‘online registration code’ is the dumbest thing ever. I have 3 other accounts with you, I promise it’s me.

2. AT&T – the notion of a $5 ‘convenience’ fee for having a live person take my payment is beyond ridiculous. You should be glad I’m paying you at all – I’d guess there are alot of your customers who don’t.

3. Chase – I really appreciate you guys keeping such a close eye on my account – really I do. However, you have to make it easier for me to manage this – having to call in, sit through the entire automated system, then sit on hold for 15 minutes to just be disconnected is a 100% guaranteed way to piss off your customers.

The Nokia Booklet 3G Is A Fingerprint Magnet

// December 6th, 2009 // No Comments » // annoying, toys

You can see in the photo, this was after less than 24 hours with the Nokia Booklet 3G. Keep in mind, though, that only the top cover is shiny-fingerprinty. The rest of the computer, including the keyboard and wrist-rest inside are all matte finish, and thus do not accumulate fingerprints as quickly. Unfortunately, the top cover is the first part of the laptop you see, and, well, there it is.

When I was at Nokia World 2009 and chatting with one of the guys in charge of the Nokia Booklet 3G project, I asked about the possibility of custom skins, similar to the one that I have for my Asus 1000HE. He was intrigued by the idea, which leads me to believe that, sometime in the future, we’ll see some available for the Nokia Booklet 3G.

I’m curious as to why laptop manufacturers insist on using these high-gloss finishes in the first place, though. Over the weekend, Mrs. Guru’s laptop died and we had to buy her a new one. She finally settled on a new Dell 14″ Inspiron, and alas, there’s that high-gloss top cover again. Is there some inherent benefit in this finish that I’m simply missing?