Picking your pocket with a smile…

Excellent column by David Pogue in today’s NYT on the trend of large companies toward passive-aggressive customer-service.

Pogue presents an interesting theory to explain the phenomena.

…I called Verizon. “Don’t worry,” the lady told me. “You signed up for the 700-minute plan with a 100-minute-a-month bonus. When you get your bill, you’ll see 800 minutes of airtime free.”

As you can probably guess, I did not, in fact, get those extra 100 minutes. For two straight months, I had to call Verizon and ask them to fix it. Each time, they apologized and gave me the 100-minute credit. But each time, I lost 25 minutes of my life.

Yes, it’s possible that I just had the good luck to call three incompetent customer-service reps in a row.

But there’s another possibility: Verizon knows that a certain percentage of customers will never notice that they’re being overbilled, or will trust that the problem has been corrected after the first complaint.

I’d chalk this up as an isolated oddity—but the thing is, this was the third or fourth time it’s come up this year.

For example, only a month earlier, the same story had played out with our MCI home long-distance service: our plan was supposed to include unlimited, free long-distance calls on the main line. Yet month after month, we were billed for long-distance calls. Month after month, we’d call customer service. “Oh, I’m so sorry; we’ll credit that to your next bill”—and no credit ever appeared. (We finally dumped MCI.)

Oh, that we could dump all the companies that are jumping on this bandwagon!

Pogue leaves out my own pet peeves. They include impenetrable voicemail systems; being placed on-hold for 20 minutes or longer; the requirement that you punch in your contact information, only to have to repeat it to the person who finally answers; the insistence that one department cannot communicate directly with another, thereby restarting the whole process; and, when all else fails, undisguised rudeness on the part of managers.

AT&T Wireless excels in these techniques. That's why I bought out of my contract early and will never sign with them again.

Read Pogue's column here.

Spinmeisters....

Remember when U.S. forces were puzzled by the failure of Saddam Hussein's "elite Republican Guard" to make a stand to defend Baghdad? Remember when it seemed that Saddam's forces just melted away, and no one knew where they went or what happened to their weapons and organization?

Now the White House/U.S. Media spin is that "foreign terrorists" are responsible for the recent string of deadly attacks in Iraq that has left U.S. soldiers and foreign aid workers--Red Cross, U.N., Doctors Without Borders, etc.--scurrying for cover.

Wouldn't it make more sense that the recent attacks are the work of some of those unaccounted for Republican guard units? Say, under the command of Saddam Hussein?

Remember him?

But that would contradict President Bush's posturing that we "won" handily in Iraq and that the war is over. It would defy the notion that all Iraqis despise Hussein. And it would undermine a key foundation upon which Bush sold his war, namely, that Iraq is a warren of al-Qaida and other foreign terrorists.

No matter how you spin it, the U.S. is bogging down deeper and deeper in Iraq.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Iraq was hit by a string of explosions Thursday that set a freight train on fire, killed a U.S. soldier in a military convoy and ripped through Baghdad's Old Quarter. Another blast injured two U.S. soldiers on a military police patrol.

The attacks came as international organizations continued their exodus from Iraq and the U.N. secretary-general warned of ``a new phase'' in postwar violence.

[…]

U.S. forces are suffering an average of 33 attacks a day -- up from about 12 daily attacks in July. A total of 117 American soldiers have been killed in combat since May 1 -- when Bush declared an end to major fighting -- or slightly more than the 114 soldiers who died in invasion that began March 20.

The escalating violence has unnerved many of Baghdad's 5 million people...

Complete story here.

Desperate acts...?

While President Bush calls today's attacks in Baghdad that killed up to 40 people and wounded 200, the acts of "desperate" individuals who "hate freedom" and "love terror," others see them as indications that the resistance is growing stronger and more organized.

...All of the attacks came within 45 minutes of each other and appeared to be carefully choreographed by Iraqi resistance guerrillas and timed to coincide with the first day of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

Brigadier General Ahmed Ibrahim, Iraq's deputy interior minister, put the Iraqi death toll at 34, including 26 civilians and eight police officers. He did not include any suicide bombers in the tally.

One American soldier was also killed in one of the police station attacks and six US troops were wounded, the US military said.

The capital has now seen the worst two days of violence since the war was declared over in April and the sound of sirens reverberated through the streets as emergency vehicles criss-crossed the city.

[...]

The terror attacks came hours after clashes in the Baghdad area killed three US soldiers overnight, and a day after an audacious rocket salvo attack on the Rashid hotel in central Baghdad which narrowly missed Paul Wolfowitz, the US deputy defence secretary, who had been staying there. A US colonel was killed and 18 people wounded in that attack.

Meanwhile, near Fallujah, "US troops opened fire indiscriminately, killing at least four Iraqi civilians, after a roadside bomb exploded as a US military convoy passed."

Someone at Saturday's peace rally had a great idea for ending our occupation of Iraq. Draft the Bush daughters and the children of congressmen, senators and other politicians and ceo's into the ranks of those troops destined to go.

Complete story here.

Fire diary....

Like tens (hundreds?) of thousands of Californians, I'm avoiding smoke and ash today by staying indoors. Work has been cancelled. It's dark outside, even though it's 10:40 in the morning. The light that makes it through the smoke is a sickening shade of yellow, casting a pallor on buildings, vehicles, and people. It’s hot, the air heavy and hard to breathe. Park a car or leave a bike or anything outdoors for a few minutes and it will be covered in a layer of burnt ash. The swimming pool in my apartment complex is black with soot and sunken ash.

So far, I’m in no immediate danger. The nearest fire is at least 15 minutes away by freeway—about 15 miles. That’s closer than I like, considering the fire covered twice that distance yesterday. But rather than the dry brush lands it mostly consumed in that period, dense city development lies between me and it. Maybe I’m naïve, but I don’t feel threatened.

I can't help but marvel that this immense destruction has been set in motion by a suspected 3 individuals. One, a lost hunter, started a signal fire that accidentally burst out of control into the so-called Cedar Fire, which has destroyed 260 homes, burned 115,000 acres and so far killed nine people. Two men, presumed arsonists, were seen fleeing from the scene of the so-called Center Valley Fire, which has burned 15,000 acres, destroyed 57 homes and killed two. The cause of the third local fire, the Mine Fire, which has burned 15,000 acres, destroyed no structures and killed no one so far, is undetermined.

It shows how vulnerable our society is. Three people, with matches, have shut down an entire county. And it's not over yet. Fire officials are worried the three fires might merge into one. (If that happens, I’ll most likely be evacuated.) The soonest they're predicting containment is Thursday. And that’s if the Santa Ana Winds, quiet this morning, do not strengthen.

I’ve always maintained that humans are vulnerable enough to nature’s forces—earthquakes, tsunamis, wildfires, hurricanes, tornadoes—that we should draw together and reinforce one another’s communities with kindness and generosity, rather than invading, bombing and deliberately destroying. This is certainly a case in point.