Joeski has a blog

Vonage Sucks - $150 free trial!?!!?!?!!?

2007-04-09T17:29:00.000-07:00

I signed up for the free trial at the end of Feb. I recently called to cancel, but I was outside of the 30 days "free" trial period. They not only did they charge me for the initial cost and first month, but I also paid for an additional month of use. When I cancelled, they added a $40 cancellation fee, and a $45 equipment return fee.

$40 for startup fee
$28 for 2nd mo
$45 cancel fee
$45 equipment return fee

$153 to make two phone calls on this service. Both phone calls were made within the 30 day trial period.

Why did I cancel? Even with a Comcast high-speed account that delivers blistering 26,000Kbps (yes, 26 thousand)... I only have 325kbps up. It's just too easy to fill that upload pipe and affect call quality. So I cannot rely on VOIP with 325kbps up and multiple computers on the home network. I could get a $20/mo SBC dsl line just for voip, but then I would be paying close to $60/mo total, while my unlimited ATT land line is $55/mo and always works.

I talked to the acct manager and that guy's boss. They wouldn't budge one bit on the fees. "it's locked in the system", "it's automatic". They offered two free months, oh joy, and a way to spend $5/mo to put the account on hold until I found a faster internet connection - great, give them more money. They wouldn't budge all, no partial discount on any of those fees. I feel like destroying the equipment before I return it (it's in perfect condition, since it was only out of the box for a few days).

Maybe I should have held on to the service at $5/mo until after this Verizon case played out. If they are out of business, I might get a rebate, not have to pay fees.

I will NEVER use vonage.

What a waste of $150.

Grrrr!

-J

Earthlink- worst customer support ever

2007-04-06T14:54:00.000-07:00

The level of customer support from various outsourced companies all over the world has varied. Getting help on setting up a router in an obscure network from a person in indonesia who is reading a script is painful. It's also understandable that the situation itself is not easy, so there should be some latitude from whomever is trying to help over the phone.

I should note that I only wait 1 minutes for my call to be picked up, and I was very pleasant (not a frustrated user who has just lost a week's worth of data).

With Earthlink, I called to ask about some billing questions. Shouldn't have been too painful...but it did involve multiple dialup accounts registered to the same company. It took something like 10 minutes for the agent to find my accounts. I was put on hold after just about every sentence I spoke. I honestly felt like I was speaking to a retarded person or a very young child in a foreign language. That is rude, I know, but that's how it felt. I slowed down every sentence, used simple words, and paused often. Here is an example...

From the message tree.... "So we may connect you to a rep with the SKILLS to help you, press 1, 2 3...." - LOL

me - "do we had three dialup accounts or two"

hold for 5 minutes

agent - "your outstanding bill is $69.61"

me - "uh, thanks, I see that on my bill"

agent - "hold please"

hold again

agent - "which bill were you referring to, xxxx@earthlink or xxxy@earthlink?"

me - "I am trying to find out if there are any other accounts associated with this company"

agent - "hold please"

hold again

agent - "I need to close out of account xxxx@earthlink, are there any other questions about that account"

me - "huh?

me - thinking....wtf??? okay..... I'll just a quick question about account xxxx

me - "on the xxxy account, if more than one person calls at the same time, is that a problem?"

agent - "is this the xxxx account or xxxy account"

me - "xxxx account"

agent - "when are these two people calling?" I can tell you the times that people are calling, please hold"
long wait

agent - "I have a list of all of the times that people called on this account, would like to hear them?"

me - "no thank you"

me - "I don't need a list of calls made"

me - "is is possible for two people to dialup using account xxxx at the exact same time"

agent - "the bill will show the calls made at the same time"

me - "actually the bill does not show any calls made at the same time"

me - "does your account show any overlapping calls made?"

agent - "I could read the list of calls made"

click - hold

hold, hold, 5 more minutes

agent - "here is a list of the calls made going back through 10 billing cycles, do you want me to read them"

me - "okay, fine, go"

agent - I won't even try to print this, it took her 2 minutes to read one line of the bill and it was unintelligible

me - "at that rate, it's going to take all day to read this bill, let's stop"

me - "can you ask your supervisor or a coworker to see if they know?

agent - "please hold"

5 more minutes

agent - "what is the question you are asking?"

me - "can two people connect at the same time?

agent - "I have answered your question, you are not getting me"

me - "no actually you haven't, I just was"

(cut off by agent)

agent - "you are not getting me, I will transfer you"

click

and I have been on hold for 30 minutes....and dead line. time to call them back

THANKS EARTHLINK

I don't want to be rude, but earthlink really needs to have it's VPs, board members, and CEO call the help line once a month to be reminded how awful their outsourcing of customer support is.

Wouldn't it be better for the american economy if
1. we kept the jobs in america, trained support and payed them fairly - that is more american jobs, and
2. these well trained support people were able to quickly solve customer problems, thus increasing worker productivity, rather than wasting time.

Don't buy from protechstore.com

2007-03-22T11:59:00.000-07:00

Don't shop at ProTechStore, protechstore.com is a SCAM.

I purchashed a laptop battery from ProTechStore in January 2007. It took nearly 1 month for it to show up. When it did show, the battery was dead, wouldn't charge, and is basically a pile of toxic waste.

So I contacted them through their website, with no response. After another few emails, I called them. One of the numbers on their website was disconnected. The other number died after a few rings; it rang a few times, but no one picked up and it didn't go to voice mail. I proceeded to call them twice a day all week, with the same results. I sent a few more emails, a fax or two, contacted them through their web site. I am pretty sure they couldn't have missed all of that accidentally. NO RESPONSE.

A few weeks later, I called again. This time the phone went to voice mail... but the mail box was full.

Over two months since I placed my ordered, and a month of trying to get in contact with this piece of cr@p company and I am left with a $60 toxic brick.

ProTechStore is a scam, DO NOT buy from them, do not visit their website, do not give them your money. If you do, expect to ripped off.

-JDub

Focus Factor is a joke - Don't waste your money on "Focus Factor"

2006-11-17T12:25:00.000-08:00

I just saw the ad for Focus Factor last night on late night TV. I can't believe they are still selling this product. Focus Factor is just a mutli-vitamin, but they sell it for a lot of money. The claim is that Focus Factor is the optimal blend of vitamins, herbal supplements, and trace elements. It's no better than a multi-vitamin you can get at your local drug store or grocery store.

They also claim that their proprietary blend will improve your brain function, memory, and ability to focus. I had a chance to try Focus Factor for 3-4 months, and I can't say there was any noticeable difference, except that my wallet was a bit lighter.

Don't waste your money on this product. Don't patronize this company.

The UC Berkeley Wellness Letter breaks down the ingredients and gives the negative verdict.

Consumer Affairs refers to various problems with the company Vital Basics and their lawsuit.

-Joe

How long does it take to burn a 16X DVD?

2006-11-03T15:37:00.000-08:00

A full 4.7GB DVD burn takes 5-8 minutes. A fast drive will be in the mid-5 minute range, and a slower drive in the 7-8min range.
Obviously there are many factors including the speed of the computer, maker of the DVD burner, the DVD-R or DVD+R media being used, single vs. dual-layer and the software that is doing the burning.

I was looking for some approximate times that a person could expect on a reasonable set hardware using a standard single-layer DVD disc (stuff you can buy in a grocery store these days). Should a full 4.7GB disc in a 16X burner take an hour a minute?

Size: A single layer DVD is 4.7GB, or 4.38Gigs of data from you hard drive.

Speed: The DVD original 1X transfer rate is 1.385MB per second

A 1X DVD can be burned in about 60 minutes. Theoretically a 16X DVD burner would tear through a DVD in 3:32 minutes. In real-world testing, times are in the 5:00-8:00 range. Check out this site that test various 16X DVD burners.

1X DVD = 4.7GB/56:33min = 83.1MB/min = 1.385MB/sec
2X DVD = 4.7GB/28:18min = 166.2MB/min = 2.77MB/sec
6X DVD = 4.7GB/9:26min = 498.6MB/min = 8.31MB/sec
8X DVD = 4.7GB/7:04min = 664.8MB/min = 11.08MB/sec
10X DVD = 4.7GB/5:40min = 831MB/min = 13.85MB/sec
12X DVD = 4.7GB/4:43min = 997.2MB/min = 16.62MB/sec
16X DVD = 4.7GB/3:32min = 1329.6MB/min = 22.16MB/sec

Other references:
wikipedia - DVD Technical_information
wikipedia - Gibibyte

Powweb back online

2006-11-02T12:54:00.000-08:00

The downtime lasted about 90 minutes, and they say it was due to power surges on redundant routers. Maybe they should have those routers in different locations, or at least on different surge protectors ;-) It's amazing that their entire operation could go dark for 90 minutes. They have 40,000+ customer. I'd expect someone to be able to reset a router much faster than in 90 minutes.

Here is what they had to say....

About Yesterday's Service Interruption
We experienced a service interruption on Wednesday, November 1, 2006, from approximately 7:50pm EST to 9:10pm EST. It affected customer Web sites, the PowWeb Web site and access to e-mail and the PowWeb Control Panel.

The outage was caused by a power surge. While we have many layers of redundancy built into our systems, the power surge caused two separate power supplies to fail at the same time. We are, of course, working with our power suppliers to fully investigate what happened and how best to avoid a similar situation in the future.

We are sorry for this interruption, and we appreciate your patience while we worked to restore service. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us.
- 11/02/06 at 12:56 EDT

Powweb.com is down (Nov 1, 2006)

2006-11-01T18:28:00.000-08:00

As of 4:30pm PST, Powweb.com hosting went down.

They are completely dark. No email, no webpages, not even their main page is running.

They are going on 90 minutes of downtime, as of this post.

This has been confirmed in both CA and the midwest, as well as using the email tool at http://www.dnsstuff.com/

Powweb.com is down (Nov 1, 2006)

2006-11-01T18:12:00.000-08:00

As of 4:30pm PST, Powweb.com hosting went down.

They are completely dark. No email, no webpages, not even their main page is running.

They are going on 90 minutes of downtime, as of this post.

Apple wireless mighty mouse

2006-07-25T11:11:00.000-07:00

It's finally wireless. The mighty mouse from Apple has cut the wire. Not a snoozer, but no reason to jump for joy. Wireless should have been an option from the beginning on this mouse.

It's still the same mighty mouse that really only has four buttons, since the left and right side clicks are the same thing. Now, why didn't they make a change so that those two button could have unique functionality? It was a relief to finally see Apple (or was it Jobs) cave on the one-button mouse issue. Jumping to four buttons is a big leap for them, so it's welcome that a multi-button mouse is standard for Apple. I have always recommended that users scrap the mouse that came with their Mac (especially that hockey-puck iMac mouse) and get a multi-button, scroll wheel mouse. With mighty mouse, they have the multi-button and scroll functions - now you can save that trip to the computerwarehousestore.

Mighty mouse now has most of what a mouse needs, multiple buttons, scroll-wheel action, laser tracking, and it's wireless. The are a lot of better mice on the market, but at least Apple is no longer stuck in the one-button world. $69 is a reasonable price for a bluetooth wireless mouse.

Now they just need to add the same one button look, two-button functionality to the trackpad on their laptops.

Running/Biking Pace Calculator

2006-07-07T14:01:00.000-07:00

I found a very useful time/pace calculator for runners and bikers. Enter your time and distance and it will show your pace. Or enter your desired pace for a certain distance, and it will spit out how long it will take. And finally enter your desired time for a distance and check your pace.

It calculates pace in kilometers and miles, and has presets for 5k, 10k, 1/2 marathon and full marathon. It will also show distances of meters and yards for you short track sprinters.

So if I want to run a 1/2 marathon at a 6min pace, then my total time will be 1:18:35. Of course I wil need to jump on the back of a Kenyan to get done that quickly.

Click here to try it.

GGAFL footy

2006-07-06T15:08:00.000-07:00

If you have never tried or even heard about Australian Rules Football, I wouldn't be surprised. Australian Rules Football, aka Aussie Rules, or Footy is not easy to find in the US. Almost no US schools play the game at any level, there is no professional league in the US, and ESPN has chosen Golf and Poker over a true athletic sport, so you can't even see games or highlights on ESPN.

(ESPN once was Entirely SPorts Network. These days they should just be "SPN"..... Sports and Poker Network.)

There is a burgeoning league, US Footy usfooty.com, with teams all over the US. Each year there is a national tournament with 8 teams in each of three divisions. There is also a women's division and some youth exhibition games. The teams will converge on Las Vegas this year in October. If for no other, reason check out the footy to experience partying with the Aussies in Vegas - that alone will be worth the trip.

If you are in the SF Bay area, the Golden Gate Roos have a metro league. Last year our club put together a division 2 national championship winning team. During the season, April to August, the four local teams compete against each other about every other weekend. The season culminates with a local Grand Final at the end of August, as the top two teams battle for the championship. The four teams are the San Jose Hornets, San Francisco Knights, Marin Mavericks, Oakland Pirates.

We have training in SF, SJ, Belmont, and Oakland. Usually it's once a week per location, with each training being different, although the Oakland training always ends with beers, while the SF training is more running and an occasional beer afterwards.

The games are played in Concord/Walnut Creek, Dublin, and Palo Alto.

If you are interested in playing check out our website at ggafl.com, then contact Leigh Barnes.

What is a blog?

2005-03-20T19:35:00.000-08:00

What's a "blog", a.k.a. "weblog"? Here is a little article on Ask Yahoo about it...

"......Weblogs and online journals are often confused, and they can frequently overlap in content and style. But purists point out that a person writing in an online journal or diary is logging their life, not the Web......"

Since I have linked to that page and noted it, this is not just an online diary, but an official blog ; )