Category: Rant

Careless whispers and companies that could care less

This post is backdated because it was on my old Drupal site. I was a former Gas South customer and I was treated very badly. Enjoy my story.This song (Careless Whispers) was recorded on my Creative Zen Sleek Photo from a radio station. Matthew introduced me to George Michael and his songs. Apparently, this song was first released as a solo George Michael single, while he was part of the pop group Wham!. So, I fell in love with this one in particular. Enjoy the song. While you’re listening, I’ll take the time to burden you with some trouble I’ve been having or had (hopefully). When picking a company to provide a service say gas, please choose wisely. I didn’t and I tolerated this particular gas company’s service until when I decided to quit due to a change in my living situation. The first thing they did was hit me with a cancellation fee that I hadn’t been advised of. Naturally, I challenged this fee and it took them over 1 month to investigate and remove this $50 cancellation fee. Well, I didn’t pay the initial final charge with the $50 bill tacked on. In a little over a month after the matter was resolved, I got a letter from a debt collection agency about the account which was overdue. To say I was blindsided was an understatement. They sent my account over to collections without so much as a “Hey you — pay or collections-here-we-come letter”. I paid the bill the day after I received the letter from the external collections agency and then, called this company (it’s Gas South, for the record). I have all my cell phone records and distinctly recall asking the CSR (customer service representative) for a final bill to be sent to me. This never happened. During my call to Gas South this time around, I got the call escalated and it reached a lady who pulled all the tricks they teach them at customer service school. First, she claimed that during my last call to confirm if the case had been resolved, that I hadn’t requested for a bill to be sent. I should have requested for a call transcript, but it slipped my mind. Then, the next thing was my inquiry into their reporting procedures. Apparently, it’s 45 days from issuing the final bill and 30 days from when it’s due that it’s first sent to Gas-South’s internal collection crew. They’re supposed to get in touch with the customer and then, forward it to an external collections agency if the customer doesn’t pony up the money. I never heard anything from Gas South. The last time I called them was 06/08/2007 and I was so occupied with things like my parents coming down, my wedding reception, etc. I’ll be the first to admit that I should have been on top of things. Nevertheless, it doesn’t give a company license to fast-track things as they please without regard to due process. I’ve since lodged a complaint with the Better Business Bureau and I am in the midst of drafting up a letter to their headquarters. That way, I’ll have my complaints on the books and their system.

Update: I’ve found a Youtube video of his performance of the song so enjoy it!

and here’s just the mp3 of the song:

My computer’s playing possum

Well, well, well. The day began innocently enough. I fired up my computer to rip a certain DVD. My PC refused to get online so I shut it down via the power button. I restarted the pc and it got stuck at the “HP Invent” blue screen and the “Intel Inside” logo. I had to call HP Support and thankfully, my PC’s still in warranty so they exhaust all options and declare that I’ll have to have it sent to them. The best part of that was hearing that it would be of no cost to me. After that, we left for Julie’s place and ate till our stomachs were bursting. Then, just for kicks, I fired up my computer expecting it never to leave the Blue Screen (not to be confused with the Blue Screen of Death or BSOD). The darned thing booted up properly and allowed me to login! Well, I instantly began retracing my steps and undoing certain “tweaks” that had been made. I will cancel the work order on my PC but will forever remain wary that it’s a ticking time bomb. In other news, I see that Google Analytics is finally recognizing its own damned code! I kept wondering if I’d done something wrong, but the code was exactly as it was supposed to be. I finally let things be and voila! Still, I’m not totally ditching StatCounter because they have upped the logs to 500 from 100. That’s fabulous. 🙂

Viva la revolucion!

Sorry to have such a dramatic title. Well, I have switched webhosts again. The circumstances were less than optimal, but I’ll repost a brief recap. of all that transpired. Essentially, my plan with Awardspace expired on the 13th of June, 2007. I emailed support asking to be reverted to the free plan pending my decision to upgrade or not to upgrade. I was essentially told to either poney up the money or say buh-bye to my data. Their response was: Sorry but we cannot convert your account from paid to free, so if you do not renew it we will have to close it when it expires (which is today). Please create free account and move your files there if you want to continue using our hosting services.If you have any other questions do not hesitate to contact us again. Sorry for the inconvenience. I was teed off and disappointed. Needless to say, I emailed support back telling them, requesting a few days to get my data offline.

And this time, someone else responded with the “complex technicalities” involved in moving from free to paid: Our clustered system is designed in that way so we move the entire account from the FREE server to a different one – PAID physically. The account is not just upgraded but moved to a different server physically. In case of non payment (renewal) of your account there is no way at this stage, to move back the account. You can still continue using our service if you sign up for a FREE account again and move your site there. We hope you understand our policy as we have never wrote or stated that in case of upgrade, next year if you decide to quit the service we move back the account on a FREE server. As per your request you have 5 business days to download your web site. Thank you for reading. No shit, Sherlock. I am positive that if I had pushed my case, Awardspace would have capitulated because their technicians admit not having anything of that sort in their terms of service agreement.

To make a long sojourn short, I found another webhost that has a free year of hosting whereafter I may decide to stick with them. Their price tag is pretty steep, but if they don’t give me any trouble, they might earn my money. I am currently on the J2-VDS hosting plan with Jumpline for a year of free service. So wish me luck in navigating this new system. In the meantime, I am preparing for my parents to come all the way from Nigeria to see me and my husband, pretty soon. My post-wedding reception is coming up on the 23rd of June and I’ll get to eat/drink/have fun. Mark your calendars!! Oh, lest I forget, check out my gallery which is slowly being repopulated with the mass of pictures I had before.