word!

I’ve been spending a few years on the internet now and in that time have been using online auction houses with little trouble. It’s easy to see why people love eBay, because you can buy anything on it. I’ve boughten many things on it and have even bought my first computer and two monitors from it’s electronic competitor Ubid. So I was prepared to buy my brother his first computer after such good, solid experiences. But what happened next made me doubt the auction houses themselves.

In the end of October 2001, I found a decent price on a computer that was decent for the money. So I bid and eventually won. Little did I know that at this time Ubid was implementing a new processing system. So after one week of no action with regards to my winning bid, I tried contacting them. I emailed, called and wrote letters in the next month and a half, but to little avail. The emails would only be auto responsed or vaguely worded that they were working on processing my order immediately. Phone calls were a little better, I could at least get to a person, but the messages they gave me were as vague as the emails, yes they were experiencing problems and things would be resolved shortly. But after a time, their phones were DISCONNECTED! (Due to the customer’s overwhelming outrage with their bumbling of this system) Letters were sent but never responded to.

After the middle of December, it looked like they wouldn’t even start to dig themselves out of this mess by Christmas, dispite the fact that Ubid still continued to operate at full scale and with full auction listings. I called after the holidays, in early January 02, to try to finally get this resolved. By that time I had bought a great computer pre-built to our specs from iBUYPOWER .

I finally got a hold of someone that could resubmit my winning bid, yes, a whole 2 months after the bid had won the auction! But this was after I was told I should have just canceled my order. Within the next week, I finally recieved the beige box that I had worked so hard for.

But Ubid still wanted payment. Having used a credit card for payment through Ubid, I at least had some options. I first cancelled the orders on my end, eleviating actually paying for something I didn’t recieve, especially in regards to their user policy. I also wrote to the Better Business Bureau about this erroroneous situation,due to the fact that the BBB logo was prominently displayed numerous times on Ubid’s website. Through all this, Ubid only offered a $50 forgiveness on the computer and free shipping, but only if I accepted that they hadn’t erred.

Excuse me? After 2 months of waiting and constant correspondence on my part, that’s all they could do? Forget it. I continued to balk at their attempts to retrieve payment for something they erred on and wouldn’t stand behind. So without a paid credit card billing, they’re the ones out a computer, not me.

But to add insult to injury, the disputed computer was pretty much a lemon. The modem, DVD drive, fan, power button and hard drive have all failed and have been replaced since it was acquired. Sure glad I didn’t pay a cent for it, because it wasn’t worth it. At least my sister has something to bang out an email on now. And I hope it makes it the rest of the school year without me having to fix something else! GOOD RIDDANCE!

I’ve always waited in eager anticipation for that magical time of day when the mailman would show up and deliver goodies just like Santa. I’ve even tolerated the goofy 2 cent or so rate increases from year to year. But ever since I’ve learned that some of those increase are going to promote the US Postal Service to Europeans and other bicycling enthusiasts in general. Since when did this quasi-government department, (the only part of the federal government that breaks even every year) start getting greedy and in need of marketing? I’m sure most could care less, but since I don’t use a personal courier yet, why market a basic universal service everyone in the US uses?

Is that why we are forced to pay the postal rate increases, so that they can promote domestic mail delivery? Sure you pay for the advertising that NIKE and Cheerios puts out, but you can always buy the generic non-branded substitute at decent prices. Does the Post Office offer that? NO.

On a somewhat related matter, everytime I decide that a parcel I wish to mail might be overweight and needs to be sent without being returned, I’ve handed it to the worker behind the counter at the Post Office to correctly charge me. I was appalled recently when I thought it was close to weight and was actually under, but the worker insisted it was over and weighted it until it was over. Cheap.

weiter lesen …

I have had the distinct displeasure of trying to fixing the problem your horrid software has inflicted on a friend’s computer. I don’t know even where to start. After kicking them off the internet and blocking up most internet related activities. I first tried uninstalling the beast, but had to resort to manual uninstallation due to corruption of software install. After this was accomplished, the internet was in worse shape. Email through outlook would lock up the computer and throw out a blue screen. After wasting the better part of a weekend, I finally gave up. But that doesn’t solve the problem, they need a working computer, at least the way it worked before they purchased your shoddy product. To add insult to injury, my cousin has also recently purchased and installed your product and is having similiar problems with his computer as well. And this is after having the BESTBUY store look into it to the tune of 200 dollars.

Support for your products costs an additional amount more than the product itself? How do you consider this a service? It’s a joke!

What is your company gonna do to make this right? Why do you even sell such a product? I would like a detailed response to this.

I’ve decided to switch back servers to Xcensus in order to get my money’s worth. Having paid $6/year and not having used it since October just irritates me, so I’m using what I paid for darn it!

Well, that was short-lived. Especially after 1and1 sent me a semi-threathening email that within a month they’d drop me like a bad habit if I dropped their hosting. Hm…. hope they like their customers more than that!

Phil T. Rich
Co-Chair and Top-level schmoozer, B4B

Phil was born a poor Mexican, but like those who feel as though they were born in the wrong body and long for a sex-change operation, Phil always new the maternity nurse had mixed up the socio-economic strata at birth. Not one to pout, however, he quickly set about to reclaim his lost heritage. A cleverly faked ID got him into Andover, identity theft landed him at Yale and then Princeton. After being tapped for the secret Skull and Bones secret society (psst, it’s a secret), and apprenticing to both Karl Rove and Kenneth Lay, he quickly rose up through the ranks of hard-right Republican organs of power and America’s most dynamic corporations. His resume — Special Attache for Accounting at Enron, Executive Secretary of the Project for a New American Century, trusted Notetaker of Vice-President Cheney’s Energy Committee, and, of course, Co-Chair of Billionaires for Bush — reads like a cocktail of forward thinking governance. Phil’s main goal in life is now Full Spectrum Dominance over American politics. His varied interests include Money, Wealth, Lucre, Cash, and Money. He is also a board member of Halliburton.

I’ve finally stumbled upon a way to work my way out of middle class squalor. By generating a few billion dollars by this fall, I’m assured to never be poor again.

God bless America!….. and it’s Billionaires