word!

Got some mailing from the local investment house that is reveired by many citizens in Gaylord. Seems that American Express or namely it’s financial advisors have gone and changed their name after their own personal scandel involving the greed that consumed nearly all the investment industry during/after the last stock market bubble.

So welcome to Ameriprise, the newly spun off investment advisory company. And what is really quaint is the omission of why they are a new company with 100+ years of experience. Where’d they get that experience? By ripping of investors? No that won’t make the promotional brochure.

These cronies tried selling their own piss poor investments over better peforming investments all the while the ship was thinking and now they can slap a new coat of paint on the same b.s. and call it progress. Good grief.

The part I like is that my mother personally holds the local yahoos responsible for our investments with the former American Express Financial Advisors. Sure these guys were your best friends when the market only looked up and everyone was making money. They didn’t care and won’t care now for your personal sob story about how they didn’t do enough. They’ll say it’s your job to review your portfolio or whatnot and not their responsibility.

Guess the bottom line is, don’t ever trust anyone to do anything for you, even if it seems it’s their job or should be. They only are in it for themselves and if they tell you otherwise one of you should be the fool.

That’s the line I was given after successfully canceling my account with the ‘newest’ DVD rent-by-mail, powerhouse Blockbuster, and asked why it was so difficult to get onto the website.

It seems the 800 poung gorilla that has sat quietly in the corner while all the others were raking in cash has finally come to the realization it should jump in on this fad, lest the competition undermine their cash cow operations and make them irrevelant. I’m somewhat glad for it, as it has brought down prices at Walmart and Netflix. Capitalism works good that way.

Now that Blockbuster has made it’s play though, I’m starting to wonder if it was worthwhile to put the worst foot forward into such a sizzling competitve and fickle market. I decided to join after seeing their ads plastered all over USATODAY offering a free month of renting. Sounds easy enough. I’ve done it with both rivals and it worked flawlessly.

But Blockbuster can’t even figure out how to let you sign into their website for the rental program. After seeming logging in and giving them your credit card info, you think you’re all set to go. But nope, you can’t. Seems they don’t think you logged in and want you to do it all over again. So I read through FAQs and maybe there is a cookie problem. So I follow the advice and clear cookies in both Mozilla and IE. nothing. Try different computer, same thing, nothing. After putzing a good hour on this, I call up Customer Service and cancel accounts. And for all this they can say they’re a new company. What, did they just steal Blockbuster’s trademarks and create all the buzz in the industry after doing so? I think not.

I am less than impressed with their stupidity, both online and in-person customer service. Get with it.

**UPDATE — while researching links to Walmart’s service, it appears that Walmart has conceded defeat of their service and is pushing it’s users to Netflix. Interesting.

What are horses good for?

You can’t really eat them, unless you’re into that culturally. They don’t have wool or fleece that you could shear off. All they do is eat enoromous quantities of food, get out often and let you ride them if they let you.

Some people make oodles of money racing them or breeding them together to make more of these dasterdly animals. Everyone that lives near the cities or comes from the cities thinks that horses are what define a farm, when all they do is make a mockery out of farming itself, raising prices for everything horse related that could be put to better use on a beef or dairy farm.

And there’s a lot to be said about women that like horses, nothing too positive.

All I can figure horses are good for is glue. If you can’t tell, I don’t like horses much.

Just learned that Minnesota Dept of Revenue has released tax forms in Spanish. Whew! I has holding out on filing, but now that they have it in my mother tongue, I can finallly do so easily and effectively. Good Riddance.

Since when does everything have to be in everyone’s native tongue? This is the United States of America and last time I checked everyone I know and all I read was in American English. My ancestors spoke a different language other than English when they first came to America too, but they had to learn English in order to communicate effectively with others in their communites, who more often than not spoke the same mother tongue as them, but having come to the U.S. used English in order to assimilate into the population. They didn’t have special classes in school because they spoke a language other than English. They learned English and that’s the way things were. If they didn’t understand something, they didn’t get the government to pay for a personal translator for them, they did without or had a friend/family member help them out.

Now you can’t go anywhere without having the fear of not having dual or numerous languages posted for the same information. Why? So everyone can be content with way things are without having to exert themselves to learn something new? Or to employ a whole system of translators to boost the economy? Things would be so much simplier if English was a standard and everyone in the United States had to learn it or do without. What kind of country is this going to become if everyone gets to speak their own language? It’s not hard to imagine a modern day ‘Tower of Babel’. What good would that do, no one could communicate with each other, but at least they didn’t have to change for the betterment of the society. Sad, sad times.

For joy! I have had the distinct pleasure of getting the cold shoulder from Shitibank once again. All this trouble to get a ‘free’ ipod. Seems they currently don’t know how service the customer. After setting up my initial account with them some months ago they still have to get things in order. Seems they want the U.S. government to withhold tax on my account, although this is the first I’ve ever had to deal with such silliness. So I called a whole month ago to get it straightened out. Fine.

Got mail today that indicates they now think I’m a Foreign Citizen, which may explain why they sent me withholding forms for foreign residents. Last time I checked, Mn was still with the USA. So call THEM up again, for the same exact reason I had a month ago. They’ve been real helpful in the past with phone calls. Calling every few days to see if I like their service,of course I say no and rant about it to Mr. India and they write it down and say good day. Nothing more.

Call into Service Center, conviently located in India and staffed by persons that have such a small grasp of the English language and are afraid they might wake someone up with the volume of their voice. I ask for correct form. Asked if I can be put on hold… Sure. Wait good 15 minutes. Back, can I take down your information? Sure. Another 10 minutes pass, with constant waits and holds while something gets supposedly done. When I get indication of successful form being expediated, I ask what the problem was. Just filling out the information to send me the form. What? 25 minutes to fill out a form request when I could have filled out the form, drove to town to mail it and come back and this guy would still be processing it?

I was irrate at this point and his poorly phrased excuses was it. I asked to talk to supervisor. Could I be put on hold? I asked who freaking long this ‘hold’ would be. 1 minute. Well 2 minutes later I get to talk to an American. All he can do is apologize without making it really seem he is sorry and they’re doing everything they can to help me. I always can call them. That ain’t help!!! I demand payment. He can’t pay me for nothing they haven’t done, even including wasting my time. Asswipes. This yahoo wouldn’t budge after I was ranting about all the stuff Shitibank has screwed me over on. I had it. I hung up on him after his convient silences.

So I sit and wait for them to send me the correct forms in another month’s time. Interesting to see what I may/ may not get then. Pathetic. And to think all I’d need to do was print appropriate form from the IRS website.

And they call this Customer Service? Why does everyone have to be their own best customer representative? These corporations rake in all the cash they want, imbezzle and defraud investors and when someone requests support on their products they balk. They send the jobs overseas to people that can’t speak English and when they get a problem not listed on their scripts they panic and put you on hold. Heck it’s cheap and they never have to respond to complaints, sounds like a win-win.

When will these idiots learn to properly service the customer? When? I think I’m going to take my money and run when I get the first chance. Unfortunately, it’s tied up, so that may be awhile. Maybe I’ll just take the iPod and run.