Acura car service clarification

I heard back from the W Hotel today regarding my post about it's complimentary Acura car service. Apparently someone forgot to tell the concierge how it works. It is available on a first come, first served basis, so when I asked for it the following day, the concierge was happy to arrange a limo for us for the $78 fee. I specifically said Acura and pointed at the sign on the desk. A simple, "it is available on a first come, first served basis; just goto the front door to see if it is there" would have stopped this nonsense and made complete sense to me.

If the W wants to stop nasty email messages from ticked off guests, it would make sense to put a sign at the entrance as normally people going to just hail a cab instead of go to the concierge to arrange transportation that is needed right at that moment.

While I guess the W is off my "bad" list, that concierge ranked a zero in my book.

I do contend, however, that the Web site is misleading as there is no asterisk next to this feature indicating that there are conditions for its use.

New blog focus

As some of you may have noticed, I've started writing more reviews of products. While I'm not a huge fan of reviews that some people review (I don't believe their unbiased or fair), I'll let my readers be the judge of the value of my reviews. For the most part, people don't send me products nor ask me to review software. These reviews are for products that I purchase; I do my own research and, of course, read other reviews before purchasing products.

If you have any questions about what I review, please ask and I'll do my best to answer them. I'm quite critical of products as I don't like wasting my hard earned money. If you like my reviews, please use the Amazon link on the right to make purchases.

If you think I own a product that you'd like reviewed, please let me know. I don't review everything I own as I'd bore myself.

If you have a product you want me to review and aren't afraid of my honest feedback, contact me and I'd be more than happy to review it.

Review: PCT 4 port Coax Amplifier

I was having problems with my EyeTV recording digital channels and finally decided to give an amplifier a try. The EyeTV showed I had a signal strength of 20% which seemed low according to all the forums I read. After a bit of research I ended up with the PCT 4 Port amplifier.

It was fairly inexpensive from Amazon, but based on the reviews, I had high hopes for the little box. My only hesitation in getting any amplifier is that a cable tech had told me years ago that an amplifier put inline before my cable modem could cause problems. I received the amplifier about a week and a half ago and quickly plugged it in. EyeTV reported I had a signal strength of between 30 and 32%! That is about a 50% increase in signal strength; I had hoped for more, but that was a decent increase. So far, I have not had one recording that has been blocky and the EyeTV has been working quite well.

Pros

• Inexpensive (a quality passive splitter costs about the same amount)
• Easy to install
• Excellent performance
• Doesn't seem to have affected my cable modem performance

Cons

• I had to supply my own coax cable to connect the power supply to the amplifier; this would have been a problem, but I bought a few cheap coax cables recently

Overall

If you have to split a coax signal, I'd definitely recommend one of these. If you don't have to split a coax signal and are having problems, this box is definitely worth a shot. However, as someone pointed out in a comment in another post, terminate all the ports that aren't in use. In my case, all 4 ports are in use, so I didn't have to terminate any ports.

Misrepresentation or False advertising?

For our trip to New York, we stayed at the W Hotel in Union Square. We got a "special" rate for the room (I almost need to take out a loan to pay for it!) and the room was not bad. The W is supposed to be a boutique hotel that offers "Whatever/Whenever" service where the concierge can arrange almost anything. Of course, everything comes at a price.

One of the features that the W advertises is complimentary rides in an Acura MDX. I thought that was pretty cool as we had to get to the wedding one day. Not only would it save us a cab ride, I'd be able to ride in an Acura MDX which I hope to get someday (once the gas mileage gets up and I save up my pennies). I asked at the concierge desk to arrange the car and the concierge said, sure, but there will be a $78 one way drop fee and she suggested taking a $7 cab ride instead. Wow, so for a ride that was less than 2 miles, the W wanted to charge us $78 for a complimentary service.

I looked up complimentary on dictionary.com and here's what it said (in this case, the W site uses it as an adjective):

given free as a gift or courtesy: a complimentary ticket.

There is no disclaimer on the site saying that there were restrictions and other fees associated with it. Is this just a misunderstanding or is it frankly false advertising? Considering each hotel has a limited number of cars (maybe even 1), they either don't expect people to use the service or they add these charges so that no one uses it and it looks good on their site.

I went ahead and submitted a false advertising complaint on the FTC's Web site. While I don't really expect anything to come of this, it makes me feel better knowing that I at least made an effort to get this changed. I also sent email to the W Hotel; we'll see what happens.