Treating customers like garbage

I got my bill from MCI (The Neighborhood plan) the other day for our home phone service and saw that it jumped! After some research (viewing my invoice online was a nightmare because the server kept dropping my connection even when I tried from Windows), they raised my rate $10 per month. I've been a customer for a long time and wasn't notified of this change; they swore that they notified me in my online bill (I still can't find a record of that). The increase is ridiculous. This comes at a time when people are dropping landline phones to go only cellular. I still like the call quality of a landline and knowing that 911 is available. So MCI charges me $56.99 per month. If I'm a new subscriber, it would be $59.99 per month, but each year I'd get a free month of service. So basically as a long time customer, I get screwed out of $24 per year. I've looked into switching to AT&T, but their online help is kind of useless. They can't even tell me exactly how much voicemail costs. The base cost for unlimited local and long distance is $40 per month and somewhere between $6.95 and $9.00 per month for voicemail. So would it be cheaper than MCI? Possibly, but I can't quite tell. The signup page lists all the fees and stuff which seems to indicate that the total, including voicemail would be a little more than $10 per month cheaper than MCI. If I go through with the signup, there isn't an option to add voicemail, so I'd have to talk to a rep and deal with that.

After my call with MCI, I got a recorded call back to fill out a survey. I rated them poorly and at the end, it offered to connect me back to a rep to straighten things out. After being on hold for awhile, I gave up.

Maybe tomorrow I'll call AT&T and see if I can get more information. At this point, it looks like MCI will lose me as a customer because of a small rate increase. $10 is $10 and I'd rather have it in my pocket. (Also it is interesting to note that MCI's fees are about $6 per month higher than AT&T's probably because MCI has to pay AT&T to use the lines.)

Supporting ancient OS versions?

I had a user today purchase ReceiptWallet and then complain that it doesn't work on Mac OS X 10.2.8! First off, people should download the demo prior to purchasing as I have a big "agree to this" section when purchasing that tells people to try before they buy and says we don't offer refunds. (I did give this guy a refund as I don't want to fight chargebacks because people can't read.) Second off, 10.2.8 came out in October 2003! This guy said that he stays 2 OS versions back (apparently major versions). How can anyone expect developers to support such old OS versions? Apple stopped providing security updates to 10.2.8 a long time ago!

Based on usage statistics I started gathering a few months back (anonymously, of course, which requires me to make some assumptions), Leopard (10.5) users outnumber Tiger users (10.4) 4 to 1. Since ReceiptWallet uses CoreData, it requires 10.4 as CoreData was introduced in 10.4. Based on these statistics, going forward, I have to really decide if I will continue with 10.4 support. For now, I'll keep supporting it, but some features will require 10.5 (or even 10.5.3) and higher.

Nice parking job

Yesterday we went to our niece's birthday party at a local park. When we pulled up, I found a perfect parking spot, but our only concern was that it was too close to the corner. I parked, we took a look and saw that it was fine. When I returned to the car later to get something, I saw that someone had parked behind us so close that his bumper was touching ours. I was furious. I moved our car and saw that there was no damage, but before doing so, I took a few photos. So not only did this yutz hit our car, he also illegally parked (he was within 3 feet of a sidewalk ramp for disabled persons).

I would have loved to have seen a police officer around as I would have reported him so he would have gotten a ticket. There usually is never a police officer around when you need one; however, when we were driving there, we saw a man cross a busy intersection (on foot) against a red light. There is a cop right in front of us that saw this and then stopped the man after he crossed the intersection. Wow, I never see cops do stuff like that!

It is probably in bad taste for me to publish pictures of the person's license plate that hit our car, but I'll do it anyway. The driver was from Florida (likely military judging by the DOD sticker on his windshield). In addition, there was a carseat in the car; what does this teach your children if you do something illegally (parking) and something wrong (hitting our car without leaving a note).

1/4 ton chair

Today I saw an ad for a 1/4 ton folding chair. My take on this is that the chair holds up to 1/4 ton; the chair also looked a bit wider. Frankly, a chair that holds 500 pounds (presumably 1 person) is just gross. I understand that there is a market for it, but do I have to see it?