I’ve spent part of this morning buying a replacement cellphone from AT&T Wireless. I get a special deal from them because I work for IBM, so I had to call their toll-free number to buy the phone. And, as they were doing the paperwork, they discovered that something was slightly weird about my account and that the “Foundation Account Number” would have to be changed.

The person I was talking to couldn’t make that change (of course). So she put me on hold and called the department there which could fix it. Five minutes later, she came back and said that there was a long wait — and then she offered to take care of it and call me back. I was amazed; I expected to be told to call that department myself and then come back and place the order.

So I accepted her offer and went on about my business. Later, I got a voicemail telling me that she was still trying; and just before lunch, she called back again, apologizing that she’d spent a long time on hold and couldn’t wait any longer (because the time she spends on hold is charged against her productivity).

But then she said she could sell me the new phone anyway, since the cost was the same whether the account number got changed or not. So I bought the phone.

I’m irritated at AT&T Wireless that their internal procedures are so bad that they affect paying customers — but I am quite pleased that this agent actually took ownership of the problem and figured out how to make me happy, and I’ll be sending a letter to AT&T Wireless to praise her. I just wish that having an agent actually fix the problem wasn’t so rare.

Not all uses of Flash are evil

I didn’t think I’d ever find a Flash site I could recommend, but I like this one.

Happy Thanksgiving!

If I’m smart, I won’t turn on the computer much, if at all, over the weekend. We’re having another family over for dinner tomorrow, so we’ll be busy cooking and eating; then we have our traditional Second Thanksgiving with friends from the Temple on Friday. And then I’m sure I’ll find something to do on Saturday and Sunday.

Speaking of free time, congratulations Andrea!

See ya!

I don’t know about you, but Diane and I each get several offers per week for credit cards from Capital One. I’ve got enough credit cards already, and I’ve got better things to do than shred mail, so I decided to find out how to get off their mailing list.

There is, of course, no phone number listed anywhere on the offer I got today (and no legal disclosure of the terms and conditions, either). They want you to apply via their website (which I will not link to!); that site doesn’t have much information, either, but there is a privacy link, and by looking carefully through the privacy page, I found the phone number to call to opt-out. It is 1-888-817-2970, then 1 (for English) and then “*” because I don’t have an account. A few seconds later, I was talking to a human being (blowing their profit margin away, what a shame!), and if I’m lucky, I’ll be off their damn list in two more days.

Spam, Scam, Spam, Scam

I just got a piece of e-mail claiming to be a e-card from “Cardwish”. When I tried to fetch it, their server said that there was a problem and it wasn’t available — then I noticed that the page they were displaying had an interestingly-misformed URL. Apparently, not only are they a scam operation, but they’re trying to take advantage of vulnerabilities in various levels of IE to do Bad Things to your computer.

Lessons learned:

1) Not all e-cards are legitimate. I still trust cards from Blue Mountain, American Greetings, and Yahoo.

2) An e-card note that just says that you have a card without at least giving a subject or sender is probably a scam.

3) Keep your browser patches up to date!