ING Lying To You & Me

I recently signed up for and moved some spare cash to an ING Direct's Orange Savings Account. At the time the rate was about 2.75% APY which ING lowered this month to 2.50% APY.

Not having been aware of the change in rate, while viewing my account online, I clicked on a link to "Get more info on your rate". What did I learn? (click images to enlarge)

I learned that ING Direct still claims to be paying me 3.00% APY on my account not 2.50%.

For a business built online, ING Direct is a Company Acting Badly for having it's online rate information months out of date.

Citi Targeting Kids

As a loyal Citibank customer for almost 20 years now, I get disappointed when I see them acting badly and doing dumb things. Like targeting my son for a credit card. My seven year old son.

Below is the application that arrived yesterday. It's not the first time they've sent him one of these (click to enlarge).

It's not just any card. It's a Citi Gold card. For a seven year old? They'll give him 25,000 points with $750 in spending. That's about five years worth of allowance money. And if you read the fine print on the back... they are offering him a 13.99% interest rate. Not great. Not killer. If a seven year old should miss one payment... it shoots to 28.99%. He'll owe Citi for life.

How did Citi decide to target a seven year old? It's obvious that they bought or bartered for a list of American Airlines Advantage members (frequent fliers). They then determined who on the list didn't already have this credit card with Citi. I got my son his own Advantage number a few years when he flew American.

Innocent mistake? Or stupidity? American airlines knows my son's age as I've purchased tickets for him and flagged him as a minor. Either American can't scrub their list and send Citi only those over 18, Citi didn't think to ask American for a list of those over 18 or Citi actually wants to load debt on kids.

Once Vik figures out how to pay the US taxpayer back for its bailout, maybe he can ask his staff to stop targeting kids for credit cards. Citi, a company that acts badly once again.

You Comment I Follow

Today I read a number of blogs about a movement to remove standard attributes that Google puts in Blogger to prevent indexing for those who comment on your site.

After reading a number of posts and stories, with a most excellent one at Blogger Buster, I have removed all occurrences of rel="nofollow" from my template. Per Blogger Buster, "this means that your backlinks, and links in your comments will now be indexed by the three major search engines when they spider this blog". Tips 4 Blogspot commented that "only the author nofollow hack works". You can read more here.

Blogger Buster notes that Randa Clay created some badges for use on your blog to show that you support this policy. As I needed a smaller badge of 88*32, I have modified Randa's badge and share it here so others can feel free to use it.

Randa's standard logo

is here.

The html code for my modified badge

(on the lower right of my blog) is:

<div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); width: 88px; height: 32px;">

<div style="margin: 2px 2px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0); float: right; width: 84px; height: 12px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; font-size: 9px; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; padding-top: 1px; text-align: center;">
U COMMENT
</div>

<div style="margin: 2px; background-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); float: right; width: 84px; height: 12px; color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; font-size: 9px; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; padding-top: 1px; text-align: center;">
I FOLLOW
</div>

</div>

AT&T Missed Pricing Me

What other company could promise you a price on the medium they control and not deliver? Could Cablevision have a price on a TV screen that they didn't honor? Could NY Magazine have a price on a magazine insert that wasn't true?

Why can an AT&T rep then over the phone, tell me what my price will be and it comes in different?

Attached is my latest AT&T bill (click to enlarge).

For those who guessed that they wouldn't honor the online price of $40, for those who thought Noreen would be wrong, for those who guessed $45... you win. Read the previous posts here and here.

Time to switch to Verizon?

For completely not delivering on a promise to a customer, AT&T remains a Company Acting Badly.

AT&T Lost My Baggage

Today I received the following from AT&T (click images to view).

After my previous trouble with AT&T (click here), and that it summarized my Monthly Rate as $-19.90, I found this letter totally confusing and called AT&T to explain it to me.

According to the first rep at AT&T in NYC, AT&T is going to bill me twice for the same service. They will be charging me $51 for the All Distance plan and the new $25 in my letter. Can your car go through two toll booths at one time? How can AT&T bill me for two plans on the same line? According to AT&T's rep, it's my fault for requesting the same service online. After I explained that I couldn't do anything online and had to do it through the phone center she put me over to a specialist.

Like an airline sending my baggage to another city, AT&T's rep sent me to a hold pattern and after a few minutes to another rep, Noreen in CT, who let me know that she's not a specialist. According to Noreen, specialists aren't available on Saturday afternoons. Noreen let me know that I'm on the All Distance plan, that I will only be charged once, and that my total bill (excluding Canada) will come to $45 per month.

$45 per month? Didn't I start trying to get the $40 per month they advertise on line?

After a few minutes on hold, Noreen returned to confirm that I will get the $40. Anyone want to bet what I will see on my next AT&T bill? $51? $76? $45? 40? or $31.10 ($51-19.90)?

For having letters that make no sense, for having NYC reps that don't know what they are talking about and for not being able to transfer someone to a 'specialist' on a weekend, AT&T remains a Company Acting Badly.

Checkfree - Not For Me

I like to pay bills online. Saves time, money, paper, the environment. I like to do it through either my bank or direct to the service provider (like Cablevision). I only use Checkfree to pay my water bill since Aquarion won't allow you to pay them directly.

Yesterday I received the following email from Checkfree (click image to enlarge):

Now firstly, Checkfree is a Company Acting Badly for putting together such a poor email:

• U.S. zip codes have 5 digits not 4
  
• The return email address "customercenter.net" doesn't look like Checkfree
• It says it was sent by Silverpop - who's Silverpop?
• The 877 phone number doesn't appear on their website
• It says I may be affected - shouldn't they have logs to know who was on their site?
  
• the overall message just feels like spam

Surprisingly, it's real. I logged into Checkfree and got this message (click image to enlarge):

The real problem with Checkfree is what they are not being transparent and specific about what happened. If I understand it, for roughly a 10 hour period, all traffic to Checkfree.com was re-routed to another fake site. If you entered info at this site, then that fake site has a copy of it. Additionally, that fake site may have installed some malicious software on your Windows PC. How did Checkfree let this re-routing happen? What have they done to make sure it doesn't happen again?

You can read more about Checkfree getting hacked at fatwallet, zdnet, and at signs101 where some folks thought it was spam.

This will guarantee they don't get more of my bill pay items, and if Aquarion ever offers a direct debit option from their site directly, I will sign up.

AT&T Learning From Airlines

Ever fly on a plane and realize that the guy sitting next to you paid a lot less for the exact same seat? Ever wonder if your neighbor is getting the exact same service from AT&T and paying a lot less?

In February 2007 I moved onto an AT&T plan that covered my unlimited local, regional and long distance calling, their "All Distance" plan. It costs $51.00 per month.

AT&T has recently been sending me lots of mail encouraging me to bundle my Internet, cell phone, TV service with them. I've got no interest in that at this time but I did want to see how competitive they were with my home phone plan. I was surprised that Verizon's almost equivalent plan (fewer features that I never use) is cheaper. I was shocked that AT&T has the same plan as mine available for $40 online. 20%+ cheaper? Including taxes, that difference will work out to roughly $150/year I'm paying more than the next guy.

That's right, my neighbor could have been getting the same plan as me for less. Did AT&T reduce my rates when their new pricing hit? No. In all this mail they send me, did they let me know I could save just by asking for the same plan and new price? No. Did AT&T try and milk more money out of me. Yes.

On top of that, when I called AT&T, I was told I would have to re-order the exact same service online in order to get the lower price. Well that's a waste of time. And what happened when I tried to order it online? You guessed it. I have to call AT&T again.

For not letting a customer know that they could save money on the exact same services, for not automatically giving their customers the new price points, and for sending a customer from their phone center to their website only to be told to go back to their phone center, AT&T is a Company Acting Badly.

Citi Speak

Perhaps when they're not laying off 50,000 employees, the folks at Citibank could figure out how to map the English language.

As a long time customer, I recently added a new payee to Citi's online banking program. Citi has Business and Individual payees split and upon choosing business, I hit their search.

I was attempting to add Conroy Irrigation (great bunch of folks).

Here's the list of matches from Citi... as they refer to it that 'closely match the name' I entered.

Now where does Energetix, Wichita, or Greystone sound like Conroy? Perhaps in Citi land. Again, a Company Acting Badly for investing in a tool for customers that only wastes our time.

Citi Bold Update

In the 200 days since I received Citi CEO Vikram Pandit's "Bold" email, we've seen Citi post record losses, declare that tens of thousands will be laid off, increase credit card fees, and have members of its board clamoring for the head of its Chairman.

And it's stock price? Down.... way down... As of today, Citi's stock has fallen some 73% from $34.77 when it named Pandit as CEO on Dec 10th, 2007 to $9.50 as of Nov 14th, 2008. You can see the stock chart here.

El Loco Toro

For the first time in months I received an automated telemarketer call at home. Ever since placing our phones on the National Do Not Call Registry last year, we have had few if any of these type of calls.

This one was unique...

"Don't be alarmed. This is the last chance to lower your interest. Press 1 to continue."

Don't be alarmed? That in itself is alarming.
Last chance to lower my interest?
On what?
My mortgage?
Car loan?
Credit cards?

Press 1 to continue. I hung up. And reported a complaint at the National Do Not Call Registry.

The name and number on caller ID? Toro Bravo LLC. 850-916-3033. A quick Google search show that Toro Bravo is a restaurant in Gulf Breeze, Florida that finds its name being abused by this telemarketing firm.

Cablevision Not Trying Too Hard

In my most recent online bill from Cablevision I got a notice that once again they are going to be jacking their cable rates in December of 2008.

What puts Cablevision on the list of Companies Acting Badly is the line that "While every effort is made to keep our prices as low as possible...". Really? Every effort? Hmmm...

How about not charging me for the dozens and dozens of channels I don't use? How about instead of offering a standard, Silver and Gold preset package with tons of channels that you offer to let me pick them a la carte?

According to an early 2006 article in USA Today, the average person only watches 15-17 channels a month. Why then should I be paying for 250 channels? In the same article the FCC states that I could save 13% by an a la carte structure. They also quote a survey where 54% of Americans would rather pick and pay for their channels.

An article around the same time in the LA Times notes that Canada, Britain, India and Hong Kong all have some variation on A La Carte pricing.

Cablevision is a Company Acting Badly for not making "every" effort to keep prices as low as possible.

Sarah Scruggs (ARDA?) Off Vimeo

Well that was quick.

After informing Vimeo that Sarah Scruggs was violating their policy (click here for earlier post) it now seems that her profile is gone. Was her account a proxy for her employer ARDA (the American Resort Development Association)? We'll never know. But given her role their as Communications Manager, you could expect they had a hand in it.

Per Vimeo Community Guidelines
1. Vimeo is for personal use
- these videos were timeshare industry noise
2. Vimeo is for videos you create yourself
- these were professional marketing creations
3. Users uploading professional content should indicate their role
- she didn't
4. No commercial videos
- this is an industry group selling their benefits through videos
5. Businesses may not promote themselves
- felt like it to me

If you now search for her on Vimeo it's clear the videos are gone. If you click on her profile, nothing pops - she's gone.

Hats off to Vimeo for a quick action.

Next step would be to see Vimeo plug their contact hole and enact a system like Facebook so that users don't have to report other users but can ignore timeshare industry spam type requests.

Sarah Scruggs Abusing Vimeo Hole

Yesterday I was informed that Sarah Scruggs had added me as a contact on the video sharing site Vimeo.

Who's Sarah Scruggs? I didn't know. But I wanted to find out.

Now I like Vimeo. I've posted almost 100 videos there for my close family and friends to see. I've added a handful of people as my contacts and they've done the same with me.

Unfortunately, Vimeo does not have the same controls as Facebook. Where Facebook will let you know that someone wants to add you as a friend and ask for your permission before setting up the 'contact' on both friends pages, Vimeo will allow anyone to add you as a contact, to see your contacts and to add them.

Back to Sarah Scruggs.

Sarah added me as a contact. And my wife. My mother. My brother. My other brother. My sister in law. My mother in law. My sister in law's mother.

Sarah's Vimeo page has two ads (videos) for the Timeshare Industry. Want to bet Sarah Scruggs is somehow in that industry and abusing Vimeo to make sales?

A quick Google search found that Sarah Scruggs is a flack for the timeshares industry. She is a Communications Manager for ARDA (American Resort Development Association) that promotes sales.

Why would Sarah Scruggs put my family in her contacts? Perhaps to make her look good. Perhaps to have her contacts fill up the screen. Perhaps her boss at ARDA told her to get some traction at Vimeo.

Vimeo is a Company Acting Badly for not having basic friend/contact controls like Facebook. ARDA is a Company Acting Badly for having employees who abuse Vimeo. Sarah just acts badly.

A Christian Apple

This morning I upgrading to iTunes v8.0 which came with a new feature when looking at your music, video or podcasts. It is a grid view that shows many album covers at the same time.

The grid view has a number of options to sort the album covers by Album title, Artist, Genre or Composer. When sorting by Genre, Apple groups all the related music and replaces album covers with buttons to indicate which Genre you have (like Pop, Rock, Alternative and Reggae). Imagine my surprise at what Apple considers its Religious Genre... Christian and Gospel.

That's right, all religious music, be it Sikh, Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, Jewish or other is now Christian. The button has some clouds with light shining through and the words "Christian & Gospel" across the front. Check out this brilliance below.



Nice move Apple. You've got iTunes distributed globally and you don't have the sensitivity to recognize that there's more than 1 religion. Every other Genre's button has the same name as the selection. So why would Apple change Religious to Christian and Gospel?

Did Steve Jobs approve this? Sounds like we need some diversity training in Cupertino, CA.

Apple is our latest Company Acting Badly

Blink Goes Your Credit

A number of credit card companies have started embedding RFID (radio frequency) chips in credit cards so they can be read over the air without having to swipe the cards at a terminal. The advantage to these credit card companies is that paying with a credit card becomes faster.

The risk to individuals is that your private information usually retained on the card may now be transmitted over the air and readable by someone with the right technology. Some banks encrypt the data. Some don't. You can read more about the risk here and here. Some people like the technology. Some don't. I don't want it in my credit card.

Citibank makes RFID an option for its customers. You have to specifically request the technology if you are comfortable with it.

What does Chase bank do with it's Blink branded RFID chip? It ships it without your request when your card is up for renewal. Chase includes a pamphlet that says the card now has 'blink!'. I bet that many Chase customers don't know they have Blink and don't know what it does.

Would Chase make a customer whole if someone stole their id off a Blink card and used their credit? I'm not waiting to find out.

If Chase doesn't replace my credit card with a non-Blink version, I'll resort to a drill or punch press to get that chip out. Click on the image below for a video on how one guy removed his RFID chip from his credit card.



Chase is a company acting badly for assuming I want technology in my wallet that is broadcasting my credit card information.

Boo to Dotblu

I've recently received two emails like the one in this image:



They both imply that there's some secret important message from a trusted source just awaiting my signing up for their service. Both of my friends who sent them, indicated that they were unaware until too late that Dotblu had retrieved their entire address book and sent this message.

Why did my friends sign up? They were trying to read a "private message" stored at Dotblu that one of their friends had sent. Sound like automated 'chain mail'?

It gets messier if you should click through... don't! Just delete.
(click to enlarge)



What happened to the secret message? Now there's some gift awaiting me. Here's where my friends got in trouble and should have hit manual instead of their address book (click to enlarge).



If you should happen to sign up (don't!) you will get this page.



The gift? A digital image of a cheap car that's not yet for sale to use on your profile at a site you never heard of before.

No mention of a private message from your friend. And if you click on the envelope icon...



That's right. What started as an email telling you to retrieve a private message from a trusted friend has you sign up at a betting site and there's no email to be found. Boo to Dotblu. Another Company Acting Badly.

Countrywide - Not On Your Side

Let's see if I'm on this list...

Countrywide's IT security was so loose that an employee was able to take 20,000 customer records off-site each week for two years and sell that data. That's roughly 2 million + customers whose identity is at risk. You can read more about the story here and here.

What's Countrywide's response? Per the article: "Countrywide, which is now a division of Bank of America, is analyzing the stolen data to determine whether any customer identities have been compromised. If they have, the company says it will notify the customers, according to a statement from the FBI."

Now that's priceless. Same shxx different company.

How will Countrywide know if the most recent credit card was taken out by me or someone pretending to be me? Instead of notifying all 2 million customers that due to Countrywide's lack of controls their identity is at risk, Countrywide will make a sole analysis and determination of who gets informed.

No Labor at Work in New York

Tried again to reach the folks at the New York State Unemployment office. Same deal. Six plus minutes of working through menus to then be hung up on.

NY State - No labor

I am currently collecting unemployment benefits from the state of New York and had a question on a recent claim I submitted. The question had a simple yes/no answer. One of their reps should be able to answer it in under 30 seconds. I had checked the website (where I posted the claim) and could not find the answer.

On the website was posted the number to call. Like so many other entities I was routed through a VRU with enter this and press that, all the while encouraging me to go to the website or get an automated response. Having been through the website, I need a human to answer my question. Finally after 6 minutes I hit the option for a person and what did I hear...

"All of our specialists are busy helping other customers, please call back later at another time". And then the phone hung up. They hung up on me. I'm their customer and they hung up?

A normal customer focused organization would post a message like "We are experiencing heavy call volume at this time, please remain on the line to retain your place in line" or "We are experiencing extended wait time in excess of 15 minutes, please remain on the line or call back during regular business hours". Something to give a customer a choice.

But no... in New York State's Department of Labor we just hang up on you. Automated like.

Here's the history of my attempt to reach a human:

• Called 1-888-209-8124
• Listened to welcome message

• Listened to Options
• Pressed 1 for English

• Extended benefits message played

• Listened to Options
• Pressed 9 for Main Menu

• Listened to Options
• Pressed 4 for question on claim already filed

• Website advertisement played
• Phone rings
• EEO message played

• Entered my SSN
• Pressed 1 to validate SSN
• Entered my PIN

• Claim status message played
• Website and call center advertisement played
• "Remain on line for additional options" message played

• Listened to Options
• Pressed 4 for other questions

• Listened to Options
• Pressed 2 for question on weekly benefits

• Website and call center advertisement played
• Processing claim message played

• Listened to Options
• Pressed 3 to ask a question

..... and then i heard something like .....

"Please hold. We're sorry we are experiencing a high volume of calls at this time and all specialists are helping other customers." Then the website and call center advertisement played once again (4th time on the call). Then it told me to call back later and the New York State Department of Labor hung up.

After listening to 10 messages/advertisements and 6 options of what numbers to press, they hung up.

The New York State Department of Labor Commissioner is M. Patricia Smith. Perhaps the M is in 'My People Won't Answer the Phone'.

B&B - no Imperative

On Saturday I received this letter from my insurance broker, Brown & Brown of Delaware. Brown & Brown bought the business from Chase Insurance and fronts for AIG who provides the insurance.

You would think if an insurance carrier is going to drop a client, and a broker feels "It is imperative that the carrier receives your payment so that your coverage is not in jeopardy" that they would've called to find out what happened to the payment.

In my case, it should've been a direct debit but who knows what happened.

What I do know is that my broker, Brown & Brown, sent a letter on July 9th stating that payment needed to be received by July 11th. The letter arrived on July 12th.

What I do know is that my broker never called on the 9th when they sent and signed the letter. They've got my home number and cell phone. Both phones have voicemail. If they had reached me on the 9th, I could have FedEx'd the payment in time to arrive on the 11th.

What I do know is that in a few minutes I had an online quote from GEICO that was significantly less than Brown & Brown. I followed it up with a call to GEICO to answer some questions and in less than an hour I had insurance forms in my email.

What I do now know is that GEICO accepted a credit card for the payment (points!) and that it is now on recurring payment so that my card will be automatically billed on renewal.

The contrast between Brown & Brown and GEICO is striking. GEICO now has a new fan and loyal customer.

Brown & Brown could take some lessons on customer experience and may need to update it's website boast from "At Brown & Brown, we know that we must be as agile as the cheetah in order to thrive in the competitive insurance environment" to "At Brown & Brown, we know that as Ostriches with our heads in the sand our customer is on his own in this environment".