Tube-Socks Full of Wood Screws

I've watched a bit of TV in my day, and with that comes commercial watching. Most commercials make me want to claw my eyes out, or are just not noticeable. Sometimes, though, there are well-crafted, funny (because commercials have to be funny. It's a rule), commercials. Once commercials become serialized, it gets even better. This time, I'm specifically talking about the Alltel commercials.

I don't like Alltel. I do like their marketing consultants though. They done good. The Chad vs. The Other Nerds campaign is one of my favorite commerical series these days. When it first started, the Sprint Kid (yellow shirt, in the back of that promotional photo) was the funniest (and the quietest -- it's always the quiet ones). Well, turns out, the Sprint Kid went to High School with me.

His name is Mike Busch. He is one year older. I never knew him in high school, but when this was brought to my attention, I looked him up. He's in there.

He won me over when he threatened to beat Chad with a tube-sock full of wood screws. Not wooden screws. Wood screws. Those things are very pointy and made of metal. The thought of this relatively harmless kid threatening that extreme level of violence on someone over a cell phone is comedic genius... then, as if that weren't enough, when his nerd-buddies look at him in shock, he tires to justify it by saying his dad's a carpenter. Awesome.

Well, I'm not sure what happened after that. Maybe the wood-screws line was ad-libbed and someone at Alltel didn't like that. Maybe Mike's moving on to bigger and better things, but he's not the Sprint guy anymore. Now they've got some afro-totin' stoner fuck who doesn't have the same delivery that Mike had. It's depressing.

Since he dissappeared, I've been trying to find Mr. Busch on IMDB or TV.com. Turns out, I was spelling his name incorrectly (I thought it was Bush). My theory was that since he was no longer in the Alltel commercials, he was moving up the ladder and the next rung was either being the dead body or finding the dead body on Law & Order or CSI. Well, I was close.

He was a ghost on Ghost Whisperer.

So, maybe he is moving up in the world. I still expect to see him in something when the fall season starts up. He's already done a little bit, which I have not seen yet. See his resume here.

Mike, you made Alltel bearable. I'm sorry to see you leave that series. You would've made the wizard commercials even better.

Through the Oily Mess, a Little Clarity Comes.

Okay, kiddies, here we go.

Read this and this.

Done? Okay.

Let's. Get. Political.
(First to tell me what that sentence is a parody of gets a prize.)

I used to like John McCain. I don't know if I would've ever voted for him for president, but I didn't have a problem with him. That all changed in May of 2005. He was the commencement speaker at the University of Oklahoma, that year, and I had the "honor" of seeing him speak (the reason why I was there will remain a mystery).

Since that day, I've been trying to find a transcript or a video of his speech. I have yet to find it. You could say that it's a right-wing conspiracy to cover up what he said that day, or you could say I suck at Internet searches. Personally, I believe both. To paraphrase what he said though, "It's great that you've achieved all these accomplishments, but there's a war on, so they don't really mean anything."

It wasn't just cynical old me who was dumbfounded by that. I looked around as he was giving his speech and most people had a look on their faces as if to say, "Uh... what, now?" Commencement speeches are supposed to be inspiring, not defeating and, oh yeah, politically charged.

So, okay. I don't like McCain. Now he's running for president again, and I'll admit that I'm biased, but a lot of the things he says are pretty ridiculous. Not Bush-grade ridiculous, but pretty close. Today, his big point was about offshore drilling.

If you read the article above, you know that off-shore drilling is exactly what it sounds like. Drilling for oil, off the shores of the United States. Most reasonable people think that's a bad idea. A leak could occur, and cause a spill, and ruin the environment.

This is why McCain's willing to risk it (and, one should note, flip-flop on his stance from eight years ago): "And with gasoline running at more than $4 a barrel ... a gallon ... I wish ... $4 a gallon, many do not have the luxury of waiting on the far-off plans of futurists and politicians."

Far-off plans, Mr. McCain? Did you read the second article I posted? Honda announced yesterday, before McCain's comments, today, that they are test marketing the hydrogen-powered FCX Clarity in California. The article says they will roll out a "few dozen" units, this year, and 200 more over the next three.

Right now, only rich people can afford them (Jamie Lee Curtis is getting one), but if they test well and become popular (Toyota Prius, anyone?), Honda will be able to improve on the technology and make it more affordable to us common folk.

Other companies are developing hydrogen-powered cars, too. GM is further behind, but chugging along on their hydrogen car. I don't have other information right now, but the point is: it's coming.

And, it's clean. Conventional cars emit carbon monoxide and other nasty gasses. Hydrogen fuel-cell cars emit water. Steam. It'd be as if a teapot was glued to the back of your car. Actually, I don't think it's even that dramatic (maybe in the winter). IT'S CLEAN.

So, my point is this: instead of pouring money into something that's potentially hazardous, and really only delays the inevitable, why don't we just suck it up for a few years until hydrogen fuel-cells are affordable and start to become ubiquitous? Pour all that money that would go into off-shore drilling into making sure that American companies can catch up to foreign companies and get this technology rolling (bad pun, sorry). To me, it makes total sense.

I know oil companies are big, and persuasive, but so are automotive companies. Maybe they're all in cahoots. I don't know. I'm still pretty sure that all of the ideas for this kind of stuff existed 60 years ago and the oil companies have been sitting on it until the time was right where they could maximize their profits from it (and from oil). I don't know.

What I do know is that I'm willing so suck it up for a few years until I can afford a hydrogen fuel-cell car. I'm sure if you asked a lot of other people, they'd say the same thing.

Except oil execs.

And John McCain.

(I didn't go into Obama's counter-idea because I don't understand it, very well, right now -- not that ignorance has deterred me in the past, but gimme a break, okay? :))

Concernity: The Aftermath

I got a response back from Discernity. It's nice, and polite. If my service outtage, and all the problems that came with trying to get it fixed, had dragged on longer, it wouldn't be enough, but for now, I am appeased.

Here's the response:

Hello,

My name is Karen Christenson. I apologize
for the lack of follow through that you received from us here at Discernity. You are absolutely correct in feeling dissatisfied and I will work diligently to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

It was I who left you a message on Monday letting you know that we wouldn’t be able to correct your TV issue until Tuesday. Due to an unexpected turn of events, we have had to employ a new team of technicians to service the Cleveland area. They are doing their absolute best in catching up on service issues left unattended but that does not excuse the fact that they didn’t leave you a door hanger or a copy of the work order to let you know they were
there.

I know you understand when using a new staff, it takes a little bit of time to make sure that policies are being followed accordingly. I appreciate your letter and I will contact the parties to rectify the issues you brought to our attention.

Because of customers like you, it allows us to see where we need to make improvements.

Should you have any other issues or concerns, please feel free to contact
me.

All My Best,

Karen Christenson

Well, played, Ms. Christenson. Well played.

Further, my letter was copied to the owner of my building (and two others in Cleveland), and Warehouse District Cable credited my account. So, I'm claiming victory on this one.

That's all I've got for today. Two posts in three days. Consider yourself lucky. :)

Concernity

Howdy.

It's been a while. I know I've neglected you, but I've been busy. Of course, you could always write to me in the comments... that would definitely ensure that I update regularly. You scratch my back, I'll bombard you with thoughts from my head. That's the deal. :)

I'm kidding. I'll post more regularly; I promise. I'm cooking up two, shorter (I hope), stories, so look for those, soon.

Today, though, join me on a crusade. Or, at the very least, a rant.

You know that I live in downtown Cleveland. Well, in the building in which I live, they are wired for DirecTV. Best I can figure, a company wired the whole building so that hundreds of TVs could be run off of just a couple sattelite dishes. The company that does this is called Discernity (ah! Now the title makes sense!). It's a set up that allows the property owner to make money off of TV service, and I'm not really clear past that. What it means to me, is this: I pay two different entities for this service, and I talk to two different entities when there's a problem.

The part of this cluster-fuck that I want to focus on is the support side. One must call Discernity directly when something goes wrong. Only, one doesn't call Discernity. One calls an answering service that attempts to connect the caller to a Discernity technician. First RED FLAG. If the operator can't get a hold of one of the technicians, he or she leaves a message for the tech to call the user (me) back. That's all well and good, but you have better odds winning Russian Roullette than getting a call back from these people. Second RED FLAG.

I'm sure you gathered, by now, that I had a problem that needed to be fixed. My service was interrupted sometime on Friday, June 6, and it wasn't fixed until TUESDAY, June 10. That, isn't neccessarily a problem, but here's the email I sent to their customer service manager, which details the whole thing.

To whom it may concern,

Last Friday, sometime before 6:30PM Eastern, our DirecTV service was lost.

I placed a call to Discernity on Saturday at 11am, and was led to believe that a technician would come out that day to look at it. After four more calls, that day, to Discernity, I finally reached someone who told me that no one would be out until Monday. I was not told this during my initial call.

Once Monday came, I called Discernity, again, to get an estimated time of arrival for the technician. No one was to be home, and I wanted to make sure the staff at the apartment would know when to let the tech into the apartment. After four calls, I received a voicemail stating that the technician wasn't coming in, today, so I was pushed back until Tuesday. There was no reason given for this. For all I know, the technician just didn't feel like coming in.

On Tuesday, I called again to get an ETA for the technician. I was told that he would arrive between 12 and 4PM, so I informed the apartment staff. I also asked Discernity to inform me when the work was completed. I never received that call. When I returned home, I had to reset all of my receivers to discover that it was, in fact fixed. I was never informed by anyone that the work was completed.

I then called Discernity again, to find out what the problem was. No one ever returned my call. I got a hold of a tech on Wednesday, and she told me she would find out what went wrong and tell me, but I have yet to hear back.

I am glad that my service is restored, but I am sorely disappointed with the level of support I received. I understand there were issues in other parts of your coverage area over the weekend, but a call back to let me know this, plus a follow-up later would have gone a long way. Also, if one technician calls off, and your support for an area is crippled because of this, that tells me that you are severely understaffed.

I work in the support field myself. I know that if I treated my users the way I was treated over the past four days, and if my users were rendered incapacitated for that long, I would lose my job. I did not have a problem with your service until this week. I like DirecTV. I'd like to continue to enjoy it. While I know you can't guarantee that service will never be interrupted again, I would like some reassurance that you will be better prepared to address the issue and keep me (and other customers) aprised of your efforts, in the future.

It's all about follow up, folks. If you keep someone informed about the progress of fixing their issue, even if little progress has been made, it goes a long way.

Do you think I was overreacting? Drop a comment and let me know what you think. Also, feel free to share your customer service woes. Every company seems so obssessed with customer service, these days, but things like this make me laugh at that "obsession."

And, finally, just be wary of Discernity. They are in a few other areas in the midwest, at least (their locations are on the website).