Gripes, pisses and moans

I just read a story on msn which got me to thinking about one of my big pet peeves in life. There are things I don't understand and one of them is the modern methods that some industries use to do business. I have cell phone service through Verizon. I don't really have a choice. People say I do and could use AT&T or Sprint, but there coverage in my areas is sort of like shit. Actually it is shit. Verizon is the only company around that covers not just all of my state but all of my county and the surrounding counties. Even with Verizon there are some areas I have to go, required by my job, where there is no cell phone reception. I have 2 phones on my plan and I was told my plan would be $74.99 per month. That was with a 10% discount on 1 phones access charge due to my employer also being a major Verizon customer. A benefit of my job I guess. The last time I signed a contract with them, I asked repeatedly what my bill would actually be. The salesman kept giving me a funny look and quoting the $74.99 amount. He finally after about 15 minutes of arguing admitted there would be some taxes but it should still be under $90. My average bill, with no overage charges, additional data charges, or long distance from outside of the US calls is $114. 60. That's almost $40 over what I was told. I look at my bill, pick, poke and pry but there are so damn many access charges, taxes, and stuff they claim is required by either state or federal government. I don't get this. If they know they are going to have to charge $10 for some sort of federal access charge, add it to the damn plan cost. Same with state charges. I know that in many cases they may have to charge state and local sales tax and that is hard to predict the exact amount on, but I would rather know up front to expect a $95 bill with tax than a $75 bill that gets inflated to $95 with additional fees and charges then gets tax added. Also, how do I know these charges and fees are legitimate? Why aren't they upfront with them. Obviously they want to make the sale and the lower the price looks the easier the sale, but there really should be some sort of disclosure laws, something to prevent the sticker shock from having an expected $8x bill be a $1xx bill.

Also there is now a company that is offering a prepaid cell phone card that works with any Verizon phone or their phone, uses verizon numbers and costs $49.99 for unlimited mobile to mobile, mobile to land line, text and internet access. I don't have that with my phone. I have unlimited mobile to mobile with other Verizon phones, nights and weekends, and unlimited text on one phone only. I have no internet access on the phones at all. I would actually save a few bucks a month going to that plan, I just have to remember to purchase and activate 2 cards every month. You can bet in March when my contract is up and they are making all the offers to try to make me renew I will be asking questions.

The only other business that seems to be working in this way is satellite television. Now I cannot get cable where I live. They stop the cable about 1/2 a mile from my house and refuse to run it any further despite there being plenty of houses along the way. For a long time, my only option was the various satellite providers. When I first moved out I had the rather limited selection, but reasonable pricing and simple billing of Prime Star. Then they were absorbed by Direct TV. There may be other choices elsewhere, but currently Dish Network and Direct TV. To give full disclosure, I have never had Direct TV service, only Prime Star and Dish Network. I can't say for sure that either cable or Direct work this way, but Dish did. I'm not up on pricing or anything, so don't expect dollar accuracy, but basically with any type of tv you choice a package. They generally have 2 to 4 different packages usually with each advance offering more channels with an increase in price. Then there are usually some smaller sets of channels you can add to a package for an additional monthly fee. For instance there is a base package of channels that most people want, but there will be a few highly popular channels that will be available only by going to the next package.

As an example, say the basic package is 30 channels for 29.99 but they leave off the syfy channel, USA, Disney Kids and one of the ESPN channels. There isn't a subset with those, you have to go to the midlevel package which offers 45 channels for 34.99. There is a superpackage that offers all the midlevel channels plus Starz, Encore and their specialty channels for 44.99 but you don't want that. You do want history international, biography international and some of the discovery subchannels though and that group is an extra 4.99 per month. You aren't interested in HBO or Showtime but would like your local networks via satellite, so that is another $4.99 so now you have a monthly bill of $44.97 right? Yeah, right. That $44.97 bill will probably be closer to $70 by the time it is finished. There are taxes, access charges, ect that go on. I have never figured it out. Now often you don't own the equipment, so they charge rental fees on the boxes and dishes too, but even if you own the equipment, you never pay just for the package. Apparently they share a training facility for the accounting personnel with the cell phone companies.

I currently get digital cable through my telephone company. I chose the basic package plus the family add on to get some of the extra history and discovery channels. It came out about $50 a month. I dreaded the first bill, but you know what? My phone bill only went up about $50 a month.

An Open Letter to the Makers of Farmville

Dear Zynga

Okay, we get it. Somehow you have crafted 3 or 4 stupid little games more addicting than a mutant blend of crack cocaine and methamphetamine. Farmville, Café World, Mafia Wars and now Frontierville pretty much dominate the social network gaming world. I can’t believe I just said social networking gaming world. That just isn’t right, but somehow your partnership with Facebook, the least private and worst secured, yet largest of the social network sites has apparently been a major success for you both. How do you do it? How do you make such repetitive and simple games so damn addicting? How addicting are they? Let me explain.

Somehow, the games are so addicting that even though they have become so FUCKING ANNOYING because of the DAMN NEAR CONSTANT POPUPS and so CRAMMED FULL OF USELESS FUCKING BULLSHIT ITEMS that they are NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE TO PLAY we still PLAY the DAMN THINGS.

Honestly, how freaking many sets of stupid train whistles do you think I need???? I do not want to offer them to my friends because they already have 4 MILLION OF THE FUCKERS. The game doesn’t even make sense. I get a pop up saying I have just successfully harvested 476,000 bushels of ragweed but my market stalls are full. Do I want to offer them to my friends rather than let them spoil? Click ok. Another pop up asking if I want to post a notice to my friends’ walls about this. Well, it’s either that or notifying them via mental telepathy. Click yes. Harvest one more section, and I get another pop up notifying me that I have now found 562,000 bushels of ragweed, one bushel will be placed in my inventory and the rest will be available in my stall. WTF, my market stalls were all full just 3 seconds ago? Then I get another popup about posting it. How about a single pop up per event that says “you have just successfully harvested xxx number of bushels of skunk cabbage, 1 bushel has been placed in your personal inventory and the rest will be available for sale in your market stall. Would you like to post this notice on your wall and your friends wall? Click yes to post or FU to not?” It would be even better to just save all the notices, maybe with a counter on one side of the screen that counted the notices and then let you scroll through the list and pick what you want to claim and/or post when you are ready. The way it works now is really annoying, especially when you add in the stupid bobbing banner on the bottom of the game screen. It’s really annoying if, like me, you can only log on before and after work, so mostly I am rushing in the morning to do all the games and get to work and as I plant or harvest I accidentally click on one of the stupid toy collections notices. Seriously, the collections are annoying but at least finishing one gives experience and stuff, but that damn toy collection just gives some stupid item that isn’t worth the constant notifications of whistles, marbles, toy ducks, ect. And Café World, at least in Farmville if you clicked ahead your guy will usually still do the tasks even with a pop up open. In Café World the little chef freezes until you deal with it. And why can’t we gift more than once a day? Farmville lets us. And lengthen the time on those stupid catering jobs. It’s nearly impossible to finish any in 3 star time, unless you get a full crew, and it can take a day or two to gather in a partial crew, by then the job is already down to one star and if the items to be cooked require a day or more it is even longer. I realize that the following bitch may not by your fault, it may be a fault with Faceplant….errrr Facebook, but when I claim my gifts, one at a time, verrrrrrry slowly, it offers me the choice of returning to the gift page or entering the game, but if I am claiming items some poor friend had to fight through multiple pop ups to make, I click the link, click okay, then get dumped into the game with no option to return to my wall. Why? Chances are there are multiple posts I want to get items from. I have to be very fast on the back or home button to get them all.