I also mentioned in that posting how the plumber who did the “inspection” quoted us a price of $238 to replace a broken toilet handle, a job that takes less than ten minutes and requires a part that costs less than $5 and is stocked all the time by pretty much every plumber.

Scott Adams says that human beings are “rationalization machines.” I’m sure I’m as guilty of that as the next guy, but I try to be aware of when I’m rationalizing. I have suspected for quite a while that I was giving Winters the benefit of the doubt more than they deserved. I hired them to replace our heating system for a higher price than some of the other companies quoted because they seemed more reputable and trustworthy than the others. I wanted to believe that decision was the correct one. I don’t think I can maintain that delusion any longer.

Starting many months ago, I asked them repeatedly and through multiple channels (phone calls, email messages) to switch the billing on my monthly service plan from one credit card to another. They assured me repeatedly that it would be taken care of. It never was.

In short, they are apparently completely and utterly incapable of resolving a trivial, straightforward customer billing issue despite repeated requests and repeated assurances. This level of incompetence and disregard for their customers is entirely unacceptable.

But wait, it gets worse. When this billing issue finally pushed me over the edge and I decided that I was done with Winters Plumbing, I sent them a letter on June 18 telling them to cancel my membership in their service plan.

They did not acknowledge my letter. And of course, they charged my credit card the monthly fee for the service plan on August 2. I just disputed the charge with my credit-card company. Maybe that will finally get their attention.

Now that I’ve finally come to the realization that the problems I’ve had with Winters are not aberrations, but rather are part of a pattern of failing to deliver the level of service they promise to deliver, allow me to regale you with a list of all the things they’ve done wrong since I first hired them:

→ The subcontractor who installed our new ducts installed one of them in a ridiculous position, far lower than it needed to be. I had to make him take it down and reinstall it.

→ I asked several times when we were planning the new heating system to install screens underneath the vent covers to prevent stuff from falling down the vents. I made the same request directly to the subcontractor. Every time I mentioned it, I specifically said that I wanted the holes in the screens to be the size of window screens. I had to remind them several times about the screens; and the gaps in the screens they installed are about a half inch across, large enough for small stuff to fall through.

→ I’m not certain, but I think the screen material they used was taken from my work room without my permission.

→ The opening of one of the newly installed ducts was not quite wide enough for the vent cover to fit. Rather than enlarging the duct slightly so the vent cover would fit properly, they crammed it into the duct, thus damaging the (antique) vent cover and making it extremely difficult to remove later.

→ The interior of the ducts visible through the vent covers was supposed to be painted black to prevent reflective glare. The duct subcontractor forgot to paint several of the ducts before he left. I contacted him and Winters several times and asked for the subcontractor to come back and paint the ducts. He never came back; a crew from Winters came instead, and they did an astoundingly awful job painting the ducts. I chewed them out about it, and to their credit they came back and fixed it, but the ducts shouldn’t have been forgotten in the first place, and when I complained about it, the duct guy who knows how to do the work properly should have been the one to come back and do it, and Winters shouldn’t have had someone do it (the first time) who obviously didn’t know how to do it properly.

→ The duct subcontractor left trash behind when he left, including cut duct steel with unprotected sharp edges, even though we were assured that all debris would be cleaned up and removed by the workers.

→ The thermostat they installed has the ability to automatically control the humidity level in the house during the winter to avoid condensation on the windows and walls. This functionality requires an exterior temperature sensor which is connected to the thermostat; the sensor comes in the box with the thermostat. They didn’t install it. I had to call them and get them to come do it. To their credit, they installed it for no additional charge, but only because I knew enough to ask; most people wouldn’t.

→ The humidifier they installed uses an unbelievable amount of water. In the first month we used it, our water bill tripled to something like $100 for a single month. Most of it is literally down the drain; it seems like every time I turn around the humidifier is flushing itself out. I can’t believe it really needs to be flushed that often. I suspect that any financial savings we’re getting from lower heating bills is offset by the higher water bill. I’ve asked Winters repeatedly to find out how we can adjust the humidifier to use less water, and they haven’t responded.

→ I think the supposedly ultra-high-efficiency furnace they installed leaks a significant amount of hot air into my basement when it runs. I was running the fan last week to test something and could feel a ton of air blowing out the top of the furnace. I’m waiting until winter to confirm this, and if I’m right, I hope Winters will fix whatever the problem is, since the system is (supposedly) 100% warrantied for five years.

→ When I asked them how long the (expensive) air filters for the furnace last, different people gave me different answers ranging from six months to a year). In fact, it appears that the filters only last a few months.

→ The aforementioned “security inspection.”

→ The aforementioned failure to switch my service plan to a different credit card.

→ The aforementioned failure to cancel my service plan as requested.

If you’ve read this far, I’m impressed. So tell me, am I just being a curmudgeon, or am I right that these folks have propelled themselves through their actions from the “reputable, trustworthy” category into “time to look elsewhere”?

I called ZipCar immediately on my cell phone. The rep with whom I spoke first verified that everyone was OK and then went through the “customer was in an accident” script quickly, efficiently, and politely. I received email within minutes of our phone call telling me everything I needed to know and do. It was all quite reasonable.

The next day I received a phone call and followup email message from Gordon, the guy at ZipCar who would be handling the incident. Gordon reminded me on the phone that because I hadn’t paid for ZipCar’s collision damage waiver, I was liable for up to $500 of the cost of repairing the damage. This was not a surprise to me. I was pretty pissed at the hit-and-run driver for sticking me with a $500 repair bill, but that was the driver’s fault, not ZipCar’s. I was resigned to pay the $500 when I read this in the followup email from Gordon:

If you have a credit card with rental collision coverage, now is a good time to start up a claim with them.

I pulled my credit card out of my wallet, observed the word “platinum” on the front which had never mattered before but might now suddenly be important, and gave them a call. Lo and behold, I do in fact have rental collision coverage, and with one more phone call, I was able to open a claim with MasterCard to be reimbursed for the $500.

The claim administrators at MasterCard demanded a whole slew of paperwork to process the claim, much of which had to come from ZipCar. I sent the list of documents to ZipCar later that day, July 13.

Two days later, only three days after the incident, the car was fully repaired and back in service, and Gordon had sent all the necessary paperwork to MasterCard.

Having somebody hit your rental car in a parking lot couldn’t possibly be described as a positive experience, but the folks at ZipCar managed to make it as painless as it could possibly have been. Yet another in a long series of positive ZipCar experiences. This company gets it.

(ZipCars are available in Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, London, the NY/NJ Metro Area, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, Toronto, Vancouver, Washington DC, and more than 100 university campuses across North America. If I’ve convinced you that ZipCar is for you, click the ad in the sidebar of my blog, and you and I will both get some free driving out of the deal!)

Two articles in a row in the Boston Herald mentioned that the authorities were investigating how the twins drowned despite the fact that the pool had a cover.

There seems to be a widespread misconception, which the Herald articles exacerbate, that pool covers are a safety device. In my letter in today’s Herald, I tried to set the record straight:

Safety hazard

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

“I don’t want to take away licenses from able-bodied people or force them to go through a driver’s test,” he said.  What the Legislature did, he said, is “fine.”

Hey Tim… The point of road tests for the elderly people would be to figure out which people are not “able-bodied.”  Anybody who can look at the string of completely avoidable accidents involving elderly drivers and think that this isn’t necessary is a moron.  I don’t vote for morons.

Bye-bye, SUM Network

Citizens has withdrawn from the SUM ATM Network, effective January 1, 2010.  According to the scuttlebutt on-line, the only reason they joined SUM in the first place was because they were required to do so as condition of acquiring another bank.  Apparently that requirement was time-limited and has expired.  They’ve decided that the smaller banks were benefiting from access to Citizens ATMs a lot more than Citizens was benefiting from access to theirs, so customer convenience be damned, SUM had to go.  Not to mention that now Citizens can make money charging ATM fees to customers of those other banks.

Which brings us to our next item…

Inadequate notification of the SUM Network change

In the good old days of paper, when a bank had something important to notify their customers about, they either enclosed the notice on a separate piece of paper with monthly statements or sent a completely separate mailing.

So, what’s the equivalent in the age of paperless statements and as few postal mailings as possible to save money and protect the environment?  Well, they could:

• send customers an email message notifying them about the change (they already have the email address of everyone subscribed to paperless statements, and they already use these email addresses for marketing and important customer communication); or
• put the notification at the front of customers’ paperless statements, so when they open the PDF it’s the first thing they see (in fact, they did exactly this in this month’s statements with a fluff notice about “great eco-friendly prizes” that paperless statement users are eligible to win).

Citizens didn’t use either of these to notify people about their withdrawal from the SUM Network.  Instead, they buried the notice in the fine print at the end of people’s last 2009 statements, after all of the transaction data (i.e., where people stop reading once they have balanced their checkbook for the month), at the end of a long bullet point which started out, “This is a reminder of how you can use your debit card or ATM card,” amidst the marketing drivel which normally appears in this section of the statement which is why nobody ever reads it.

Which brings us to…

Pissing off a profitable customer over a $2 fee

A few weeks ago, I got nailed with a $2 ATM fee at a SUM ATM.  I had no idea that Citizens had withdrawn from SUM (see above), so I assumed that the fee notice was an error and figured I’d straighten it out later with Citizens since I didn’t have time to find another ATM to use.

When I got home, I looked into the matter and discovered that Citizens was no longer in SUM.  I sent Citizens a message through their online banking Web site complaining that their notification of the change was inadequate and asking them to therefore refund the $2 fee.

They sent me back a form letter notifying me that Citizens was no longer a member of the SUM Network.  Well yeah, duh, I knew that already.

I sent them back an impatient response, reiterating my complaint over inadequate notification, demanding again that they reimburse me, and ending with, “Your bank makes thousands of dollars from the interest I pay on my home equity line.  It would be foolish for you to further antagonize me over a $2 fee.”

They sent back a response again refusing to refund the fee, since it was charged by the other bank and the ATM had warned me about it.  Well, yeah, duh, I had already told them that the fee was charged by the other bank and the ATM had warned me about it.

I responded, “Your reply is callous, stupid, inadequate, and unacceptable.  Please give me the fax number of your executive complaints office so that I may let them know just how I feel about the way you have handled my complaint.”

They responded:

Thank you for your recent inquiry regarding the charge to your account. Citizens Bank is aware that situations may occur that are beyond your control. In such cases, we are able to issue a one time credit to your account. I have initiated a $2.00 rebate to your account.

They did not provide me with the contact information I requested for their complaints office.  I wrote back to them, thanked them for the credit, and again asked how I could contact their complaints office.

I got a voicemail message a few days later from a supervisor at Citizens.  I haven’t spoken to him yet.  I’m planning on getting his fax number or email address and sending him a copy of this blog posting.

Here’s a clue, Citizens Bank: it’s stupid to nickel-and-dime a customer from whom you’re making thousands of dollars per year.  When such a customer fields aggrieved over a measly $2 fee, and his complaint is even just a little bit legitimate, you refund the fee.  It shows that you care.  Conversely, arguing with the customer shows that you don’t care.

Web site silently enforces message length limits and erases customer messages

While I was going back and forth with Citizens on their Web site about the issue described above, I ran into an incredibly stupid functionality issue on their Web site combined with an incredibly annoying data-loss bug.

The “message center” on the Citizens Web site has a message length limit.  The limit is completely undocumented, i.e., when you’re composing a message, the site doesn’t tell you how long it’s allowed to be, which is the minimum acceptable behavior if you’re going to impose such a limit (the limit is also unreasonably low, but that’s a different story).  Far superior to that would be what so many other Web sites have figured out how to do: a character counter which goes down as you type and prevents you from putting more text than you’re allowed to into your message.

When you exceed the limit and try to submit your message, you get an error message saying that your message is too long and you should hit the Back button and try again.

When you hit the Back button, your message is gone.  You’ve just spent a significant amount of time composing a message (obviously, since it’s long enough to run afoul of the length limit), and the Web site just throws it away, and you’ve got to write the whole thing over again, all the while trying to guess what the limit is that you’re not allowed to exceed, because the site doesn’t tell you (even the error message doesn’t actually say what the length is; it just says that you’ve exceeded it).

Customer service staff has no clue about how to deal with Web site feedback

I sent a message to Citizens through their message center outlining the problems above.  In return, I expected an acknowledgment that the issues I described were real and an indication that my feedback had been passed on to the people who maintain the Web site.  Instead, I got back a form letter: “Please keep in mind, the length of emails is limited.”  Well, yeah, duh, isn’t that what I was complaining about?

I wrote back and told them, again, to please give me the contact information of someone to whom I could complain about their poor customer service.  This was all going on at the same time as the other issue outlined above, so I think the supervisor who called me was calling about both issues.

The great thing about paper statements is that they don’t experience technical difficulties

I’m all for the idea of saving money and protecting the environment by reducing paper mailings.  If I weren’t, I wouldn’t have invested many hours of my time in eliminating junk mail from my mailbox.  So when Citizens finally offered me the chance to switch to paperless statements for my home equity line, I took them up on it.

But here’s the thing, Citizens… When you ask your customers to switch from mailings to paperless statements, you are making a commitment to them: the statements will be available on-line when they are needed.

I’m a busy man.  I handle my financial affairs, things like reconciling my monthly bank statements, in dribs and drabs whenever I can find a few minutes to spare.  When I find those minutes, the “paper”work needs to be at my fingertips.

But it’s not.  For several days now, my home equity line statements have been inaccessible through the Web site.  This is not the first time this has happened.  I called Citizens today to ask what was going on and was told that the issue is impacting everyone; they are working on resolving it; and they could not give me an ETA for when it will be resolved.

Note: the minimum monthly payment on a Citizens home equity line is the amount of interest accrued in the past month.  Interest accrual doesn’t show up explicitly in the transaction history on the Web site (yet another stupid bug with the site).  This means that when on-line statements are unavailable, many customers have no way of knowing how much they’re required to pay that month.  Awesome!

I’ve managed high-availability OLTP Web sites.  It is not hard for such a site to serve up a bunch of PDFs; in fact, it should be trivial, since they are static documents, not database-backed queries or transactions.  It is mind-boggling that this keeps happening, mind-boggling that it takes days to resolve each time it does, and mind-boggling that whatever the problem is, Citizens didn’t just fix it properly the first time rather than letting it happen over and over.

Needless to say, the merchants are livid.  According to the Boston Herald, here’s what Richard Davey, the General Manager of the T, had to say to justify the removal of parking spaces:

“… he said a survey of 500 Route 28 bus passengers found that 91 percent approved of it rolling out the state-of-the-art 60-foot articulated buses, even if it means losing between 60 to 92 parking spaces along its five-mile route…”

Yes, that’s right, the T asked people who don’t use the parking spaces whether it’s OK to get rid of them.

What’s next?  Are they going to ask people who don’t ride the buses whether it’s OK run fewer of them?

The T is holding a public hearing at 6:00pm tomorrow at the Mattapan Public Library.  They’ve publicized this hearing where?  On the buses, of course.  This calls to mind Arthur Dent’s experience in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy when his house is slated for demolition to make room for a bypass road:

“But Mr. Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning office for the last nine months.”

“Oh, yes, well, as soon as I heard I went straight round to see them, yesterday afternoon.  You hadn’t exactly gone out of your way to call attention to them, had you?  I mean, like actually telling anybody or anything.”

“But the plans were on display…”

“On display?  I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”

“That’s the display department.”

“With a flashlight.”

“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”

“So had the stairs.”

“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” said Arthur.  “yes, I did.  It was on display in the bottom of a locked file cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.’”

Also, wouldn’t want normally want to hold one’s public hearings before buying the new buses?  What exactly is the T going to do with $900,000 worth of buses if it turns out they can’t use them because the public outcry is too loud for them to enlarge the bus stops?

Unless, of course, the public hearing is a sham and the removal of the parking spaces is a foregone conclusion…

(click for larger image)

This one is a tiny, tiny bit less deceptive than the Honda Village mailings: notice how it has the word “Auto” hidden in the return address!

The mailing inside was also deceptive.  No, actually, it was an outright lie.  It’s one of those “trade in your vehicle now!” hard sells, which informs me, “Our Records Indicate Your 2007 Honda Odyssey Has A Trade Value Between: $16,500 and $18,450″.  Funny how the Kelly Blue Book says its value is between $13,200 and $15,550.  Big difference!

We were occasionally using Herb Chambers Honda’s service department, but now I guess we’ll have to find yet another dealership when we need genuine Honda service for whatever reason.

Are there any car dealerships that don’t engage in slimy sales practices?  Discuss amongst yourselves.

Executive summary: You can save a lot of money on the stuff they carry, but the Kosher food selection is bad.

I’m going to keep updating this page with additional pricing information and any changes to the Kosher food situation, and I’d appreciate pricing updates from others, so send ‘em in if you’ve got ‘em.

A loser’s game

The condition of our economy proves the absurdity of John Stossel’s argument that gambling should be legal because, “People are responsible for the consequences of their bad habits” (“Is it your choice to gamble? You betcha!” May 14). We’re digging ourselves out of the worst recession since 1929 because people took out mortgages they couldn’t afford. It’s costing us trillions of dollars to clean up from their “bad habits.”

Whether it’s Keno, a slots hall or a casino, any gambling establishment is a blight on the community, one that hurts those who patronize it and everyone else.

- Jonathan Kamens, Brighton

Here’s what I sent them:

Gambling not a victimless vice

To the editor:

John Stossel argues that gambling should be legal because, “People are responsible for the consequences of their bad habits.”

The condition of our economy proves the absurdity of that argument. We’re digging ourselves out of the worst recession since 1929 because people took out mortgages they couldn’t afford. It’s costing us trillions of dollars to clean up from their “bad habits.”

The spa down the street from my house has a dedicated keno room. I see people who clearly cannot afford it sitting in that room gambling for hours at a time. Many of them are entirely disreputable, the kind of people who provide a market for the wall full of seedy porn magazines the spa recently added. Whether it’s a keno room, a slots hall or a casino, any gambling establishment is a blight on the community, one that hurts the people who patronize it and everyone else.

– Jonathan Kamens, Brighton

Interestingly, I got email this morning from the executive director of Stop Predatory Gambling, thanking me for my letter and describing it as “right on the mark.”  I wonder how he found out about it so quickly.