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Archive for the ‘Boston’ Category

Snow shoveling problems in Brighton Center

Saturday, January 22nd, 2011

A walk of less than 0.4 miles on one side of the street in Brighton Center, showing 20 violations of the City of Boston’s snow shoveling regulations, many of which are the fault of the city itself. Here are the violations, with time stamps in the video:

0:36 437 Washington St. – curb cut (Foster St.)
1:05 427 Washington St. – curb cut, sidewalk (Foster St.
2:44 423 Washington St. – curb cut, crosswalk (Parsons St.)
3:44 419 Washington St. – curb cut, crosswalk (Washington St.)
3:59 414 Washington St. – curb cut, crosswalk (Washington St.)
5:24 389 Washington St. – curb cut, crosswalk (Leicester St.)
5:38 385 Washington St. – curb cut, crosswalk (Leicester St.)
5:50 385 Washington St. – curb cut, crosswalk (Washington St.)
5:50 388 Washington St. – curb cut, crosswalk (Washington St.)
6:00 383 Washington St. – sidewalk
7:06 435 Market St. – curb cut
7:16 Market St. & Washington St. – public square completely unshoveled
7:38 362 Washington St. – curb cut, crosswalk (Washington St.)
9:16 323 Washington St. – curb cut, crosswalk (Waldo Ter.)
10:15 Wirt St. & Washington St. – public square completely unshoveled (Washington St., next to public parking lot)
11:06 Wirt St. & Washington St. – curb cut, crosswalk (Washington St., in front of police station)
11:10 Wirt St. & Washington St. – pedestrian island completely unshoveled (Washington St., in front of police station)
11:56 Washington St. & Cambridge St. – curb cut, crosswalk (Washington St., in front of police station)
12:05 Washington St. & Cambridge St. – pedestrian island completely unshoveled (Washington St., in front of police station)
12:15 736 Cambridge St. – curb cut, crosswalk (Cambridge St.)

Tags: ADA, snow, snow shoveling
Posted in Boston, Government activism | 7 Comments »

Sounds like theft to me

Monday, January 10th, 2011

Letter I sent to the Herald this morning:

To the editor:

Wellesley Parking Clerk Bonita Legassie dispatched a parking attendant with a handheld computer Legassie knew was broken (“Driver finds survey ticket a wrong turn”, Jan.10). The broken handheld issued parking citations which Legassie knew were bogus. Legassie did nothing to dismiss the bogus citations, even though handling problems like this is her job. Even now, when the problem has been discovered by the public and reported in the newspaper, Legassie hasn’t dismissed the bogus citations, notified the victims, and refunded those who’ve already paid them.

Last time I checked, knowingly taking people’s property on false pretenses is criminal theft. Is the district attorney investigating? Is the Board of Selectmen looking for a new parking clerk?

Jonathan Kamens
Brighton

Tags: parking tickets, Wellesley
Posted in Boston, Government activism | No Comments »

Herald letter to the editor about Madoff / Picard

Monday, December 27th, 2010

Here’s the letter I originally sent to the Boston Herald, with mark-up (strikeout for removed text, green for added) showing what they actually printed today:

To the editor:

It is infuriating to see rich people, who can afford to give back their imaginary “profits” from Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, whining about the actions of Irving Picard, the trustee for Bernie Madoff’s defunct firm.

As the Herald noted, Picard isn’t suing people who can’t afford to give the money back. In contrast, many of the victims for whom Picard is trying to recover assets were literally impoverished by Madoff.

Any profits withdrawn by Madoff’s “investors” were fraudulent. As the trustee for Madoff’s defunct firm, Picard is required by law to do everything in his power to recover those profits to help other victims. Blaming Picard for what he is doing is as absurd as blaming the police for recovering a stolen car and returning it to its rightful owner.

Picard is even permitted to sue investors for more than just their profit if they knew or should have known that it was a scam. Plenty of the people Picard is suing are sufficiently savvy that they should have known something was fishy. Rather than complaining, they should be happy that they, unlike most of the victims, got back their initial stake, and that Picard isn’t suing them for more.

Jonathan Kamens
Brighton

My wife would say that they took out the last paragraph because I tried to make two points in my letter instead of just one, and removing the second point makes the first one stronger. I suppose she’s right. But I can’t fathom why they added the extra “Bernie” in the first paragraph.

Tags: Bernie Madoff, Boston Herald, Irving Picard, Ponzi scheme
Posted in Boston, Politics | No Comments »

This is why your Comcast bill is so high

Thursday, December 23rd, 2010

In the last six months I have received no less than 16 promotional mailings from Comcast, many of them only a few days apart.

I have tried repeatedly to get them to stop sending me these mailings, to no avail. I filed a complaint about it with the Better Business Bureau; not only did Comcast fail to respond to the complaint, the BBB has failed to respond to multiple inquiries from me about its status (way to go, BBB!).

I live in an area with a heavy student population, so I could understand several mailings per year at the times when students tend to move in and move out. But 16 mailings in six months just doesn’t fit that profile.

Comcast isn’t a monopoly in very many places anymore. Even if they’re the only cable company in an area (and that’s not always true, e.g., I also have access to RCN service), there’s always satellite TV, FiOS, ADSL for Internet, etc. The odds are that anybody who hasn’t taken Comcast up on their offer after receiving a few promotions in the mail isn’t going to because they already have another service they’re satisfied with.

In short, the continuous stream of promotional mailings from Comcast simply makes no sense, and anybody who’s already a Comcast customer is paying for it in the form of higher fees.

Tags: Comcast
Posted in Boston, Consumer activism | No Comments »

National Grid gets 66.666% confused with 99.999%

Monday, December 6th, 2010

You’ve probably heard the expression “five nine reliability,” which is shorthand for saying that a product, Web site, service, application, or whatever is fully functional 99.999% of the time, the equivalent of less than six minutes of downtime per year.

Most Web sites don’t need to achieve that level of reliability. However, when you’re in the business of critical infrastructure, e.g., the natural gas that people use to cook their food and heat their houses in the winter, you had better be aiming for a pretty serious uptime target.

National Grid apparently thinks otherwise. When I contacted them to find out why there have been several incidents recently when I was unable to view or pay my bill online, here’s how they responded:

Our system goes down every night between 10:30 PM and 6:30 AM for processing. During this time you cannot view bills or take care of other processes for your account like payments or paperless billing. Please try going online during the daytime to view the bill.

In other words, their Web site has planned downtime, let alone unplanned downtime, for a third of every day, so their maximum possible uptime, assuming no other outages ever occur (which, alas, is not the case), is 66.666%. That’s an awful uptime ratio. Really, really awful.

National Grid ought to fire whoever thought it was reasonable for their Web site to be down for eight hours out of every day, not to mention whoever thought it was necessary for their Web site to be down for eight hours out of every day.

Tags: National Grid
Posted in Boston, Computers, Consumer activism, Internet, Web | 9 Comments »

Now it’s National Grid’s turn to be incapable of running a Web site

Wednesday, December 1st, 2010

Apparently it’s “big companies that can’t keep their Web sites up in the middle of the day” week. Yesterday, Citizens Bank online banking was down for over two hours. Today, National Grid’s main US Web site and online account management site are both down:

(more…)

Tags: National Grid
Posted in Boston, Computers, Consumer activism, Internet, Web | 5 Comments »

Citizens Bank FAIL

Tuesday, November 30th, 2010

At 9:45am on a weekday:

Tags: Citizens Bank
Posted in Boston, Computers, Consumer activism, Internet, Web | 5 Comments »

Bye Bye, Citizens Bank

Monday, November 8th, 2010

Last July, when we were preparing for our trip to Israel, I called Citizens Bank and asked this simple question: “What is the least expensive way for me to get Israeli sheqels out of my Citizens Bank checking account?”

In response, the customer service representative told me the following:

The fee for withdrawing currency from an ATM in Israel is 2%.
The fee for exchanging currency at a bank branch is waived because I am a “Citizens Gold” customer, so this is cheaper than using an ATM in Israel.

Unfortunately all of this is incorrect:

The fee for withdrawing currency from an ATM in Israel is actually 3%, not 2%.
While the “exchange fee” is indeed waived for Citizens Gold customers, the bank charges a hidden fee by marking up the exchange rate by around 10%, so in fact exchanging currency at a bank branch costs 7% more, and is thus 233% more expensive, than using an ATM.

(more…)

Tags: Citizens Bank, foreign currency exchange
Posted in Boston, Consumer activism, Fraud, Small claims court | No Comments »

Massachusetts 2010 ballot questions: no, no, and no

Tuesday, October 26th, 2010

A week from today is election day. In Massachusetts, there will be three statewide ballot questions in addition to candidate elections. These ballot questions are important and I strongly urge all registered voters in Massachusetts (if you’re not registered, register before the next election!) to visit the polls and weigh in. I recommend voting no on all three ballot questions.

(more…)

Posted in Boston, Government activism, Politics | 14 Comments »

More Citizens Bank idiocy

Sunday, September 19th, 2010

I have to confess that at this point it seems like posting examples of Citizens Bank incompetency is sort of like beating a dead horse, but here’s one that might amuse a few people. (Stay tuned for a future post about the >$300 in fees that Citizens Bank stole from me, which I’m holding off on posting about until it is resolved.)

The last time I logged into the Citizens Bank online banking Web site, I saw this message:

We’ve made some improvements to Online Banking! The new “Manage Features” tab provides convenient access to services which work along with your accounts, including Goal Savings, Rewards, Overdraft Services, and Protection Services. See how you can get the most out of your accounts!

Unfortunately, there was no “Manage Features” tab that I could find anywhere on the Web site. I sent them this message through the site:

My home page says “[above message elided]” but there is no “Manage Features” tab that I can find anywhere on the site.

Two days later, I got this response:

Thank you for your recent email regarding a Manage Features tab. Please provide additional information where you are viewing this reference; please provide page. Unfortunately we are unable to assist you further with this issue with the information provided, as we are unable to locate the page you are viewing. You may choose to call when you are on the website so we can navigate along with you. We regret any inconvenience this may have caused.

Which part of “home page” did they not understand? Which part of “It’s your broken Web site that displayed this stupid message, so why don’t you go bother the people who create and post these messages instead of wasting my time?” did they not understand?

*sigh*

Tags: Citizens Bank
Posted in Boston, Computers, Consumer activism, Internet, Web | 1 Comment »

Something better to do

Archive for the ‘Boston’ Category

Snow shoveling problems in Brighton Center

Sounds like theft to me

Herald letter to the editor about Madoff / Picard

This is why your Comcast bill is so high

National Grid gets 66.666% confused with 99.999%

Now it’s National Grid’s turn to be incapable of running a Web site

Citizens Bank FAIL

Bye Bye, Citizens Bank

Massachusetts 2010 ballot questions: no, no, and no

(more…)

More Citizens Bank idiocy

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