The caller ID was “Gorden Leslie” with the phone number 773-891-5581. Here’s a transcript of the message:

Hi, this is Patrick calling from Mitchell Communications Group. I have made numerous attempts to reach you [lie!] regarding an entry form that was filled out in your name within the last 12 to 18 months to receive a new car. [probable lie!] This will be my final attempt to notify that your name was pulled and you’re going to receive one of our top four major prizes. It would be in your best interest to give me a call back as soon as possible. The number is toll free at 1-877-279-3457 extension 243. We’re not a telemarketing agency [lie!] or a timeshare and this is not a cold call so please do not ignore this message. I’m very aware of the do not call list so I wouldn’t be calling unless you actually entered. [lie!] This is a time sensitive matter I do look forward to hearing from you. Once again congratulations my name is Patrick.

Just for kicks, I called back and was connected to a woman who identified herself as “Rhonda, your prize coordinator.”

She asked for my name and phone number. I told her that it sounded an awful lot like a scam, so to prove she was telling the truth about my filling out a contest entry form, she’d have to give me back my name if I gave her my number. She got all defensive and said it wasn’t her job to “prove” anything to me. Needless to say, this proved that it’s a scam, since a real, legitimate contest wouldn’t hesitate to prove that you’d actually entered. I decided to play along and gave her my name and phone number.

I took notes for the remainder of the call. Here are some highlights that I managed to jot down:

• She said “top four major prizes,” in contrast to “Patrick’s” four major prizes.
• She claimed that I had filled out an entry form at a “mall, sporting event or festival” 12 to 18 months ago and “the contest is now closed” and I’d been selected as a winner.
• She said the three prizes were:
  • 1st: 2010 Ford Expedition or $25,000;
  • 2nd: fly and stay holiday (she went into lots of detail about this; guess what the prize everybody wins is!); and
  • 3rd: 27″ flat-screen television.
• She said my wife and I had to go in person to find out what we’d won and sit through a 90-minute “award celebration and presentation” for the “grand opening of a new travel agency.” She claimed that the name of the travel agency was “GCI Travel”.
• The address she gave for the presentation was 800 South Main Street, Mansfield, Mass.
• No children or guests would be allowed to attend the presentation with us.
• We had to bring two forms of ID — a driver’s license and a major credit card — with us. “These are for identification purposes only and will never leave your hands.”
• She gave us a claim number, MCG534.
• She said we had to agree to let them publicize us if we won the car or we wouldn’t receive it.
• She claimed that I’d indicated on the entry form that I was married, over a certain age (I think it was 25 but don’t remember for certain) and make $60,000 per year. She said we would have to fill out another survey at the prize event and if the information didn’t match we wouldn’t receive the prize.
• She tried very hard to convince us that this wasn’t a scam. She said the point of the contest was to make us feel good about this travel agency so that maybe we’d give them our business later, although there was of course no obligation. The phrases “you don’t have to buy, sign or join anything,”, “nothing to be skeptical about,” “we’re not here to waste your time,” “just trying to show you guys a nice time,” and “no trick no hoax no scam” were all used.
• She said she was going to fax or email us a letter with confirmation of all this information and we would have to sign and bring it back with us.
• She said we could go to pick up our price tomorrow (yes, tomorrow!).
• When I told her my wife was out of the country for the next several weeks, she first asked if there was another married couple that could attend and claim the prize on our behalf, and then asked if my wife could fly back into town for the day to claim the prize and then fly back to wherever she was (really!). She said that once the Ford Expedition was won, the prize drawings would be over.
• When I told her that no, neither of those was really an option, she gave me her phone number (877-249-6405 ext. 126) and told me to call her back when my wife was back in town. She said she wasn’t going to send us the confirmation letter until then. It’s a shame; I really wanted to see it just for kicks (and to get more information about the scam).

Interesting fact: According to Google maps, one of the companies that does business at that address is “Premium Destinations Northeast.” Hmm.

I can’t find anything definitive on-line about a travel agency named “GCI Travel”.  But I think in fact they’re a timeshare company.

I filed a complaint at donotcall.gov. I’m pretty sure this is a timeshare scam, and I’m also pretty sure their phone call to me was a violation of the do-not-call law.

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”?

Remember how IsraelSims claimed that they had sent us a replacement pair of SIM card on July 27 when the ones they’d supposedly sent July 20 hadn’t arrived? They even repeated that claim to me in email on July 29, in which they mentioned “the 4 SIM cards we sent you.”

Well, the replacement pair of SIM cards still hasn’t arrived, six mail delivery days after they claim to have sent them. It appears that my suspicion was correct that rather than actually sending replacement cards, they just mailed the original set of SIM cards that they hadn’t gotten around to mailing for a week.

• Their Web site claims you can get sales answers from them by emailing sales@israelsims.com, but they don’t actually respond to sales inquiries at that address. LIE
• Their Web site claims you can get support from them by emailing support@israelsims.com, but they don’t actually respond to support inquiries at that address. LIE
• When you call after hours, their voicemail claims that if you leave a message they’ll call you back, but they don’t actually respond to voicemail messages. LIE
• Either their Web site lies about the cost of calls to the US on their SIM cards, or they lied when they told me the SIM cards sold at the airport are the same as theirs. LIE
• Their Web site claims, “All orders will be shipped within 24 to 48 hours of receiving your order.” LIE
• When I spoke to them the first time about our missing SIM cards, they said they’d look into it and call me back. They never called back. LIE
• When I spoke to them the first time about our missing SIM cards, they said they’d send us replacements via FedEx. They didn’t. LIE
• When I spoke to them the second time about our missing SIM cards, they continued to keep up the pretense that replacement cards had been sent. LIE Furthermore, they acted all surprised about the fact that their “warehouse” had “switched” from FedEx to postal mail. There is no “warehouse” — it’s a one-man business, LIE and that one man was the person who had “switched from FedEx to postal mail” (actually just mailing the order that he hadn’t bothered to mail before). LIE
• When I spoke to them the second time about our missing SIM cards, they said they’d figure out what happened and call me back. They didn’t. LIE
• Either the rate for calls to the US and Europe posted on their Web site is a LIE, or they LIEd to me when they claimed that the SIM cards at the airport are the same as the ones they sell. Or both.
• In email to me on July 29, they repeated the LIE for the third time that they had sent replacement cards which were in fact never sent.

In short, LIE LIE LIE LIE LIE LIE LIE LIE LIE LIE LIE LIE LIE LIE.

Please think twice before doing business with this company.

I first notified Apple about this vulnerability on July 23, 2010. In response, Apple claimed that parental controls are only intended for young children and that the level of security they provide is adequate for that purpose. This response is off the mark for two reasons:

1. The documentation that comes with the Mac says nothing about the controls being intended only for young children, nor does it suggest that a tech-savvy child could bypass them.
2. This response ignores the fact that the controls are also intended to keep unwanted outsiders from corresponding with children, and even if the children can’t figure out how to bypass them, the outsiders certainly can.

Apple and I have exchanged several rounds of email since their initial response. They have created an issue in their bug-tracking system, and they claim that they are taking it seriously and intend to fix it. However, they have refused to assign a CVE ID and will not give any sort of time-line for disclosure or patching.

A CVE ID is supposed to be assigned to an issue as soon as it is known to the public. The point of CVE IDs is to allow all public discussion of a vulnerability to refer to a common identifier which ties the discussion together. Since Apple is a CVE CNA, they are responsible for assigning CVE IDs to vulnerabilities in Apple software. Apple told me they won’t assign a CVE ID until they release a fix. They should have assigned a CVE ID when I asked them to do so. According to Mitre, “If the affected software vendor is a CNA, then the researcher must obtain the CVE-ID from the vendor,” which means that Apple’s refusal to issue a CVE ID has prevented me from including one in this initial disclosure.

On August 1, 2010, I reported this vulnerability to CERT. They responded, “… unfortunately, because of our current case load we will not be able to handle the coordination or disclosure,” and further instructed, “Please continue to work with the vendor directly.” I am disclosing the vulnerability (albeit not the details of how to exploit it) here because I am dissatisfied with Apple’s response and believe that their refusal to assign a CVE ID or disclose the vulnerability is unacceptable.

Getting the child’s and parent’s email addresses

As noted above, all that is necessary to take advantage of this vulnerability is for the attacker to know the addresses of the child whose whitelist s/he wishes to compromise and his/her parent.

It might seem implausible that a third party would be able to obtain a child’s and his/her parent’s email addresses while at the same time not being someone whom the parent wishes to allow to correspond with the child. Nevertheless, there are numerous scenarios in which this might occur. For example:

• An unwary child may simply reveal the information, e.g., in a chat room.
• Some Web sites intended for children actually require the child to provide their own and a parent’s addresses.
• A non-custodial parent may know the child’s and other parent’s email addresses while not being authorized to exchange email directly with the child.

Workarounds until the vulnerability is fixed

Parents utilizing Mac Mail parental controls can protect themselves against this vulnerability as follows:

1. Disable parental notification of unapproved addresses by removing your email address from the notification field for your child in the parental controls application. If you do this, then your child will need to ask you directly to add new addresses to his/her whitelist, and you will need to add them manually through the application.
2. Review your child’s whitelist in the parental controls application on a regular basis to confirm that no unrecognized addresses have been added to it.

I am a huge fan of Fresh Air. I listen to every episode. I greatly admire your interviewing skill and your obvious in-depth preparation for every interview.

Having said that, I was extremely disappointed by your interview with Lawrence Wright. I realize that you are not a hard-hitting investigative reporter and that’s not the kind of show Fresh Air is. I realize that your guests are invited onto the show with the intention of portraying them in a favorable light. In all the time I’ve been listening, I’ve never heard you shred a guest, nor would I expect to. But the other side of that coin is that if that’s the kind of show you do, then you’d better be pretty darn discriminating in who you invite, and Wright, despite his self-professed expertise and alleged objectivity, doesn’t cut it.

His reporting on the Middle East conflict, like the supposed facts (many of which are anything but) that he rattled off on your show, are obviously slanted against Israel. It is beyond me how anyone can claim to be an expert on Israel, which he professes himself to be, who so thoroughly and completely butchers the pronunciation of an Israeli town he claimed to have visited which plays a critical role in the current conflict (“seh-de-rat”? Really? Oh, my God!), as well as the name of one of the biggest daily newspapers in the country (ha-AH-retz, not ha-ah-RETZ).

On the subject of facts, just one example of an outright falsehood… Wright claimed that Hamas stopped firing rockets into Israel during the “truce.” In fact, rockets from Gaza continued to rain down on Gaza throughout the “truce.”

He also criticized Israel for not honoring the “spirit of the truce” by withholding the blockade, but did not bother to mention that Israel never asked for or agreed to the truce and said when Hamas first announced it that the only reason they were agreeing to a “truce” is because Israel had destroyed much of their terrorist infrastructure and they were going to use the “truce” to rebuild it. This is, in fact, exactly what they did, and for Israel to have eased the blockade when they new full well that any dual-purpose supplies brought into Gaza were going to be used to rebuild the terrorist infrastructure would have been simply stupid.

I cannot fail to mention Wright’s profoundly stupid comment at the end of the interview that a great step toward peace would be for Hamas to release Gilad Shalit unconditionally. He’s a clue for you and Wright: Hamas doesn’t WANT peace. There has never been any sign, not even a little one, at any time, that Hamas is interested in anything but the destruction of Israel. Why, then, should they make a peace gesture such as the absurd one he suggested?

Really, Terry, if you’re going to stick with the NPR trend of news coverage that is decidedly biased against Israel, then the least you could do is interview someone with a better claim to expertise and slightly more respect for truth than Wright.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Kamens

It all started when I decided to drop off our broken dehumidifier this afternoon at the repair guy’s house in Revere. This was already aggravating, because:

• it’s the second time it’s broken in the past two years;
• it’s been broken for months and this is the first opportunity I’ve had to be able to bring it to the repair guy;
• therefore, our basement has become oppressively humid again and the air, laundry, etc. down there have all started to smell; and
• instead of having a decent number of major repair shops under contract to do warranty repairs, all LG has is little work-out-of-their-houses shmoes in inconvenient places like Malden, Dorchester and Revere.

Having said all that, I decided that since it was 3:30 and the drive to the guy’s house in Revere would probably take about 40 minutes, I could get there, drop it off, and get back before the worst of rush hour. Hah!

On the way there, I idiotically misunderstood the Google Maps directions and turned onto 93North before the tunnel when what I was supposed to do was go through the tunnel and then get onto 1A North. I’d never done that before, and my brain was unfortunately stuck in “It can’t possibly be right that I’m supposed to go into the tunnel, because the only thing through the tunnel is the airport, right?” mode, and I knew that Revere was north of downtown, so I figured either the signage was wrong or Google Maps had simply forgotten to mention the whole 93 North thing.This was stupid.

But it wasn’t too stupid, or so I thought, because I realized my error quickly and told Google Maps to recalculate the route from 93N, and it’s just about the same distance and time than the original route it had recommended. So off I went on my merry way, dealing with Friday afternoon traffic which was not nearly as bad as full rush hour, but bad enough to cause continuous low-grade aggravation and grumbling.

Speaking of which, please let me take this opportunity to say: If you don’t know how to drive, then get off the roads, you idiots. This means you, the old guy who couldn’t see over the steering wheel driving 20 MPH below the speed limit with nobody in front of you. This means you, the guy in the P.T. Cruiser who for some inexplicable reason was driving 30 MPH below the speed limit on a straight, open road. And these were hardly the only morons I encountered on the road during today’s drive. Sheesh.

Did I mention that during this entire drive, my Blackberry Bold, which although it’s only a little more than a year old has decided that half of its convenience buttons no longer need to work every time they’re pressed, kept hanging, arbitrarily turning off it’s display for no discernable reason, etc.? Well, yeah, that was going on too and contributing to the rising aggravation level in the vehicle.

Did I also forget to mention that the one and only way in which the Blackberry is inferior to my old Windows Mobile phone is that on the Windows Mobile phone, my GPS location updated smooth and continuously in Google Maps, whereas on the Blackberry, it seems to only update when it feels like it, which is sometimes after the turn you were watching for on the map because you don’t know the area well enough to be sure of where it is on the street? The significance of this will become obvious in a moment.

Aside from the morons, the drive went OK until I’d just about reached my destination:

My phone picked just this moment to freak out and stop updating my GPS location, so I missed the turn. By this point, of course, I was screaming at the GPS, screaming at the traffic, screaming at my radio…

Oh, wait, I forgot to mention the radio. I was listening to podcasts on my Blackberry through an “iTrip”, which is one of those little FM transmitters that plugs into your car power jack (If I call it a “lighter jack” I’m an old fogey, right?) and your mobile device of choice and broadcasts to your car radio. You need to use one of these devices if your the idiots who manufactured your car declined to include an auxiliary input jack, though why any car manufacturer would do that in this day and age is completely incomprehensible. And, alas, the FM airwaves in and around Boston are so saturated that it’s impossible to find a frequency to set the thing to that doesn’t experience interference, which means that at critical points in the podcast, you get static, clicks, or just silence for seconds at a time. So yeah, I was screaming at the radio too.

Now, you might think that missing my turn would have been no big deal, right? Just make a U-turn at the next opportunity and go back, right? Except by the time I realized I had missed the turn, I was already over the General Edwards Bridge, and that’s when things got real interesting, in a rather morbid way.

Suddenly, there were a lot of cars on the road not moving, and a plume of black smoke came into view. It turns out that these people…

had just carried an unconscious driver to the side of the road after extracting her from this:

I wasn’t going to be turning around and going back in the other direction for quite a while.

The driver of the car and truck involved in that accident were obviously having a much worse day than I was, perhaps even fatally so, so now in addition to all the aggravation coursing through my veins, I had to also deal with the self-loathing resulting from being conscious of the fact that although clearly some perspective on my silly little suffering was called for, I just couldn’t seem to muster up any. I was still less concerned about the accident victims than about my own wasted time driving around in circles. I suck.

In any case, because of this awful accident which failed to activate the perspective center in my brain, instead of being able to get to the repair guy’s house like this:

I had to get there like this:

By now we were well into rush hour, and it took about 45 minutes to drive the 8 miles.

Alas, the location at which Google Maps had placed the house I was looking for was just wrong enough to cause me to drive past it and then not be able to turn around because of all the traffic on Lynnway backed up trying to get onto the bridge, which was by now backed up for miles. So I had to park 3 blocks away from the house, walk back to the house to confirm that it was the right place, walk back to the minivan, get out the dehumidifier, and roll it three blocks back to the house.

On the way there, one of its casters fell off. Really. I couldn’t make this stuff up.

Ah, but here, to my amazement, things started to go right. My first rummaging through the van in an effort to find something I could use to hammer the wheel back on was a failure (no, I don’t carry a toolkit in my vehicle; maybe I should). But just as I was resigning myself to either carrying a heavy dehumidifier for three blocks or pushing it on three wheels, it occured to me that perhaps the handle of the flat-tire jack might be usable as a hammer. Lo and behold, it was, and the wheel was successfully restored to its former glory.

A block later, one of the casters fell apart. But surprise, surprise, I was able to put it back together.

Two blocks later, the dehumidifier was successfully delivered to its destination, and I walked back to the van, got in, and drove home without further incident, if you don’t count the ten minutes of bumper-to-bumper traffic in between the 1A South entrance onto 90 West and the 93 South exit from it.

In the “icing on the cake” department, when I got home, I discovered that the washing machine had decided not to do a proper spin cycle on the load of laundry I’d started before I left. And when I clicked the “Publish” button on this blog posting, I discovered that my Internet connection had just gone down (temporarily, thank God).

So, that was my day. How was yours?

According to my credit card’s Web site, IsraelSims did, indeed, refund my payment to them on July 28.

Although I would like to believe they did it before I sent them my nasty email, there’s no way of knowing, since (a) that’s the day I emailed them, (b) they did not notify me that they had issued a refund until a day later, and (c) the bank only has the date of the transaction, not the time.

I leave it as an exercise for the reader to decide whether they refunded my money because they “felt so bad about what happened,” as they claimed, or because they received the nasty email in which I demanded that they do so, or because they realized that it was better to refund my money up-front then rather than forcing me to initiate a charge-back. Charge-backs cost the merchant an extra fee and cause their merchant account rates to go up if they have too many of them.

I also leave it as an exercise to the reader to decide whether I should give a rat’s ass whether they “felt so bad about what happened,” when they apparently didn’t feel bad enough to return my phone calls or email messages or FedEx the replacement cards on July 27 as they said they were going to.

As you can see, although the cards were sent in a regular business envelope, the shipping label is on the envelope sideways. According to postal service regulations, this makes the envelope “nonmachinable,” which means that it has to be processed by hand every step of the way.

The label says that IsraelSims uses endicia.com for their postage printing. Endicia supports printing the recipient address, return address and postage directly onto an envelope in the proper orientation, as opposed to printing onto a label as IsraelSims did. In short, IsraelSims could be mailing out SIM cards as machinable letters, which would reduce the postage cost and speed up delivery time, but instead they are sending them out as parcels.

One would think that a company whose entire business involves mailing things to people, often with hard deadlines, would know this.

As I noted in a comment on yesterday’s posting, the author of Frommer’s Israel has informed me that he has heard stories about IsraelSims similar to mine from a number of people, and he is planning on removing the reference to IsraelSims from the next edition of the book. IsraelSims is going to lose a lot of customers over that!

I’m not sure there’s any point in trying to guess what the heck happened with IsraelSims, but my current theory is that they didn’t have enough stock to satisfy all their orders immediately, so they delayed shipping orders to nearby towns, assuming they’d take less time to deliver. Then they either continued to be low on stock and thus continued to delay nearby orders, or they simply forgot to go back and send them.

Do you know the really sad part…….we felt so bad about what happened that we refunded you fully yesterday without waiting for you to send back the 4 SIM cards we sent you.

No apology for ignoring two email messages and a voicemail message. No apology for promising on two separate occasions that they would call me back and then not doing so. No apology for saying they were going to send a replacement via FedEx and then (supposedly) sending it via the postal service instead. No attempt to explain why a package supposedly shipped on July 20 did not show up at a postal service facility until July 27. No attempt to explain why they were unable to provide a correct  tracking number for the replacement package they supposedly sent.

These guys really need to get some help.

(It remains to be seen whether they’re telling the truth about refunding my money yesterday. If they really did, then it’ll take another day or two for it to show up on the credit card’s Web site. I suppose it’s possible that they’re telling the truth about this, but given that they’ve lied about so much else, I’m not holding my breath.)

I ordered two SIM cards for about $150 from IsraelSims on July 19. There was plenty of time for the cards to arrive before my departure on July 28. Their Web site says orders are shipped within 48 hours, and first-class mail takes three days or less to anywhere in the continental United States. Not to mention the fact that IsraelSims is located in Worcester, MA, only a couple of hours from my home in Brighton, so delivery shouldn’t have taken more than a day.

I received email from IsraelSims at 4:10am July 20 claiming that my order had been “completed.” Oddly, no tracking information was provided.

On July 26, when the SIM cards had not yet arrived, I called IsraelSims and left an urgent voicemail message. I also sent them email. Both were ignored. It is worth noting that they had also ignored an earlier email, which I sent them to inquire about exact rates before ordering the cards. In retrospect, I should have recognized this as a danger sign.

On July 27, a day before our trip, when the SIM cards again were not in the day’s mail delivery, I called them again. This time I got to speak to a person, who told me that his computer said the cards were shipped on July 20 and he just couldn’t explain why they hadn’t arrived yet. He said he would see if there was still enough time to send us replacements via FedEx and promised to call me and let me know the result. He never called.

On July 28, or day of departure, when the SIM cards again were not in the day’s mail delivery, I called and spoke to the same guy again. After typing on his computer briefly, he informed me that although he had told “the warehouse” to ship the replacement cards via FedEx, they had overridden his instructions, since Brighton is near enough to Worcester that mail delivery should only take a day, and sent them via mail instead.

I was at the post office trying to find out if they could help me locate the missing packages when this conversation occurred, so I asked the IsraelSims guy for the tracking numbers of both packages — the original one supposedly sent on July 20, and the replacement supposedly sent on July 27 — for the clerk at the post office to look up in their computer.

Here’s what USPS.com has to say about the July 20 tracking number:

• Processed through Sort Facility, July 27, 2010, 10:31 pm, SHREWSBURY, MA 01546
• Electronic Shipping Info Received, July 20, 2010

In other words, IsraelSims printed the label for my SIM cards on July 20 but didn’t drop them off at the post office until July 27.

The other tracking number he gave me, for the replacement package supposedly sent July 27, was for a package destined for Greenwich, CT. When I pointed this out to the IsraelSims guy, he said he “must have copied it from the wrong slip of paper.” He then said that “nothing makes sense here” and told me he would have to figure out what happened and call me back. It’s an hour later, and he hasn’t called.

In other words, IsraelSims didn’t actually send the replacement they claimed they were going to send. What they did instead was to rush my original package to the post office last night after my phone call, praying that it would arrive today, and then lied to me about it.

Others have had similar trouble with this company.

In short, IsraelSims:

• ignores email and phone calls from customers;
• lies about when orders are shipped;
• pays for tracking for orders sent via first-class mail but does not provide tracking numbers to customers so that they can verify when orders are actually shipped (if they did, then I would have known all the way back on July 21 that there was a problem);
• tells customers they will call them back to get rid of them and then doesn’t call;
• tells customers they will ship replacements via FedEx and then doesn’t;
• lies to customers about sending replacement packages; and
• tells bald-faced lies convincingly and without missing a beat to customers who call on the phone with problems.

Here’s the kicker… If you go to the Cellcom booth at the airport in Israel and buy a SIM card there, it’s exactly the same SIM card that IsraelSims sells, and it’s slightly cheaper because you’re getting it directly from Cellcom rather than through a reseller.

The only reason we ordered the SIM cards in advance rather than buying them at the airport was so that we wouldn’t have to deal with the hassle of getting to the Cellcom booth, standing in line, buying the cards, etc. with kids and luggage in tow. It was for the sake of convenience. Does what happened to us seem convenient to you?

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!)