Category Archives: Consumer activism

CrashPlan jumps the shark

I owe a lot of people an apology. For about the last five years, I’ve been a major cheerleader for the “CrashPlan for Home” backup service. Many times, I’ve been asked directly about what computer backup service I recommend or stumbled across a discussion of that question, and many times, I’ve unreservedly recommended CrashPlan. Their… Read More »

Dear Microsoft, please stop stonewalling me and fix my broken Skype subscription

I sent the following letter via certified mail this morning: May 23, 2017 Bradford L. Smith, President Microsoft Corporation One Microsoft Way Redmond, WA 98052-6399 Dear Mr. Smith, I have been trying to get an Office 365 / Skype issue resolved for over two and a half months. Your customer support representatives have alternated between… Read More »

How to delete your LiveJournal account

LiveJournal recently changed their Terms of Service. Many people are unwilling to accept the new Terms of Service. Some people even find them so unacceptable that they want to delete their LiveJournal accounts. The only way to delete one’s LiveJournal account is via the Account Status page. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to access that page without… Read More »

Intuit / TurboTax acts slimy and/or incompetent yet again

According to both the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the IRS, my daughter, who has barely any income, should be able to e-file both her federal and state taxes for free using TurboTax online, thanks to the “FreeFile Alliance.” We tried filing her taxes through the TurboTax Android app. It didn’t offer her the option of free… Read More »

GameStop does not deserve your business

GameStop doesn’t know how to run a working web site that is capable of taking people’s money, and doesn’t know how to provide decent customer service when people run into problems because of their broken web site that won’t take people’s money. Don’t patronized GameStop; they don’t deserve your money.

Limitations on the U.S. Postal Service “Prohibitory Order” for junk-mail prevention

If you’re anti-junk-mail (the paper stuff, not email spam) like I am, then you may have seen people recommend using a a U.S. Postal Service Prohibitory Order to stop junk mail from a particular sender when nothing else works. In a nutshell, you fill out a form telling the Postal Service that you consider the… Read More »