Those of you who have been reading the ongoing saga of my dissatisfaction with Citizens Bank will no doubt be pleased to hear that it is nearly at an end. Last week, my wife and I transferred our home equity line to Century Bank and opened a checking account there, and we applied for a… Read More: More Citizens Bank shenanigans »
Long-time followers of my advocacy may recall my story from years ago of attempting to get the Social Security Administration (SSA) to deal with the fact that they sent several of my kids’ social security cards to the wrong address because the software they were using to canonicalize mailing addresses was buggy. Some sleuthing on… Read More: Semaphore Corporation continues to canonicalize addresses wrong and refuses to… »
Last month, I wrote about Google’s surreal attempts to collect from me a debt I don’t actually owe, and my unsuccessful attempts to make it stop. Things have gotten much worse since then. I sent a letter (appended below) to the office of Google’s CEO over a month ago. There has been no response. Today,… Read More: Google AdWords is still staffed by poorly trained monkeys »
I recently posted about MADD’s failure, for over a year, to stop sending me junk mail. I remain somewhat appalled by what happened, but I think it’s important to give credit where credit is due. Since I sent them the complaint which I posted, they have been quite responsive, culminating with this email which I… Read More: MADD cleans up its act »
See When kids are all alone at 10,000m, published May 1 by The New Zealand Herald. The author of the article, Danielle Murray, did a remarkably good job of getting her facts right about what happened to me daughter, with the exception of saying that it happened “in June last year,” when in fact it… Read More: Daughter’s unintentional trip to Newark still occasionally in the news »
April 20, 2011 Kimberly Earle, CEO Mothers Against Drunk Driving Fax: (972) 869-2206 To whom it may concern: My efforts to get MADD to stop sending me junk mail commenced almost exactly a year ago, on April 21, 2010, with a message sent to you through your web site. I received a response the same… Read More: MADD enters the junk mail hall of shame »
I previously reported about a safety issue with a risk of collapsing ladders on the Pulaski Build-A-Bear loft bed sold by Jordan’s Furniture and other retailers. I’m sorry to say that I’ve encountered another safety issue with this same bed.
Two years ago, I told the story of US Airways essentially holding my wife and children hostage in Georgia, demanding that we pay hundreds of dollars in change fees so that they could fly home a day later than originally planned. They couldn’t fly on the original date because my wife had a serious illness… Read More: US Airways: Another awful change-fee extortion story »
I try to make a habit of giving out “tagged” email addresses to web sites when I sign up for accounts / mailing lists / whatever. For example, when creating an account at widgets.com, instead of just signing up as “jik@kamens.us”, I might sign up as “jik+widgets@kamens.us”. It ends up in the same mailbox regardless,… Read More: A study in contrasts: handling stolen email lists »
Back when I was doing my week-long Shave a Redhead for Israel fundraiser, Google’s search index was taking an unusually long time to index the fundraiser page. This was a problem because I was publicizing the fundraiser and telling people they could find it easily by searching for “Shave a Redhead for Israel”, but they… Read More: Google AdWords is staffed by poorly trained monkeys »