January 26, 2010 John Holiver, President St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center 736 Cambridge Street Brighton, MA 02135 Dear Mr. Holiver, My wife, A… Kamens, was treated in your emergency room (ER) early in the morning on Sunday, January 17. The doctor who treated her told her to seek follow-up care with her primary care physician (PCP),… Read More: St. Elizabeth’s Hospital (Boston) ER: wait 0 minutes to be… »
[You can read the whole series of Honda Village postings here.] January 22, 2010 Ray Ciccolo Village Automotive Group 75 North Beacon Street Allston, MA 02134-1912 Dear Mr. Ciccolo, Once again, I find myself sending you a M.G.L. Chapter 93a letter because of Honda Village’s deceptive trade practices. In June 2009, Honda Village started sending… Read More: Honda Village is still at it; let’s see if the… »
I first asked Frank Shaw at Vanguard Realty in Brighton, MA to stop sending me junk mail in January 2008, through a contact form on his Web site. He ignored me. More junk mail arrived in late March, so I asked him again, this time using both the form and a phone call. He sent… Read More: Frank Shaw / Vanguard Realty: Another junk-mailing Realtor »
I recently joined Zipcar. I have been incredibly impressed in all of my dealings with them. Some examples… Like just about every other company nowadays, Zipcar has a form on their Web site you can use to send them a message. However, unlike most other companies, they also publish an actual email address you can… Read More: Zipcar! w00t! »
As I’ve discussed at length, I recently switched from Comcast internet & phone to RCN + Vonage because of dissatisfaction with Comcast’s business model (i.e., rip customers off at every opportunity), pricing (i.e., not at all competitive) and customer support (i.e., awful). I thought this afterthought might be amusing to some… When the RCN installers… Read More: Comcast Tech: “Comcast already disconnected? But I’ve got to disconnect… »
Recently, I wrote about trying to figure out what to do about my gutters. Ned Stevens says three of them needed to be replaced at a cost of $600. New England Gutter Kings says that they can be repaired for only $400, and for $1,360 I could install gutter covers that will be warrantied against… Read More: Gutters and gutter covers — a third opinion »
I’ve just encountered a new (at least for me) scam in the ongoing quest by retailers and manufacturers to make rebates more and more onerous to apply for and therefore less likely to cost them any money. While applying on-line for a $10 rebate on an ASUS motherboard I purchased recently at Micro Center, I… Read More: New scam: pay a usurious fee to get your rebate… »
I’m hoping that someone out there who knows more than I about rain gutters, who has done work on their own gutters similar to what I’m considering, or who has used one of the companies I’m considering, will be able to provide some helpful insight and advice… We use Ned Stevens (NS) to clean our… Read More: Advice needed: What to do about our gutters? »
I’ve just sent the following letter, with minor variations, to Sen. Kerry, Rep. Capuano, State Sen. Tolman, State Rep. Honan, and Martha Coakley (who will almost certainly soon be Sen. Coakley). If you’re as fed up as I am with this state of affairs (the incident described below is not the first time we’ve been… Read More: ER copayments put lives at risk »
Today, I received a commercial email message from Sears Home Services, a.k.a., Sears Holdings Corporation. They got my email address when I made a service appointment through their Web site, which I subsequently canceled when it became clear that they were going to charge me more than a local repair man. The email message contained… Read More: Sears violates CAN-SPAM act »