Following up on my previous blog posting, I just sent this letter to The Home Depot (pay special attention to the part I’ve emphasized in red): October 2, 2009 Store Manager The Home Depot 615 Arsenel Street Watertown, MA 02471 To whom it may concern: This letter concerns a purchase whose receipt bar code is… Read More »
A few days ago, I went to Home Depot to buy a big roll of outdoor carpet — 12′ x 20′ — for our back yard. After rolling and cutting the carpet and wrapping it in cellophane, one of the two sales associates assisting in this endeavor whipped out a calculator, punched in a few… Read More »
I haven’t seen this posted anywhere else… I received in the mail today replacement Discover Cards for my wife and me. Our cards were not due to expire for quite a while. They were attached to a special-purpose mailing sleeve, not the generic sleeve they usually use when mailing out new cards. Some highlights of… Read More »
In a letter to the editor in the September 21 edition of the Boston Herald, one Christine Giroux wrote: At the core of the health care controversy is the question of whether health care is a basic right held by every American citizen… We all need food, clothing and shelter. Are these basic rights too?… Read More »
From October 6 to October 9, Sheraton will be giving customers the opportunity to win a free overnight stay at one of 86 recently renovated Sheraton hotels across the United States and Canada. The free overnight stays will be on a single night, Friday, October 23. By only allowing the free overnight stays on a… Read More »
As I wrote earlier today, I just changed my password on over 300 Web sites. In the process, I encountered a large number of sites which simply don’t know how to do password security properly. Some of these sites are operated by major corporations which are entrusted by their users with confidential and sensitive personal… Read More »
My blog postings about the DMA (initial and followup) got picked up at The Consumerist and got over 5,200 views, which is a respectable take, but not nearly as good as when Continental lost my daughter :-). You will also find on The Consumerist a rebuttal from the DMA which doesn’t actually respond substantively to… Read More »
Well, she made it sound like I’m the only King Richard’s Faire patron who ever complained about it, said nothing about the fact that more importantly than the Kosher thing, the Faire’s policies discriminate painfully (literally) against people with medical conditions, let stand unchallenged a statement from the owner of the Faire that her policies… Read More »
Earlier today, I wrote about the many ways in which the DMA’s MPS Web site is broken and about the fact that the people who run the site don’t really seem to care all that much. I forwarded a link to my article to the DMA’s consumer affairs email address. To their credit, they responded… Read More »
Since 1971, the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) has offered a service called the Mail Preference Service (MPS). The alleged purpose of the MPS is to allow consumers to register which kinds of direct marketing mail they want, or to opt out completely. DMA members are then supposed to scrub their mailing lists against the MPS… Read More »