I recently booked a stay at a motel through hotels.com. The night I checked in, hotels.com sent me email asking me to rate my check-in (literally, the subject line said, “How was your check-in, Jonathan K?” and the body of the email said “How’s your trip going, Jonathan Kamens? Rate your check-in experience.”). Thinking that’s… Read More »
We’ve been smelling a faint gas smell in our house for several months. It was sufficiently faint and intermittent that we didn’t feel too much urgency to get it fixed, but my wife finally asked me last week to call the gas company (National Grid) and ask them what to do about it, which I… Read More »
My bank was recently acquired. The migration of accounts into the new bank’s infrastructure happened over the weekend, and this morning at 8am, we were officially able to log into the new online banking site. We were told that any direct deposits or debits we had configured with the old bank’s routing number would automatically… Read More »
On October 15, 2021, I received this email from Hotels.com: Those of you who’ve been reading my blog know that I‘ve been demanding this since June. Even emailing the president of the company didn’t help. After that failed, I filed a complaint with the New York Attorney General’s office. That, too, was fruitless. They forwarded… Read More »
UPDATE [October 14, 2021]: Vanguard has confirmed to me that this issue was caused by a bug in a software update they released to their web site and then fixed a day later. See the end of this blog posting for their response. Executive summary Some time between 6:00am US/Eastern on September 14, 2021 and… Read More »
[October 17, 2021 update here.] July 8, 2021 Adam Jay, PresidentHotels.com5400 LBJ Freeway, Suite 500Dallas, TX 75240 Dear Mr. Jay, On May 5, 2021, I reserved a room through hotels.com for June 20-22 at the Washington Square Hotel in New York City. My confirmation number was [elided]. On June 22, I learned that NYC Mayor… Read More »
Great news, y'all. You get two "Why is @Amtrak service so terrible?" stories in one day! How exciting! (See the last installment at https://twitter.com/jikamens/status/1407335005450342403) #TrainTwitter 1/ I'm taking the Acela home tonight, so I figured hey, what the heck, I'll use one of my upgrade coupons to hop into first class and enjoy unbridled Acela… Read More »
It's time for my next installment of "Why is @Amtrak service so terrible? It doesn't need to be this way." Check out the last chapter at https://twitter.com/jikamens/status/1217620947781541889. Today's topic: how to make a pre-trip Covid-19 check form as difficult as possible to fill out. #TrainTwitter 1/ I got a notification on my phone that I… Read More »
I recently received a shipment of cat food from Petco which, as far as I know, I had not ordered. I did have a “repeat delivery” order scheduled for that variety of cat food, but usually when Petco is about to send you a repeat delivery order they notify you by email to give you… Read More »
Dear sales representative who wants me to buy your company’s products, If I’ve emailed you a link to this blog posting, it’s probably because you’ve sent me multiple unsolicited sales emails. Welcome to the club of vendors from whom I’m unlikely to ever purchase anything! No unsolicited sales email I have ever received from a… Read More »