This is just what it says – a first-world rant. There are so many other problems in the world to worry about, but just this morning I encountered it again, and it made me realize that it’s been a burr under my saddle since the days of Windows 1.0 (and possibly even earlier, since DOS-based programs may have had earlier versions of the same thing.
So today, I just need to “reeeeee into the void,” as we say at Imgur, and then I can put the annoyance to bed and not think about it any longer.
I’m talking about the Progress Bar… you know, “a graphical user interface element that shows the progression of a task, such as a download, file transfer, or installation. It may also include a textual representation of the progress percentage.”
Like this:
Sometimes it even gives you the percent of the task completed as a number, and the better ones give you an idea of how much time is left for completion.
The idea of this is to show the user how much of the task has been done, so they have an idea of how long they have to wait, or whether they can do something else in the meantime, or go out for coffee, or whatever.
Sometimes, however, a process has several parts, and some designers like to show the completion of individual steps; there is debate out there among software designers as to whether it’s better to have one progress bar or two, like this:
Either way, really, is fine with me, as long as I have an idea of what the total job completion percentage is like.
But what really torques my cork is when a single progress bar goes all the way to the end, and then goes back to the beginning and repeats… over, and over, and over, and over again in the case of complex packages, giving the poor user absolutely no idea of when the flaming job will be done!
Initializing installation
Deleting Old Files
Extracting zip files
Installing…
Installing…
Installing…
Adding registry entries
Finishing up…
And that’s just an example. I’ve seen even more complex processes, with that blistering progress bar starting over each time, and no indication of how much is left to do!
(Image gacked from a Kaspersky website)
So the end of my rant is more of a plea than anything else: If you’re a software developer, please don’t do this! The best option is one progress bar, showing the percentage of the total job that’s complete, and (if possible), how much time is left for completion. Most users don’t care about how many steps there are, or what the installation is doing… they just want it done!
Thank you for coming to my TED talk. I will not be taking question.
I really, really need to stop ordering things from Facebook-promoted ads. I’ve written previously and copiously about the nature of promoted posts on Facebook, and thought I had learned my lesson; some of these things are pretty enticing, though. Well, shame on me.
But as a word to the wiser-than-I, my latest escapade with a Chinese merchant, one who – not unlike most of them – have all the ethics of a starving honey badger.
This one of many Amazon listings for the item we ordered, although we bought from a company named “blueorxy” – clearly a randomly-generated name. They’re still out there, and I would trust them as far as I could throw a Steinway piano. As soon as we ordered, we started getting notifications from a supposed tracking company; the notifications ended on December 10, and from then nothing was heard.
The package finally appeared on 15 January, with the following label:
The label shows clearly that it was shipped directly from China. The whole series of notifications from “shipping@24hservice.vip” was a bunch of computer-generated nonsense. We paid nearly $40.00 for a cheaply-made, cheaply painted resin piece of garbage that isn’t worth $3.95.
When I tried complaining about the quality and shipping deception, I got this from their auto-bot (no hope of contacting a real person):
～Uh-oh. I sincerely apologize for giving you an unpleasant shopping experience. Please trust your first choice. This product has a high sales volume in our company and has several advantages:
First: The price is high cost-performance. Second: Customer evaluation is good. Third: The buyback rate is high. So it is a better choice to keep it.
Sorry you are not satisfied with our products. Will it be possible to give others as a gift? They are superior in quality and reasonable in price. They have been in top-seller in our company for many years. Under the circumstance that we did not send the wrong goods, we cannot provide you with return and exchange services. If you need to return or exchange, we need to report and verify your problem to the after-sales department, which will take a long time.
Therefore, we recommend that you keep this item.
Thank you for your understanding. Yours sincerely, Customer Service Team
In other words, “We’ve got your money, sucks to be you.”
The level of dishonesty and deception from Chinese vendors is breathtaking in scope. Learn from my mistakes, and stay away from all Facebook promoted posts or anything that looks like it’s sold directly from China. Amazon, too, is a nest of fraud and trickery, thanks to thousands of illegitimate sellers, and Amazon is not doing anywhere near enough to combat the problem.
On September 18, the oven glass in my Frigidaire range exploded with no provocation. The oven had not been used in days; just out of the blue, boom! – glass all over the floor. Apparently this is not uncommon, but Frigidaire typically calls these occurrences “customer damage” and declines to do anything about it.
So being a do-it-yourself type of guy, on 9/18 I went to Sears Parts Direct online and ordered a new sheet of glass for the oven. I got a text message saying “thanks for your order, it will be delivered on 10/6.”
Three weeks without an oven? That’s won’t do, especially with a wife who loves to bake.
So on September 19th, the following day at 10:52 AM, I called Sears Parts Direct and told them I wanted to cancel the order. The agent (in an practically incomprehensible accent) asked me a thousand questions, demonstrated that he didn’t really understand what part I was referring to, and then assured me that the part would be shipped in 24 hours and would arrive in 3 days. OK, fine, I won’t cancel the order.
Guess what? I get another text message saying “thanks for your order, it will be delivered on 10/6.”
At 1:05 PM, I call Sears Parts Direct again. I explained the situation, and this agent told me, “I see in the notes that you are concerned about delivery time. No action has been taken on this request. We cannot promise 24-hour shipping. Your delivery date is still October 6th.” The previous agent simply lied through his teeth to keep me from cancelling the order. So I told this guy to cancel the order, I would find a part somewhere else. Fine. Order cancelled. Check in 5 days to make sure the refund has been processed.
I get another text message saying “Your parts have been ordered, Estimated delivery Friday October 6th.”
Cute, but I thought I’d wait until today to see if my refund has been processed. In the meantime, back on Tuesday, I went to Frigidaire’s website and ordered the part from them – about $40.00 more, but the part arrived in 3 days. Yay. Glass installed. Wife has oven, wife happy. That’s the important thing.
But today, 9/25, I get a text message from Sears saying “Your Part(s) have a delay for your order [number]. Track your part(s) and order details online [address].” The funny thing is, when I went to the website for Sears Parts Direct, uBlock Origin blocked it, and Malwarebytes blocked it for potential riskware with “coupleze.com.” Nice.
So back to the phone. Today’s agent said “I see the cancellation request, but because you requested cancellation more than 24 hours after the order, we can’t do anything here. The request has been submitted to our cancellation department.” I told him that I had nightmares about this extra part arriving on my porch, and if that happened I had no intention of sending it back. “Nothing we can do here,” was the response.
And, just as icing on the dung cake, another text message: “Your Part(s) have a delay for your order [number]. Track your part(s) and order details online [address].”
And an email this morning:
Dear Christopher, We have not-great news: The item you ordered (W935098) is delayed because the product is temporarily unavailable. Like most sellers, Sears PartsDirect is struggling with product availability because the global supply chain has been severely disrupted. As a result, our customers are enduring long waits for products shipped directly from our manufacturers. We’ll notify you as soon as your order ships. Unfortunately, our call center agents don’t have any additional insights into order status. We’ll email you the moment your order is on its way. As soon as we have the estimated ship date, we’ll provide it to you. You can track your order at any time online here. Thank you for your understanding and patience. Your Sears PartsDirect Team
With customer service like this, it’s amazing that Sears Parts Direct manages to keep going at all. I’ll keep hammering at them until I get a refund, one way or the other. If they send me the part anyway, it’s their loss.
Read this horror story. Read it, and think about it. The parts in bold are emphasized by me, things that should absolutely be illegal and criminal. Health insurance is the biggest scam being perpetrated by corporations on the American people, right up there with wage theft.
Write your representatives in Congress. Better, call them. Demand #MedicareForAll. It’s the only morally-justifiable system. It would save citizens and businesses and doctors and hospitals immense amounts of money, result in better healthcare and greater productivity for all of us, and would free employees from staying in a crappy, abusive job out of fear of losing their insurance. People would no longer go bankrupt because of a single medical emergency, which happens to nearly 650,000 people each year, accounting for more than 60 percent of all personal bankruptcies. Our current system is a crime, and insurance companies are the criminals.
———–
Michelle DuBarry @DuBarryPie
A Thread
In 2010, I had good union health insurance. Obamacare was the law of the land. In November that yr my 1yo son was struck by a careless driver in a crosswalk. After two surgeries and a night in intensive care, he died.
Before we knew the outcome, I sat at his bedside, his tiny stitched- together body hooked to a million incessantly beeping machines, straining to recall what our deductibles were. I worried I wouldn’t be able to keep working during what could be a long hospital stay.
I googled FMLA and learned I wouldn’t qualify b/c I hadn’t been at my job for a year. If I lost my job we would both be without insurance. Without my income, there was no way we could afford $1K/month COBRA.
My husband who was also injured in the crash, was refused treatment by his primary care doc b/c she didn’t accept payment from auto insurance and his health insurer wouldn’t pay til we exhausted our auto insurance.
Have you ever had to call around to find a doctor that can handle your specific insurance situation? Have you done it in the days after your toddler has died, when you haven’t even figured out a way to talk about it, when your husband is injured and urgently needs a Rx refill?
We ended up with around $5K in out-of-pocket expenses and our health insurer paid $175K. Eventually, we’d receive a settlement from the at-fault driver. For a minute, we thought we might be OK financially.
(Side Note: It took me 8 yrs but in 2019 I initiated and passed a bill making this practice illegal in OR. It remains legal in many states.)
Through all this, my husband and I both were suffering from PTSD. We had jobs, a mortgage. All of it hung in the balance. In a humane system, we could grieve without having to navigate an insurance juggernaut, without worrying about being thrust into debt and poverty.
Despite Obamacare and “good” union insurance, we were nearly bankrupted by a 27-hour hospital stay.
Every one of us lives in a body that is going to fail. Sometimes it happens suddenly, catastrophically. Do you want to fight with insurers when this happens? Do you want to sort through a mountain of bills when you lose someone you love, when your grief is raw?
There is no compromise on healthcare that doesn’t leave millions of people unacceptably vulnerable to corporations trying to profit from sick and injured people.
End of Thread
America’s economy is broken, designed to keep people in perpetual poverty to the benefit of the ultra-wealthy. Things must absolutely change. The only way that’s going to happen is if progressives are voted into office in numbers too great to swindle.
For the sake of your posterity’s future, vote Blue in every election at every level, from now until the heat death of the universe. Vote for progressive candidates who will work to build a world for everyone, with no one left out.
This is a broad generalization, but based on results and statistics, it’s not an unfair statement. An overwhelming preponderance of Facebook advertising leads to scammy sites that promise one thing and deliver another, or which take your money and deliver nothing at all. I’ve written about this before, but another one crossed my screen today.
Interestingly enough, the link (sent to me by my wife) leads to the general website which has all sorts of “amazing deals” but which makes no mention of the product above.
Amazon has the same item… for almost a thousand dollars.
And this “auntpump” website is offering you two of them for $30.00? You can bet this website has been set up by unscrupulous scumbags with all the ethics of a starving honey badger. I’d bet a bowl of wonton soup it’s being operated from China.
Be very, very careful with anything you see advertised on Facebook. Never click on Facebook ads directly. Do a web search and locate the company directly, and make some inquiries before sending money to any firm that advertises there, because Meta will happily take advertising dollars from anyone with two coppers to rub together without the slightest effort to verify their legitimacy.
This showed up in Imgur recently, and it’s the second time I have seen it there. It makes a powerful lot of sense, and shows how badly broken our current system of employment is at all levels.
A twitter thread by @_danilo on 24 January 2020. A hat tip 🎩 to Phil Stracchino for the transcription.
After the premiere of Picard, [I] name checked Bruce Maddox, [and] decided to head back and watch Measure of a Man, TNG S2E09.
And it turns out Maddox is a bit of a tech bro. Startling how well this holds up three decades later. This kind of guy is still a problem.
As a refresher, The Measure of a Man was TNG at its hammiest, most thought provoking best.
A courtroom drama where the fate of Data hinges on the question of whether he is sentient being deserving of what we’d call basic “human rights”.
After Riker delivers a devastating presentation that proves Data is an elaborate machine, Picard joins Guinan for a drink.
Guinan warns Picard that civilizations love nothing more than to create “disposable people,” to do the jobs no one else wants, with no recourse.
Guinan’s point is that by creating a special category that allows Data to be property by an arbitrary distinction, the Federation risks creating a permanent underclass.
This was the lever Picard needed — he wins the argument by appealing to Starfleet’s high mindedness.
This got me to thinking about Silicon Valley innovation.
Today, androids are far beyond our technological capabilities. So what the Valley did was build it lean.
Rather than building artificial laborers, the tech industry invented artificial supervisors.
When the algorithm determines who gets fired, when you work, what you get paid, and everything else about your daily life, there’s no limit to the cruelty of the workplace.
The human needs of the laborers are invisible to the software.
You don’t need to invent an entire android under this model, nor do you need to bear the costs of manufacture.
The software becomes an abstraction around real humans, but the owners of the business never need see them or interact with them in a supervisory context. rows in a db.
We’re left with “algorithmically disposable people.” Entirely commodified labor that can be discarded at will.
No one has to look them in the eye when they’re fired. No one need think of their kids or dependent parents.
No one has to worry about a thing — except the workers.
Gig workers are precarious not only because they lack benefits, but also because the everyday bedrock of their work is determined by a black box algorithm designed to extract maximum profit for a distant corporation.
They are raw material to be optimized.
And what is so dark about this is that the software is perfectly suited to this task.
Software perfectly shields the humans profiting from this one-sided equation from confronting the personal toll it takes on the algorithmically disposable people the company is chewing through.
One of the most striking parts of @Mikelsaac’s Super Pumped¹ is how OPTIONAL it was for Uber management to interact with drivers.
They could hide away, pop out to interact with the drivers IF THEY WANTED, and go back into hiding again, and the machine kept working either way.
Footnotes
¹ This refers to Mike Isaac’s Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber, W. W. Norton & Company; 1st edition (September 3, 2019)
… or when the right hand knoweth not what the left hand doeth.
I have an account with Chase. You know, JP Morgan Chase, which used to be known as Chase National Bank. They’ve been pretty good to me and have helped a lot with some particular financial needs over the last couple of years or so.
But the other day, I wanted to do a wire transfer to another account of mine. So I went online, entered the data for the receiving account, and fired off the request.
Email: “Your wire transfer has been cancelled by our security department. Please call us for further details.“
Ok, so I call Chase and explain the system. I verify myself with account pins, one-time text messages, and various identifying data. “Oh, it’s because you’ve recently changed your password. I’ve cleared that flag, go ahead and re-submit the request.”
Fine. Request the wire transfer again.
Email: “Your wire transfer has been cancelled by our security department. Please call us for further details.“
What the…? OK, I call them and we go through the same rigamarole again. “Sorry, I don’t know what was said during the previous call, but they didn’t identify you properly.” Provide all sorts of information again. “OK, I’ve reset the account. Go ahead and request the transfer again.”
Also: Got a voicemail message and a text message from Chase Fraud Department. “Please call us to clarify some activity on your account.” On a side note, the voice mail was left by someone with a very heavy India accent, leading me to believe this might have been a scammer at work.
Call Fraud Department. The message was legitimate. I am asked for a whole new raft of identifying information, including questions about where I have lived, what cars I have owned, and so forth. I am told all is well. Please submit the request again.
Email: “Your wire transfer has been cancelled by our security department. Please call us for further details.“
Shiva H. Vishnu! By this time I’m pulling out my hair. And another text message from the Fraud Department.
Call Chase back, and call the Fraud Department again. Go through the excruciating process of identifying myself for the third time. Everyone decides that it’s because I’m making the request from Florida, and my normal residence is Maine, so the “back office” as they call it is automatically rejecting the transfer because they think it’s fraudulent. By this time I have provided identifying information to Chase five different times.
“You’ll have to go to a local branch to make this transfer.”
Wow. Well, it’s a good thing there are close branches here in Florida where I’m staying for the winter.
To make a long story short, the teller asks me all the same questions again. She has to refer me to someone else in the branch office. Finally someone comes over to help. It takes me about 15 minutes to get her to understand what I’m trying to do and what has happened in the past. She has to get someone else in her branch to approve the transfer request, and she has to call the Fraud Department herself, whereupon in the course of a three-way call I have to provide all my identifying information for the sixth time, perform mathematical operations on my driver’s license number, promise them my firstborn, stand on my head and spit nickels, and tell them that yes, indeed, I would like to make this wire transfer and that no, indeed, the money is not going to Nigeria, but is simply being transferred to another account I own, and Yes, I know the recipient.
At last. The transfer is effectuated.
Now, don’t get me wrong. Banks these days do their very best to protect their clients’ accounts, and fraud is absolutely rampant. Years ago my mother was almost scammed out of $65,000 by a filthy Russian bottom feeder who played the “You’ve won a million dollars, all we need is the taxes and fees” game with her. Being borderline senescent, she sent the money. By a miracle, when I told the bank what was going on, they were able to reverse the transaction (which sent money to an account in Cyprus) before it had been withdrawn, and Mom only lost about $6,000, the amount of the first request (and these skells will keep milking victims for every cent they have as long as the mark keeps sending money.) As a happy footnote, the FBI and the RCMP working together arrested these guys and at least one of them spent a good deal of time in prison. I hope he enjoyed the experience.
So I appreciate the security efforts on behalf of their customers. But in this case, things went beyond the pale, and it should not have taken the better part of a day to get a simple wire transfer effectuated, especially when I was able to properly identify myself to multiple functionaries at Chase, all of whom promised that my problem had now been resolved.
All’s well that ended well, but just reeeee-ing into the void here because the experience was so frustrating.
I have written about blog spammers multiple times. I had hoped that with time this repugnant technique for driving traffic would have died out, but no such luck.
Looked at my list of followers today, and the top ones are displayed here:
Every single one of these is a sleazy-looking marketing website. By following my blog, I assume they hope either a) I will follow them back, or b) this will somehow raise their rankings in Google or other search engines. A few examples of what you find if you happen to click their links:
Seriously, people? This is not how to advertise your businesses. It’s definitely a dick move, and is a solid guarantee that I will never ever use your services or do business with you.
Update: Not satisfied with the response from Customer Service, I wrote a letter directly to Robert Isom, the CEO of American Airlines. He just bounced it back to Customer Service, without the courtesy of a direct response. Their answer was, essentially, “we’re sorry you’re unhappy but [censored] you. What happened is standard procedure. Here’s 10,000 miles in your account, we hope you’ll fly with us again.”
Below is the text of a letter I wrote to American Airlines, which essentially summarizes our experience.
I’ll try to be concise here, but it’s hard, because there are so many feelings involved. I’m not a happy camper right now.
In December of 2021, I found a great fare to London and booked a trip (which had been delayed by 2 years due to COVID) for my wife and myself to celebrate our anniversary. First class. This was important, because my wife has mobility issues and I wanted to make the trip as easy on her as possible. Our flight record was [redacted], but the flights were with British Airways as a codeshare.
BA then cancelled our flight to London and I had to rebook in January. Great, all is well. On 22 March we took off for London under the following itinerary:
Boston to London – AA 6963 Mar 22, 8:15 PM–Mar 23, 6:50 AM
London to Rome – AA 6455 Mar 23, 9:35 AM–1:20 PM
☞ Rome to London – AA 6511 Apr 19, 12:55 PM–2:40 PM ☜
London to Boston – AA 6927 Apr 19, 5:05 PM–7:45 PM
Everything went wonderfully. We had a lovely trip traveling around Europe, including taking the Eurostar from Paris to London. And I figured that, hey, since we’ll already be in London, we just won’t have to take that segment from Rome. The one up there that’s struck out. So before we flew, I called American and asked if that segment could be refunded.
The agent said that to do that, he would have to rebook the entire itinerary. And that there would be a price difference. And that all he had available was business class. So I told him that I would just leave the itinerary as it was, and simply would not take the flight from Rome to London. And the agent told me that would be fine.
So when we got to Heathrow to come home, we trucked down to the First Class reception area, expecting to be able to spend a few hours in the lovely Concord Room getting a bit of something to eat… but instead I was told that we had no itinerary. No flight. So sorry.
You cannot possibly imagine the feelings I had at that moment. The stress. The embarrassment. The shame. The fear. Waiting in BA’s first class area with a physically limited spouse, no flight, no way home, and no one who was willing to get us on the flight that we had booked and paid for and were present and ready to take.
The BA personnel conferred for about an hour and were sympathetic, but finally told me that they could do nothing, and that I had to go to the American Airlines desk to get it resolved. There I was given the same story: Because we had not taken that segment up there (the one crossed out), our entire itinerary had been cancelled. The AA agent told me I could get a flight the next day in First Class for another $14,000… or a business class booking for another $8,000! And by this time we had been dealing with this for over three hours, and my stress had reached a point that I was experiencing chest pains.
None of this made sense. I had paid for an entire first class itinerary, and I sure as shooting was not being given first class service. Just because we didn’t take the flight from Rome – and remember, you people had my money for that segment and I wasn’t even asking for a refund, so you were losing nothing – you had no right to cancel my flight from London. None. It is sheer madness. People kept throwing terms at me like “illegal ticketing,” “terms and conditions,” “fine print blah blah,” and the like… and I really didn’t understand any of it, and I really don’t care. I had paid for a first class itinerary, and you took it away from me. And it was wrong. All you had to do was undo that flight cancellation [and there were available seats in First Class], but nobody seemed willing to do that. It seemed all about getting more money, and not a soul was concerned that I had been effectively robbed and stranded. I was just another number in a computer.
So there I was. Finally, your agent was able to get us a seat in coach, on BA 203, that evening, the same flight that we had paid for in first class. Yes, he offered me a bit of a refund in the form of some vouchers, but that in no way made up for the inconvenience, the stress, the embarrassment, the discomfort, and the physical challenges for both me and my wife. It’s just a good thing we arrived at the airport a good 6 hours early, or we would have missed the rest of our connections.
So we made it home, and now you guys are in deep tapioca with me. And how you respond to this situation will determine how I will respond to you in future. Because as of this moment, the odds that I will ever use AA again after using up those travel vouchers are pretty much less than zero. But there it is.
You screwed up royally. You put us through literal travel Hell. And it all could have been avoided if your telephone agent – in the Philippines or wherever, with an accent so heavy I had to strain to understand him – had told me at the time of my phone call, “Be careful, because if you don’t take the segment from Rome to London, your itinerary will be cancelled.” But nothing like that was said. I was completely unaware that this was even possible, and it never entered my mind, because it was like I had purchased four separate tickets and simply chose not to use one of them. To your financial advantage.
So I ask you, what are you going to do to make this right? What are you going to do to keep me as a customer? If I hear any corporate noises like “We’re sorry, but according to the terms of conveyance…” or “regretfully you did not read the fine print…” or “we regret this is standard industry practice…” or anything like that, I will be more than put out. And my social media presence is large, and extensive, and wide.
And below, you will find the bitterly disappointing weak-sauce response from AA:
Thanks for taking the time to contact us. I’m sorry for any confusion over your reservations. I appreciate the opportunity to respond to your concern. [Note: But your “response” was just a load of mealy-mouthed corporate pablum.]
There are many different fares and associated restrictions with air travel. It is a generally accepted practice that tickets are to be used in sequence and in their entirety. This is a standard airline requirement for all discounted round-trip tickets. [Note: So despite my admonition above, all I’m hearing is “corporate noises“].
When a customer presents a ticket for “return” travel without having used a previous segment, the ticket is considered void for that trip. In such cases, it is usually necessary to purchase a new one-way ticket at the applicable fare. [Note: And that is pure 🐂💩, an unconscionable money grab. You had seats available in first class that you had not re-sold. You could have just reinstated our fare with no loss to you.]
We know that travel plans can change, even up to the time of departure. In such cases your ticket will be repriced at the applicable fare. I am sorry for your disappointment. [Note: But you are unwilling to do anything about it I’m clearly not worth the effort to retain me as a customer.]
Regarding the vouchers issued for the fare difference, I’ve reissued your eVouchers as new Trip Credits, which will arrive in separate emails. [Note: This does absolutely nothing for me. Thanks for nothing.]
Trip Credits are valid for one year from the date of issue, unless otherwise stated and can be used to purchase travel on flights operated by American, American Eagle® or flights marketed by American – designated with an AA*. They can also be used to book flights on our oneworld® partners, as long as at least one flight in the itinerary is operated or marketed by AA and is for international travel. International flights are defined as transatlantic, transpacific and flights to and from South America.
When using a Trip Credit, the value must be applied toward the ticket purchase before the one-year expiration, but travel may extend beyond that date. Trip Credits are nontransferable and may not be sold or bartered, but you can use them to purchase a ticket for anyone you choose. Check out all the Terms and Conditions here on aa.com.
Christopher, thank you for your loyalty and support as an AAdvantage® member. We look forward to welcoming you aboard your next flight! [Note: Not bloody likely. I asked what you were going to do to rectify this hideous treatment, and you toed the corporate line and answered, effectively, “nothing.” And as a result, once I have used up whatever credits I have accrued on my AA mastercard and the vouchers I was given, AA is unlikely to see another red cent from me. Ever. And I robustly encourage anyone who’s planning travel to use an airline that gives a rat’s south-40 about customer satisfaction.]
Sincerely, [Name redacted] Customer Relations American Airlines
Edit: I wrote back to AA to let them know I was unhappy with their response:
It goes without saying that I am both unsatisfied and bitterly disappointed by your uncaring response. I asked you in my letter, “So I ask you, what are you going to do to make this right? What are you going to do to keep me as a customer?” And your response was effectively, “nothing.” American really screwed the pooch with this one, and it’s clear you don’t give a rat’s south-40 about customer satisfaction. So as for welcoming me aboard my next American flight, the odds of that are precisely zero – and I am publishing our exchange far and wide, to make sure others know how poorly I was treated and how AA didn’t really care.
Sadly, -Christopher C. DeSantis A former AA flyer.
And they came back to me with this:
May 31, 2022
Hello Christopher:
I received your additional email and am sorry to hear that you’re disappointed with my response. [Note: This letter was written by a different agent, so the original was not “her response.“] We recognize that we will not always agree upon the resolution, but we do our best to be supportive as advocates for our customers and fulfill requests where we can.
We’re committed to providing world-class service, and your business means a lot to us. We appreciate you taking the time to share your feedback, which helps us know where we can improve. Every day our team is working to make flying with us better, and we look forward to rebuilding your confidence. From all of us at American Airlines, we look forward to serving your future travel needs. We sincerely appreciate our loyalty, you are why we fly! [Note: I can’t believe they have the unmitigated chutzpah to say something like this to an unhappy customer.]
Sincerely,
[Name redacted] Customer Relations American Airlines
Yes, life happens. But this kind of treatment – essentially a calculated money-grab by the airline – is unconscionable and a corporation that cares about its customers would at least do something to retain an unhappy customer. Clearly, American Airlines is not such a corporation.
So, I wrote back:
> I received your additional email and am sorry to hear that you’re disappointed with my response. It was not “your response.” The first letter was sent by a completely different agent.
> we do our best to be supportive as advocates for our customers and fulfill requests where we can.
Your total dismissal of my complaint proves that this is a lie.
> We’re committed to providing world-class service, and your business means a lot to us.
Horsehockey. If my business meant a lot to you, you would have replied with something – anything – to make up for the terrible thing you did.
>From all of us at American Airlines, we look forward to serving your future travel needs. We sincerely appreciate our loyalty, you are why we fly!
You have thermonuclear chutzpah to send this kind of boilerplate response to a very unhappy customer. It makes you look as cheap and uncaring as you have proven yourselves to be. As indicated, you shot yourselves in the foot and I will not be using American Airlines again unless you come back to me with something substantial to change my mind.
Sincerely, Christopher C. DeSantis A former AA flyer.
And, today [6/7/2022] I received this dishwater response:
June 7, 2022
Hello Christopher:
I received your reply and see that you’re still unhappy with us. One of our primary responsibilities in Customer Relations is to help our customers who have experienced a situation such as yours. I’m sorry that we weren’t able to resolve the issue to your satisfaction. I can see that you feel strongly about this issue. I took another look at your original complaint, as well as our response and, at this time, I don’t see any new information that would change our position. If you have additional information you’d like us to consider let me know and I’ll gladly review it.
Christopher, we look forward to rebuilding your confidence in our service, and hope you’ll give us the opportunity to provide you with a more positive experience in the future.
Sincerely, [Name redacted] Customer Relations American Airlines
So AA’s response is, still and forever, “Nothing.” Just “sorry you’re unhappy with us.” That’s pretty pathetic. Maybe a letter to someone in corporate will change something? Time will tell.
But the story continues with a coda:
So we got on our flight – for which we had paid for first-class service – in coach class. I suppose it would not have killed us, but it would have played hob with my wife’s sciatica. But when the cabin crew of BA 203 heard what had happened, these good people bent over backwards to make our flight home as comfortable as possible. We were moved up to the next section, sort of a Coach Plus affair – not as cushy as business class but with much more comfortable seats and better service – and taken care of with as much solicitousness as it was possible for this crew to offer. A particular shout-out to Simon, the flight manager on duty: he gets a gold star for caring and compassion. As a result, I would happily give BA my business any time I had the opportunity.
TL;DR – Avoid American Airlines like the plague, and consider using BA for your transatlantic needs.
Edit, because I’m still mad about this whole thing 18 months later; just thinking about it keeps me awake at night.
I shouldn’t have to keeps saying this, but far too many people just don’t practice “safe computing’ and as a result end up getting their computers infected by malware, losing their data, having their information stolen by criminals, being robbed, or all of the above.
Phishing message with dangerous link
Red flag #1: This message is not from Venmo. The email address of the sender is “0vmlwfglxague7g0kzs@oneautousa.com” which is not a venmo address; the domain leads to an essentially empty storefront of a generic “church.” Either the domain was created for the purpose of scamming people, or an otherwise unrelated domain was hijacked to have malicious content injected into its directory structure, or the email address was simply spoofed. In any case, it’s a clear indication that this email is not from Venmo.
Red Flag #2: “Congratulation.” Uh, no. That’s not what a message written by English-speakers would say. We’re dealing with Nigerian scammers here, or something similar.
Red flag #3: The link on the “accept money” button looks like this:
malicious link, not from Venmo
If you hover your mouse over any button or link in an email, the actual address where you will be taken will be shown at the bottom of your browser (at least that’s where it is in Chrome.) However, most of these deceptive links will re-direct one or more times, so you really never know where you’ll end up. But if the original link is not a “venmo.com” address, then you know you’re being taken for a ride.
Red Flag #4: “Click her” I suspect she, whoever she might be, will not appreciate being clicked. Real emails from real corporations do not generally contain obvious typographical errors like this.
So, as is my wont, I clicked on the “Accept Money” link just to go down the rabbit hole and see where I ended up. Malwarebytes told me the page was malicious, but I’m pretty well protected so I advanced anyway.
Instead of getting any money through Venmo (which I didn’t expect), I ended up on a “survey” page.
Again, not from Venmo, but camouflaged to look as though it is. All of the “verified” comments are without doubt spurious. The questions below are carefully crafted to keep the illusion going that the survey is from Venmo. It ain’t.
So once you give your answers, you end up at a “reward” page with 26 different offers you can claim. But beware – every single one of these is as phony as Donald Trump’s tan, and if you claim any of them you will end up paying a lot of money for next to no value.
Limited Supply! Act fast, offer expiring! [These are the “scarcity” and “urgency” sales ploys.]
This is the first reward on the list. Check the “Terms and Conditions:”
By placing an order, you agree our special deal club and we will bill you $0.00 S&H + $6.98 = Total: $6.98 (one-time purchase, no auto-ship) plus tax where applicable for your initial order, and every thirty days thereafter we will send you a new product from our special deal club, and automatically bill you the low price of $0.00 S&H + $6.98 = Total: $6.98 (one-time purchase, no auto-ship) plus tax where applicable.
So you’re getting a really cheap fitness tracker for 7 bucks, and committing yourself to getting another piece of slum [that’s what the carnival hucksters call the cheapest prizes they hand out] for another 7 bucks every 30 days, until you catch on and cancel. Which will be hard to do, I can guarantee it. And, you’ve given your contact information and your credit card number to extremely disreputable people. I cannot count the number of ways that this is a bad idea.
A couple of rows down is an offer for an iPad Pro. But again, after you give them your information so that they can spam you forever, you read the “Terms and Conditions:”
Claim your chance now! Sign up for a 30-day trial to Best Tech Giveaways and get the chance to win a new iPad Pro and Magic Keyboard! This contest is not made by or in cooperation with Apple. The winner will be contacted directly by email. All new customers participate in the prize draw for the shown campaign product. If you are the lucky winner, you will be contacted directly by email. This special offer comes with a 30-day trial to an affiliated subscription service, after which the subscription fee (37.97 USD every 30 days) will be automatically deducted from your credit card. If, for any reason, you are not satisfied with the service, you may cancel your account within 30 days. The service will be renewed every 30 days until canceled. This campaign will expire on December 31, 2021. If you wish to participate without signing up for a 30-day trial to besttechgiveaways, please send an email to support@besttechgiveaways.com.
What you’ve “won” is a chance. Your odds of winning that iPad are about the same as hitting the Powerball. Don’t hold your breath.
You might end up at another similar website whose small-print terms are like this:
As a user of Blue Ice Group, you agree to a deeply discounted LIMITED user fee of nine dollars and ninety-five cents ($9.95), the LIMITED user price. If you’re happy in approximately 7 days you will receive an email offer to purchase 30 days for our low one-time price of eighty-six dollars and sixty-one cents ($86.61), the 30 day FULL PLAN. We will continue to send you offer to purchase upon expiration of your user terms via text or email (data rates may apply) approximately every 28 days simply reply N to postpone, please allow up to 10 days to process your payment. You can continue to view our Premium Content including exclusive games, beta games, motivational content, exercise videos, diet, nutrition and other VIP Benefits unless you choose to cancel. You may cancel your purchase anytime by contacting our customer support center by email, or toll-free telephone (877) 327-2393. THE WEBSITE IS ALLOWED TO COLLECT AND STORE DATA AND INFORMATION FOR THE PURPOSE OF THE USUAL OPERATIONS AND FUNCTIONS OF THE WEBSITE.
So you’re authorizing a ten-dollar charge for the privilege of being sent offers, and will likely be charged $81.61 every month until you raise the alarm.
No money from Venmo, just a lot of scammy, spammy malvertising and potentially dangerous websites.
Playing in the World Game 