Security Questions

The security questions are getting more ridiculous every time I sign up at a new banking website. Here are the latest questions I had to answer:

Observe that I had to select and answer three questions, one from each list. Note the error message that said I must select one question from every list. The EASIEST questions I could find were:

• Who was your favorite childhood friend?
• What was you childhood phone number?
• Where were you New Years 2000?

Even if I could remember where I was on New Years 2000 (I can't), how would I possibly describe it using exactly the same phrase multiple times?

And look at the other choices for that third question:

• Name of your least favorite teacher
• Nickname you gave your favorite grandparent
• Where do you want to retire?
• What is your dream car?
• If you won a million dollars, what is the most expensive purchase you would make?
• What is the name of your most memorable stuffed animal?

If this wasn't on a banking site, I would think it was some sort of cruel joke.

Costco's Flexible Pricing

The two images below show Costco's two different prices for the same product on the same day.  Sure, the packaging looks different, but after careful inspection of the ingredients, quantity, etc., it's the same product.  Of course, shortly after these pictures were taken, the $8.99 packaged version was discontinued.

I want to skewer the person who came up with this pricing trick!

BooksFree

I saw a car at a stoplight today. It was one of those cars with a website painted on the side. Presumably the guy driving the car runs the site. Anyhow, the site was BooksFree.com.

I like free books as much as the next guy, so when I got home I went right to the website for some free books. Here are the options I was offered:

So it is basically the same as Netflix, but for books instead of movies. What the hell? The cheapest option I could find anywhere on the site is $15 per month. Then it ranges all the way up to $71 per month for 6 audiobooks at a time. (Who listens to 6 audiobooks at a time? Are they really expecting that I'll find 5 friends to go in on this proposition with me?)

Bottom line -- If you're the one guy who still thinks that mailing books and CDs around is a good business model, knock yourself out. But please show us both a little respect and don't call it "BooksFree".

5-Minute Survey

These companies are always looking for a new angle to guilt me into taking their surveys. Here is a new one I received today from HP:

To summarize, if I don't take the survey, I am taking $5 away from the International Red Cross.

This reminds me of the ones at the grocery store cash register, where the guy asks me right before I pay if I want to donate $1 to benefit research on child birth defects. He waits there until I say "No", in front of all of my disappointed friends and neighbors behind me in line. I haven't done it yet, but I am always tempted to go ahead and say out loud what is obviously already implied: "I have absolutely no compassion for kids with birth defects".

Freedom to Be Swindled

I was fed up with my Citibank card for forcing me to change my credit card number after one of their security breaches. So I looked around for the best offer on switching to a different card.

I signed up for the Chase Freedom credit card. It offered 1% cash back on all purchases, plus 5% cash back on gas, travel, and a few other categories. I had a 2,000+ mile driving trip coming up, so with the high cost of gas the 5% back really sounded like a great offer.

About 2 months after using the new card for all of my purchases, I get the following e-mail from them:

So you have to "activate" the 5% cash back option. What the hell? Why would they not just automatically activate everyone? This is just a scam to take back the 5% bonus from anyone who doesn't figure out that you need to click to activate. I'm glad I somehow didn't delete this spam-looking message, or who knows how long it would have taken me to figure out I was being swindled.

When I went to fill out the form to "activate" my 5% cash back, I clicked on the "why is this necessary" link next to the Email address box:

It says "We need to know who you are in order to make sure you receive your bonus". What a loap of crap.

Evil Marketing Trick #348: Bundling

One of the biggest difficulties for evil marketing is how to sell more product when the market is saturated.  If people are buying all of a product they need, how do you convince them to buy more?  Bundling is a well known strategy to push more product than people need.  I recently saw a bundle of watch batteries, a 2 pack for $6, which was a good deal over 1 for $4.  The problem is, I only have one watch that needed a battery.   Yes, some people will benefit from a 2 pack, so maybe the extra consumption isn't double, but even if 20% of the additional batteries are ones that would never have been purchased, that is still a 20% increase in sales for the vendor.

When you can combine bundling with fear-mongering, you  get something like this:

You've Got Lycos?

When you sign up for a "free" web account, do you have an exit strategy?

While searching through old internet account notes, I noticed that I once had a Lycos email account.  I was curious, so I went to the Lycos website and managed to login to my old account, which I had assumed was long gone.  After searching everywhere for a "close account" option, I found that they do not have one.  Folks, you should be very concerned about any web service that doesn't allow you to terminate your account.  They had no further information on their website, so I had to search the web to find out how to delete my account.  The best I could find was some statement that said accounts would auto-delete after 30 or perhaps 90 days of inactivity.  Since I am sure I haven't logged in for years, I am pretty sure that this is a bold faced lie.

Lycos is also tied to Gamesville, which has a cancellation policy... by FAX!  Seriously?

Please submit a request to close your Gamesville / Lycos Network account to Gamesville Customer Service, by sending a fax to 781-370-2990.

Windows Bifurcation?

There is no possible way that you will get this window to close without restarting Internet Explorer. Don't even think about just trying to cancel the restart.

No Returns

It always seems that whenever I have a simple unopened-box-with-receipt store return I get stuck behind somebody who has a return more complicated than the federal tax law. Recently at Target I got stuck behind a woman returning 20 jars of baby food. I overheard her explain that she no longer had the credit card she purchased the items with (WTF?), complicating the transaction. The clerk had to scan each and every jar, and I swear he did it at least three times. Of course there was a long wait for the manager to come over as well.

That really makes my lunch want to return from my gut.

Vonage Marketing Bullshit

Below is the email I got from Vonage notifying me of a rate increase. You can't immediately see the rate increase because it is hidden by only posting the new rate of $19.99/mo. It was previously $17.99/mo. I had to look that up because I had no idea what my original rate was. The reason I didn't know was because I was more familiar with $26, which is the actual amount I pay after all the surcharges.

Hey Vonage, it's OK to sugar coat price hikes by announcing new features (additional minutes and message transcriptions), but just be upfront about the costs. Treat your customers with more respect.

Still, this is slightly better than what they did the last time they hiked rates.

-----------------------------------
Dear Customer, Modifications to your Vonage calling plan will appear on the first billing statement posted to your account on or after July 5, 2011.

Your plan will continue to provide a great value for home phone service, including an increase in outbound minutes to 750 from 500. Your account will reflect this change at $19.99/mo plus taxes and fees.

In addition to 50% more minutes for calls in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico, your plan still provides the benefits you've come to expect: Unlimited incoming phone calls AND Vonage-to-Vonage calls. The same great low international rates on calls around the world. Messages transcribed into convenient texts and emails delivered by Vonage Visual Voicemail®. Unlimited 411, plus all of the other included features you've come to enjoy. Thank you for being a valued Vonage customer.

Microsoft Office "Save As" Annoyance

Dear Microsoft,

OK, we already complained about your save-as feature once, but your newer feature is even more annyoing. When a user wants to save an Office document that is marked read-only, you came up with the moronic idea of appending "Copy of" to the front of the file name in the save-as dialog box. Why on Earth would you do that? Don't you realize that this totally screws up the file location as displayed in the directory, which is usually sorted by filename? Don't you realize that the user will append the filename as necessary and gets REALLY annoyed when they forget to delete the "Copy of" append. Please, PLEASE, tell us that there is an option to turn this off! We'd even settle for a registry hack.

You got it right in Windows, where duplicates have a number appended to the end of the file name. Please move some of your Windows developers over to the Office department.

So Hard To Say Goodbye

Everyone knows that companies hate to see you go. There is a special place in hell for the series of operators I had to fight through when I cancelled my AOL subscription back in 1997. So I am not surprised when I try to cancel something, and I am confronted with hurdles.

I recently encountered two interesting approaches on this theme with a program called Xobni. Xobni (inbox spelled backwards, by the way) is a tool I never even asked for, and was installed automatically when I installed another program called Digsby. Last week I got tired of Xobni running in the background and decided to remove it, like I should have done a long time ago.

Of course, there was no uninstaller in the Start menu, so I had to go to Add/Remove programs. Rather than just removing the program, I was first forced to reckon with this series of alternatives:

Arrrrrgh! Fancy choices! Buttons! Precious seconds of thinking! Maybe I should just wait until some other time. No, I made it this far, I must press on. Click "Uninstall Xobni".

Then they hit me with a new low - launching the sad dog web page:

I don't know what happened to that dog, but I'm pretty sure it was because I just uninstalled that program.

Stop the Registry Madness

Dear Microsoft,

Why is it that any time I want to change one of Windows annoyances, I find the only option is to edit the registry? Did it ever occur to you that some people can identify a shortcut by the little arrow in the icon, and they don't need the word "shortcut" appended to the icon name?

You know those commercials you keep running, "Windows 7 was MY idea..."? Did you actually consult any real users or perform any focus group research? I'd like to see you find one person that says they enjoy editing the registry to get Windows to behave the way they want.

Regards,
a slightly more dissapointed user

"No Drip" Cap

Off Target: Evil Marketing Trick #582

I was curious how much I would actually be saving when I saw this sale price:

When I lifted up the tag to see what was beneath it, would you believe that the answer was nothing?:

Uncool, Target.

Truth in Advertising?

One rule in marketing is to always inflate the value of free offers. I was surprised to see this offer for a free DVD download with a value of only $5.99. Either this is unusual marketing honesty or the download is really crappy.

Wouldn't you think they would make the value $6 instead of $5.99 when they are giving it to you for free? The only time you want to use the $x.99 trick is when you want the cost to appear to be less.

Special Message

I was pleasantly surprised to receive a "special message" e-mail from my IP phone provider (8x8). It was a lovely red envelope with a "Click here to open" note on the flap. Here is what I saw when I moused over the "Click Here"link:

Check out that URL! I don't know what sort of deranged masochist would want to risk clicking on that thing. It even has the word "track" right at the end of that top line. If they really wanted to send me something special, why couldn't they just include it in the spam e-mail without tracking me all the way back to their website?

Thanks, No Problem

Some people on my e-mail list have determined that every piece of communication requires a response. You probably know these people. You send them an e-mail such as: "Just wanted to let everyone know, Jane said she is going to be coming in a half hour late this morning", to which you immediately receive the reply email: "Thanks"

I think about 10% of my e-mail some days is from these "auto-responders". I propose a rule for all e-mail servers that any e-mail that consists entirely of "Thanks" or "No Problem" is just automatically deleted.

Note: I know you're thinking about it, so be warned that any one-word comments to this post are subject to deletion.

Allow Me to Postpone!

While in the middle of an online poker tournament an important work project, windows displays this wonderful warning. Notice that the postpone option is disabled. Call me crazy, but it's my computer, how about I decide when to restart my computer? Why even have a postpone button if I can't click it? Is it just a tease?

Evil Marketing Trick #672: Package Labelling

Can you guess what the first ingredient is in Log Cabin Original Syrup? Click here to find out.

Our Privacy Policy

Collection and Use of Personally Identifiable Information

In order to use certain portions of the R&R of Thickness, you may be asked for, or you may choose to provide, personally identifiable information such as name, email address, postal address, favorite ice cream flavor, etc. We will collect this information with or without your consent, but if comes under dispute, we will swear on the farmer's almanac that you provided it of your own free will.

By using this website, you authorize R&R of Thickness to use this information to operate and manage the blog, exercise our legal rights or defense against legal claims, to comply with applicable laws or regulations, to comply with a subpoena or court order or to investigate suspected fraud or a violation of the terms of the R&R of Thickness Users Agreement. Since the Users Agreement currently only exists as a single draft written on a toilet paper roll and hidden under the bed, this leaves us wide open to use your information any way we please.

We will try our damnedest to sell your Personal Information to ANY third party willing to take it, with or without your consent. Third parties typically do not reveal their sources, so you won't know that it was R&R of Thickness that sold you out.

You should be aware that information you "share" on our blog may be viewed and used by anyone with access to the blog, including your boss.

Security

The security of your information is very important to us and we take commercially reasonable steps to attempt to secure your information. We have put in place reasonable physical, electronic, and managerial procedures to safeguard the information we collect. We have a guard dog (labradoodle) watching the server. Only those employees and contractors who need access to your information in order to perform their duties, or want a good laugh, are authorized to have access. However, we cannot guarantee that communications between you and R&R of Thickness or information stored or transmitted through the Service or on our servers, will be completely free from unauthorized access by third parties such as hackers or teenagers.

No Children under 13

We have no intention of collecting personal information from children under the age of 18. Besides, we use words like fuck and shit occasionally and are highly cynical, who wants their kids exposed to that?

Changes in Privacy Policy
This Privacy Policy may change from time to time. In fact, it has already changed while you were reading this. Hit refresh to see the new policy.

Terminate Account

We haven't wasted any time creating a "terminate" feature, because, let's face it, even if we had one, we'd still keep your personal information. Storage memory is cheap and you never know when that information might be useful.

Recycling Electronics

A few times a year, many local towns have an electronics recycling day. This is to encourage people to stop throwing their electronic monitors and TV sets in the dumpster and dispose of them properly.

If you read the item in the above picture, you probably already figured out the problem. They are charging people to dispose of these items. This just goes against human nature, since there is still no charge for people to continue (illegally) tossing them in the dumpster. It seems doubtful that most people will dispose of these items properly if it will cost them time and money to do so. If the environment is truly at risk with these items, you would think the town would cover the cost of these disposal programs (raising taxes if necessary).

Imagine a trash can in the park that charged 25 cents to put an item in the trash. Think about what this park would probably look like after a few weeks.

Rather than charging people, how about every time you properly dispose of a TV you get entered into a monthly raffle for an iPad?

A Penny for Your Thoughts...on the Penny

You may have noticed that there is a new penny design out for 2010. The real question to ask is, why are they still redesigning pennies instead of eliminating them?

Pennies are ridiculous and worthless. There is nothing more annoying than getting charged $4.01 at a store and getting $0.99 in change because you don't have a penny. Some places leave out a tray where you can discard your pennies for others to use. Some places simply ignore the penny and give back a whole dollar. We're only talking small business, of course. Big corporations don't care about such things. Try rounding off your bill at Walmart or Best Buy and see what happens.

What is even more insane is that it costs more than a penny to make a penny! That is right, the government is subsidizing the cost of every penny produced. The half penny was eliminated in 1858, and it was worth much more than the current penny is today.

See this excellent video rant on the subject from the Freakonomics Blog.

Even Abe Lincoln would agree...the penny has got to go.

Friendly at First, Good Luck Later

A subtle but annoying strategy a lot of companies seem do is putting the best people on sales. A related problem is sales people that are not accountable further down the purchase chain. There are a variety of businesses where you see this.

One example is whenever my company switches to a new health insurance plan. They send 1 or 2 people who are very knowledgeable to introduce the plan. They meet with us in the conference room with donuts and tell us that everything will be covered. We ask about different scenarios, and they clearly explain to us how we would be covered under those scenarios. Then we never see those people again. When we go to the doctor 3 months later and get our bill in the mail, lots of charges are not covered. The friendly people from the conference room are long gone - we need to talk on the phone for hours with people who are far less competent and friendly.

Another example is buying a car. The sales person is very friendly and tells you a lot about different features of the car. Then once you decide to buy the car, you never see that guy again. You get a hard sell on buying the extended warranty, then spend the rest of your days dealing with the service department.

It would be nice if there were a way to get continued access to the smart, friendly people after you purchase something.

I Voted

Everyone loves their little "I Voted" sticker. They display it proudly on their shirt and walk around with their best posture on Election Day. They are sure to ask everyone else if they have voted. The problem is that the sticker is sending a different message than they think.

What sticker-wearer thinks people see:

"Now there is an American patriot that we can all look up to. He carefully studied the issues and then cast his vote. He makes our system work."

What people actually see:

"That douchebag rolled into work 45 minutes late and now he's rubbing it in my face with that idiotic sticker. Later he'll waste another hour of my time gabbing about a bunch of candidates that he never heard of before yesterday. I guess he didn't read the company manual about voting outside of regular work hours. He'll be having a few beers and watching Chris Matthews while I'm sitting in traffic and waiting in line to vote this evening, after the exit polls have already declared the winner."

Apple Fan Boi's

I am impressed with the enthusiasm some people exhibit for Apple products. It defies rationality and has clearly become deeply rooted in emotion. It's especially funny how enthusiasts will rave about the products and completely gloss over the shortcomings. I've had many Apple friends tell me their computer was in the shop and then casually go on telling me how much better their PC is than my Windows-based PC. It will be interesting to see if the latest iPhone antenna disaster will bring some of these enthusiasts back to Earth.
This cartoon (NSFW) says it all...

One Cause for Annoyance

So someone signed up my e-mail address for a site called OneCause. Seems like a nice enough idea - instead of getting money for making purchases, you can donate the money to a charitable cause.

Anyhow, they were sending me all sorts of spam in the form of shopping e-mails and newsletters. So I clicked the "unsubscribe" link in the e-mail to unsubscribe to the shopping e-mails and newsletters. I was greeted with the following page to manage my settings:

Notice that the top checkbox is grayed out. Let's take a closer look:

That's right. I'm a "champion", so I have earned the permanent privilege of receiving the Shopping Emails and Newsletters.

Target Pharmacy Hates Me

Every time I go to Target Pharmacy to pick up a prescription, the same routine happens...

Me: "Pick-up for Brian M."

[Pharmacist spends 2-3 minutes looking at prescription bags filed under "M" and then comes back to the counter empty handed.]

Pharmacist: "Did you drop off the prescription today?"

Me: "No."

Pharmacist: "When did you drop it off?"

[Why didn't the pharmacist ask this question first, since it nullifies the need for the first question?]

Me: "It was an automatic refill. I received a robo-call telling me it was ready for pick-up."

Pharmacist: "Date of Birth?"

[I state my DOB as several identity thieves standing in line jot furiously.]

[Pharmacist walks away and starts typing on a computer keyboard.]

Pharmacist: "What is the prescription for?"

[Didn't the pharmacist just look up my data? Doesn't she know already what my prescription is for?]

Me: "Anal cream"

[Not really, but it might as well have been, as awkward as I felt talking about my prescription in front of the gathering crowd of strangers.]

[Pharamacist goes back to the row of prescriptions filed under "M" and after another minute of fumbling around grabs a bag. She brings it to the counter beaming with pride at a job well done.]

Next time, I'm going to need an additional prescription for anxiety.

Read THIS Microsoft

Dear Microsoft,

Your Office applications are the ONLY APPLICATIONS IN THE UNIVERSE that don't let a user overwrite a file that was opened read-only. Sure, I appreciate the warning prompt indicating that the file was marked read only when I opened it. But when I click on the file in the dialog prompt and change it to read/write access, your apps should let me save the file over itself. All your stupid limitation does is make me waste time. Now, I have to save the file with a new file name, delete the old file, and then rename the new file with the old file name.

The only time this does not annoy me are days that I don't use Microsoft Office. If I ever met the developer responsible for that bit of code, I would beat him or her vehemently with a pineapple.

Spokeo and Pandora Privacy Concerns

I hate websites like Spokeo that farm the internet and collect peoples' personal information. Spokeo is a particularly annoying site because you can search by a wide variety of fields (name, email address, etc) and it will display a summary of any pictures, blogs, and social network data it can relate to that person.

I was surprised to find that if I searched my own email address, Spokeo was able to display a list of my Pandora music lists. I tried a few friends email addresses and it also linked to their Pandora music lists. This is extremely disturbing because I've never provided that information to anyone but Pandora (email required to register). They claim they don't give it out, and it's not displayed on my "public" Pandora page. As a side note, I didn't even realize I had a "public" page on Pandora. It was enabled by default when I created the account. But that is another topic to rant about on another day.

Bottom Line, Spokeo has access to information that isn't public information and I didn't provide to them. I don't know if they hacked Pandora, or if Pandora is lying about saying they don't give the info out. Either way, you can't trust anybody to protect your online information, no matter what their privacy policy says.

Also, I think we need to create a new classification of privacy - the right to "privacy of public data by context". Just because you provide personal information in one context, say family pictures for sharing with your friends on Facebook, doesn't mean that you mean for that information to be aggregated with data from another context, say your LinkedIn profile.

Dr. Pepper Iron Man 2 Promotion - Worst EVER!

Can anybody spot a flaw in this Dr. Pepper promotion...





Edit 05/12: I just purchased another bottle of Dr. Pepper and thought I'd play again for fun..I got the same results. WTF Dr. Pepper? Did you get your doctorate in bullshit?

Witholding Options

It's tax time and I am frustrated again. The most frustrating part of doing taxes every year is Intuit's Turbo Tax. This company is nefarious and devious in their ways. Each year they manage to raise the Bar of Evilness. In this year's product, they attempt to trick you into letting them use your personal tax information for their own devices. Why do I say they try to trick you? Because instead of saying "click here if you want to allow us to use your tax return information to spam provide you with other fantastic offers" it says "click here to allow us to show you more options to get your refund". I'm not making this stuff up. Of course you are tempted to check the box. Who doesn't want more options? Who wants to "miss anything"? I bet most people will click on the box, and then it disappears before they even have time to realize what they have done.



Here is another blogger who more rants eloquently about the situation.