Support Subscription Service

I mentioned in another post today that I ordered a new laptop and I just got an email with an invoice saying that I owe Dell $7.77 and that they will be charging me this amount every month forever.  There is a slim chance of that ever happening, as I don’t remember asking for their support subscription services with 24/7 expert support and enhanced SupportAssist, so I called the number on the bill and a robot picked up the phone.  I couldn’t deal with her, so I decided to log into the website and cancel this that way.  Again, some type of robot was handling the chat line asking me a bunch of questions till I finally was able to get connected with a Sales Advisor who I told that I would like to opt out of subscription automatic renewal.  He said “Great! I am glad you chatted in today.  I would be happy to help you with that information, sure let me help you with that, can you help me what is the product that you are looking to purchase please help me with the link of the product.  Typical sales guy, but I was not buying anything today, in fact it was the opposite and I told him that I don’t want to pay $7.77 every month for this service that I never asked for.  He said he could cancel this for me and then he told me that I had to do this from my cart, but I don’t have a cart, because this item is already being shipped to me.

I told him that I have already paid for this and I am waiting for you to ship it to me and he said that once I placed the order, he could not make any changes to it, so he tried to pass me off to customer care and he gave me that same phone number for the first robot, which I wasn’t having.  I asked him to connect me with a real person.  I told him that I was never going to pay this bill because I don’t want this service and if he didn’t cancel it, I would return the product and then I resorted to pulling a Karen and I said, “get me your supervisor”.  I asked him if he was willing to lose this whole sale because he is too lazy to fix my problem.  Eventually he gave me a link for another chat room and I got connected with the Dell Customer Care chat line.  After reexplaining my problem, it finally got resolved.

The representative asked me if I was satisfied with the level of service provided to me and if I had any feedback regarding my experience today.  I told him that it was very difficult to get this cancelled but since it is done, I am satisfied.  He said that it was his pleasure to help me and then he mentioned that I may receive a short email survey, which I am not taking as this wasted enough of my time.

Written for Paula’s Monday Peeve.

Unburdening

I finally got my Echo Show Alexa device working properly, so this is more of a gratitude than a peeve post, but it is also sort of a complaint, because this should not have taken so long.  I bought the Echo Show back in March as a birthday present to myself and it never worked the way that it was supposed to.  I wanted to be able to view my email calendar from my Alexa device and this would help me plan my day before I got out of bed every morning as I keep the Echo Show in my bedroom.  I was told that I needed to download the Alexa software on my phone in order to do this, but I had an older 3G phone that was low on memory and every time I turned it on it gave me this low memory warning, so I was not able to download this phone app.  I was able to download the Alexa software to my desktop, but this is a different version and it never connected to my email calendar or my Echo Show device, so that was just frustrating.

When I got my new phone on Friday night, I downloaded the Alexa app on it and tied it in with my email and I was able to look at the appointments that I setup on my calendar, but these still were not appearing on my Echo Show device.  I had this weird virus on my desktop when I first got it back in September of 2019 and this company digitaldrive365 helped me to resolve it after I bought a three-year contract for their services, so I contacted them to help me out with this.  After some fiddling around and giving them control of my computer through the TeamViewer, they finally fixed this so my Alexa is working properly as it should have been.

My new phone was the answer to this problem and I was blaming Alexa for being so stupid and I even stopped talking with her for a while.  The thing is that she is way more stubborn than me and when I needed her to set some new alarms for me to take this new medication, I gave in and started talking with her again.  She is so much easier to use for alarms than setting my alarm clock, as all I have to do is tell her what time to set the alarm for.  I know this was not a really great peeve, but sometimes the waiting is the hardest part.

Written for Paula’s Monday Peeve.

Annoying

Lluís Bussé liked 14 of my posts in a minute, which means that he didn’t read any of them and he just wants his mug to show up on the bottom of my posts.  What is up with that?

Kettle Corn

I have never walked past a Girl Scout without buying cookies from her, and I guess I feel like it is the least I can do to help them out.  The cookies are overpriced, but they are usually good, even though they are not on my diet.  On Saturday I went to the grocery store and there were two Scouts out front with a table set up and the young boy asked me if I was going to buy something from him and I told him to catch me on the way out.  When I finished my shopping, I walked past the Scout and I asked him what he had for sale and he showed me a bag of this Kettle Corn, which looked good, so I asked him how much and he said $20, which was way more than I wanted to pay.  I bought the Kettle Corn, but the next time I see them out in front of the store, I am going to duck them, because this is an exorbitant amount to charge for a bag that is mostly filled with air.

I don’t have any children, so I always try to help them out and don’t get me wrong, this Kettle Corn was tasty, but $10 is too much to pay and I feel like I got ripped off.  I was a Cub Scout for one day and then I quit, because this just wasn’t for me, as I thought they were all sissies.  The day I was a Scout it was raining and the Den Mother had everyone cutting up paper flowers and I was not the kind of kid that got into crafts.  It must be even worse now, as the Boy Scouts has both boys and girls together, with the Girl scouts being a different organization.   I bet it would be even worse now being a Boy Scout then it was when I was a kid.

Written for Paula’s Monday Peeve.

Minor Complaints

That Low Tire Air Pressure idiot light came on again.  Tire pressure will increase as the outside air temperature rises, and I don’t want to get into the ideal gas law here as everyone has already had too much of that from taking Physics, but the temperature gets hot here in Florida.  Once the weather cools down like it does at night, you may get a signal that says your tire pressure is low.  I heard that some people in Florida fill their tires with nitrogen to avoid triggering this sensor all the time.  The light illuminates to alert you that your tires could be underinflated, which can lead to undue tire wear and possible tire failure, but it could be triggered by a tire that is only 10% to 15% low in air pressure.  Nitrogen molecules are larger and slower moving than those of compressed air, thus nitrogen doesn’t seep out of your tires as quickly as air will, helping to maintain proper pressure for a longer period of time.  They are just tires, but the car won’t work without them, however I don’t understand why this needs to be so complex.

I got the Super Flu shot last Wednesday which is only given to old people and I had a minor reaction to it, at least that was what the nurse said when I called to complain about it.  I have been getting flu shots for years and I never had anything more than a sore arm for a few hours afterward.  This time my arm swelled up and I looked a bit like Arnold Schwarzenegger pumping iron and there was a giant red patch on my arm.  The nurse assured me it was normal and the swelling went down and the pain went away on Sunday, but it is still a bit reddish.

I got an email from Consumer cellular, yea the cell phone company for older people and they said that I need to but a new phone.  They said that since the entire country of wireless network providers are completing major improvements to their networks and cellular towers to deliver faster connections and higher call quality via new 4G and 5G services, that my 4G phone will no longer work in a month’s time.  Whatever happened to downward compatibility?  That used to be a thing where if something new came out, the old stuff would still work, but I guess there is a lot of money involved for everyone getting new phones, so it is what it is.

I got my haircut the other day, but not at the first salon that I went into.  The girl was not wearing a mask, so I asked her if she got the Covid vaccine and she told me that it was her personal business and there was no reason for me to know that.  This is part of living in Florida where you have to deal with republican mentality every day, but I told her that it was my business, as I have the right to protect myself and I got up out of her chair and told her that I was going someplace else.  I mostly blame DeSantis for promoting this cavalier attitude with his baring mandatory mask usage in schools.  The only way we will ever got out of this pandemic is for people to get vaccinated.  This actually worked out good for me, as I went into another salon where this cute blond said she was vaccinated and I think that she will be cutting my hair from now on.

Written for Paula’s Monday Peeve.

Always Upsetting Everything

Why does Joe Manchin the conservative West Virginia Democrat still believe that bipartisanship cooperation is possible?  Is he living in some idealistic world where Trump was never the president and Republicans were not totally into conspiracy theories?  He always seems to be voting against something that the rest of his party supports and with the Senate being equally split between the two parties, he is needed as the 50th vote.  Without Manchin, Democrats don’t have a working majority and even with Manchin on their side, they still need Vice President Kamala Harris to break any tie votes.  In this increasingly polarized Senate, where every issue seems to be split down the middle, he needs to take the blame for nothing ever getting done.

Written for Paula’s Monday Peeve.

Phishing

Why are these people trying to take advantage of others?  Are they sadists that want to feel powerful and be in control, because they feel superior to everyone, or are they just too lazy to go out and get a real job?  These people are selfish and ungrateful predators that try to miniplate our emotions and they invent scams that will either appeal to us, or try to threaten us.  Phishing is mostly done by email and this attack is an attempt to trick you into doing exactly what the scammer wants you to do.  In order for the world to work, we have to put our trust into certain things and when you see a message that has the Microsoft name and label attached to it, then you feel that it is legitimate.

I got phished the other day and I hate when people f__k with my email.  I clicked the link in my email and it brought me to a web page and then I realized that this was probably a scam, so I closed it.

I don’t know much about Linktree, but it appears to be a legitimate site and as far as I can tell, it is not associated with Microsoft Outlook.  I figure that these scammers are trying to get me to trust them and that is why they are using authentic genuine sites to make me feel better about giving over some of my information to them.  That is not going to happen, but I could see how some people would end up falling for this.

Written for Paula’s Monday Peeve.

Most Of My Spam Is Coming From China

I had 80 comments in my Spam folder this morning and most of them were about online casinos and they had Chinese characters in them.  This just started about two weeks ago and it seems to be getting worse every day.  Some of the comments are nice and they said things like, “Great blog, continue the good work!”, or “I could not resist commenting. Well written!”, or “Your website is extremely helpful. Thank you for sharing!”, or “You’ve made some good points there”, or “Aw, this was an exceptionally good post”, or “Saved as a favorite, I really like your web site!”  To me all of these comments are all Spam, as they don’t have a Gravatar and I delete them every day.

China is on a global hacking spree and these hackers are all trying to suck up to me.  I am sure that they all have evil intentions.  These sites have all left multiple comments on my blogs: 먹튀사이트, 먹튀검증, 먹튀검증사이트, and 광주출장안마 and I am fed up with it.

Written for Paula’s Monday Peeve.

Up On the Roof

It is unbearable and they just arrived, the roofers are here, bang, bang, bang and scaring the hell out of the cats.  I am lucky that I have a meeting today and then I will be going out to the store, but I already have a headache from the hammering.  You don’t realize how loud getting a new roof will be, till there is a crew of 8 men standing on your roof constantly hammering nails into it.  I know that I didn’t like the noise when my neighbors had their roof shingles replaced, but it is much worse being inside the house.  It is just a one-story house with a tiny attic, so I can even hear their footsteps walking above me.  I guess the only good thing about this is that the contractor said that all the work should be completed by tomorrow, if we don’t get too much rain.

Written for Paula’s Monday Peeve.

Sucked In

I watched the very exciting show Salvation on Amazon Prime, but when Season 1 was over they said I had to purchase Paramount Plus in order to watch Season 2 and because I liked it so much, I got sucked into doing that.  Spoiler alert Season 2 ends with many unresolved issues and I am still worried about whether or not the meteor named Samson will destroy the Earth.  I Googled Season 3 and I found out that the show was cancelled and Salvation will not be returning for a third season.  It is not the worst thing in the world having another entertainment outlet in my life and after ten years of just watching Netflix, I was running out of stuff to watch.  At any rate, it is cheaper than joining another dating site, which I finally realize gives me nothing but problems.

I started watching the series Picard, which I really enjoyed and the best part was when Seven of Nine plugged herself into the Borge cube and became the queen, she was always such a badass.  Now I am watching Star Trek Discovery which I am also enjoying despite the flaw of the spore drive transport system, which is integral to the show, but it is out of place.  The main character is a woman named Michael and she is Spock’s half-sister, and Spock’s father Sarek is also in this series, which puts this show at an early star date, so this advanced technology seems out of place.  The comedic character Fenton Harcourt Mudd also shows up in this series, which enforces this earlier time period, but I guess that everything does not have to be perfect for a show to be enjoyable.  The one thing that does piss me off about Paramount Plus is their need to make me sit through 20 seconds of commercials, before a new episode comes on and that never happened on Netflix or Amazon Prime.  If I am paying to watch something, I should not be forced to watch commercials.

Written for Paula’s Monday Peeve.