It's very hard for me to believe that there wasn't a contract in there somewhere.
I think a good question to ask, then, is "what was the text of the agreement that you claim I agreed to?". For this debate to be settled, we'll need to see (1) a copy of the terms of service that were agreed to at the time, to see if it says "can be changed, and you agree by continuing to use the service" -- I'd guess that it probably does say that, but we need to see it to be sure, and the ISP needs to provide that text; (2) if it does say that, what are the terms now?; and (3) what does it say about cancelling your account and any related time limits?
I don't think we can settle this without that information. So I think the original poster needs to talk to their credit card issuer and get them to provide that information, since it seems as if the ISP isn't exactly going out of its way to do it when the poster asks. In fact, I have to wonder at this reluctance -- if they have ready evidence that yes, a contract was agreed to, why have they not produced it? Cynical, I know, but big business these days seems all too willing to extract money from people who these days are being bombarded by so many other expenses that they can't afford to be cheated (gas, wage increases being behind, etc).
If the contract was presented to them, either in the documentation or through some sort of "I Agree" dialog, they have a duty to read it.
The story's original poster has already stated that there was never an "I agree" dialog because the ISP's software was never installed. ISP-ware is not necessary to use a cable or DSL modem, and I have never used it and never installed it (threw my parents' copy of the disk away, actually, when I set up their DSL for them and their wireless network) and so there was never an agreement to be in a contract.
The customer in this case has been using the service all this time without ever being forced to agree to a contract and so they were never forced into one, so no contract is in effect.
If the ISP wanted all users to be bound to a contract, they should do what my ISP does and, when a new account is set up, when the user first goes online with their new modem, they are presented with the terms of use (no contract in my case, just the "thou shalt not spam or hack through our system" stuff) and have to agree before they're let out of the ISP's sandbox onto the Internet.
Credit card companies are on not on your side, they just want to make money any scummy way they can. Just because some company rightfully got the brunt of it doesn't make them your friends.
They're a business; they're on no one's side in particular other than their goal of staying in business. As long as you're careful to not carry a balance and to skim any terms of use changes (I read all of mine; for instance cashback gets paid off last and has the highest interest rate; not that I use cashback except in dire emergencies, but I know about that) and you make sure you don't get a card with an annual fee, and pay regularly, you should be fine.
But given that federal law, at least here in the US (the original story took place in Canada) severely limits your liability in fraud situations and you have the ability to reverse bad charges without any money leaving your real bank account, I'm going to keep right on using credit cards. Never had a problem; being informed is your friend.
In this case they've already refused to send a bill, and there is no contract for the card issuer to look at and say "okay, you do have to pay this charge". And given all the press crooked places like this are getting for crap like this, I'm sure card issuers and banks know about the stuff they try to pull on people, and know that chargebacks are one of the best weapons for fighting it.
A lot of people are going cell-only; I'm one of them since I don't like to talk on the phone much, so I'd rather have a phone that follows me on trips and such. If you have broadband (and these people apparently want broadband), you can do what I do and have cable net service, a cell phone, and nothing to do with The Phone Company.
So no, Telus does not have these people over a barrel. And they must behave appropriately. If they wish to keep peoples' business, they must act as if 100% of customers who become unhappy WILL defect to someone else.
Actually, last I checked (and I've done chargebacks before), their credit record gets the negative reports because they tried to commit fraud, and you get your money back.
And that would be just why Verizon has crippled those methods so that they don't work. That's why Verizon is so reviled around he -- wait, you must be new here.;)
And then there's this from the article: "The problem is if the used game is available a week after the new game is out for a $5 discount."
Meaning, they're afraid of the market getting stolen out from under them by their own product. Of course, they have no recourse to stop anyone who sells a game when they're done with it, under the doctrine of first sale, so long as it's the original being sold and not a copy. That's why used-book and used-CD stores are legal (though both authors and the RIAA have whined about them).
To that I say, tough. Someone bought the product from you, either used it or didn't, and decided that a fair asking price was lower than yours. Don't you think that that might just mean that the market think the selling price should be lower than you do? Economics dictates that you meet or beat the lower price if you want to regain market share.
Yet another example of "waaaaaaaaaaaah we're going to whine instead of charging a fairer price".
especially in the case of the Parent poster to this thread, who couldn't understand the game if the subtitles weren't there in the first place.
I'm my own parent? Cool.;)
The errors drive me crazy, too. I know why live captions have the mistakes, too, but that doesn't make them any more tolerable. I'd like to see more quality control. People depend on them and making a half-assed excuse isn't enough.
I really think whoever put that "more cinematic experience" crap in KOTOR has never actually thought about why some people might be using the subtitles. (I admit that the speed-reading I've developed over the years as a response to being born with a hearing impairment does also help me skip annoying dialogue that I've seen before, or just lets me skip in the first place because I have the whole thing read instantly, and that's nice too).
Let me say this as clearly as I can: if you think you know better than me as to what's right in my life, fuck you.
Too bad that doesn't seem to be doing any good with regards to getting rid of idiot Congresscritters that don't know what their constituents want. Or just don't care.
90% of the people using one of the computers was on a myspace page
And you could have walked up to any of them and said "Excuse me, I have a paper to write and I need this computer." And if they refused to give it to you, had them removed by lab staff. University computers are for academics first, and anyone who needs them for that purpose can boot off anyone who is just goofing off.
It's about time the issue of captioning is getting press. I'm hearing-impaired and captions are vital to me. I must have them available to understand important messages. If there's no captioning and I can't make out the dialogue without it (which is often), then the game doesn't get played. I still haven't done much with Starlancer since it had no captions even though it was developed by many of the same guys who did the well-captioned Wing Commander series (what the hell?) and the publisher knew about it but outright said it wasn't going to fix it. That's callous and uncaring and insensitive. Haven't bought anything from those guys since.
Now, some people may say that it's less realistic to have captions, and in fact I've gotten really tired of Knights of the Old Republic periodically yelling at me about using captions in the loading screens ("turn off subtitles for a more cinematic experience" my ass, I NEED THOSE TO UNDERSTAND WHAT THE HELL YOU ARE SAYING, so shut the fuck up!). That's fine; if you don't want subtitles, don't turn them on. That's why it's called closed captioning!
I've even had people call me a snob when I tell them that when I watch anime (and that's not often), I will only watch subtitled anime, not dubbed. (How does that make me a snob, anyway?). I asked them how they'd feel if they were in wheelchairs and it was seen as snobby to actually demand that buildings and street corners have wheelchair ramps. Oh, their expressions... followed by my glaring at them and then wandering off to find someone else to talk to.
Half-Life 2 even has the standard symbol for closed captions on the box (a TV with "CC" printed on the screen). Why can't other games do that, too?
It's a shame British magazines are so expensive in the US/Canada: I find they have far better and more intelligent articles.
It's not just the gaming magazines. The digital photography magazines are the same. I currently subscribe to Digital Photo Pro which has great articles and is printed on high quality paper stock... but I'm paying out the nose too. I'm not sure what the reason is - shipping maybe?
Why can't the US publishing houses pick up on this? I remember Final Frontier magazine, a space magazine. When I subscribed to it, it was great, same great stock, etc., then I suddenly stopped getting issues for a while. When it started shipping again, it was on the same crappy thin paper that everything else is using.
I dropped the subscription. I wasn't getting what I paid for anymore.
I used to subscribe to PC Gamer around 7-10 years or so ago. I want to say I dropped it in 98 or so. It was decent... and then I wrote them a letter to point out an error in a photo caption, a polite letter that included resources that showed why I was correct (saving them some research time before publishing the errata) and the correct information.
They responded by making fun of me and jeering at me. I felt like I was being mistreated because I had actually caught them at an error and therefore they were less than perfect, or something like that. I dropped my subscription right away and haven't ever picked it up again, not even in a bookstore, and I haven't read their web site. I can get my news online for free and more up-to-date than a print magazine.
If you cannot take criticism from your readers, especially the ones that take the time to try to help you out and who also follow every step you're supposed to follow for writing a polite critique letter, then you do not have a place as a magazine editor. Find another job, or find your readers going away.
I have also written correction letters to TIME and the New York Times, among other publications, and was treated professionally and politely. As a result, I still read the NYTimes online and I still recommend both publications if I'm asked about magazines or newspapers of those particular genres, and I speak well of their staff. PC Gamer on the other hand gets described as rude and unworthy of the money.
No one I've ever talked magazines to has ever subscribed to them after that.
Then I guess Amazon.com is too much of a hassle, too?
Who says one has to have the latest and greatest to have fun? I use a Mac, yes, but I also have a PC for gaming -- but even though I could have the latest and greatest, it's not important to me. Whatever's fun and whatever I want to play is -- and I'm sure I'm not the only one who has to have the latest the day it comes on sale. So some games come out a bit later. Big deal!
If you want to get paid for your service, you have to offer something that people can't get any other way. No ads? I can do that for free. See the story early? What's the big deal with that? Full comment history? Big deal, I don't need to look at it often. Tags? I can already use tagging (not that my inputs ever seem to appear).
Most of us can't just throw money around the way Bill Gates or other stupidly rich people can, especially not with gas costing more and more and electricity costing more and more.
And as an added bonus, you can play games on it without Bootcamping to Windows!
Uh, there are MacOS games out there. You just don't see them in most stores (and those that do carry them usually have them on only one or two shelves). You don't have to dualboot anything to run games on a Mac.
My own experience with laptop warranties has been Powerbooks and AppleCare. I have had to send a couple back for fixes, but each time the extended warranty has covered service and parts. I know someone whose Inspiron 8100 went through several displays, and from what he said, I believe Dell covered each of them and even admitted that there was a bad batch of displays from a supplier. I don't believe that he was financing through Dell, and we (I work in a research lab at a major university) buy the laptops via educational purchase ordering. I've also had to bring in a G5 tower for a logic board repair for another lab and that was covered under the one-year warranty. No problems there either.
If you are going to call me dumb for trusting the hundreds of complaints I've seen online that Paypal makes its contact information is hard to find, then you are a fucking asshole. It's so easy to slam other people, isn't it, when you're hiding behind that anonymous user name? You wouldn't call me stupid if you actually knew me, unless trusting other people is stupid now.
Things change, and apparently this is one of them, but the fact that people on the Internet can be assholes when completely uncalled for hasn't.
Fuck you, and have an awful day. It goes both ways, but to use an old saying, you started it.
Or you could just do what I am doing -- build your own box from parts and choose them based on reputation, user feedback, pre-rebate price, and your other needs. A box I'm building in a wishlist on newegg.com has a couple of mail-in rebates included, and if they're still active when I buy the system, I'll send them in -- but fortunately, newegg displays the pre-rebate price clearly labelled along with the post-rebate price, which is clearly labeled as "mail-in" or instant.
Slashdot Mirror
It's very hard for me to believe that there wasn't a contract in there somewhere.
I think a good question to ask, then, is "what was the text of the agreement that you claim I agreed to?". For this debate to be settled, we'll need to see (1) a copy of the terms of service that were agreed to at the time, to see if it says "can be changed, and you agree by continuing to use the service" -- I'd guess that it probably does say that, but we need to see it to be sure, and the ISP needs to provide that text; (2) if it does say that, what are the terms now?; and (3) what does it say about cancelling your account and any related time limits?
I don't think we can settle this without that information. So I think the original poster needs to talk to their credit card issuer and get them to provide that information, since it seems as if the ISP isn't exactly going out of its way to do it when the poster asks. In fact, I have to wonder at this reluctance -- if they have ready evidence that yes, a contract was agreed to, why have they not produced it? Cynical, I know, but big business these days seems all too willing to extract money from people who these days are being bombarded by so many other expenses that they can't afford to be cheated (gas, wage increases being behind, etc).
If the contract was presented to them, either in the documentation or through some sort of "I Agree" dialog, they have a duty to read it.
The story's original poster has already stated that there was never an "I agree" dialog because the ISP's software was never installed. ISP-ware is not necessary to use a cable or DSL modem, and I have never used it and never installed it (threw my parents' copy of the disk away, actually, when I set up their DSL for them and their wireless network) and so there was never an agreement to be in a contract.
The customer in this case has been using the service all this time without ever being forced to agree to a contract and so they were never forced into one, so no contract is in effect.
If the ISP wanted all users to be bound to a contract, they should do what my ISP does and, when a new account is set up, when the user first goes online with their new modem, they are presented with the terms of use (no contract in my case, just the "thou shalt not spam or hack through our system" stuff) and have to agree before they're let out of the ISP's sandbox onto the Internet.
Credit card companies are on not on your side, they just want to make money any scummy way they can. Just because some company rightfully got the brunt of it doesn't make them your friends.
They're a business; they're on no one's side in particular other than their goal of staying in business. As long as you're careful to not carry a balance and to skim any terms of use changes (I read all of mine; for instance cashback gets paid off last and has the highest interest rate; not that I use cashback except in dire emergencies, but I know about that) and you make sure you don't get a card with an annual fee, and pay regularly, you should be fine.
But given that federal law, at least here in the US (the original story took place in Canada) severely limits your liability in fraud situations and you have the ability to reverse bad charges without any money leaving your real bank account, I'm going to keep right on using credit cards. Never had a problem; being informed is your friend.
In this case they've already refused to send a bill, and there is no contract for the card issuer to look at and say "okay, you do have to pay this charge". And given all the press crooked places like this are getting for crap like this, I'm sure card issuers and banks know about the stuff they try to pull on people, and know that chargebacks are one of the best weapons for fighting it.
A lot of people are going cell-only; I'm one of them since I don't like to talk on the phone much, so I'd rather have a phone that follows me on trips and such. If you have broadband (and these people apparently want broadband), you can do what I do and have cable net service, a cell phone, and nothing to do with The Phone Company.
So no, Telus does not have these people over a barrel. And they must behave appropriately. If they wish to keep peoples' business, they must act as if 100% of customers who become unhappy WILL defect to someone else.
Actually, last I checked (and I've done chargebacks before), their credit record gets the negative reports because they tried to commit fraud, and you get your money back.
criminals engaged in a crime recognized as a crime all around the world.
Are you sure about that, given that this is Slashdot?
More likely fangirls drooling at Depp.
And that would be just why Verizon has crippled those methods so that they don't work. That's why Verizon is so reviled around he -- wait, you must be new here. ;)
And then there's this from the article: "The problem is if the used game is available a week after the new game is out for a $5 discount."
Meaning, they're afraid of the market getting stolen out from under them by their own product. Of course, they have no recourse to stop anyone who sells a game when they're done with it, under the doctrine of first sale, so long as it's the original being sold and not a copy. That's why used-book and used-CD stores are legal (though both authors and the RIAA have whined about them).
To that I say, tough. Someone bought the product from you, either used it or didn't, and decided that a fair asking price was lower than yours. Don't you think that that might just mean that the market think the selling price should be lower than you do? Economics dictates that you meet or beat the lower price if you want to regain market share.
Yet another example of "waaaaaaaaaaaah we're going to whine instead of charging a fairer price".
especially in the case of the Parent poster to this thread, who couldn't understand the game if the subtitles weren't there in the first place.
;)
I'm my own parent? Cool.
The errors drive me crazy, too. I know why live captions have the mistakes, too, but that doesn't make them any more tolerable. I'd like to see more quality control. People depend on them and making a half-assed excuse isn't enough.
I really think whoever put that "more cinematic experience" crap in KOTOR has never actually thought about why some people might be using the subtitles. (I admit that the speed-reading I've developed over the years as a response to being born with a hearing impairment does also help me skip annoying dialogue that I've seen before, or just lets me skip in the first place because I have the whole thing read instantly, and that's nice too).
Difficult? Not really. That's what lab assistants are for.
Let me say this as clearly as I can: if you think you know better than me as to what's right in my life, fuck you.
Too bad that doesn't seem to be doing any good with regards to getting rid of idiot Congresscritters that don't know what their constituents want. Or just don't care.
90% of the people using one of the computers was on a myspace page
And you could have walked up to any of them and said "Excuse me, I have a paper to write and I need this computer." And if they refused to give it to you, had them removed by lab staff. University computers are for academics first, and anyone who needs them for that purpose can boot off anyone who is just goofing off.
It's about time the issue of captioning is getting press. I'm hearing-impaired and captions are vital to me. I must have them available to understand important messages. If there's no captioning and I can't make out the dialogue without it (which is often), then the game doesn't get played. I still haven't done much with Starlancer since it had no captions even though it was developed by many of the same guys who did the well-captioned Wing Commander series (what the hell?) and the publisher knew about it but outright said it wasn't going to fix it. That's callous and uncaring and insensitive. Haven't bought anything from those guys since.
... followed by my glaring at them and then wandering off to find someone else to talk to.
Now, some people may say that it's less realistic to have captions, and in fact I've gotten really tired of Knights of the Old Republic periodically yelling at me about using captions in the loading screens ("turn off subtitles for a more cinematic experience" my ass, I NEED THOSE TO UNDERSTAND WHAT THE HELL YOU ARE SAYING, so shut the fuck up!). That's fine; if you don't want subtitles, don't turn them on. That's why it's called closed captioning!
I've even had people call me a snob when I tell them that when I watch anime (and that's not often), I will only watch subtitled anime, not dubbed. (How does that make me a snob, anyway?). I asked them how they'd feel if they were in wheelchairs and it was seen as snobby to actually demand that buildings and street corners have wheelchair ramps. Oh, their expressions
Half-Life 2 even has the standard symbol for closed captions on the box (a TV with "CC" printed on the screen). Why can't other games do that, too?
It's a shame British magazines are so expensive in the US/Canada: I find they have far better and more intelligent articles.
... but I'm paying out the nose too. I'm not sure what the reason is - shipping maybe?
It's not just the gaming magazines. The digital photography magazines are the same. I currently subscribe to Digital Photo Pro which has great articles and is printed on high quality paper stock
Why can't the US publishing houses pick up on this? I remember Final Frontier magazine, a space magazine. When I subscribed to it, it was great, same great stock, etc., then I suddenly stopped getting issues for a while. When it started shipping again, it was on the same crappy thin paper that everything else is using.
I dropped the subscription. I wasn't getting what I paid for anymore.
I used to subscribe to PC Gamer around 7-10 years or so ago. I want to say I dropped it in 98 or so. It was decent... and then I wrote them a letter to point out an error in a photo caption, a polite letter that included resources that showed why I was correct (saving them some research time before publishing the errata) and the correct information.
They responded by making fun of me and jeering at me. I felt like I was being mistreated because I had actually caught them at an error and therefore they were less than perfect, or something like that. I dropped my subscription right away and haven't ever picked it up again, not even in a bookstore, and I haven't read their web site. I can get my news online for free and more up-to-date than a print magazine.
If you cannot take criticism from your readers, especially the ones that take the time to try to help you out and who also follow every step you're supposed to follow for writing a polite critique letter, then you do not have a place as a magazine editor. Find another job, or find your readers going away.
I have also written correction letters to TIME and the New York Times, among other publications, and was treated professionally and politely. As a result, I still read the NYTimes online and I still recommend both publications if I'm asked about magazines or newspapers of those particular genres, and I speak well of their staff. PC Gamer on the other hand gets described as rude and unworthy of the money.
No one I've ever talked magazines to has ever subscribed to them after that.
I won't be sad to see them die.
Then I guess Amazon.com is too much of a hassle, too?
Who says one has to have the latest and greatest to have fun? I use a Mac, yes, but I also have a PC for gaming -- but even though I could have the latest and greatest, it's not important to me. Whatever's fun and whatever I want to play is -- and I'm sure I'm not the only one who has to have the latest the day it comes on sale. So some games come out a bit later. Big deal!
If you want to get paid for your service, you have to offer something that people can't get any other way. No ads? I can do that for free. See the story early? What's the big deal with that? Full comment history? Big deal, I don't need to look at it often. Tags? I can already use tagging (not that my inputs ever seem to appear).
Most of us can't just throw money around the way Bill Gates or other stupidly rich people can, especially not with gas costing more and more and electricity costing more and more.
Not anymore than it's a hassle to buy something that isn't carried at every store. Is it really a hassle to get a Big Mac instead of a Whopper?
And as an added bonus, you can play games on it without Bootcamping to Windows!
Uh, there are MacOS games out there. You just don't see them in most stores (and those that do carry them usually have them on only one or two shelves). You don't have to dualboot anything to run games on a Mac.
My own experience with laptop warranties has been Powerbooks and AppleCare. I have had to send a couple back for fixes, but each time the extended warranty has covered service and parts. I know someone whose Inspiron 8100 went through several displays, and from what he said, I believe Dell covered each of them and even admitted that there was a bad batch of displays from a supplier. I don't believe that he was financing through Dell, and we (I work in a research lab at a major university) buy the laptops via educational purchase ordering. I've also had to bring in a G5 tower for a logic board repair for another lab and that was covered under the one-year warranty. No problems there either.
Plus, instead of the neat black colour scheme, his armour would probably have holstein spots.
That was Gateway.
If you are going to call me dumb for trusting the hundreds of complaints I've seen online that Paypal makes its contact information is hard to find, then you are a fucking asshole. It's so easy to slam other people, isn't it, when you're hiding behind that anonymous user name? You wouldn't call me stupid if you actually knew me, unless trusting other people is stupid now.
Things change, and apparently this is one of them, but the fact that people on the Internet can be assholes when completely uncalled for hasn't.
Fuck you, and have an awful day. It goes both ways, but to use an old saying, you started it.
Or you could just do what I am doing -- build your own box from parts and choose them based on reputation, user feedback, pre-rebate price, and your other needs. A box I'm building in a wishlist on newegg.com has a couple of mail-in rebates included, and if they're still active when I buy the system, I'll send them in -- but fortunately, newegg displays the pre-rebate price clearly labelled along with the post-rebate price, which is clearly labeled as "mail-in" or instant.