They have to, they subsidized that cool new feature laden cell phone you are carrying, US cell phone deals are not as one-sided as you think. If you take the phone and quit the service they lose big time.
Bullshit. Aside from the fact that you can't get a plain phone anymore (nor will most providers activate an old cell phone), the cell phone companies get massive discounts from the phone manufacturers by buying in bulk. They aren't losing hundreds of dollars, unless you use RIAA math. Sure, they lose money, but it isn't a tradegy - and they make money on each and every single person who cancels and pays the etf.
They also have enough purchasing power to cripple the phones, selling intentionally broken products to you - something that borders on fraud when they don't change the name of the phone (and every carrier has done this)
Some parts of the world do not subsidize, you pay full retail for your phone, and customers have an easier time changing providers. And the phones are vastly cheaper over there than the sticker price that we see. Go figure.
In the usa, verbal contracts are only good up to a certain dollar amount in goods (as in a sale of an item - and it is $500 in most of the states that I'm aware of) and a different amount (~2 grand) in services. Wouldn't be surprised if you folks had a similar thing, given that their system is similar (and somewhat of a blatant rip off;) of the English system.
And yes, proving the terms is a bitch, even if there was a witness.
Whining includes going to the BBB and other toothless organizations. (No large corporation gives a shit about the BBB.)
I disagree. With so many companies staffing their 800 lines with people who really can't do anything, a quick bbb complaint often gets a call back within a day or so from someone who is actually empowered to fix your problem. It isn't really the BBB that companies are worried about, it is the reporter for a news startion saying something like, "So, Mr. Jones, why does your company have over 350 unanswered BBB complaints?" Compusa got forcibly delisted from the BBB (mostly for the rebate bullshit the ftc later punished them for) a couple of years ago and it was a pain in the ass for them to get back on and their reputation suffered. That said, if a company just doesn't care about negative PR - tiger direct comes to mind - yeah, filing a bbb report won't do shit.
One of your options can be to do amusing things to companies. Phillips was suposed to give me a refund on a set of headphones but were apparantly retarded and kept losing / not receiving the receipt (I think the shitbirds were hoping I would just go away, however I'm... passionate about getting my money when companies owe me something.) So I called one day and informed them they were going to receive 1701* copies of the receipt if the cheque didn't ship that day. So that night, 1701 faxes of the receipt (ok, so a few errored out) were sent. Later that day, I received a polite call from an american woman (the fucking filipinos on their 800 line can't tie their own fucking shoes without approval from the us office) and they sent me a cheque.
*about 1701 - I used to watch star trek a lot and I did a quick estimate on how many faxes I could send while I slept - it was around this number, so I just used it. I suppose this made a lot more sense / was funny to me when I was full of angst over this. Not so much anymore.
See, problem is that most people can't instill the necessary amount of fear that keeps them from calling the cops. Then again, an anonymous assault with some "what happened last night to my x was such a shame"s thrown in sometimes gets the message across and gives you a little less risk in regards to law enforcement.
Telus will threaten to take you to court for abusing their service - shaw (the local "competitor") threatened to bill me for bandwidth overages at a rate that changed on every call (they quoted me $5-$10 a megabyte - of course, this isn't defined anywhere in the aup, tos or contract). I'm guessing these are just empty threats made by csrs who have a quota or something. But yeah, if you wget microsoft.com or something repeatedly, that will probably get you bumped pretty quickly. That said, telus will probably try to hit you with the etf if you do that.
Which is the proper way to deal with situations. I'm sure the submitter could claim breach of contract on the lowered bandwidth limits, but it isn't as easy to file a complaint in small claims court in Canada than it is in the usa.
Forget waiting. Do a chargeback on your credit card. Fastest, easiest way. BTW, wherabouts are you? Fatwallet.com has a couple pretty threads on chargebacks in the forum sections.
A chargeback is always the best thing to do. If visa approves the chargeback, telus will get fined, the funds taken directly from their merchant account (none of this bullshit where you have to get a collection agency to collect the debt), a certain percentage (8-11%) will be an additional fine and telus gets a black mark on their record. Theoretically, if they get enough chargebacks, their credit processor will drop them, although this would never happen with a telus sized company. You might even get a full refund (i.e. every payment since you signed up) back although that is rare (very rare in canada). No dealing with lawyers, court fees, etc. Much cleaner and it hurts the offending company more.
I talked to their legal department and a lawyer friend a few months ago about telus's contract and get this - even if they reduced the level of service, or implemented a drastically lower bandwidth limit, you would still be charged the cancellation fee unless you took them to court. So while your prices may stay constant, the level of service would noticably be decreased. Lovely, eh? Sort of how sprint pulls a cell tower out of your neighborhood and all of a sudden you can't make calls without roaming, but oh, no, cancelling your contract will cost you $200*
As you may or may not know, about 4 months ago, both telus(dsl) and shaw (cable) started cracking down on bandwidth usage. First both started from ~100 gigs (which was an unofficial "you're abusing the network because we say so" limit) and then it started dropping gradually. At one point, shaw's service dropped to a pathetic 30 gigs a month, and telus dsl users were limited to 25 or so. The interesting thing is that the bandwidth caps dropped very quietly - only a press release and a small change on the sales page (meanwhile, shaw continued to advertise unlimited service. Belive they still do actually, even though the cap is set at 60 gigs - you can pay another $10 a month to get back to the previous limit of 100 gigs). Also - when one company dropped the cap, the other would follow within days. Now - I'm not saying that there was collusion, but it sure as hell stank of something. After a few months of this, they finally figured out that it cost them more to have a csr make a 15 minute call to the customer to discuss their bandwidth usage than it does to pay for a hundred gigs of bandwidth - so the bandwidth limits are now 40 for telus and 60 gigs a month for shaw (for the mid range personal accounts). BTW. It is impossible to get an account where I live that gives you more than 150 gigs of transfer a month.
Really, this isn't as big deal, the monopolies up here act like arrogant assholes and have the idea that contracts only apply to the users using their service - a bit better than BellSouth, but still annoying to deal with. Eventually, these bullshit "contracts" of adhesion will be challened in court just like their magical bandwidth limits and this will be resolved. Unfortunately, Canucks are less likely to sue, so it may be a while before this is resoved.
Good luck in your quest, although I honestly can't reccomend shaw. Shaw, at least doesn't block access to union websites during a lockout though.
* a hateful "I hope you fucks are all gunned down and shot in the knees" goes out to all the sprint employees.
Let's dispense with the hyperbole. Had the FBI gone in with a tactical team and started throwing flashbangs and arrested everyone who was in attendance, maybe then your arguement would be justified. We really don't know jack shit about the situation yet, and although it sounds fishy and looks a wee bit on the abusive side of law enforcement, let's take a step back (not that there hasn't been downright dirty and disgusting abuses in recent history)
yup - and ipodservice is an absolute pain for (admittedly poorly written ones that have a hard time re-establishing comm without a reboot) all in one printer drivers - both on the pc and mac side.
Well, there could be. Of course, you'd need to have a president (and congress + senate) that would write and pass the legislation. Interestingly enough, when I came to the USA, the first American history / civics class was based on what makes America great. The right of recall, the right to travel freely without showing "papers", the right to bear arms and the Bill of Rights were all mentioned - and to someone in high school who came from a country that didn't necessarily have all those rights (or the rights weren't specifically written down in the documents penned by the creators of my native country) - I was honestly quite shocked, amazed and there was a fair bit of admiration there too. As of today, that has virtually all changed - and in some cases, outright reversed - under the leadership of different presidents who sat on opposite sides of the aisle. In case you're wondering - the year I came was 1998.
All this will do is start a bidding war on the oem's end. Besides, installing the next version of messenger (or a MS download of any kind) will have a screen that will have all the default options revert back to MS's settings. It doesn't really matter what browser they use, if the homepage is msn.com, they still get their unique visitor and ads displayed numbers bumped. OTOH,.mp3 will be associated with Musicmatch jukebox or some equally bloated shitty app. I think we can all agree that is a loss.
Name, account number, etc is also on the card in cleartext, so it isn't like it hits a db to pull that. Played with a serial based card reader a while ago, much fun.
I was in London about 2 months ago and the amount of people walking around with the white headphones oblivious to the world around them was incredible.
Well, size isn't everything, but if you are 5'5" 140lb, then yes, you probably are a pussy
. . . That's why people who cannot fight for themselves love guns. They are the pussies weapon of choice.
Or female. Or disabled. Or have a disease like MS. And I love how in your world the bad parts are clearly marked and the criminals never walk out of their little criminal ghetto.
In terms of damage, dying from a knife wound is rare. You generally need multiple wounds or a lucky shot to a key artery or nerve. For a club you need to literally cave in some part of their body. Oddly enough, 33% of UK muders were caused by knives. I guess they aren't all that rare.
Or get one in the head to almost guarantee a kill. Right, and your average dumbass thug is walking around getting headshots on moving targets.
What the article is really talking about is not a man-trap, but the anti-"bum" measures that banks use in many cities around ATMs inside a building. You have to put your ATM card into a slot, but it really doesn't read the card, it just verifies that you stuck a magstrip card into the slot.
Some of the "bum repelling devices" are a little more advanced and will read the frst few digits to verify that you are a customer of the barticular bank, etc, (a bit of a nuisance if you are drunk and looking to buy more alcohol and need to make a withdrawal;) so it is a little more complex than you claim, but we can see how that isn't perfect.
Yes, the company's main product may be beaten to the punch by XBox live arcade at best and vaporware at worst
I do believe that the worst could be "defrauding investors in order to get funding to buy beer, hookers and aeron chairs(plus a rather decent salary for the founders of the company)", but hey, the jurys still out on that one. I do know that at e3 2003, they had exactly 2 keyboards and one died while I was there.
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They have to, they subsidized that cool new feature laden cell phone you are carrying, US cell phone deals are not as one-sided as you think. If you take the phone and quit the service they lose big time.
Bullshit. Aside from the fact that you can't get a plain phone anymore (nor will most providers activate an old cell phone), the cell phone companies get massive discounts from the phone manufacturers by buying in bulk. They aren't losing hundreds of dollars, unless you use RIAA math. Sure, they lose money, but it isn't a tradegy - and they make money on each and every single person who cancels and pays the etf.
They also have enough purchasing power to cripple the phones, selling intentionally broken products to you - something that borders on fraud when they don't change the name of the phone (and every carrier has done this)
Some parts of the world do not subsidize, you pay full retail for your phone, and customers have an easier time changing providers.
And the phones are vastly cheaper over there than the sticker price that we see. Go figure.
In the usa, verbal contracts are only good up to a certain dollar amount in goods (as in a sale of an item - and it is $500 in most of the states that I'm aware of) and a different amount (~2 grand) in services. Wouldn't be surprised if you folks had a similar thing, given that their system is similar (and somewhat of a blatant rip off ;) of the English system.
And yes, proving the terms is a bitch, even if there was a witness.
Whining includes going to the BBB and other toothless organizations. (No large corporation gives a shit about the BBB.)
I disagree. With so many companies staffing their 800 lines with people who really can't do anything, a quick bbb complaint often gets a call back within a day or so from someone who is actually empowered to fix your problem. It isn't really the BBB that companies are worried about, it is the reporter for a news startion saying something like, "So, Mr. Jones, why does your company have over 350 unanswered BBB complaints?"
Compusa got forcibly delisted from the BBB (mostly for the rebate bullshit the ftc later punished them for) a couple of years ago and it was a pain in the ass for them to get back on and their reputation suffered.
That said, if a company just doesn't care about negative PR - tiger direct comes to mind - yeah, filing a bbb report won't do shit.
One of your options can be to do amusing things to companies. Phillips was suposed to give me a refund on a set of headphones but were apparantly retarded and kept losing / not receiving the receipt (I think the shitbirds were hoping I would just go away, however I'm... passionate about getting my money when companies owe me something.)
So I called one day and informed them they were going to receive 1701* copies of the receipt if the cheque didn't ship that day. So that night, 1701 faxes of the receipt (ok, so a few errored out) were sent. Later that day, I received a polite call from an american woman (the fucking filipinos on their 800 line can't tie their own fucking shoes without approval from the us office) and they sent me a cheque.
*about 1701 - I used to watch star trek a lot and I did a quick estimate on how many faxes I could send while I slept - it was around this number, so I just used it. I suppose this made a lot more sense / was funny to me when I was full of angst over this. Not so much anymore.
See, problem is that most people can't instill the necessary amount of fear that keeps them from calling the cops. Then again, an anonymous assault with some "what happened last night to my x was such a shame"s thrown in sometimes gets the message across and gives you a little less risk in regards to law enforcement.
Telus will threaten to take you to court for abusing their service - shaw (the local "competitor") threatened to bill me for bandwidth overages at a rate that changed on every call (they quoted me $5-$10 a megabyte - of course, this isn't defined anywhere in the aup, tos or contract). I'm guessing these are just empty threats made by csrs who have a quota or something.
But yeah, if you wget microsoft.com or something repeatedly, that will probably get you bumped pretty quickly. That said, telus will probably try to hit you with the etf if you do that.
Which is the proper way to deal with situations. I'm sure the submitter could claim breach of contract on the lowered bandwidth limits, but it isn't as easy to file a complaint in small claims court in Canada than it is in the usa.
Incidentally, telus is the company who blocked access to union websites from their network and cut off the internet access of some employees during a strike last year
Regulatory bodies are a joke in Canada.
Forget waiting. Do a chargeback on your credit card. Fastest, easiest way. BTW, wherabouts are you?
Fatwallet.com has a couple pretty threads on chargebacks in the forum sections.
A chargeback is always the best thing to do. If visa approves the chargeback, telus will get fined, the funds taken directly from their merchant account (none of this bullshit where you have to get a collection agency to collect the debt), a certain percentage (8-11%) will be an additional fine and telus gets a black mark on their record. Theoretically, if they get enough chargebacks, their credit processor will drop them, although this would never happen with a telus sized company.
You might even get a full refund (i.e. every payment since you signed up) back although that is rare (very rare in canada).
No dealing with lawyers, court fees, etc. Much cleaner and it hurts the offending company more.
I talked to their legal department and a lawyer friend a few months ago about telus's contract and get this - even if they reduced the level of service, or implemented a drastically lower bandwidth limit, you would still be charged the cancellation fee unless you took them to court.
So while your prices may stay constant, the level of service would noticably be decreased. Lovely, eh? Sort of how sprint pulls a cell tower out of your neighborhood and all of a sudden you can't make calls without roaming, but oh, no, cancelling your contract will cost you $200*
As you may or may not know, about 4 months ago, both telus(dsl) and shaw (cable) started cracking down on bandwidth usage. First both started from ~100 gigs (which was an unofficial "you're abusing the network because we say so" limit) and then it started dropping gradually. At one point, shaw's service dropped to a pathetic 30 gigs a month, and telus dsl users were limited to 25 or so.
The interesting thing is that the bandwidth caps dropped very quietly - only a press release and a small change on the sales page (meanwhile, shaw continued to advertise unlimited service. Belive they still do actually, even though the cap is set at 60 gigs - you can pay another $10 a month to get back to the previous limit of 100 gigs). Also - when one company dropped the cap, the other would follow within days. Now - I'm not saying that there was collusion, but it sure as hell stank of something.
After a few months of this, they finally figured out that it cost them more to have a csr make a 15 minute call to the customer to discuss their bandwidth usage than it does to pay for a hundred gigs of bandwidth - so the bandwidth limits are now 40 for telus and 60 gigs a month for shaw (for the mid range personal accounts). BTW. It is impossible to get an account where I live that gives you more than 150 gigs of transfer a month.
Really, this isn't as big deal, the monopolies up here act like arrogant assholes and have the idea that contracts only apply to the users using their service - a bit better than BellSouth, but still annoying to deal with. Eventually, these bullshit "contracts" of adhesion will be challened in court just like their magical bandwidth limits and this will be resolved. Unfortunately, Canucks are less likely to sue, so it may be a while before this is resoved.
Good luck in your quest, although I honestly can't reccomend shaw. Shaw, at least doesn't block access to union websites during a lockout though.
* a hateful "I hope you fucks are all gunned down and shot in the knees" goes out to all the sprint employees.
Let's dispense with the hyperbole. Had the FBI gone in with a tactical team and started throwing flashbangs and arrested everyone who was in attendance, maybe then your arguement would be justified.
We really don't know jack shit about the situation yet, and although it sounds fishy and looks a wee bit on the abusive side of law enforcement, let's take a step back (not that there hasn't been downright dirty and disgusting abuses in recent history)
yup - and ipodservice is an absolute pain for (admittedly poorly written ones that have a hard time re-establishing comm without a reboot) all in one printer drivers - both on the pc and mac side.
Well, there could be.
Of course, you'd need to have a president (and congress + senate) that would write and pass the legislation.
Interestingly enough, when I came to the USA, the first American history / civics class was based on what makes America great. The right of recall, the right to travel freely without showing "papers", the right to bear arms and the Bill of Rights were all mentioned - and to someone in high school who came from a country that didn't necessarily have all those rights (or the rights weren't specifically written down in the documents penned by the creators of my native country) - I was honestly quite shocked, amazed and there was a fair bit of admiration there too.
As of today, that has virtually all changed - and in some cases, outright reversed - under the leadership of different presidents who sat on opposite sides of the aisle.
In case you're wondering - the year I came was 1998.
All this will do is start a bidding war on the oem's end. Besides, installing the next version of messenger (or a MS download of any kind) will have a screen that will have all the default options revert back to MS's settings. .mp3 will be associated with Musicmatch jukebox or some equally bloated shitty app. I think we can all agree that is a loss.
It doesn't really matter what browser they use, if the homepage is msn.com, they still get their unique visitor and ads displayed numbers bumped.
OTOH,
Don't worry, presidential pardons are around the corner...
Name, account number, etc is also on the card in cleartext, so it isn't like it hits a db to pull that. Played with a serial based card reader a while ago, much fun.
Hehe, you're probably right.
I was in London about 2 months ago and the amount of people walking around with the white headphones oblivious to the world around them was incredible.
No brass to pick up either ;)
Well, size isn't everything, but if you are 5'5" 140lb, then yes, you probably are a pussy
. . .
That's why people who cannot fight for themselves love guns. They are the pussies weapon of choice.
Or female. Or disabled. Or have a disease like MS. And I love how in your world the bad parts are clearly marked and the criminals never walk out of their little criminal ghetto.
In terms of damage, dying from a knife wound is rare. You generally need multiple wounds or a lucky shot to a key artery or nerve. For a club you need to literally cave in some part of their body.
Oddly enough, 33% of UK muders were caused by knives. I guess they aren't all that rare.
Or get one in the head to almost guarantee a kill.
Right, and your average dumbass thug is walking around getting headshots on moving targets.
Well, size isn't everything, but if you are 5'5" 140lb, then yes, you probably are a pussy
Or female... Insightful post... do you have a newsletter?
What the article is really talking about is not a man-trap, but the anti-"bum" measures that banks use in many cities around ATMs inside a building. You have to put your ATM card into a slot, but it really doesn't read the card, it just verifies that you stuck a magstrip card into the slot.
;) so it is a little more complex than you claim, but we can see how that isn't perfect.
Some of the "bum repelling devices" are a little more advanced and will read the frst
few digits to verify that you are a customer of the barticular bank, etc, (a bit of a nuisance if you are drunk and looking to buy more alcohol and need to make a withdrawal
Even better, he was arrested one night while drunk and they let him go because he was complying with the asbo ;)
Yes, the company's main product may be beaten to the punch by XBox live arcade at best and vaporware at worst
I do believe that the worst could be "defrauding investors in order to get funding to buy beer, hookers and aeron chairs(plus a rather decent salary for the founders of the company)", but hey, the jurys still out on that one. I do know that at e3 2003, they had exactly 2 keyboards and one died while I was there.