I have observed people countless times that will count every single item even when it is organized in a grid, and even when the last row is completely filled. I try to explain to them that you can just multiply the number of full rows by the number of columns and then add in the number on the last row, and sometimes they will do that, but then count them all individually just to be sure. Sigh.
In the U.S., we have all of those things, but people still choose to commit crimes. Crime would be almost excusable if it were out of necessity. Say, stealing a loaf of bread because your family is hungry, but at least in the United States, the hungry and homeless are not the ones doing the crime. Hungry people don't steal TVs, homeless people don't kill your for your shoes. Nobody is breaking into your refrigerator and stealing a gallon of milk. People are just lazy and choose to steal from people who worked hard to get the things that they (used to) have rather than getting a job and buying the things that they want.
Measuring internet stats is just as crappy as measuring TV stats. When you have kids, you will often find that the TV is on and blathering about something or other, but no one has been watching it for hours. I'm sure that happens in Neilsen homes as well.
Hours? I realize you are considering merely a stolen plate, but what if they stole your plate and replaced it with another non-expired plate from the same state (assuming you don't have a vanity plate)? How long then? I might NEVER notice my plate had been merely swapped out. I could go on reregistering at the DMV year after year. They don't ever actually check your plate when they issue you a new sticker.
Deal with the disasters first, after that everything in the day is a lightweight bonus.
Surely you mean: Deal with the disasters first, then go home. And be sure to call your Spouse/SO/cat/dog on the way to apologize for getting home late again.
Actually, there were about 16,000 murders in the U.S. in 2004, and the rate has been going down, but it rose in 2006 by about 4.8%. The grandparent post is obviously just being a troll. There is no way that 625000% of the murders in the U.S. were Christian men killing their wives.
Some journals are > 10,000 per year.
And they wonder why the average man knows so little about science. Perhaps scientists should subscribe to some economic journals.
I agree I should get paid more for being available 24/7. And the EVP keeps saying that they are going to do something Real Soon Now(tm). Frankly I think 50% more is justifiable. At the moment, I am supervising 10 people spread over three shifts. I have to be there when the bigwigs are there and my first shift people start at 8, so I usually get there at 8, then I typically work onsite until 6. I go home and mostly just have to answer the phone until about 9, when my second shift guy goes home. But after he goes home, I have to remotely monitor the late shift which works from 6 PM until 2:30 AM. If I get lucky, they finish their work by 10 or 11 (they are just headsdown keyers), and I can load them up with practice work, tell them not to bother me if things go wrong, but if they don't finish their work by 10 or 11, I pretty much have to keep watching them until they do or until 2:30, and then tell the first shift guys to hit it first thing in the morning. Unfortunately, my first shift guys are techies, and shouldn't be keying, so I get ticked when the late shift doesn't finish their work. Unfortunately, the late shift is in Mexico, against my wishes, and as in most offshore operations, it is difficult to actually get them to do their work because there are too many links in the chain. I'd rather put some college kids in a room. They'd consider it an interesting exercise, they speak English and can understand what they are keying, if they weren't working, you could tell them to get to work, you could fire them if they don't, if they got tired of it they could leave, training new ones would take a day at most, and there are lots of college kids out there who would gladly take what we are paying the firm in Mexico. Unfortunately, the higher ups are committed to the idea that this can work, and seem extremely uninterested in hiring locals to do the work.
I also contacted a local news station for a Consumer Help segment they run weekly, but never heard from them to try and get it on the news.
I have never had much luck on those Consumer Help segments. I contacted them about all the Cell Phone Carriers and their third party billing scams. Never heard back. I also called them when a local car dealer tried to railroad my sister into buying a car she didn't want, kept refusing to give back the keys to her trade, and then threatened to call the cops on her if she didn't get off the lot, even though they still had her keys. She went to another dealer, and the dealer wouldn't sell her a car because there were a large number of turn downs on her credit from the previous dealer, with whom she had never authorized a credit check, let alone applied for a loan. She ended up buying a car at about the third dealer down the line for 15% interest because that was the best they could offer with all those black marks from the first dealer. I told her she should not have bought a car at all, and should have gone for a free consultation with a lawyer. The Consumer Help had no interest in this either, but I think it is because they are part of the same group as the local radio station which STILL does spots onsite at that car dealer, despite me ALSO emailing them about what this car dealer did to my sister.
AT&T and the local phone company in McLoud Oklahoma screwed me royally several years back. When I signed up for telephone service, I requested AT&T long distance, because I had been reasonably happy with them in previous locations, and my Dad worked there. I was given a number to call to sign up for a plan. I called, and they sold me a 10 cents a minute plan with no monthly fee for long distance (this was back when that was a good deal), and an international plan for 15 cents a minute for $6 a month.
The first bill comes, and it is for about $400. I call and ask why my 15 cent per minute international calls were costing me over 4 dollars a minute, and why my 10 cent a minute long distance calls were costing me over a dollar a minute. The explanation I received was that I was with a small local provider, and the plans I had been on were not available with my local provider. I told them that they had sold me those plans and I was entitled to have them. They replied I could not have them, and if I did not choose one of their other more costly plans than I would continue to be charged at the current "no plan" rate. I asked them why no one called me to tell me I could not have the plans they sold me instead of just putting me down with no plan at all. They had no explanation. I asked them why the person who sold me these plans did not have the information that these plans were not available to me. They had no explanation.
I was unable to get them to do anything for me at all. They insisted I choose a new plan, which was something like 15 cents a minute for long distance and something really awful like 50 cents a minute for international. The only thing I could get them to do for me on the previous bill was to retroactively price it at the new bad rates.
I no longer deal with AT&T. I felt that they should honor what they had sold me. it is not my fault that the customer support person who they pay for and who represents them sold me a plan that they did not feel like extending me. If a car salesman sells me a car at a loss to the dealer, I would not expect the dealer to come knocking on my door demanding extra money and threatening to destroy my credit if I don't pay it.
At the same time, corrections to billing errors (an almost monthly thing when I was w/Sprint) shouldn't require a callback to ask "is it fixed".
It should just be fucking fixed when someone tells you it will be.
Instead, Sprint treats you to a giant circle jerk of unaccountability, lies and incorrect information from their CSRs which forces you to call back in, yet again.
Never blame on incompetence what can be chalked up to malice. It's easy to believe that all of the cell phone companies have all of these little glitches in their accounting systems that always seem to add (and never subtract) random charges to your bill month after month after month after year after year. However, the truth of the matter is, most people don't bother to look at their bill. They just pay it. The cell phone companies count on this to make extra income. If you look at your bill, you cost them extra in two ways, by reversing the charge, and by taking their CSRs time. This is why some of the companies have instituted charges to send you a detailed bill. Hopefully, you won't pay to receive the detailed bill, and then they can charge you whatever, and you won't know you are being ripped off.
They're the ones who never RTFM or refer to online FAQs. They need to speak to an actual person about everything...
Research has found that often, technical comprehension of a concept does not sink in when you read the words on a piece of paper to yourself, but if someone reads them to you, you can understand it.
Absolutely. I have notice that over the last 20 to 30 years, you have to actually spend a considerable amount of effort in order to obtain the things which one is promised. I know it is not cellphone related, but I just recently bought an RV, and there were signs all over the place that said I would get a free $1000 gift card if I bought an RV. The salesman mentioned it several times as well. After completion of the sale, he said "you will be getting your gift card in the mail shortly." Needless to say, I will probably now have to spend $1000 in time and effort to obtain the gift card, which naturally, has not shown up yet.
When my stepson's phone was stolen, the thief racked up all kinds of charges for downloads and signed us up for recurring services. I spent about 20 hours on the phone with Alltel and the third parties (with whom I had no business relationship). When I finally paid the bill, I subtracted out the amount that Alltel had said they were reversing, sent them a letter saying why I was subtracting out that amount, and I sent them a bill for my time for dealing with them and the fly-by-night companies which they choose to do business with.
The result? They did not pay the bill I sent them. They shut my phone off for non-payment, even though I had paid all charges except the illegitimate ones for services that could not have possibly been rendered due to me not having a phone.
Sprint should have to pay an early termination fee to the customers.
Well, ink it into the contract next time you sign up for a plan. Let me know how it turns out.
I don't see why as a consumer, we shouldn't have the right to alter the contract to better serve our needs. Of course, if you do this, you'll probably just get a call in about a week, saying "you have modified the terms of the agreement. We prefer to retroactively not accept this contract. Plus we've decided to charge you the termination fee as well. Have a nice day."
Little known secret: your account ain't credit, and they can't mark your credit score.
Well known fact: As a landlord, I run credit checks on my tenants. Some of them have unpaid balances to cell phone companies listed in their credit report. Utility bills too.
Credit reports can contain amounts owed to people that were not extended as credit. For example, if someone doesn't pay me rent, I can put that on their credit report.
You have the freedom to drop your cell-phone carrier if you're unhappy.
If you can afford it.
Do you think Sprint should be denied the freedom to drop a customer if Sprint is unhappy?
I think they should be able to drop you. After 25 hours of calls, probably both sides are unhappy, and they would be doing the customer a favor by dropping them. I just hope they didn't charge an early termination fee. If someone is on the phone 25 times in a month, there is clearly something wrong with the service.
I would write a letter stating dates and times, and telling this isn't a reasonable service for my money and that I stop paying and the contract should be considered broken.
And they would say that they agree the contract is broken, and was broken by YOU by not paying your bill, and you must now pay the early termination fee, or they will send it to collections, and put a black spot on your credit report.
Cell phone companies, and utilities in general are not bound by the same rules of service as a typical business. You still get charged the same amount by your cable company if the cable is out for several days during the month. You still have to pay the same monthly service charge for your electric and water, even if they didn't provide it to you several days during the month. And cell phone companies have to get paid, even if they did not provide the service they said they would in their contract.
You don't HAVE to even have a cell phone!
I admit that it is a matter of preference to have a cell phone. I prefer to keep the job I have, therefore I have to have a cell phone. I don't WANT a cell phone. I don't NEED a cell phone, but it is made abundantly clear by my company, that it is a condition of my employment that I have a cell phone, and be reachable 24 hours a day/7 days a week. They are at least gracious enough to pay a certain amount every month in reimbursement for cell phone service. However, my cell phone bill is higher than this amount.
My last three jobs have all required me to have a cell phone. So it looks to me like I HAVE to have a cell phone unless I want to work a blue collar job of some sort.
As an aside, I think I am actually becoming afraid of my cell phone. Since it is used mostly for work, and for my side business of rental houses, the phone only ever rings with bad news. No one ever calls to chat. It is always something broken, at work or at a rent house. My heart rate actually goes up when the phone rings, and if it rings a lot in one day, I actually start to get an upset stomach. I don't know if this is a common malady, or just me. But it is a large part of the reason why I wish I didn't have a cell phone.
I had a $4000 pile of 30+ false charges show up on a credit card once- someone fucker somewhere got the number. It took two calls to resolve it.
That is because the credit card company is bound by laws which protect you from fraudulent charges. The cell phone companies, however, are not. The cell phone companies still want to ACT like a credit card company, congregating miscellaneous charges from third parties onto your cell phone bill, whether or not you requested whatever "service" the third parties claim to provide. The cell phone companies get to keep around 1/3 of the income from these services. Most of the services are advertised as being free, and are intended to trap the unwary or inexperienced young children with cell phones into a recurring charges, which are usually on the order of $6.95 a week for two lame text message jokes or something similar.
If you call customer support, they will not admit any affiliation with these third party companies, they will tell you that there is nothing they can do about it. They will tell you to take up the issue with the third parties. These are all lies. They get to keep part of the money billed by these companies. They can reverse the charges from these companies, and they are the ones who put the charges on your bill, so they darn well BETTER be responsible for reversing them. If you deal with the third parties, they will tell you that they are removing your number from their list, but they rarely actually do so, and you will continue to get billed every month. If you talk them into a refund, they will usually only refund up to half the amount, and they will get it to you in 6 to 8 weeks, although they billed you instantly.
My stepsons phone was stolen. The thief signed us up for all sorts of crap, although the phone was turned off within about 6 hours of when it was stolen. We were billed for hundreds of dollars of services which we could not possibly have received, given that we did not have a phone to receive them on. It took over 20 hours on the phone spread over three months, with four different companies, and about a dozen e-mails before I got the problems resolved. My phone was turned off once because I didn't pay part of the phone bill, even though Alltel had told me they were reversing some of the transactions. Too late I found out that you have to pay your WHOLE BILL, even the parts that contain illegitimate charges, even if they say they are reversing them, and you are supposed to wait and receive the credit on the next month's bill.
In my situation, I ended up having to deal directly with the third parties, however, in the future, I now know that I should not have had to do that. If you know what you are talking about, the customer service at the phone company stops lying and starts doing some things about the illegal charges. The third parties sent me refunds, in about 6 to 8 weeks, but continued to charge me, despite having said they were removing me from their list. At this point, I called Alltel, and told them I was having no luck with the third party companies which were illegally charging me for service which I had not asked for, and had no phone upon which to ask for them, and I was no longer going to make any attempt to deal with these parties with whom I had NO BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP, and I was going to deal with Alltel, with whom I had a contract. Finally, I was able to get them to block all third party billing by disabling my Axcess account. Previously, I had been lied to that there was no way to block these third party charges. I pointed out to them that our phone had been stolen, but even if my stepson (who's phone it had been) had signed up for these services, we would not have been responsible for them, because he is not old enough to have to be held to a contract. They replied that they feel that the parent has given implicit permission for the child to sign up for those services by giving them a phone. However, the third parties try in various ways to make it appear that they have a free product, and hide the fine print.
Yeah. Lose lift, plus have two big engines generating thrust way above the center of mass of the aircraft and more than likely too much to compensate with the elevator, so the plane would pretty much nose over.
It's great that the wings can flex that much, but I hope it still requires just as much force to bend them 10 degrees out of normal as it currently does with a metal wing.
Slashdot Mirror
I have observed people countless times that will count every single item even when it is organized in a grid, and even when the last row is completely filled. I try to explain to them that you can just multiply the number of full rows by the number of columns and then add in the number on the last row, and sometimes they will do that, but then count them all individually just to be sure. Sigh.
"No Child Left Behind Act"
More appropriately titled, the "No Child Gets Ahead Act".
In the U.S., we have all of those things, but people still choose to commit crimes. Crime would be almost excusable if it were out of necessity. Say, stealing a loaf of bread because your family is hungry, but at least in the United States, the hungry and homeless are not the ones doing the crime. Hungry people don't steal TVs, homeless people don't kill your for your shoes. Nobody is breaking into your refrigerator and stealing a gallon of milk. People are just lazy and choose to steal from people who worked hard to get the things that they (used to) have rather than getting a job and buying the things that they want.
That's nothing. They should look into the crime that occurs INSIDE the check cashing stores.
Measuring internet stats is just as crappy as measuring TV stats. When you have kids, you will often find that the TV is on and blathering about something or other, but no one has been watching it for hours. I'm sure that happens in Neilsen homes as well.
Hours? I realize you are considering merely a stolen plate, but what if they stole your plate and replaced it with another non-expired plate from the same state (assuming you don't have a vanity plate)? How long then? I might NEVER notice my plate had been merely swapped out. I could go on reregistering at the DMV year after year. They don't ever actually check your plate when they issue you a new sticker.
Exactly. But it wouldn't set off as many paranoid responses if they worded the title more appropriately.
Deal with the disasters first, after that everything in the day is a lightweight bonus.
Surely you mean: Deal with the disasters first, then go home. And be sure to call your Spouse/SO/cat/dog on the way to apologize for getting home late again.
I had read somewhere that incidence of rape was higher in countries where they cover themselves head to foot in robes than it is in the United States.
Actually, there were about 16,000 murders in the U.S. in 2004, and the rate has been going down, but it rose in 2006 by about 4.8%. The grandparent post is obviously just being a troll. There is no way that 625000% of the murders in the U.S. were Christian men killing their wives.
Some journals are > 10,000 per year.
And they wonder why the average man knows so little about science. Perhaps scientists should subscribe to some economic journals.
I agree I should get paid more for being available 24/7. And the EVP keeps saying that they are going to do something Real Soon Now(tm). Frankly I think 50% more is justifiable. At the moment, I am supervising 10 people spread over three shifts. I have to be there when the bigwigs are there and my first shift people start at 8, so I usually get there at 8, then I typically work onsite until 6. I go home and mostly just have to answer the phone until about 9, when my second shift guy goes home. But after he goes home, I have to remotely monitor the late shift which works from 6 PM until 2:30 AM. If I get lucky, they finish their work by 10 or 11 (they are just headsdown keyers), and I can load them up with practice work, tell them not to bother me if things go wrong, but if they don't finish their work by 10 or 11, I pretty much have to keep watching them until they do or until 2:30, and then tell the first shift guys to hit it first thing in the morning. Unfortunately, my first shift guys are techies, and shouldn't be keying, so I get ticked when the late shift doesn't finish their work. Unfortunately, the late shift is in Mexico, against my wishes, and as in most offshore operations, it is difficult to actually get them to do their work because there are too many links in the chain. I'd rather put some college kids in a room. They'd consider it an interesting exercise, they speak English and can understand what they are keying, if they weren't working, you could tell them to get to work, you could fire them if they don't, if they got tired of it they could leave, training new ones would take a day at most, and there are lots of college kids out there who would gladly take what we are paying the firm in Mexico. Unfortunately, the higher ups are committed to the idea that this can work, and seem extremely uninterested in hiring locals to do the work.
I also contacted a local news station for a Consumer Help segment they run weekly, but never heard from them to try and get it on the news.
I have never had much luck on those Consumer Help segments. I contacted them about all the Cell Phone Carriers and their third party billing scams. Never heard back. I also called them when a local car dealer tried to railroad my sister into buying a car she didn't want, kept refusing to give back the keys to her trade, and then threatened to call the cops on her if she didn't get off the lot, even though they still had her keys. She went to another dealer, and the dealer wouldn't sell her a car because there were a large number of turn downs on her credit from the previous dealer, with whom she had never authorized a credit check, let alone applied for a loan. She ended up buying a car at about the third dealer down the line for 15% interest because that was the best they could offer with all those black marks from the first dealer. I told her she should not have bought a car at all, and should have gone for a free consultation with a lawyer. The Consumer Help had no interest in this either, but I think it is because they are part of the same group as the local radio station which STILL does spots onsite at that car dealer, despite me ALSO emailing them about what this car dealer did to my sister.
AT&T and the local phone company in McLoud Oklahoma screwed me royally several years back. When I signed up for telephone service, I requested AT&T long distance, because I had been reasonably happy with them in previous locations, and my Dad worked there. I was given a number to call to sign up for a plan. I called, and they sold me a 10 cents a minute plan with no monthly fee for long distance (this was back when that was a good deal), and an international plan for 15 cents a minute for $6 a month.
The first bill comes, and it is for about $400. I call and ask why my 15 cent per minute international calls were costing me over 4 dollars a minute, and why my 10 cent a minute long distance calls were costing me over a dollar a minute. The explanation I received was that I was with a small local provider, and the plans I had been on were not available with my local provider. I told them that they had sold me those plans and I was entitled to have them. They replied I could not have them, and if I did not choose one of their other more costly plans than I would continue to be charged at the current "no plan" rate. I asked them why no one called me to tell me I could not have the plans they sold me instead of just putting me down with no plan at all. They had no explanation. I asked them why the person who sold me these plans did not have the information that these plans were not available to me. They had no explanation.
I was unable to get them to do anything for me at all. They insisted I choose a new plan, which was something like 15 cents a minute for long distance and something really awful like 50 cents a minute for international. The only thing I could get them to do for me on the previous bill was to retroactively price it at the new bad rates.
I no longer deal with AT&T. I felt that they should honor what they had sold me. it is not my fault that the customer support person who they pay for and who represents them sold me a plan that they did not feel like extending me. If a car salesman sells me a car at a loss to the dealer, I would not expect the dealer to come knocking on my door demanding extra money and threatening to destroy my credit if I don't pay it.
At the same time, corrections to billing errors (an almost monthly thing when I was w/Sprint) shouldn't require a callback to ask "is it fixed". It should just be fucking fixed when someone tells you it will be. Instead, Sprint treats you to a giant circle jerk of unaccountability, lies and incorrect information from their CSRs which forces you to call back in, yet again.
Never blame on incompetence what can be chalked up to malice. It's easy to believe that all of the cell phone companies have all of these little glitches in their accounting systems that always seem to add (and never subtract) random charges to your bill month after month after month after year after year. However, the truth of the matter is, most people don't bother to look at their bill. They just pay it. The cell phone companies count on this to make extra income. If you look at your bill, you cost them extra in two ways, by reversing the charge, and by taking their CSRs time. This is why some of the companies have instituted charges to send you a detailed bill. Hopefully, you won't pay to receive the detailed bill, and then they can charge you whatever, and you won't know you are being ripped off.
They're the ones who never RTFM or refer to online FAQs. They need to speak to an actual person about everything...
Research has found that often, technical comprehension of a concept does not sink in when you read the words on a piece of paper to yourself, but if someone reads them to you, you can understand it.
Absolutely. I have notice that over the last 20 to 30 years, you have to actually spend a considerable amount of effort in order to obtain the things which one is promised. I know it is not cellphone related, but I just recently bought an RV, and there were signs all over the place that said I would get a free $1000 gift card if I bought an RV. The salesman mentioned it several times as well. After completion of the sale, he said "you will be getting your gift card in the mail shortly." Needless to say, I will probably now have to spend $1000 in time and effort to obtain the gift card, which naturally, has not shown up yet.
When my stepson's phone was stolen, the thief racked up all kinds of charges for downloads and signed us up for recurring services. I spent about 20 hours on the phone with Alltel and the third parties (with whom I had no business relationship). When I finally paid the bill, I subtracted out the amount that Alltel had said they were reversing, sent them a letter saying why I was subtracting out that amount, and I sent them a bill for my time for dealing with them and the fly-by-night companies which they choose to do business with.
The result? They did not pay the bill I sent them. They shut my phone off for non-payment, even though I had paid all charges except the illegitimate ones for services that could not have possibly been rendered due to me not having a phone.
Sprint should have to pay an early termination fee to the customers.
Well, ink it into the contract next time you sign up for a plan. Let me know how it turns out.
I don't see why as a consumer, we shouldn't have the right to alter the contract to better serve our needs. Of course, if you do this, you'll probably just get a call in about a week, saying "you have modified the terms of the agreement. We prefer to retroactively not accept this contract. Plus we've decided to charge you the termination fee as well. Have a nice day."
Little known secret: your account ain't credit, and they can't mark your credit score.
Well known fact: As a landlord, I run credit checks on my tenants. Some of them have unpaid balances to cell phone companies listed in their credit report. Utility bills too.
Credit reports can contain amounts owed to people that were not extended as credit. For example, if someone doesn't pay me rent, I can put that on their credit report.
You have the freedom to drop your cell-phone carrier if you're unhappy.
If you can afford it. Do you think Sprint should be denied the freedom to drop a customer if Sprint is unhappy?
I think they should be able to drop you. After 25 hours of calls, probably both sides are unhappy, and they would be doing the customer a favor by dropping them. I just hope they didn't charge an early termination fee. If someone is on the phone 25 times in a month, there is clearly something wrong with the service.
I would write a letter stating dates and times, and telling this isn't a reasonable service for my money and that I stop paying and the contract should be considered broken.
And they would say that they agree the contract is broken, and was broken by YOU by not paying your bill, and you must now pay the early termination fee, or they will send it to collections, and put a black spot on your credit report.
Cell phone companies, and utilities in general are not bound by the same rules of service as a typical business. You still get charged the same amount by your cable company if the cable is out for several days during the month. You still have to pay the same monthly service charge for your electric and water, even if they didn't provide it to you several days during the month. And cell phone companies have to get paid, even if they did not provide the service they said they would in their contract.
You don't HAVE to even have a cell phone!
I admit that it is a matter of preference to have a cell phone. I prefer to keep the job I have, therefore I have to have a cell phone. I don't WANT a cell phone. I don't NEED a cell phone, but it is made abundantly clear by my company, that it is a condition of my employment that I have a cell phone, and be reachable 24 hours a day/7 days a week. They are at least gracious enough to pay a certain amount every month in reimbursement for cell phone service. However, my cell phone bill is higher than this amount.
My last three jobs have all required me to have a cell phone. So it looks to me like I HAVE to have a cell phone unless I want to work a blue collar job of some sort.
As an aside, I think I am actually becoming afraid of my cell phone. Since it is used mostly for work, and for my side business of rental houses, the phone only ever rings with bad news. No one ever calls to chat. It is always something broken, at work or at a rent house. My heart rate actually goes up when the phone rings, and if it rings a lot in one day, I actually start to get an upset stomach. I don't know if this is a common malady, or just me. But it is a large part of the reason why I wish I didn't have a cell phone.
I had a $4000 pile of 30+ false charges show up on a credit card once- someone fucker somewhere got the number. It took two calls to resolve it.
That is because the credit card company is bound by laws which protect you from fraudulent charges. The cell phone companies, however, are not. The cell phone companies still want to ACT like a credit card company, congregating miscellaneous charges from third parties onto your cell phone bill, whether or not you requested whatever "service" the third parties claim to provide. The cell phone companies get to keep around 1/3 of the income from these services. Most of the services are advertised as being free, and are intended to trap the unwary or inexperienced young children with cell phones into a recurring charges, which are usually on the order of $6.95 a week for two lame text message jokes or something similar.
If you call customer support, they will not admit any affiliation with these third party companies, they will tell you that there is nothing they can do about it. They will tell you to take up the issue with the third parties. These are all lies. They get to keep part of the money billed by these companies. They can reverse the charges from these companies, and they are the ones who put the charges on your bill, so they darn well BETTER be responsible for reversing them. If you deal with the third parties, they will tell you that they are removing your number from their list, but they rarely actually do so, and you will continue to get billed every month. If you talk them into a refund, they will usually only refund up to half the amount, and they will get it to you in 6 to 8 weeks, although they billed you instantly.
My stepsons phone was stolen. The thief signed us up for all sorts of crap, although the phone was turned off within about 6 hours of when it was stolen. We were billed for hundreds of dollars of services which we could not possibly have received, given that we did not have a phone to receive them on. It took over 20 hours on the phone spread over three months, with four different companies, and about a dozen e-mails before I got the problems resolved. My phone was turned off once because I didn't pay part of the phone bill, even though Alltel had told me they were reversing some of the transactions. Too late I found out that you have to pay your WHOLE BILL, even the parts that contain illegitimate charges, even if they say they are reversing them, and you are supposed to wait and receive the credit on the next month's bill.
In my situation, I ended up having to deal directly with the third parties, however, in the future, I now know that I should not have had to do that. If you know what you are talking about, the customer service at the phone company stops lying and starts doing some things about the illegal charges. The third parties sent me refunds, in about 6 to 8 weeks, but continued to charge me, despite having said they were removing me from their list. At this point, I called Alltel, and told them I was having no luck with the third party companies which were illegally charging me for service which I had not asked for, and had no phone upon which to ask for them, and I was no longer going to make any attempt to deal with these parties with whom I had NO BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP, and I was going to deal with Alltel, with whom I had a contract. Finally, I was able to get them to block all third party billing by disabling my Axcess account. Previously, I had been lied to that there was no way to block these third party charges. I pointed out to them that our phone had been stolen, but even if my stepson (who's phone it had been) had signed up for these services, we would not have been responsible for them, because he is not old enough to have to be held to a contract. They replied that they feel that the parent has given implicit permission for the child to sign up for those services by giving them a phone. However, the third parties try in various ways to make it appear that they have a free product, and hide the fine print.
Yeah. Lose lift, plus have two big engines generating thrust way above the center of mass of the aircraft and more than likely too much to compensate with the elevator, so the plane would pretty much nose over.
It's great that the wings can flex that much, but I hope it still requires just as much force to bend them 10 degrees out of normal as it currently does with a metal wing.