Monthly Archives: June 2013

Shorted

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I mail-ordered new boxers. I live 50 miles from the discount department store. Even the Dollar Store is 12 miles away. http://bit.ly/13tWI8a

Shorted

I ordered some new boxers because SWMBO kept telling me I didn’t need any. I have three pairs in my drawer. I live about 50 miles from the nearest generic American discount department stores. Even the Dollar Store is 12 miles away and it stocks only briefs, so I mail ordered.

Ship to Home for 97 CentsI did the same thing in South Puffin so the order was already in my history at Wallyworlddotcom. Brought it up, clicked that page, punched the quantity up to two and clicked “continue.”

Wallyworlddotcom advertises 97 cent shipping.

They doubled it for the two packs of underwear in my cart. That annoyed me so I tried to call. There is no Live Customer Service phone number on the Wallyworlddotcom contacts page. Plenty of email links. Plenty of FAQs. Plenty of “We have your back” helpfulness. No phone numbers. In fact, the Contact Us page shows explicitly that

There are two simple ways you can contact Wallyworld:
Email
If you have questions about your order or about using Wallyworlddotcom, please email Wallyworlddotcom
For questions about store products, please email Wallyworld stores.

Contact Your Local Store
You can find the phone number for your local Walmart, along with store hours, by using our Store Finder.

Calling the local store is really gonna help with online sales. “Webmaster, you have a call on extension 327497268504778. Please pick up 327497268504778, please.” After a little Googling™, I found this at contacthelp.com:

Customer Service – Live Help
Phone 800.966.6546
How to reach a live person:
Dial 238 as soon as the automated greeting begins
(it is not necessary to wait for the menu options)

Except it is necessary to wait for the menu options, because dialing 238 before the auto attend finishes talking caused her to say “I’m sorry but I’m unable to complete your call at this time. Please try your call again at a later time. Good bye.”

<sigh>

Anyway, the live rep ‘splained to me that Wallyworlddotcom’s advertised 97 cent shipping charge is per item. “Scammed again,” I said as I slammed down the phone.

They got even. When I completed the order the item arrival date which had started out as Wed., Jun. 12, through today, had a red flag:

Item arrival date has changed has changed
Ships Standard / Arrives by Wed., Jun. 19

I sooooo love shopping there.

“I was going to search Amazon for your undies,” Liz Arden told me. “I don’t like Wallyworld shopping at all — online or off, although I do go there for stuff. I just … dislike it.”

Boxer or BriefI agree about Wallyworld, but it is often the only game in town for me and (usually) somewhat not too too inconvenient.

Amazon has a Hanes store but I AM™ pugnaciously parsimonious. The cheapest I found there was $11.01 with FREE Shipping when sold by NY Lingerie and fulfilled by Amazon. Another seller has a slightly different white boxer for slightly more but not in my size.

Wally charged me $9.97 for the package of three, shipped, and I got a story out of it but paying Amazon the extra couple of bucks would have been faster and easier. Thank goodness today is laundry day.

 

Brrrrr

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It is drear, dank, drizzly, and dark outside but the temp here in my study has come up two degrees since I flipped the lights on this morning. And that’s without burning a dead dinosaur or a single stick of wood.

So why are my fingers and toes five degrees colder than when I got up.

Bell’s Blues: Phone Home

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“What the intelligence community is doing,” Mr. Obama told the crowd at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose, “is looking at phone numbers and durations of calls.”

And I say it’s about time!

The Guardian broke the news on D-Day that the National Security Agency is collecting your phone records and those of millions of other Verizon customers. The order requires Verizon on an “ongoing, daily basis” to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries.

This came on the heels of the demands for phone records from the AP and Fox News. The blogosphere erupted. The pundits erupted. The ACLU erupted. Fox News went ballistic.

We all need a calming breath.

I wrote about the problem back in 1997 but I knew about it in the 1970s. Everyone in New Jersey did then.

In New Jersey, Ma Bell charged “message units” for local calls. Here in New England, they changed the name to “measured service.” In phone company parlance, either name counts each instant of local phone use. Then they bill us.

Who counts those minutes? The electric company puts their meters where we can see them. When I pump gasoline into my car, the readout tells me how much in thousandths of gallons. I’ve always wondered why I need that kind of precision.

The phone companies have always hidden the counters.

It’s worse now.

According to the Pew Research Center, “91% of the adult population now owns some kind of cell phone … [and] 56% of all American adults are now smartphone adopters.”

Cell phones pay by the minute. Data users pay by the mini-bit.

Are you on a 300-minute plan? Maybe a 1,700-minute family plan?

Who counts how many minutes you use or how long the movie was? You? I didn’t think so.

All that data is available under FOIA. And that is the basis for a really really good lawsuit against these phone companies.

“Nobody’s spying on you,” Mr. Obama said, “we’re just monitoring your phone usage.”

Thank goodness for that. After all, it takes a crook to catch a crook.