World Wide Web Tax

I have a tax preparation business and a few months ago I started shopping around for tax preparation software. I thought I found the best deal with a company called World Wide Web Tax. I had never heard of them but the price sounded great so I purchased their product. I had made several phone calls to them to ask different questions before doing so. They charged my credit card on November 17th and a few days later they sent me an email with directions to download my software. Like an idiot, I didn't read the entire jargon and seemingly endless software license agreement, and all that mumbo jumbo that comes with it. I figured they must have told me all the important stuff before they sold me the product. NOT SO! Last week I received a phone call from a rep at Intuit. I had been in contact with him when I was shopping around. I told him which software I decided to buy and he informed me about some fees that they weren't making their customers aware of before buying. I called WWWebtax to confront them and they admitted that they do charge another $9.90 per return e-filed. They claim they told me that on the phone before I bought it but I know they didn't. If I had known I was going to be spending another grand per 100 returns I wouldn't have bought from them! I asked them to play back the recorded conversation where I agreed to something like that and they couldn't produce it. Needless to say I am not using their software this season. I purchased the Intuit product and am now in the process of fighting for my money back from WWWebtax. I am giving them a chance to refund my money on their own before I involve Richard Blumenthal, my state's Attorney General, the Better Business Bureau, and the Department of Consumer Protection. I just want to make everyone aware of WWWebtax's deceptive practices!

Waiting in Lines #2

The next place I always seem to wait in a long line is at the bank. Don't get me wrong, I love People's Bank, but I hate waiting. A couple years ago they shut down the freestanding branch in the parking lot of Stop and Shop in Groton. All of those customers had to merge with the customers from the branch inside the Stop and Shop. Since they were going to be busier, they remodeled that branch. Do you think they added more teller stations? Of course not. They still have 3. Ridiculous! Especially on a Friday. And the thing that really gets me.... When I worked there there was a rule that the customers waiting in line came first. We were supposed to stop whatever we were doing to wait on those customers. Everything else could wait. Until closing if needed. I guess they have done away with that rule because countless times I have had to watch a teller do something other than customer service while I just stood there and watched. Some times I'm not even acknowledged. Other times the "greeter" (which is a teller or a manager taken off the line just to stand in the lobby) will say hello and apologize for the wait, which wouldn't be necessary if they would just stop "greeting" and process some transactions! Again, I love People's Bank, the hours, the tellers themselves, and the banking products, but it's time to put the customer who is there in person first again. The online shopping, talking on the phone, balancing the ATM or their drawer can wait!

Waiting in Lines

The weekend after Christmas I went to the mall to use my Victoria's Secret gift card. They were having an awesome sale on panties and it was the busiest store in the mall. It took me all of 5 minutes to pick out 15 pairs of thongs but I had to wait in line to pay for them for 30 minutes! Why, if they know they are going to be busy, do they not have enough cashiers to help the customers? They only have 2 registers in the store so there were 2 girls working at them, but they must have had another 10 employees walking around the store with headsets looking busy and important! This seems like very poor planning to me. If I ran the store I would at least double the number of checkouts. If that wasn't possible, I would have a couple of the busybodies helping to wrap and bag the items purchased. As if the girls there didn't take enough time scanning the merchandise and delicately placing it in nice piles, they also wrap each item in pretty pink paper before placing it slowly in the bag. I almost told the girl not to do anything fancy with my panties, just throw them in a bag, but I had already been there for 1/2 an hour, what was another 2 minutes? I won't be going back to Victoria's Secret anytime soon. And I certainly won't spend my own money there, only if I happen to get another gift card, then maybe I'll put myself through that waste of time again.

Beer at Mohegan Sun

On Friday night my fiancee, brother, and I went to the Kid Rock concert at the Mohegan Sun arena. The show was awesome and we weren't there for 1/2 an hour and some guy stopped us and gave us third row seats. Our original seats were halfway up in the top section. My complaint, though, is about the beer. They used to serve beer in the plastic bottles and way back when you could even get 2 at a time per person. Now they pour your beer into plastic cups! As if the plastic bottles weren't safe enough, now they are worried about people throwing them. Can I just tell you how difficult it is to climb up the steep stairs up to the top few rows with an open cup full of beer, brushing up against thousands of strangers, with a beer buzz, without spilling some! I think it is all a money making scheme so that you spill most of your beer and have to come back for another even sooner. I asked the server if she could please give me a lid and a straw so I didn't have spillage, but of course they don't have lids for the beer cups. How convenient for them. So I asked if she could put it in a soda cup with a lid. Of course not, they can only use beer cups. Therefore, a coffee cup with a lid was out of the question also. All I wanted was a spill proof container for my beer. Impossible. Mohegan must have made about $80 on my fiancee and I, half for beer we drank, and half for beer we spilled. Ridiculous!

AT&T Customer Service

I called AT&T a couple weeks ago to find out how much it is going to cost to put a phone line in my new office. The girl quoted me something like $25.98 a month. I thought, that's not bad. So a few days ago I called to get it hooked up but first I wanted to verify the price so I asked and this girl told me $49.99 a month. I told her what I was originally quoted and she was unsure why but her price was the right one for a commercial line. Why is a commercial line twice the price? The phone does the same thing no matter what kind of building it is in! Do they just assume that because you have a business you have plenty of money so you can afford to pay double what it's worth? Because I don't. I am still starting out in my business and I don't have extra. Anyway, the girl told me that I get a free yellow page listing with that so I thought it was a little more worth the price. But I still had to think about it. She said the deadline for getting in the new phone book for my area was the end of January '08. Yesterday the new phone books were delivered to my house. :( So it seems that the service reps at AT&T don't really know much about the products and prices they have or any details, at least the 2 I talked to. After Christmas I'll call again to get my phone hooked up and see what kind of incorrect info I get this time.

Hospital Follow Up

I had filled out a survey about our ER visit from November when the hospital had made a mistake with my daughter's diagnosis and prescription dose. Every patient recieves this follow up survey and I filled it out with exactly what happened. The assistant ER administrator called me today to apologize and let me know what they are doing to improve their practices. He said he was concerned about what happened and woul d have a talk with the doctor. Hope this does some good and other families won't have to go through what we experienced.

Pet Select Pooper Scooper

Here is a follow up from my post on Oct. 25 about the Pet Select Pooper Scooper. I purchased yet another one today since it is the only product of its kind that Wal Mart carries and I refuse to buy a more expensive one at a pet store only to have it break also.

I wrote this letter to the company today:

December 18, 2007
Pet Select
PO Box 828
Yorktown, VA 23692
Re: Item Number 91821
To Whom It May Concern:
I am writing you to express my disappointment with your Allen’s Spring Action Pooper Scooper. I have purchased three of these products in just one year and every one of them has broken in the same place. Unfortunately this is the only product of it’s kind at my local Wal Mart, and I refuse to buy another kind at a pet store because it would probably cost 2 to 3 times as much and it may break also.
I have included an illustration of your current product and the problem it presents, and also an illustration of what you can do to improve the quality of the product. I urge you to share my disappointment with others in your company and make this right.
Also, because of the lack of contact information for your company; no phone number or web site; only an address to write to, I was forced to voice my complaint in my own personal blog to get my point across.
You may read the post about your company and product at:
http://tracyscomplaintspot.blogspot.com
There is also a product review at:
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=3635644#reviews
I thank you in advance for your prompt attention of this matter.

Hopefully this will get some attention. I also included an illustration of where the product is breaking every time and what they can do to improve it.