Jan 11

FREE on Ebay!

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Ebay had over 15 billion dollars in profit for 2012 which I’m sure inspired their delightful FREE “post-holiday-gift.”  Since they didn’t give me anything for this holiday or any holiday ever, it was a wonderful surprise!  I thought I’d share it with those less fortunate.

You can see the amazing, generous gift as cut and pasted from my email.

 

Since speaking nicely of Ebay, even in a sarcastic tone is about to make my head explode, let me cut the Shit.

What these worthless, greedy bastards did was send me an email that links to sellers who have shipping built into the item cost.  That’s it.  The “post-holiday-gift” is a worthless search for “free shipping” that is linked to a bunch of items where sellers have jacked-up the price and included the shipping costs.  (I could have linked you to the “free shipping” search too, but FUCK EBAY they have enough links.)

And as a special insult to the people who are stupid enough to be selling on Ebay, the “With the shipping cost on us” line takes the credit away from the merchants that are actually the ones who are offering the “free” shipping.

Their customer NO service is based in India where they pay those clueless people pennies a day, and Ebay doesn’t sell or ship anything, so their only other legitimate cost is some servers to run the site.

15 billion dollars in profit and virtually no real expenses.

Where’d the money go?  The site has more bugs in it than it did 15 years ago and even the most basic features don’t work half the time.  Fraud is higher than ever, and the fee gouging of the sellers is insane.

It ‘s clear that the money went to the crooked management team, just like it’s always gone since Meg Whitman stole billions from the company when she was CEO..

Ebay.  I’ve made this special link as a free post-holiday-gift just for you:  Ebay Sucks

Jan 04

I am tired of calling India.

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Whenever I have to contact a bank, cable company, technical support or virtually any large business, I have to talk to someone in India.

Rajesh, Baasim and Saanjh all answer the phone with fake American names like Randy, Bert and Sam and tell me they’re in a call center in Georgia, when they’re actually in New Delhi.  And while they’re raping each other on buses and have a police system designed to  sweep crimes against women under those buses, they are always very polite to me.

However, most of them don’t have a Fucking Clue about any of the company procedures, how to troubleshoot or even get half of what you’re saying.  And if you ask them if they understand they will repeat what you originally said, and add, “I will help you with” at the beginning of it and then go on with whatever Cueless thing they were saying.

Lord help you if you’ve got to work with them through chat or email.  Either you get cut-and-paste form responses that have nothing to do with your problem or you get something they wrote themselves that make no sense.

Meanwhile there are Americans who would do these jobs so much better.  Yes, they’d require higher compensation, but it’d be cheaper in the long run when each issue didn’t require five calls.

I recently got a promotion for a 5% off grocery purchases from a large credit card company and wrote them three times with the simple question, “Will I get 5% off grocery purchases made at Walmart?”  Twice I got a form letter which cut-and-pasted the original promotion rules and did not answer the question, and the third time I got gobbledygook that didn’t make any sense.

I finally called the bank and got India, then asked my question.  After the agent read me the promotional details again, I explained that I specifically wanted to know about Walmart and she read them to me again.  She tried to bluff me, but she apparently they don’t yet have Walmarts in India and she was clueless about the crossover products in their stores.

I canceled the card right then, or at least that was my intention.  Gajalakshmi, I mean “Gail” probably signed me up for magazines instead.

Dec 28

Hostess Execs Bankrupt Company then take $1.75 Million in Bonuses

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Want to score $1.75 million in bonuses?  Then mismanage and bankrupt the company you’re running and you can score!  That’s just what Hostess executives did, and a crooked judge approved it.

The people doing the actual work at Hostess are out on their asses with nothing, and the 19 top executives who destroyed the company are going to split up a fortune.  In fact, many of them will get bonuses of more than $130k each, which is several times what the real Hostess workers were making in a year.  But before that, the worthless managment were already taking outrageous salaries, which is what destroyed the company.

Back in September I wrote They’re Not Worth It!!! that talks about the obscene amount of money that executives steal from companies because they’re deemed so fucking wonderful that they’re worth 50 times what a Grunt is worth.

Seems to me that if you destroy a company that’s been in business for 80 years, you weren’t worth 50 times what a real worker was worth, YOU WERE A FUCKING LIABILITY.  The company would have been better without you.  You’re worth less than $0.

Yet this happens over and over and over again — these worthless shits come in, rape a company for all it’s worth and then get bonuses after they’ve destroyed the company.

I just don’t get it.

Dec 21

Bank, Cable Company or Phone Company Screwed You? Guess What!!!

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If you deal with any large company in America, you are most likely stuck with Binding Arbitration.  This means if you want to sue them, you’re going to wind up in a Kangaroo Court that rules in favor of the crooked company over 99.6% of the time.  But Binding Arbitration in the Terms of Service (TOS) of the companies that you’re forced to deal with is old news.

However, it just got much Fucking worse.

In a Nutshell, the Supreme Court decided that crooked companies may include a clause like this in their TOS:  “Arbitrator.  The claim or dispute shall be resolved by a single arbitrator selected and agreed upon by the parties.”   This means that you give up your Constitutional right to a real court hearing and agree that any Beef you have will be decided in a fake court hired by the Giant-Monster-Company (GMC) that has cheated you.  All of the Binding Arbitration companies are crooked, and 99.6% of the time they “rule” in favor of the GMC that hired them.  (And those few that might have once been fair were fired and went out of business.)

This clause also means there can be no Class Action lawsuits either.

In theory Binding Arbitration helps keep down costs for everyone, helps the courts stay unclogged and provides speedy justice.  In practice, it just means the Consumer gets crushed.

But this is all old news — here’s the Bombshell I promised.

Verbiage like this has been showing up in GMC’s TOS in the last year, “Costs and Fees.  Each party shall bear its own costs of discovery, deposition, attorney and witness fees but the arbitrator shall be empowered to make a different allocation of such fees and costs in the award/”

Everyone pays their own fees seems innocent enough, right?  But notice that the arbitrator is now empowered to “make a different allocation.”  That means the Kangaroo Court can now say, “You lose  plus you also have to pay all of the legal fees of Giant-Monster-Company too.  Hahahahaha!    You Are Screwed!”

Guess what?  This last year, that’s Exactly what they’ve all been saying.  People are being cheated by banks, cable companies, phone companies, etc. and when they take it to the Kangaroo court, not only do they lose, but they’re stock with massive legal fees as a penalty for their effort.

But it’s worse.  In that .less than half of 1% where the consumer wins, the Kangaroo courts have started declaring that the victim STILL has to pay the Giant-Monster-Company’s legal fees.  So even if you Win, you Lose.

How does this come into play?  Take my recent article on Time Warner Cable’s internet price hike http://readthisshit.com/time-warner-cable/ where they claim their crooked price increase is “just an equipment fee.”  There can’t be a class action, if you do submit to Binding Arbitration there is a 99.6% chance you’ll lose, and win or lose, it likely you’ll be hiit with paying Time Warner Cable’s “legal fees” too!

The Supreme Court gave away our rights, and it’s getting worse.