I knew I would find this out eventually, but I’ve discovered that Twitter is a complete waste of time. For those of you who don’t know, Twitter is a site which basically broadcasts your current activity to your friends so they can keep tabs on you (and you on them). The trick is that it integrates with other technologies, like SMS, so you can keep up to date in many different ways. Don’t see the point? Neither do I.
Given the added overhead of techrecs.com and the fact that the readership of infobhan and techrecs are similar, I’ve decided to consolidate the content onto one site: this one. Recs will be moving in. I will slowly be moving some of the old content over.
I’ve been a T-Mobile customer for years, but recently discovered first-hand their deceptive business practices. Knowing I would have to move to a different carrier within the month, I specifically asked if transferring a number to my name would require a new 12-month contract. They said no, yet hit me with a $200 “early termination fee” when I switched carriers.
Bottom Line: Stay away from this company.
…one of the great problems facing the world. Or at least my world. I’m talking about mediocre hamburgers. I mean, you’ve got a grill, you’ve got some fresh ground beef, how complicated can it be? I tried the plain beef method, the onion and garlic method, the Worcestershire sauce method. Nothing worked. But this guy, he is good…he is very good. He somehow came up with the idea of mixing some chipotle peppers into the mix. Ingenious. For those of you who don’t know, chipotle’s are basically dried, smoked jalepenos. That smoky flavor and spiciness makes for a particularly delicious burger. Also works great with turkey burgers. Haven’t tried it with veggie burgers because, frankly, I don’t think anything can make those edible.
Yes, it’s a little embarrassing. But I’m also a little proud of it.
Who would have thought that it would be so easy to type on a keyboard without actual keys. I am now a faster typist on my iPhone than I was on my Treo.
Through the various bank acquisitions that have taken place over the years, Bank of America has become my primary bank. I hadn’t had any particular cause to complain. They have many branches in my area. They have relatively full-featured online banking. They have a convenient online banking feature that lets me send checks directly to someone else without having to do any of the mailing myself.
One of the nice features of their online banking service was the ability to view canceled checks online. This is convenient when you need reimbursement for something you paid for by check and need to provide evidence of the transaction. Recently, I had the need to do this, but realized I had used the online bill pay feature to send a check rather than written one by hand. For some reason, the option to display and print the canceled check didn’t appear as it did for conventional checks.
Surely there must still be a way to get a copy of the canceled check. How could I find out? It turned out that Bank of America has a convenient customer service email system build right into their website. Instead of waiting on hold, I could simply fire off a quick typed message. So I did.
“I am able to view and print canceled checks online for regular checks. I’d like to get a copy of a canceled check I sent using the bill pay system. How can I do this?”
The next morning, I had an alert in my e-mail inbox that I had a customer service message waiting for me on the Bank of America site. It turns out, they don’t email you directly, but rather post a message to your online account. You have to log in to their website. No big deal, it’s probably for security purposes. I logged in.
No message. I must have missed something. Ah, there it was:
“There was a problem loading your message. Please try again later.”
I tried again right away, thinking that I could just ignore this error and it would fix itself. No luck. Patience is a virtue, right? Sure enough, later that day I was able to see a new message from Customer Service in my Bank of America online account. Finally, the answer I had been waiting for. I loaded the message:
Dear Ishir Bhan,
Thank you for your inquiry dated 7/9/07 regarding the Bill Pay check. Your concerns are very important to us and we will be happy to assist you
There is a follow-up message to this e-mail.
Allow us to apologize for any inconvenience that you may have experienced in this matter. Please note that you are able to view the Bill pay check online.
We apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused. If we may of further assistance, please contact us again by e-mail. We value your relationship and thank you for choosing Bank of America.
Sincerely,
(name censored)
Bank of America
Dear Ishir Bhan,
Thank you for your inquiry dated 7/9/07 regarding the Bill Pay check. Your concerns are very important to us and we will be happy to assist you.
Please note that you are unable to view the check image of the Bill Pay. However, in some cases, payments made through Bill Pay are made by mailing a paper check to the payee. When a Personal Check is issued, Bill Pay Check, not the payee name, will appear in the transaction description on your statements, Online Banking Account Activity screen and/or PFM software Quicken/Microsoft Money. To identify payee names for Personal Check payments click on Transaction Description to see an image of the check.
We appreciate you taking the time to submit your comments and suggestions. Product enhancements and other great ideas are submitted by many of our customers. We are currently reviewing your message and, if necessary, someone will get back with you for further clarification.
We apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused. If we may of further assistance, please contact us again by e-mail. We value your relationship and thank you for choosing Bank of America.
Sincerely,
(name censored)
Bank of America
I read this over several times. It appears to be two contradictory messages stuck together (both written largely by a computer). I searched for some morsel of useful information, some tiny gem drowning the vast sea of boilerplate. Alas, my efforts were to no avail. A reply asking for further clarification was met with the following:
Dear Ishir Bhan,
Thank you for your inquiry dated 7/12/07. We understand your concern
about Bill Pay check. We are glad to assist you with your inquiry.
We regret that your request was not completed correctly. We strive to
ensure that every customer’s request is handled appropriately the first
time we are contacted. Bank of America has a commitment to provide the
highest level of service possible. Please note that we have taken the
necessary steps to ensure that we have properly described the issue down
below. You can be assured that we will make every effort to avoid a
similar situation going forward.
The Bill Pay service maintains the history of a transaction for a
maximum of 180 days. After the 180 days, the transactions are removed
from Bill Pay. After the transactions are removed, you will be able to
view the transactions posted to your account by your monthly account
statement only. If you need additional information or a copy of a
transaction older than 180 days, please provide us with the details of
the Bill Pay transaction and the information needed regarding the
transaction. We once again apologize for the inconvenience caused in
this matter.
We value you as a customer and appreciate your business. If we may be of
further assistance, please contact us again by e-mail. Thank you for
choosing Bank of America.
Sincerely,
(name censored)
Bank of America
With Mobile Banking, you can check your balance, pay bills, transfer
funds and more, right from your cell phone. Simply sign into Online
Banking at www.bofa.mobi from your wireless browser to enjoy anytime,
anywhere banking! Mobile Banking service is free to Online Banking
Customers. Web access is needed to use Mobile Banking. Check with your
wireless carrier for details on specific fees and charges.
Though I am a vigorous advocate for information technology, it was failing me here. I decided to resort to more traditional methods and picked up the phone (my iPhone, of course). After a brief wait on hold, I spoke to a human being and my questions were quickly answered. Those verbose emails could have been replaced with one sentence:
“Give us a call and we’ll fax it to you.”
Bottom Line: The Apple iPhone is a revolutionary phone not in its feature list, but in the way it packages those features. For the right person, there is nothing better than this phone on the market.
Verdict: Highly Recommended
There are many reviews of the Apple iPhone on the net, many of which are frighteningly long and detailed. This review aims to focus on the bottom line. Everyone’s seen the iPhone ads on TV and seen Apple’s latest wundergadget writing emails, browsing photos, surfing the net, playing music, playing videos, displaying maps, and (of course) making and answering phone calls.
Here’s a quick summary: The iPhone does a few things better than any other smartphone out there, in large part due to its massive touchscreen. Photos are sharp and well saturated on this screen. It’s easy to browse a large library of music with the sweep of a finger, and the iPhone has much more capacity for storage than other smartphones. Web browsing is a dramatically better experience that is almost as good as using a desktop computer. Small widgets like stocks and weather seem so obvious, its a wonder no one thought of them earlier. Complex call management like managing multiple simultaneous calls (merging, holding calls, switching between callers) and voicemail are similarly a dramatic step forward. The virtual keyboard, a concern of many used to the tactile microkeyboards on Treos and Blackberry’s, was surprisingly usable. Though it takes about a week to get the hang of it, I now find it superior to my Treo’s keyboard. A surprising advantage: the lack of physical keys makes it more comfortable to use for an extended period of time. AT&T’s service so far seems better than the T-Mobile service I’m coming from, but this varies regionally and could be a dealbreaker for some.
If you are a regular cell phone and iPod user and have longed to merge the two, the iPhone is likely to be both a better phone than your phone and a better iPod than your iPod.
The iPhone has some small, but real, deficiencies that may prompt you to wait for a future model:
I found EDGE to be quite usable when I was not in Wifi range, particularly given that I could actually browse the pages once they were downloaded (the Treo managed to mangle many in its attempt to reformat them, and often gave up completely). The other limitations are real, but I found them to be minor. Lack of corporate email support is the biggest limitation that hopefully will be addressed in a future software update.
Yes, there will be a new iPhone down the line which will be better, but there will be a new one after that as well. The initial model is suprisingly robust, and most deficiencies should be addressed with software updates. For now, the iPhone is dramatically better than any other smartphone I’ve seen. It removes so many of the frustrations I experienced with the Treo. Is it really worth suffering with yesterday’s technology to wait for the next revision? My answer is no.
…you have to figure out how old you are by subtracting your birth year from the current year. My “About” section had been saying I was 32 for some time despite the fact that my birthday was in January. Worse yet: I only realized it was wrong today.
Hmm…these signs appear to present a conundrum.