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Reort from America

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  • Reort from America

    In July of 2011 my credit card was “compromised” when an online vendor I use got hacked. My bank notified me 9 months later, only after the first attempt to use the card fraudulently occurred.

    The bank, the vendor, and Visa had been sitting on this information all that time. The bank said it would monitor charges to the card. I told them to cancel it, but they did not until I told them that someone had used the card to order my credit report. (So much for the monitoring) At this point the bank denied I had ever asked them to cancel the card. I was unable to cancel the card via Visa because the address associated with the card had been changed thanks to US postal service computers.

    When I arrived back in the states without a credit card, it was impossible to get internet service which would have helped enormously in solving these problems. I spent a lot of time at the local library. It’s closed now on Tuesdays and Sundays and open four hours on three out of the other five days. However, the parking lot is often full when it’s closed. People are sitting in cars with laptops using the Wifi.

    The bank, sensing they had screwed up, offered to "overnight" me a new card. I snorted when the women said, “Overnight is three business days.” The post office claimed they'd fixed the address screw up, but three weeks later our mail was still going to my brother’s house three hours away. The credit card went there too.

    When I finally got hooked to the internet in our rural area, the woman told me it would cost 50 dollars for one gigabyte of data per month. (The penalty charges are beyond absurd.) I explained that I had used the same USB devise last year and that 50 dollars had bought 5 gig. She said the price had not changed. I said, “I have an invoice in front of me.” She said, “I’m sorry, prices have not changed. You must have gotten some kind of promotion at a store.” I said, “I didn’t go to a store. I called the same number I’m calling today.” She said, “The prices have not changed.”

    Needless to say, I spent a lot of time on the phone and am glad to be back where all phones are jailbroken, cash is king (for a while longer) and high speed internet is not bundled and contracted.
    Last edited by Thailandnotes; August 26, 2012, 10:30 AM.

  • #2
    Re: Reort from America

    In Japan, I changed from Yahoo Broadband (which was perfectly adequate and cost $30 a month, but was a little slow when I tried to upload video files, unlimited data, downloads about 5M/sec, uploads about 0.5M/sec) to NTT optical fiber (much faster uploads and downloads, unlimited data, about $60 per month) last year. When the equipment came, I plugged it into the telephone socket, plugged the wifi in, and turned it on. That was it. Took about 10 minutes.

    In Hawaii, TimeWarner Cable. 1M! $60 a month.
    I spent three hours trying to connect the computer to the internet. I read all the directions for hooking it up. After three hours, I started to suspect something was wrong. I called the service number and was on hold for half an hour. When I finally got through, the guy on the other end had me step through and manually input many strange codes in fields in many windows. That took more than half an hour. I told him the manuals from TimeWarner and the individual account information I had didnt say anything about this, and he agreed. So, I wasted 4 hours just to get the thing to work. Same thing happened to my neighbor. She had to pay someone to come set it up because she couldn't figure out what was wrong.

    Why do people put up with things like this? As soon as I can, I am ditching TimeWarner, although Hawaiian Telephone is unlikely to be better.

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    • #3
      Re: Reort from America

      one tip on engaging any electronic service - ordering online, shipped directly to you, is more likely to be the latest version of their equipment. If a tech comes out or you pick it up at the local service branch the chances are greater it could be an older model, with it's subsequent problems to tickle and delight.

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      • #4
        Re: Reort from America

        Good point.
        Unfortunately, in this case, there was no way to order online since I didnt have internet service to begin with, and I had to go to the TimeWarner office to sign a contract, etc., which itself was a huge waste of time, and I wound up having to go twice.
        I think they are just screwups. Product is poor and expensive because it is a monopoly, more or less.

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