CNS

If you land on the SEA Airport page you may have seen — or may see — an image tile with this title: “Live Airport Cameras.” Here’s a screen capture from 2024-08-07:

Clicking on “Live Airport Drive Cameras” takes a user to this page:

https://www.portseattle.org/page/airport-drive-cameras .

On that page — below the images — you find these comments:

“Drive camera images are static (not live) and are published with a slight delay.”

Hold on. The first page says “live” and the next page says “not live”

Note also that there are no date or time stamps on the images.

Another comment — again below the images — says “Drive camera images refresh every minute. To see the most recent view, refresh your browser window.”

Given the contradiction — and apparent outright lie about being “live” — combined with the lack of date and time stamps on the images, how can a user have any confidence that the Port of Seattle is being honest about the images being recent?

The Port should rethink its credibility concept.

A tech organization by the name of Deeper Network sells decentralized VPN (Virtual Private Network) servers. Cool idea.

An interview with Russell Liu, founder of Deeper Network, can be found in this March 31, 2021 article in Korea IT Times.

I ordered one of the devices. Deeper Network refused to send me the device. The email I got said this: “Your recent Order #32319 was detected by our system as High Risk For Fraud. To protect both ourselves and our customers, we have temporarily suspended this order.”

Ok, fine. I let it drop, thinking I really didn’t need the device.

Deeper Network did not ship the product. But, Deeper Network charged my card, taking my money.

Take my money, don’t ship the product. Who is doing fraud?

I wrote to them, months later, pointing out that they took my money, didn’t ship the product, and that I wanted my money back. I included an image of the $209 line item charge on my credit card.

The simple response I got was this: “This case is very high risk for fraud.” The answer completely ignores the fact that they took my money and failed to send the product.

Who is committing the fraud here?

Beware of Deeper Network — they apparently have a deeper agenda.

As with any slimy organization, it is wise to file a complaint with the appropriate state agency. In this case, I filed a complaint with the California Attorney General’s Office and with the Santa Clara Better Business Bureau. The address Deeper Network has on its website is 5200 Great America Pkwy, Santa Clara, CA USA 95054.

You might think a big company like McDonald’s — with a huge IT infrastructure — could do a simple common sense implementation to not piss off customers.

But no, they seem to have an inability to grasp the idea of customer inconvenience. To wit:

Look at these legible hours on the company’s website for one of their stores .

Note the 11:00 PM closing time for Sunday Drive Thru. Fantastic! I can order my sandwich now, at 10:20 PM and drive the two miles and it will be ready when I get there.

WRONG.

Upon arrival at 10:35 PM was this sign posted above the order station in the Drive Thru. Closed at 10:00 PM!

The manager was still on site and was snagged at the back door amid the maintenance workers.

Upon complaining and asking why I’m allowed to order from a closed store, the manager provided the following insight into McDonald’s IT system: there is no way for the store to submit a command telling the order system that the store is closed to prevent orders from a closed store!

The manager further claimed that customers ordering on the mobile app when the store is closed happens frequently. The manager said reports to upper management of this method of inconveniencing customers has produced nothing but inaction.

As it happens, this exact same scenario happened to me in another city as well.

One would think that a big corporation that can figure out how to keep money coming in through a mobile app could also figure out a simple procedure for management of a location to get on one of the computers and send a 0 (zero = closed) to the system to disable ordering from that location.

Not implementing such a sensible and simple concept is one way McDonald’s is OK shitting on customers.

Let’s Confuse the Customers

On May 22, 2024 this SMS message arrived on the phone from T-Mobile:

T-Mobile: For the first time in nearly a decade, we’re making a change to the price of some of our monthly service plans. Starting on 06/05/24, your rate plan(s) will increase by $5 per line per month. You’ll keep all the benefits you currently enjoy, and your rate plan type and bill due date remain the same. For more information, visit sms.t-mobile.com/NGqUR4F4

Soon after that SMS message I’m greeted with this voice message when calling 611:

Welcome to T-Mobile. Hi Bruce. I notice there are charges on your account causing your bill to be slightly higher. You have questions about that?

Charges, in addition to a rate increase? I talked with T-Mobile reps and they could not find any additional charges. Then they said the voice message really refers to the RATE increase. But, according to one rep, the rates are really charges, per the “MRC”. What is MRC I asked? “Monthly Recuring Charge”. The SMS message never used the word “charge”, instead referring to a “rate plan”.

This kind of inconsistent terminology is a great way to confuse customers and drive up the number, length, and costs of calls to customer service. Mike Sievert needs to get his act together.

And if that is not enough of a problem for millions of customers, Mike Sievert should also pay attention to this absurd T-Mobile suggestion from a supervisor.

Ask a stranger for the PIN

In the Spring of 2024 someone used one of my email addresses to start prepaid service with T-Mobile. I called T-Mobile and said there is some fraud going on using my email address without authorization.

The first rep said I needed to talk to the Prepaid Department.

The first rep in the Prepaid Department could not get her brain to understand that someone used my email address without authorization, as many ways as I tried to explain it. She kept asking if there was someone — like a friend — I had given my email address to.

I asked for a supervisor. The supervisor had a brilliant idea so that she could get into the account and look at it. This was her idea: I should call the phone number in the account associated with my email address and ask the person for the PIN, which I would in turn give to the supervisor.

So there you have it, T-Mobile personnel suggesting I be part of a process to try to improperly obtain a PIN from a stranger. I declined to be a part of this process.

Mike Sievert really needs to get his act together.