(?) Global Batteries www.global-batteries.ca

Still waiting to hear back from these folks on warranty on a battery I bought less than a year ago for my PowerBook G3 Wallstreet. The battery is completely toast, not degraded or anything; the machine can't recharge it, and when it's in the first bay the battery in the second bay won't charge either. Pop out the bad battery and the other one starts charging fine.

When I queried, these folks wanted me to pay around $45 to replace the defective battery, which goes contrary to their own posted warranty conditions. They're claiming it's a restocking fee, which clearly it isn't (the person I've been corresponding with, Christine, insists in her muddled English, "'restocking' does not mean that putting it back in our stock to sell to someone else. You can see, your battery has been used for 10 months, do you thing we can sell this used battery to our customer? So the 'restocking' mean that we must handle your return battery. The restocking fee including depreciation fee." I've written back, provided a true definition of the term "restocking fee" and asked to speak to a manager. I'll let you all know how this pans out.

(+) Starbucks

A little too much negativity here, so I thought a quick plus post was in order. I love Starbucks. For years I avoided them as an evil corporate entity, but I have changed my tune. Not only are they at least making an effort to be globally conscious by offering fair wages to coffee growers, but their products are good, their stores are comfortable and well-appointed, and in general their employees appear to me (and tell me they are) very happy working for Starbucks.

I used to drink Tim Horton's coffee, but don't now. I suspect they keep their prices down by totally exploiting the coffee growers. Starbucks coffee is just better, probably because you can't taste the blood of the peasants in it.

(-) HP, Dell, Toshiba, Sony, Gateway, etc.

Yes, all of these manufactures get a nice big minus sign. Want to buy a new notebook? Can't/won't run Microsoft Vista? Too bad if Vista comes pre-installed. All these manufacturers have done a deal with the devil, a.k.a. Microsoft, to pull their XP drivers. Microsoft desperately wants to see full adoption of Vista, and I speculate the company hasforced makers to pull the XP drivers to ensure compliance. I suspect this is the case because for years after the release of XP most makers continued to offer easy web access to drivers for Windows 2000, and even Windows 98. What's so different now?

For those who do not wish to run Vista until Microsoft works out its many bugs (and then introduces a host of new ones in Service Pack 1), you're out of luck. For those who have no choice, e.g., at the office where I buy and support the computers we use SAP Business One, which won't even run on Vista, it's an utter nightmare. How can we do business if we can't buy machines that will run the OS we must use?

I was able to get drivers from HP by going through a live chat with a tech, who sent me links to the drivers. I've heard Toshiba will also release drivers (which they initially claim do not exist) if you pester their techs sufficiently. My advice: pester, pester, pester! Be a complete nuisance to these jerks for the bad deal they made with Microsoft. Also, let me say: screw you Microsoft! (Sorry, just had to let that out.)

I'll also go on record to say I will not buy any computer that does not readily support XP. Purchasers, make the same declaration! Let's hit the fools who made this decision where it hurts.

More here.

Did I mention I use a Macintosh at home? So should you.

(-) Quicktaxweb.ca

This is a great one: it's the day before the Canadian tax filing deadline and QuickTaxWeb.ca is down. I called their Canadian tech support line (by long distance, at MY expense) and Raj (who's actually in New Delhi) told me they were down due to high volume. Well DUH! It's the day before the deadline! Didn't anyone think to ensure that their servers could handle the capacity? How utterly amateurish! Intuit Canada, attention: this is completely unacceptable. Next year I'm using someone else's service.

(-) Netgear (technical support)

Problems with a Netgear router; it works fine as an open network but it won't work with WPA-PSK security turned on. Try to contact their tech support, but you first have to register at this page. No matter what I enter for a telephone number, I get a message in red to the right of the phone number field, "You must enter a valid telephone number". Oh, like, area code and number? Doesn't work. Tried this in Firefox and Explorer. Email to "support@netgear.com" yields an autoreply sending me to "http://my.netgear.com/myNETGEAR/support ..asp" (there's a carriage return before the two periods and "asp" in the email message), which when you click on it drops everything before the two periods, so you get a page with "The system cannot find the file specified."

(-) Expedia.ca

I carefully planned a flight for myself, wife, two kids, in detail, and throughout the entire process was told my price was $1032.94. I read all the conditions, completed a number of online forms, which included entering passenger names, selecting meal and seating preferences, kids' dates of birth, booking the car rental, submitting air mile collector data, etc. etc., the system consistently maintaining, even after clicks to submit each form, that the cost to me, including all fees and taxes, was CDN$1032.84.

When at last I arrived at the final page, entered my credit card information, and clicked "Submit," a new screen appeared, again requesting that I submit my credit card info, but also informing me that the price had risen by almost exactly 20%! The "new" price: $1239.24.

The system conveniently waited until I had completed the bulk of my labour, i.e., I had committed a great deal of time to completing the purchase, before it jacked up the price.

Think about it. This is akin to letting your customer walk through your store, collect his purchases in a shopping cart -- up and down the aisles, selecting carefully items based on price and quality -- and only when he has reached the cash desk, placed all his items on the conveyor, had the barcodes scanned, when he has seen the total cost on the display and you have run his credit card through the reader, then, and only then, you tell him, congeneally, without apology, that the price of all the items he's just purchased have inflated, spontaneously, by 20%. And when he complains, you tell him that it's not your fault; he should blame the manufacturers of the items he's purchased.

A scam? It sure looks like a scam. Expedia claims in their formletter response (part of the "exceptional" customer service they proudly boast), "Expedia.ca uses a real-time airline reservation database that contains current ticket prices and availability. The database is updated as fares change and seats are sold." After I received that response, my phone call to customer service saw me rapidly passed to a queue to speak to a supervisor, where I remained for almost 30 minutes, until at last the original agent returned to say that no one was available to speak to me. I was promised a call back by 5:00 p.m. That call never came.

The system had several opportunities to update the displayed fare to reflect what Expedia claims was a price increase by the airline. Well no, not just the one airline, all the airlines, simultaneously, for as I discovered later when I rechecked fares, Delta, US Airways, Continental, United, all these apparent competitors had, by some staggering coincidence, and while I was dutifully reading conditions and punching data into forms, hiked their prices. Does this sound at all suspicious to you?