Knocking heads and calling numbers
On Monday night the phone rang and for the third or fourth time in a few hours “Circulation Department” showed on the caller ID which we ignored. Well I was finally annoyed enough to pick up the phone to see who the f wanted to talk to us this badly.
So I pick up and some young black girl is on the other end. She asks for Alison, even though Alison is standing right next to me I tell the woman Alison is not home. Then she asks for Mr Duffey, I tell her she is speaking to him. She said she was just calling from the Rachel Ray magazine which Ali evidently receives. She was calling to let us know that there is new reduced subscription rate and she just wanted to give us the confirmation code for it.
Woah, woah, hold on there. Obviously this chick was trying to railroad me into agreeing to renewing the magazine. I told her that in so many words and that I had no idea if Alison was interested in renewing. The woman insisted it was just some code and I kept pressing her, seeing through her obvious scam. Finally she got frustrated with me and said “Well since you obviously can’t make a decision I’ll call back and talk to your wife” and hangs up. You f’ing little bitch. Yea we will be renewing that magazine for sure now, not…..
So yesterday I go to load up Pocket Tunes Sirius feed and get an error that I was unauthorized. I instantly suspected that my main subscription had come up for renewal and that they dropped my online listening since I had not opted to pay an additional 2.99 a month for the “premium” service. When I logged on to my account I did see this was the case.
Of course I was annoyed for a couple reasons. The entire business plan of Sirius to keep sliding in additional costs to it’s subscribers during a period of time when luxury items like satellite radio are getting harder and harder to justify is just plain moronic. Secondly when I called about the bullshit royalty fee increase a month ago I asked the woman point blank if I would still have the basic online listening once my subscription renewed without any additional cost. She said I would and you only had to pay for the “premium” bullshit. Well she was full of shit.
Just calling Sirius piles on to the annoyance as their first level customer service has evidently been farmed out of the country. Your first contact NEVER speaks good English. So I call in to complain and explain that I was told I would still have my online streaming once my subscription renewed. Well the guy apologizes but says that was not correct. I voice my disgust with being lied to although I knew I may as well have been complaining to my cup of coffee.
After I finished the guy again apologized for the misunderstanding and offered the incredibly underwhelming compensation of the first month of online listening for free. Wow THREE BUCKS? Why you…. Ok well I moved on to phase two. Having talked to other Sirius subscribers I knew I had another bullet in my gun. I tell the guy that I am really disgusted and want to cancel, although I have no real plans of cancelling. Well those few words moves me to the next step of the flow chart and I am transferred once again where low and behold I talk to a young guy that speaks perfect English. I guess once you say you want to cancel you become important enough to talk to someone in the United States.
So again I voice my mini-rant to the guy and tell him I am ready to cancel. All of a sudden there is a special deal he can do for me. He said they will knock 50% off the yearly subscription, a savings of about $80. Even with adding the premium online listening back in I wind up paying about $50 less than what I was going to be billed without online listening included originally. I solemnly agreed to take the offer and hung up after telling the guy that if Stern doesn’t sign back up with Sirius at the end of his contract I will be gone as well as millions of other subscribers, just an FYI. I gave myself a little pat on the back for working the plan to perfection.
My upcoming four day Thanksgiving break is going to be a very busy one. After dinner at my mom’s tomorrow I will be diving into a long list of things I would like to do. Here are the things that pop into my head quickly:
Mow the grass
Cement in the hurricane anchors for the new shed
Trim palm tree fronds using my new 20 foot ladder and high torque loppers
Hang Christmas lights outside
Try to install the new floats and needle valves into the Moto Guzzi
Weed the property
Normal interior cleaning
as well as a handful of small things not worth mentioning. As you can see, I will be busy.
Spook has resumed eating with vigor but her peeling ear/head skin thing got worse. I mean it is f’ing gross, it almost looks like the cat took a bullet to the side of her skull. I think I may have made it worse by putting some of the ear medicine in Monday night to try to clean out the scuzz inside her ear. I think it also dissolved some of the adhesions where the skin was starting to heal. As a result it has pulled away even further. Plus if the cat scratches at the area it would further retard any healing. But besides looking like the hell she is eating and still using the litter box so as long as that continues to be the case she can continue to walk the planet.