Et tu Itunes?, bungling boobs

So I am scanning my email this morning and I see an invoice from the Itunes store.  Hmm that’s odd, I haven’t bought anything recently.  I look more closely at the items.

1 Learn English from Friends S06 – S10, v1.0, Seller: ZHANG YOUNG (12+)
Write a Review  Report a Problem  $2.99
2 Learn English from Friends Season 02 – 05, v1.0, Seller: ZHANG YOUNG (12+)
Write a Review  Report a Problem  $2.99
3 Learn English from Friends S01, v1.0, Seller: ZHANG

WTF is this?  So immediately I hop on Itunes and look at my account.  Not only are these three transactions there but there is also another transaction about a week earlier that I don’t recall seeing an email for. That transaction was for $40 and change.  These two purchases effectively cleaned out the gift card balance I had on the account.  Of course I am pissed.

A quick Google search revealed that Itunes account hacking is pretty rampant.  I immediately changed my password and sent off an email to Apple to see what my recovery options are.  Thank goodness I didn’t have something like a paypal account that is linked to a bank account linked to my Itunes account, I have read horror stories of people getting their accounts sucked dry.

Of course my attention now turns to how it happened.  Was it a brute force password crack?  Is their malware lurking somewhere on one of my systems?  Now I am paranoid.

Back when we replaced our AC system in September we jumped through the numerous amount of hoops to qualify for the $1500 state rebate.  The program was part of the federal stimulus program to promote installation of more energy efficient HVAC equipment.  The program was scheduled to run from September to the end of the year.

Well two weeks into the program, the state abruptly suspended it (read about the bullshit here).  They pulled the application from their website and said it was “temporarily suspended”.  The reason was somebody didn’t make sure the $15 million was actually available to be handed out, wtf?????????

Well for a couple months no updates were posted, the phone number that they provided to call for info was even disconnected. Finally, in late November (after the elections) an update was posted that said the state was only going to honor purchases made during that first two weeks of September.  There was some sort of gigantic cluster f of ineptitude going on somewhere.  Supposedly they were going to steal money from the HVAC rebate program to help pay off the solar rebate program which was also mismanaged.

Well as ridiculous as this was, I knew we had made our purchase just within that two week window.  I submitted the numerous forms and crossed my fingers.

Again there was no way to check the status of your rebate on the web site for a month or two.  Finally, yesterday I decided to check back in and saw I actually had a status on my rebate – DENIED.  For a reason it said “Invalid UPC Code/Model”.  I was like WTF, I triple checked that the numbers I wrote down were right, how can this be?

On the rebate site they had a 410 page document that listed all of the HVAC equipment that qualified for the rebate.  The guidelines when the program launched said the new equipment had to have a minimum of a 16 SEER efficiency rating (higher number is better).

So I start flipping through this huge PDF, looking for the Trane section.  I eventually find it but am flabbergasted that only a few Trane models are listed and none of them are mine.  As I looked closer I noticed that every Trane model listed was only a 16 SEER unit (ours is 18.5), nothing higher.  I THEN started scrolling through the entire list and saw that the entire list was 99% units that were no more than a 16 SEER rating???

What the f is this???  Surely this can’t be right, why would they exclude HVAC equipment that was MORE efficient than their baseline?  I needed someone to bitch at, badly.

First I contacted the company that sold me the equipment.  They were as baffled as I was, agreeing that it makes absolutely zero sense.  I initially intended for them to shoulder some of the blame since they were the ones that installed it.  However once I saw the absence of >16 SEER units on the list I knew I couldn’t really blame the contractor.

Hell the AC company got royally screwed by the state’s handling of this program as well.  They went out and spent $10,000 on equipment and certification to do the duct leakage testing, expecting to have a huge demand over the 3 month period the program was supposed to run.  Instead they performed 4 tests in the two week period and lost their shirts in the investment.

So now my problem is getting a hold of a real human being to scream at.  Obviously this is some sort of mistake.  Common sense would scream that any unit that is more efficient than the posted ratings would also qualify for the rebate.  The only problem is thus far my only avenue of contact is through some sterile email form.  Who knows what eyes that winds up in front of.  I will be digging deeper, much deeper today.