Club you over the head, Hulu restraints released, “hot” pants

So yesterday I had our credit card bill with me at work.  Ali had pointed out to me when she was doing the bills about some credits that were not there, one from RCI and one from The Manhattan Club, the place I originally reserved a room at but later had to cancel.

I handled the RCI issue first, it was a small amount of money, $27, but I’ll be damned if I am going to let RCI screw me out of one more penny.  This credit was tied into my airfare reservation I placed with them.  When I tried to book the flight online their site continuously crashed.  The credit was to make up for the difference between the higher fee for booking via the phone which for some reason they charge more for.

When it all went down I asked for assurances REPEATEDLY that I could expect the credit to be applied and I was told REPEATEDLY it would be.  Of course this is RCI we are talking about, the credit wasn’t done, surprise, surprise.  So I called up and explained the situation.  The woman I spoke to ASSURED me the credit would now be applied although she couldn’t explain why it wasn’t done initially.  Now I have to babysit my statement further to make sure the credit actually shows up.

Next up was a call to the Manhattan Club.  I originally booked this online for two nights.  When I booked the reservation I had no idea I was dealing with a timeshare, they don’t do a very good job of pointing that out on the web site.  I logged on to the site, picked my dates, picked the lowest rate and was done.  I didn’t realize it was a timeshare until I received the email confirmation that said our stay required us to attend a 90 minute sales presentation.

I called the place after I realized it was a timeshare to get some clarification.  I told the person on the phone that when I booked the room I had no idea it was a timeshare.  The woman said I could cancel the reservation if I wanted and book at the higher standard room rate or just attend the presentation at the lower rate.  She said as long as I met the prequalifications for the presentation, which I did, there isn’t an issue.  So Ali and I resigned ourselves to just sitting through the sales pitch.

Well a few weeks later I realized that when I booked the room for two nights I made a mistake.  I had it in my head that our flight left Saturday when in reality it left Friday evening.  Upon talking to Ali we agreed that I should just cancel the Manhattan Club reservation and book somewhere that didn’t require us to waste a couple hours since we now had less time in NYC than we first thought.

I called MHC again and told them I needed to cancel my reservation.  The woman told me it was easy to do, all I had to do was go back on the web site and enter my original confirmation number.  I followed her instructions, cancelled the reservation and made a one night reservation at a nearby Sheraton instead. Ok problem handled, so I thought.

So yesterday I call up Manhattan Club to handle what I assumed was just another oversight.  Somehow they must have just forgotten to issue the credit for my $435 cancelled reservation.  I wind up being connected with a woman named Stephanie.  I explain to Stephanie that I cancelled my reservation back in June but had not seen a credit on my card yet.  Stephanie told me that was because there won’t be one, the money in  not refundable…

As you can imagine I went from 0-60 in the flip of a switch when I heard this ridiculous sentence.  I asked her what she meant, why would it be nonrefundable, I cancelled the reservation? Stephanie said that the “special promo rate” that I signed up for was a nonrefundable rate and that in order to make the reservation I would have had to agree to those terms.  I told her I have no recollection of that being mentioned anywhere in the booking process.  Stephanie could sense this conversation was just about to get ugly so she said she would transfer me to the person in charge of “online marketing”.

So I began a new conversation with Maritza.  I explained the background of the situation.  I told her much like I had no idea initially I was making a reservation at a timeshare I had zero knowledge that the money I was laying out was nonrefundable.  I told her that this was not made clear on the site in any way.

I also told her that I had phone conversations with MHC staff twice regarding cancelling the reservation and never was there a mention of the the money being nonrefundable.

Maritza repeated Stephanie’s line about my agreeing to the non-refundable rate. She said that I could reuse the credit anytime in the next year.  I told her I was not going to be going to New York again in the next year so that was worthless to me.

I went to the site and looked at the check out screens.  My “agreeing” to the terms meant I clicked a checkbox next to hyperlinked TERMS and CONDITIONS. The only way you saw these terms was if you clicked the link, they are not presented to you directly before handing over your credit card information.  I, like most human beings, don’t typically take the time to read what is normally pages of legalese when performing a transaction like this.

Maritza crowed that whenever she puts in her credit card information on a web site she always makes sure to read all of the terms and conditions.  Yea, sure you do.

So now we were at a clear loggerhead.  Manhattan Club was taking the stance of “too bad, so sad.  We tricked you into agreeing to terms that were not transparent. ”  I of course was now in full bare knuckle fighting mode.

I battered Maritza with various points.  First I asked her how my making and then cancelling a reservation a month and a half in advance costs The Manhattan Club a single penny.  She said there were costs associated with taking reservations on the web site.  I told her I worked in IT and that she was basically full of shit.  Any prorated cost for the miniscule bandwidth that I utilized doing the transaction could be measured in pennies.

Next I asked her why the Manhattan Club thought that $435 was an adequate amount of money to rationalize all of the negative word of mouth that will come out of this.  Again her response was weak, saying it was MHC policy with little else.

We were in full out argument mode for quite awhile.  To be honest I am surprised she didn’t hang up on me.  Then she offers the first chink in the armor, saying that “maybe” she can get one of the two nights credited back to me.  I told her if she can get one night credited, she can get both nights credited.

Maritza did not like that I didn’t accept her halfway offer.  I tried to switch tactics and calmed down a bit.  I asked her to put herself in my shoes for a second.  Obviously from the get go there was a misunderstanding regarding the reservation and all I am asking is for MHC to step around policy in an effort at customer satisfaction.

Maritza calmed down a bit and said she would “see what she could do” and get back to me.  Of course I don’t have a lot of faith of her actually doing anything but I am crossing my fingers that I don’t have to be the one to make the next call.

If MHC ultimately decides that keeping my money is worth it, I will repay them with an onslaught of negative commentary that will surely be picked up on by the Google spiders for all to see.  In addition, since MHC is an RCI affiliated resort, I will be making my feelings known there as well.  Finally I will file a dispute with my credit card company which hopefully will remove the money from their accounts via brute force.

I hope they see the light.

When I first signed up for Hulu Plus I was complaining how a lot of their content when viewed via the native Xbox 360 app was not available, saying it was WEB ONLY.  Web only means the content is only viewable if you browse Hulu from a PC with a web browser.  It’s pretty stupid restriction if you ask me.

Well last night I realized I had a way around this, using playon.tv.  When I use playon, which is running on my home server, it is essentially like sitting at a PC so all of this content is unlocked to me.  Now there are some drawbacks to doing it this way.

Navigating Hulu programming via playon is not nearly as slick.  There is no search ability, you just wind up drilling through tons of menus to get to what you want.  Second the video quality is not nearly as good as when you use the native application.  It’s SD quality at best because of compression.

Even with these warts, I appreciated actually being able to watch some Iron Chef America for the first time since I cut my ties with Comcast.

Late yesterday afternoon Ali called me and asked if I wanted to do a training run with her.  I was a bit surprised since normally if Ali wants a training partner she will ask me in advance so I pack appropriately.

On Monday I wore my green Adidas Firebird retro training pants and had no shorts.  I also had my “normal” sneakers instead of my New Balance running sneakers. Despite this I told Ali I would run with her as I always try to support her running as much as I can.

We did about four and a half miles around Sugden.  Even though the sun was behind clouds the entire run it was still extremely humid.  It didn’t take long until I was unhappy I was wearing long pants for the run.  By the time I was done they were sopping wet.

I was surprised that my gym sneakers felt ok to run in.  They are running sneakers but not anything I tailored to my running needs like I did with my NB 1080’s.