Bag of Randomness

BaconDCokeScreenShotBON153

  • Usually I have nothing but praise for DirecTV, but I smell something fishy.  Months ago I decided to cancel my NFL Sunday Ticket subscription because it was hard for me to justify spending about $300 for the package, even though I’ve been subscribing to it for about five years.  You can’t remove the package online, you have to call in.  Which I did.  But yesterday when I got my bill the auto-renew kicked in and I was charged.
  • So I call in, and fight the voice prompts.  It’s one of those where all you have to do is simply speak and tell the system what you want to do.  Sounds simply, right?  So I say, “Cancel NFL Sunday Ticket.”  You probably guessed what happened, I get a long message, better yet, a commercial about the NFL Sunday Ticket.  I try to cut it off by saying “agent” but that didn’t work.
  • Finally I get to a representative.  He shows no record of my cancellation.  He does something, what, I’m not sure, then transfers me to someone else where I have to give all my account information again.  This agent was nice, told me it was the auto-enroll that caused this to happen, I tell her that I called months ago to cancel the auto-enroll, she finds no record of the call.
  • This is where I’m thinking it’s getting a bit fishy.  Now they offer me the entire package for half off.  Tempting, but I say no, mainly because I think they’re plotting.  See, I got a thing in the mail about the NFL Sunday Ticket a while back saying that because times are tough, they understand, so now NFL Sunday Ticket Subscribers can spread out their payment plan even further so the monthly bill would be so high.  That seems like a good business decision on their end and actually helps out their loyal customers, but I still didn’t want to spend a total of about $300.  So I’m thinking for anyone that has canceled, they kept the auto enroll feature turned on so the customer would have to call in, offer the half price deal, and can at least make something out of nothing.  I could be wrong about that, but the reason I canceled months ago was to avoid any of this.
  • The Dallas Morning News had a nice article that mentioned the Landry Mile.  I haven’t thought of the Landry Mile for quite some time.
  • The Rosanne Bar picture of her dressed as Hitler is disturbing.  But I think she’s Jewish, so I guess that’s OK?
  • Gordon Keith wrote the following line and I keep thinking about it, “To them, the argument is always about the source of the reasoning, not the soundness of it.”
  • Heard some lyrics but just can’t name the song? Just tweet @LyricRat and they’ll respond quickly with the song you’re looking for.
  • The Brett Favre Retirement Timeline is longer than I thought.
  • WifeGeeding took DogGeeding to the vet yesterday.  He’s been prone to ear infections, and as of late his hearing has been very bad.  Turns out he’s just old.  The vet thinks he’s around 12 years old, we never knew his real age as he’s a rescue dog, and thinks he only has two to four years left.  When I heard that, only the two stood out, I got that very bad sinking feeling in my stomach and couldn’t finish my lunch.  Maybe I’m optimistic, but other than his hearing he seems to be in great health and have lots of energy.  I’m thinking he has five to six years left.  I hate thinking about this kind of stuff.
  • Cool photo of a dog walking on water.
  • I tried my safety razor recently and didn’t cut myself.  All in all, I think it provides a superior shave when compared to the Mach 3 I was using.  I also used a pre-shave oil this time around, so that may have had something to do with it.  I did get a small amount of razor burn, but that was only because I was experimenting with the razor just to see how hard I could press it against my skin.  It was a bit difficult shaving around the chin and under the nose, but with practice I think I can conquer that.  However, if you are a goatee kind of guy, I would highly recommend the safety razor since you won’t be shaving in those areas.  I also found it  shaved the hair on my throat better than any razor.
  • Bacon Flow Chart [Thanks, Mike!]
  • If I see the Legally Blonde musical commercial one more time I might just start to take hostages.
  • My Altima died on me yesterday, it just won’t turn over when I turn the ignition key.  There is some power, so I’m thinking its the alternator. I tried jumping it, but nada.
  • Also, I can’t remove the ignition key, which is frustrating.  So for the first time in my life, I removed a car battery.  I plan on taking it to get tested.  Hopefully I’m wrong about the alternator, and it’s just the battery.
  • And even with the removed battery, I still can’t remove the ignition key.
  • If you are wondering why I have a lack of posts, it’s because of the car.  Blerg.
  • Thanks to Bone for helping me push that darn thing yesterday up an incline.
  • Obama was smart to include Biden on that Beer Summit yesterday, otherwise it could appear that two black men that are friends are against the lone white guy.
  • Or maybe he just wanted a free beer and decided to crash the party.
  • But I would have like the whole thing better if it didn’t look so much like a photo-op.
  • A construction worker fell 23 stories to his death – just horrific.
  • Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison’s campaign site says “rick perry gay.”  Link
  • A Dallas police officer was in Colorado taking part in a police competition event and ended up developing a blood clot due to the high elevation and severe dehydration.  His health insurance company, United Health Care, wouldn’t pay for his transportation to a Dallas hospital, but a local car dealer stepped in to pay the $7500 bill in a genius move.  Even though he may have done this out of the kindness of his heart, he’s gotten more than $7500 worth of advertising from the local media.  Article
  • Grace
This entry was posted in Personal. Bookmark the permalink.

3 Responses to Bag of Randomness

  1. 10 bucks says it is your battery. Same thing happened to me a few weeks ago, took the battery to O'Reilly's, and they confirmed it. They said that they get a LOT of dead batteries this time of year because of the heat.

  2. Melissa C says:

    Having worked for Dish (which uses the same software programs that dtv does, and a lot of the same tactics), I can tell you you're half right on your suspicions. When it's "not in season", it's really hard to remove an auto-renewing PPV from the account. While they should have notated it, half of the time, notes don't stick into the system (the program that they use was notoriously bad about this when we used it at dish!!!)… They are supposed to use a different software tool to unenroll from auto renewal, but half the time, in the offseason especially, it tells them that the cust is not currently subscribed to the program.

    As far as the getting people to call back situation…That is always the case! They don't want you to cancel, that is why you cannot ask for such things in any other way other than calling and speaking to someone. The lie that they had us spout was that it was for your protection – to prevent someone else from calling in, acting as you, to cancel the services so that they could fraud you & the company to get you a new customer promotion, as an existing one. Really, they want you to call so that a persuasive retention agent can try to convince you to change your mind and keep your business (I know this…I was good at this… I kept an over 80% retention rate!) by offering you what you want/what they think you need. The half-off offer was probably a genuine offer, you really would get it for half the cost…but yeah, you'd still be enrolled in auto renewal and would have to go through the same drama again next season (though, I have known some customers to ALWAYS get their way with adjustments and half prices and etc…. until they got to me, and I looked at their adjustment history! 😉 LOL)

  3. dan says:

    One of the news stations pointed out that Biden claims to have never drinken a beer in his entire life. Some of the media outlets were also upset they were kept so far back from the summit that it was impossible for them to bray out questions at the participants during the sit down. Made me wonder if the news outlets ever hire lip readers to discern what's be said at meetings just out ot ear-shot.

Comments are closed.