Posts tagged as "consumer watch" - Chris Hardie

It feels worth noticing the parts of our lives that are set up to make some regular use of disposable items.  Whether it's plastic bottles of water, plastic bags at the grocery or styrofoam coffee cups, there are a lot of things we use once or only a few times and then throw away when we don't necessarily need to. Recently I went looking for a more sustainable way to shave, so that I didn't have to throw away as many of those ridiculously expensive blade cartridges. At some points in life...

At some point when I was fairly young, I was excited to learn about the concept of "truth in advertising" - the notion that it actually matters whether what you say in a public announcement or description of products or services is true or not.  I was even more excited to learn that there was an official government entity (in the U.S., the Federal Trade Commission) empowered to enforce truth in advertising standards, and punish those who would dare publish falsehoods.  It totally knocked my socks...

Bank interface story #1: Got a new debit card for a new checking account.  Sticker on card says "must be activated at an ATM before use."  Went to ATM at bank, inserted card, entered temporary PIN (securely mailed in a separate envelope).  ATM menu came up, one option was "Change PIN."  Entered new PIN.  ATM said "Card is being retained" and ended my session. What the heck. Went inside bank, asked teller what's up.  Our conversation, paraphrased:  "You can't change your PIN on the first...

I offer this account of trying to address a known (and I would say, severe) bug in the iPhone 4 mail software, in case it's helpful to others: Ever since I upgraded my iPhone to IOS4 (the latest version of the phone's operating system), the Mail application has been flaky when it comes to syncing mail messages via IMAP. Duplicate messages, empty/blank messages, messages dated 12/31/1969, messages that are deleted and then re-appear, and so on. At first I thought it might be my phone hardware,...

A number of mainstream magazines and newspapers have recently published reports on the increasing threat of "cyberwarfare," the significant resources being devoted to fighting that "war" and what we're doing to protect the critical national asset that is our digital infrastructure. Unfortunately, most of the responses (and the ones favored by the Obama administration) are focused on paying insanely large amounts of money to private contractors to create and deploy complex technological solutions...

Once in a while I can't help but comment here on a company or organization that has so clearly committed themselves to creating the worst possible customer service experience for their customers.  Interpage paging, which offers network paging services, faxing, voice and e-mail gateways, etc., is just one such company.  If you're considering using them, you'll definitely want to make sure you ask lots of questions about what happens if you're not satisfied.  Here's our story: Summersault contacted...

I love the Sonos multi-room music system.  It's a ridiculous luxury to have and I could fill up another blog post apologizing for it, but it's too much a fulfillment of the dreams I had as a kid about what the households of the future could be like to pass it up.  "Wait, you mean I can have N-Trance's Set U Free blaring in every room of the house at once, perfectly in sync?  OMG!"  I used to do this with FM transmitters, spaghetti audio wiring, and various mediocre gadgets - not any more. But...

(Some of my blog posts are constructive, this one is pure rant.) There's a new amusement park ride opening up in town!  It'll take you on a thrilling journey through ups and downs of successful projects, communication failures, happy long-term partnerships, and total failures in competence.  It's called THE CONTRACTOR EXPERIENCE and you can hop on it today by opening up the phone book and calling pretty much any contractor you want to try to get some work done on your home or business! Okay,...

This weekend I had the opportunity to sample three local/regional shopping destinations that were all new to me: 1) The Fireplace Shop at 1000 North F Street in Richmond is an amazing little brick complex that showcases all that can be done with wood and other heat sources. From traditional fireplaces to wood burning stoves to corn pellet stoves to crazy other conflagrant configurations, it was quite a wonderland of temperature control. With the added bits of atmosphere like lazy cats sprawled...

The "do it yourself" (DIY) movement is sometimes talked about as a new or emerging phenomenon, but when you reduce it to its essence - "people creating or repairing things for themselves without the aid of paid professionals" - it's clear that DIY is just a new label for a way of living that is as old as human existence itself. Our culture likes to take the old and repackage it as the new so it's more exciting and engaging. I don't have any problem with that per se - there can be something creative...