Posts tagged as "consumer watch" - Chris Hardie

It's not April first yet, so I couldn't really stop my jaw from dropping to the ground on this one: The Richmond-Wayne County Chamber of Commerce and the City of Richmond will be holding a press conference tomorrow afternoon to promote buying local - to be held at the mall, which is predominantly occupied by chain stores. It seems like QUITE an unfortunate juxtaposition to me to have this kind of announcement in that kind of setting. Malls like the Richmond Square Mall certainly provide great...

This is a republishing of a series of blog posts looking at the pal-item.com Terms of Service, discussing what they actually mean and how they might impact your use of the Palladium-Item website.  (The Palladium-Item is Richmond, Indiana's daily newspaper.)  You can view the original posts where they appeared on the Pal-Item site: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. The pal-item.com Terms of Service (TOS) are the policies and terms that the Palladium-Item and its parent corporation, Gannett, have set forth...

We all love to splurge a little once in a while. Save up some money and do something nice with it, really go a little beyond our normal spending - maybe it's a vacation, maybe it's a nice gift for a friend, or maybe it's buying universal healthcare for 300 million Americans. Huh? Oh yeah, universal health care was one of the things I bought on my $3 Trillion Shopping Spree. I did it at the website 3trillion.org, which asks the question: "The occupation of Iraq will cost $3 trillion...can YOU spend...

You may or may not notice that I've incorporated some Google Ads into my weblog. It's my unabashed attempt to make whatever moo-lah I can off of this exercise in public writing (which does not, for what it's worth, have moo-lah generation as a primary goal). I'm not sure if I'll keep the ads: the concept in general already grates against my sense that there's too much advertising on your average website, and because of my affiliation with a certain company that does webhosting, it's not like I'm trying...

I had a nice call this morning from Nick, the local store manager of the OfficeMax in Richmond. I'd recently had some really poor customer service experiences in that store with them and had submitted a narrative of those experiences for their review. I usually don't bother going back to a place after such occurrences - especially not a big box store - but in Richmond they are uniquely suited to sell a few products that I and/or Summersault consume, so I thought it worth at least trying to share...

I called Vectren Energy Delivery (a.k.a. the gas company) the other day with a question about my bill, and was pleasantly surprised by a customer service measure they've implemented. When I had made my way through the phone tree to the point where I start to sit on hold, the system said "we'll call you back within the same period of time you might wait on hold - 47 minutes." Then they let me enter a phone number and record my name. Indeed, about 30 minutes later, I got a call back from an automated...

The forthcoming closing of Richmond's Target store, reported in the Palladium-Item on November 6th, is certainly a troubling development for the local economy. Jobs will be lost, the convenient shopping will need to be found elsewhere, and yet another "big box" piece of real estate will need to be filled. But perhaps more troubling than these obvious effects are the more subtle implications of how we as a community think about and support local businesses. Our downtown, and our local small business...

I sent this letter to Timex, and have not yet received any response. They may well have trashed it, but I think I would like it if I received this kind of specific technical feedback on the products/services I create. Timex Audio Products 135 Essex Avenue Avenel, NJ 07001 September 25, 2004 To Whom It May Concern: Greetings. I am writing with some comments and suggestions about one of your products, specifically the Model T618 Stereo CD Clock Radio with Digital Tuning and Nature...

Well, it's that time of year again, when public radio stations completely abandon any pretense of professionalism and dignity, and begin soliciting their listeners for money. Announcer #1: Well, we're sorry to break in to this news story about critical current events, but we've got a great jello recipe that can be yours for a pledge of just five dollars. Announcer #2: That's right Tom. Unfortunately, the phones are all quiet right now. If we don't get a call in the next few minutes, well,...

My letter of Tuesday, Sep 7th, 8:30 PM: Greetings. For the second time in a month, I recently ordered Papa John's breadsticks and had them delivered with only a Garlic sauce - no pizza sauce or cheese sauce as has been included in the past. Your website indicates that at least the pizza sauce should be included (perhaps you've discontinued the Cheese Sauce?). In any case, I've been fairly disappointed both times, and thought I'd take a moment to note that folks ordering breadsticks and pizza...