Car Titles

I have not owned many cars in my life - 2 to be exact. Each one I owned for 6-7 years. So I'm not that familiar with titles and all that crap.

My first car - I took out a loan, paid it and got my title when it was paid from Toyota Financial Services. My second car I took out a loan and also paid it back in September of '06. I got a letter from Toyota saying 'Congratulations! Your account is now paid in full'. Great.. only thing is - they never sent me the title!

I have called them several times over the past 2.5 years and they say oh yes we'll send that out right away and continue not to. I am currently on hold with them (for about 15 minutes and counting) trying to once again get them to send me the title.

Anyone ever had this happen to them? I heard I can go to the registry and get a duplicate made for $150 but I refuse to pay for something my financing company should have sent me for free 2 years ago and that I've repeatedly called them and asked for (out of principle)!!! Why can NOTHING ever be done right? Why can nothing ever be easy? It apparently takes 60-90 days to mail the damn thing out too - which doesn't much help me if I'm trying to buy a car this week.

speaking of bullshit...

Somerville's revenue generator, Oh I mean their 'street cleaning' racket really pisses me off. Twice a week I can't park on my street, or the side streets near me because of 'street cleaning' which half the time they don't ACTUALLY DO!

Last night I forgot to move my car and sure enough when I remembered at 12:01 they are already out there ticketing me. Hey if you go down to the traffic office you wait 45 minutes, but they are mighty timely when it comes to ticketing you the tax payer of their town. The ticket is also $50! Are you kidding me!?? $50 fucking dollars for parking during 'street cleaning'.

YEA and this morning when I came out (no reason to move my car after the $50 ticket) it was CLEAR the street wasn't cleaned at all! There were a bunch of leaves and dirt/sand on the side that was 'cleaned' and there was no clear path of where the street sweeper had driven through - you can see the path when they drive through it lasts for a while.

OH and I REALLY love it when it's raining and they ticket for 'street cleaning'. I can HEAR the cleaner when it drives by and doesn't go by when it's raining.

What a waste of time

Wicked glad I wasted 2 hours of my night in rush hour traffic (and hungry!) driving to Butcherie in Brookline - only to get there and it's closed!!!

Their website says they are open till 8pm tonight.. Guess it's the 2nd day of Rosh Hashanah, so I assume that's why they are closed, but didn't see anything on the website.. maybe they should let people know that kind of thing before they waste 2 hours driving behind moronic drivers who can't even go the speed limit to get there!!!

On the Leverett Connector we get behind some guy going 25mph - who NO ONE in front of him!! So even though there wasn't any traffic on the Leverett for a change we waited anyway stop/go (me and about 5 other cars) because of an idiot in the front that can't drive!!!!!

Now I am home. Sans hummus and kugel. Hungry. Bitchy. and tired. ARGH!!!

And while I'm at it, who are the jackasses that saunter across the street at a green light like they have ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD - don't worry - I've only waited 20 minutes for the green, but go ahead, you should cross right now so I miss the green AGAIN!!! NO REALLY I HAVE NOTHING ELSE TO FUCKING DO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

even more annoying than barking dogsI

Is the crazy guy - who's outside my house walking back and forth screaming 'fucking fuck' at people as they walk down the street and following them.

NICE.

We had a few day reprieve from him. I was hopeful.... now, not so much.

How to Piss of your Customers / Users

I decided to set up Poland Spring water delivery service to my home. I drink a ton of water, it's nice to have the dispenser that gives hot and cold, I use less (if any) small water bottles, and I don't have to go to the store and get it. All good stuff.

But try to figure out your friggin bill. Good luck! Here's what the screen looks like with my billing information:



It appears to me that my bill each month will be $31.96. But I look at my credit card and I've been charged $58.70 - UM WTF is going on?

I call and get a representative that tells me - for your first delivery there is a $20 deposit, there is tax on each delivery, and a $2.00 a month rental fee for the water cooler. Ok fine I say, but you should really be more clear on your website. There is NO WAY for me to find out the information what my bill will REALLY cost me. She says yes that information can ONLY be found in the email we send when we first confirm you as a customer. HUH so the only way I can EVER know my full bill is to search and find this email. Wicked helpful. Thanks.

I mean if it's more each month include that on the page with my billing info! Why only show me part of my bill? Then I realized upon further reading (clicking the click here for details) in the pop-up window that there's also a fuel surcharge - which from calculating the charge on my credit card and subtracting the other fees is about $5. The woman on the phone didn't mention anything about a fuel surcharge for each delivery.

Then she kept explaining that there was a $2.00 fee for the cooler and tax. I GET THAT - REALLY I DO. What I am trying to tell you folks at Poland Spring - your site is ineffective. You do not clearly show the user what their bill will be each month. Clicking the more details just says there are fees, but doesn't tell me what they are for my bill.

Wouldn't it be so much easier for me as a customer and user of your website to say here's your monthly bill:
Water $31.96,
Tax $0.10,
Water Cooler $2.00,
Fuel Surcharge $5.00.
For a total of: $39.06.

I mean cuz that would be... um.. USABLE???

Oh and one may think 'hey I will just click on that My Billing link there, that's going to show me my real bill'. If you thought that - you would be wrong. This is what I got when I clicked that link:



I've never actually been able to get my real billing info by clicking that link. All I ever get is an error. Don't know if it never works, or only when I want to see my billing info?

Also BTW I should add the woman on the phone either wasn't aware of the fuel surcharge, or somehow can't figure out exactly what my monthly bill will be (if that is true why is it so variable!??) because she said my bill would be about $35 a month. But by my calculations of the bill I just got for the first one that's incorrect it's going to be $39.06. And why can they only say around, why can't I get an accurate quote of my bill? And I get if I add something to my order one month it goes up, but if I don't and I get my standard order - can't they give me the exact amount it will cost me?

I then log out and go to the website to see if I were to create a new account - would this information all be clear to me? This is what I get - still different amounts than what I was charged - although they do point out tax, deposit, and fuel surcharge.



So then I think where the hell is this first bill that I got in an email explaining all this? I have to search for it because they only send that once. The email to let me know I have a delivery is just that - no billing info is contained in it. So I find it... and shock #2 - apparently it's also a 24 month service contract. That's not on their site ANYWHERE when you sign up... well anywhere one is actually looking for the information!



I found the information at the bottom of the screen, then had to click a pop-up to figure out how long the service agreement is (seriously WHY wouldn't you put this information right where I'm reviewing my order in the same font size!?????) Maybe because you know I may rethink that order if I knew I was locked in for 2 years? I hate those service commitments! However the website says it's only a 12 month commitment!!!! Not 24 like the email says. So which is it!? I want the 12 of course.



I mean I like the convenience of the water delivery and all, but don't make me a detective to figure out what my bill is going to be each month and how long my service contract is!!!

getting political for a minute..

So normally I don't talk politics on my blog - as I would rather focus on Fashion, Football, and Somerville... but I just can't help myself today.

I'm a pretty moderate person - there's things I like about both parties. My problem I hate hypocrites.

I don't want to be highly taxed - I personally think taxes should factor how much you make and WHERE in the country you live. Because making 100K in the middle of Oklahoma is REALLY different from making that same salary in NYC, Boston, or San Francisco - the cost of life is so much more expensive in those cites. I think society has an obligation to help people, but don't think people should abuse that help and if they do I think there should be repercussions. I think parents shouldn't look to schools to raise their kids for them. I think people should start stepping up and taking ownership and responsibility for their actions.

I like that republicans don't want lots of big government interfering in people lives. Well rather in theory it's a good idea not to interfere. But in reality they want to tell me who I can marry, and what I can do with my own body. To me that IS big government interfering with my life and telling me how to live it! To me government has no right to interfere with those two things. And it's not because I want to go get an abortion if I got pregnant I wouldn't, but I don't know everyone's situations. Who am I (or anyone) to decide and judge them on that? Who am I to decide who someone can love and marry? Aren't there more important things to worry about?

What also makes no sense to me is this whole pro life, but pro death penalty. How can a person be pro life, but then pro death at the same time? To me that just doesn't add up. Because if you truly think that everyone deserves life - doesn't that really include EVERYONE?

And this whole gun thing.. surely folks that are responsible gun owners and hunters should be able to have a gun and hunt. Do I like hunting? Not at all, but if someone hunts for their food and eats it - who the hell am I to judge? I don't like it if people are just doing it for sport and not using the animal for food. And I find it pretty hypocritical if someone is super pro life but then shoots and animal for the hell of it and sticks it's head on their wall- what about the animal's right to life? People have to see that having a gun in Alaska is VERY different from walking around with one in the middle of a city! And it's also clear to me not everyone is a responsible adult, or has good intentions - so you need some rules around guns for the good of society. Otherwise it's just chaos.

Folks always quote the constitution and the right to bear arms, but that was written over 200 years ago - the world was different then. Then the world was much more rural, people probably hunted more for their food. People had to protect their property from large animals and probably other people (especially during a war!) But in today's world can you imagine if every single person living in a large apartment complex in the middle of a city had a gun? It that really necessary or a good idea? It all depends where you live - the farmer in Montana living on hundreds of acres of land is quite different from me living in a Condo in Somerville where my neighbors are on top of me. I don't need a gun - he probably does.

But what I mostly don't like about this election - the twisting of words. I hate backstabbing and mud slinging. Stick to what YOU are going to do - don't tell me how much the other person sucks. That is just ridiculous and not helpful. If anything it makes me less likely to vote for you. These republican strategists have somehow gotten it into many people's heads Obama isn't like them. He grew up with a single mom - how is that really elite? How is he really so different? They say he doesn't have small town values, but then when asked in a poll at the RNC what small town values were - no one could answer it!! NOT ONE PERSON!

I mean if you are going to say someone doesn't have small town values - you should be able to define what that means and why they don't have it. One woman said 'it's sitting around the kitchen table talking'. Does she REALLY FREAKING believe that Obama has never sat around his kitchen table talking with his family??? REALLY?????? Are you fucking kidding me? To me small town values means that I should treat others how I would like to be treated - which means I am not going to judge people or want to put discrimination into our constitution or society. But clearly their word twisting propaganda has worked - yesterday I was out and heard someone talking politics and how Obama is: an elitist, a muslim, was going to raise everyone's taxes and more. He's not a muslim (and really it shouldn't matter if he is - he's an AMERICAN - that's what matters!!!!!) but those words have been put out there enough there are people that believe it! I can't even believe there are, but there are - I heard it with my own ears!!!!

And really that is just sad. I want to know all the information I can possibly know. I want to make a decision I feel comfortable with and be able to explain why I made that decision. I watch NBC, CNN, Fox, and more to make sure I see all sides. Each network has a different slant and from that I hope I can take away the truth. How can people not be interested in trying to find out all the information? It's out there - you just have to look for it. Why be ignorant?

UM what part of

No don't you understand?

I cannot stand credit card companies (not that it stops me at all from living off credit cards). It's really a love/hate thing. I like using my cards for everything - I can track all my expenses, earn rewards, and I pay my bills at the end of the month to avoid finance charges. win/win.

I have a bunch of store charges because you can get some great benefits using those cards - extra savings on certain sales, coupons in the mail, points that can be used to buy things etc. Interest rates are crazy on these cards though (usually like 23%!) so I always pay them at the end of the month. Apparently I shopped enough when I was going to Vegas with Express (getting some cute, cheap clubby shirts) to get their A List card. I only bought $250 of stuff - I don't know how that makes you "A- List" but whatever. They have those stupid call to confirm things on the card. Fine. I call, put in the stuff they asked for and then get put on hold. WTF? Why can't it just confirm the damn card?

Now I am on fucking hold, and I'm not sure why? I pushed the numbers in they asked for and there's no - hold on while we confirm. There's no information as to WHY I'm on hold, but I hear hold music so I know I'm on hold and they haven't said my card has been confirmed yet... so I wait..... Perhaps letting the person know why they are holding would be helpful. and FYI customers hate this bullshit. It turns us off from shopping at your store when you do shit like this. Your call is important. YA so important we put you on hold for 10 minutes and made you listen to crappy music while we forced you to wait to confirm receipt of a card you never even asked for!!! YA thanks a lot. No really. Thank YOU.

Finally I get a representative who asks me the same fucking questions I already typed into the phone when I first called. Shouldn't they have the data I just entered in front of them???????? Why do they always do this? Why don't they have that data? What kind of stupid ass system is this? Then she asked more questions. Like confirming the spelling of my name. UM pretty sure that if I stole this card I could look at it for the spelling of the name on it. How is this a security precaution?

Then as if I wasn't already annoyed for wasting my time - the woman at the cc company proceeds to tell me I qualify for some stupid free trial of some stupid service that will be like $13 a month after the first 30 days. Oh yea the service is some thing for my cell phone that will tell me the best price for clothes at stores (WTF???). If I want to find out the best price I will look on my iphone myself, or online before I go, or I just don't care. and BTW how much would this really save me to justify over $150 a year for this???? Are you kidding me??? No absolutely not interested. Well it's a great deal. NO already said that I was not interested. It's free for 30 days while you evaluate. YEA said no already. Don't care, don't care, don't fucking care! What part of NO don't you understand? Stop wasting my time trying to upsell me some stupid service I don't want or need! I hate this shit. I swear Credit Card companies send out new cards just to force us to have to call them and try to upsell us needless expensive services and waste my time.

Disgusting

This mother should have been the one to die in that fire, not her 2 innocent daughters. So horrible. Such a promising lifes cut short. Where were these children's grandparents? How could they let their drug addict, criminal, scum bag children continue to have custody of their children after DSS placed the kids in the grandparents custody? Where was DSS all this time? But more to blame is the parents, grandparents, and neighbors that KNEW what was going on! There's people in this world that can't have kids, and these assholes have 4 and don't even give a shit about them - what a tragedy.

You are Kidding me Right?

So first of all what is up with the NKOTB reunion? They sucked the first time, why would one assume this time will be better? I'm not saying some of the guys weren't hot (they were), but their music was not. As you can probably tell from the bands/music I've blogged about I am NOT a fan of the boy band. AT ALL. How can one even compare any boy band album to -let's say- masterpieces like Loveless (My Bloody Valentine), or Grace (Jeff Buckley)?

And on top of that - why do people want to see boy bands all grown up, and aging? I don't understand. A bunch of these guys have decent acting careers. Why sabotage that? Boston.com dedicated an entire slide show to the reunion last week - with homepage coverage. Guess there wasn't enough real news to report...

And while I am on 'things that are bullshit'... here's another one.

Apparently regular folks are sick of being just that. Regular. boo freaking hoo. So they are now using 'Paparazzi For Hire' a new service that people can hire to stalk them - and make them feel important and chase them down the street.

'Faux Paparazzi' is all the rage according to the Boston Herald. Are they fucking kidding me? Who has such an ego, yet low self esteem, and a large wallet to hire such services?

For a mere $499, one can be hunted down by a pack of four Your Paparazzi for Hire photographers who will be riveted on you for a full 30 minutes. Up the ante to $2,479 - the premium "Star" package - and the wannabe celeb, accompanied by a body guard, will be able to step out of a limo to be hounded for two hours by six paparazzi whose questions will be fielded by the "star’s" personal publicist.

And the random idiots on the street are just eating it up... photographing these people on the street because they *think* they are famous! Snapping pics before they even found out who the people were! Which is really kind of hilarious.

I don't know what is more idiotic. People paying to be stalked, or the people that run after them taking photos before they realize the people they are taking pics of are just regular people. Like them.

for a mere $500 - do you know what I'd do? Buy a pair of Manolo's (hey I'm single if I had kids I'd probably spend it on them)! And really I don't even want to go there - who has $2,500 they can't find a better use for? Not waste it so I can feel important for 30 minutes!!

If I want that I can just call my mom for FREE and tell her I had a bad day. :)

What’s wrong with America’s Youth?

Yea so this is probably going to be one of those “when I was your age I walked to school 5 miles in the snow, uphill, both ways.”

This is seriously the kinds of stories I got from my grandparents and I used to think it is just not possible to walk uphill both ways. Yet, just this Christmas my boyfriend’s grandmother told us a similar story. What is it with grandparents and telling us this kind of story? It’s like they want us to know how they suffered in life (and I'm sure they had their share of suffering). I’ve suffered too, but not from walking to school in the snow, which I did, but it wasn’t uphill *both* ways. And I can think of far worse things that happened to me, walking in snow wasn't one of them.

But anyway, when I was in school we had to work hard and do well to get good grades. At least for me (and plenty of my friends) there were repercussions if I didn’t do well, so there was incentive to do well in school. Teachers did feel bad for us and give us an A when we deserved a D, and our parents didn’t call the teachers and bitch at them until they did things like that. If I got a D my parents knew that is what I earned and deserved – it wasn’t because the teacher was out to get me. Or if they really didn't like us maybe we were graded slightly harsher, but not by 5 grades!

Sure there were plenty of times I felt a little screwed on a grade – like the time I had earned an A (the teachers would give out the grade to us after the final exam before the report cards were issued) in every class in college to have the perfect 4.0 semester, but when I got the report card one teacher had made a mistake and listed it as an A-! I tried to find the teacher to find out what had happened and get it corrected, but she had left the school. My perfect 4.0 ruined, but I got over it. Kind of.

I felt that my teachers made me work hard – or at least tried to, I remember them getting annoyed with me for not trying harder because they knew I could. Yea probably, but I was a little lazy. But not so lazy I felt that I could just show up and not do anything and hope my parents yelled at the teacher to pass me! I wanted to learn. I wanted to be successful in life.

A friend of mine is a high school teacher and I am often shocked at the stories she tells me. I had dinner with her the other night which is where this whole rant comes from. Kids don’t want to work (I’m sure there are plenty that do but I’m generalizing). Then when they get the grades they definitely deserved their parents call and complain the teacher is being too hard on them. That these kinds of things shouldn’t be expected of high school students - like reading books and writing papers… the horror! Sure it’s probably tough and challenging, but it SHOULD be! They are trying to prepare these students for college. And the way it’s going with kids getting babied – like there are no winners or losers in games, or even if you really deserved a D we’re giving you a B because your parents yelled at me. How will these kids be prepared for the real world?? They don’t even understand that life isn’t fair, because they live in a little protective bubble. What will they do when they are at college and their professor assigns 250 pages of reading for homework, and another teachers assigns 50 pages, and yet another has a test – and they are all tomorrow. Will their parents call the universities to say they are being too hard on poor little Johnny – how can he be expected to do so much? Boo Hoo suck it up. We all did and made it through. Plus in the real world – do you think my bosses actually say things like well I don’t want to challenge you, or make this too hard for you? No! Plus I don’t want that – I LIKE a challenge.

And my other issue is what is with this attitude of today’s youth that the world owes them something. Owe them what? A kick in the ass is about all I think it owes them. What is this sense of entitlement that kids have?

When I was in my senior year of college they prepared us to interview and write our resumes – which were graded and had to be in decent shape to graduate. That really prepared me for the real world. They taught us what to expect in our first jobs: low pay, doing grunt work to prove ourselves and move up. They taught us to be grateful someone actually hired us and that we had better work hard and do a good job to move up. I had to do some crappy grunt work and it sucked, but I did a good job and got promoted and worked my way up. I was afraid no one would hire me when I graduated, after all, who was I? What did the world owe me? But I got a job and they really liked me. I felt grateful. But now kids graduate and they have no clue – they expect $75,000 salaries and no grunt work and then are angry that this isn’t what happens for them. Why? Didn’t their colleges prepare them for what came next? Don’t they realize they have to start at the bottom to work to the top? I mean maybe you start at a salary like that and get to do better than grunt work if you go to MIT or Harvard, but if you are like the rest of us, you start at the bottom and work your way up.

A friend of mine has a cousin that was so angry her boss was “being unfair” and made her do “grunt work” she actually had her DAD call this boss to bitch her out!!!! Who does this? Shame on the father, and shame on the daughter – she was 23 years old at the time. Cut the cord already! She should be able to work this out on her own. AND she should realize everyone has to start somewhere.

I certainly don’t know everything and I’m sure 20 years from now I will be much wiser than I am now, but I know so much more than I did in my 20s. I don’t ever recall thinking I had all the answers in my 20s. I learned a lot from the people that were older and wiser than me. I took advantage of that to learn everything I could from them, and sure they probably learned a little from me.

My teacher friend showed her students an article how Americans were losing their edge in the world, how more was getting outsourced - trying to motivate them to work harder. They instead said things like I won't worry about that - in 5 years someone will make a law to prohibit that. Um I'm pretty sure they won't, after all if someone is more qualified and cheaper to pay why wouldn't companies go with them?

With so much getting outsourced, and American kids getting lazier and lazier, and their parents and them making excuses for why – how can our country remain competitive in the world? How can we keep up? Other nations have kids that are hungrier than ours, and hey good for them – they want to work hard and earn it – great! But where will our country be in 20-30 years when we have a nation of people that make excuses for their laziness and shortcomings and blame everyone else, rather than look at themselves? We will no longer be the country of innovation. It’s sad really. How bitter these kids will be when they don’t have any knowledge because they blew off their education and don’t have a job because really the world *didn’t* owe them anything.