AmEx Ripoff???

Way back in the mid 1980s when my wife and I were healthy, psuedowealthy, and unwise, she got one of those old green American Express cards. Sure, it cost every year just to have the status card, but we were into status. We bought a few things, had to PAY IN FULL when each monthly statement arrived…because back then they didn’t have a minimum payment arrangement on small impulse purchases.

A few years later she upped the status and replaced the green card with their prestige gold card. Obviously the new gold card REPLACED the former card. So any statements we got still showed only CURRENT purchases and total amount due.

Then when we got too old to go impulse shopping anymore, she stopped the ridiculous annual fee and cancelled the card. No more monthly statements, no more monthly bills, no more letters from AmEx.

A few months ago there was an AmEx letter in the junk mail. Out of curiosity, I opened it and almost had another stroke!

It said it was a SETTLEMENT OFFER from Liwen Liang, VP of Collections. My wife has a DELINQUENT BALANCE, still owes them more than two grand but they are willing to settle for $1130.56. Send your check today…but first call this number…

I call their number to find out what this ripoff is all about. According to customer service, my wife had a platinum card. (She didn’t.) Just send your check…

The amount has been past due for 16 years. Just mail your payment.

Why is she receiving this notification for the first time? If her account was past due, why didn’t she get bill after bill sixteen years ago? Why not phone call after phone call sixteen years ago? Why not a collection agency sixteen years ago? Why wasn’t she sued and thrown in jail for delinquency sixteen years ago? And how can you send mail to our current address (which was not the address 16 years ago). Why wouldn’t this negative account/delinquency continue to show up in credit checks, credit reports, credit files…for the last 16 years? Matter of fact, the account number on your notice doesn’t appear in any of the three credit reporting agency files.

All he wants is the $1130.56

This letter makes no sense…and the conversation on the phone made even less sense. So I composed a letter to Liwen Liang, asking all these same questions. No reply.

I made hard copies and put a package of info together and wrote to Kenneth Chenault, CEO of AmEx, explaining my concerns.

After a few weeks I received a letter from Sergio Guzman, VP of Dispute Resolution in El Paso, Texas. He said he would like to update me on the status of his research. Apparently he forgot to include it.

A few more weeks and I get a letter from P. Hopkins of Fraud Services, also in El Paso. He needs to speak personally to my wife (probably to ensure she really exists). Call this number. I called. It was not HIS/HER number–it was one of the many overall AmEx numbers–and I needed to enter an account number (don’t have one) finally speak to someone who had no idea who this P. Hopkins is and needs more information to get me to the right department and puts me on hold forever and finally disconnects.

No more updates from anyone. Then yesterday, she gets another SETTLEMENT OFFER–this time from Brandon Sears, who is a Manager for American Express (just a plain manager???!!!) Call this different phone number before you make your payment of $1130.56. I call. I ask all my same questions and get the same non-answers. Just give him the checking account numbers on the bottom of your check.. No. Why?

By now I’m ready for my second stroke and my wife is overdosing on tranquilizers so I’ll mail the @#$%^&*-ing check and quit fretting about it.

Why won’t you give us the check by phone? I’ll mail it in the U.S. mail. When will you send it? Tonight. (My hyperactivity is increasing!) He will have to check with his manager first!

His boss comes on the phone. Why won’t I give them the payment info on the phone, they prefer to get the full payment by phone. On and on and on…

I took a couple swigs of booze and a couple Valerian and wrote a *&^%$#@ check and put it in the @#$%^&* mail…immediately, same day, as promised.

BOTTOM LINE: Why am I Publishing this essay? To preserve all the facts digitally, forever. To let all the current and former AmEx cardholders know what could potentially happen to them–way down the road. To summarize for the Action Line guys and the TV station investigative reporters. Am I wrong and they are right? I don’t even care anymore. I just don’t want to get another settlement offer (that they somehow misplaced) delivered to our graves years from now.

News Re-runs???

We have a TV station here in the Silicone Valley of California. They used to be Channel-11, then they were Channel-3, then back to -11 so they could offer ‘The Top Stories in the First Eleven Minutes’…now they are NBC Bay Area.

They have all (or most) of the normal NBC programming. They also have news programs at the usual times. What sets them apart from the other stations in the San Francisco Bay Area is: their news shows contain RERUNS.

Yep. The same story I saw the other day is on again–and again. I know it sounds strange but you gotta watch it to believe it. RERUNS on a news show???

If anyone out there is reading this, pass the word on to your buddies at NBC headquarters and suggest they give the franchise back to Channel-4…where it belongs!

Take me out to the…

Prehistoric Autographed Base Ball

circa 1,250,689,311 BCE

During the Plasticene Age, a popular rite of passage for young men was the sport known as Base Ball.

The game was played with a smooth round rock, known as a Ball. The object of the game was to hunt and kill a primitive flesh-eating beast known as The Base.

The Base was a gargantuan carnivore towering sixty to seventy feet in height. Huge front legs could grasp and crush a young player; an oversized mouth was able to ingest a complete teenager in one gulp.

The sport was played deep in the primeval woods. All the young men of the tribe would surround The Base in a huge circle, each hurling a stone Ball at the predator’s head.

The hunter who killed the creature got to go back to the village and autograph the deadly Ball; the ones who didn’t became prehistoric lunch.

PreColumbian G3

Prehistoric Cellular Hittite ‘phon’

circa 1759-1173 BCE

The Hittite Empire changed the face of the entire world when they invented Iron.

 Having created smelted iron weapons of mass destruction, the empire decided to conquer the entire known world. To accomplish this mission, they developed a revolutionary form of battlefield communication.

The generals recruited the biggest tallest strongest soldiers in their ranks. Then, they determined the maximum distance one of these soldiers could throw a stone. Where the rock landed, another soldier stood ready to receive the pitch and throw it to the next receiver. They had invented a perimeter, a cell, a radius of communications.

When they were ready to attack an enemy, the field general would inscribe a short encrypted message onto a stone slate. The first soldier would heave it to the second who would pitch it to the third, and so on, until it finally reached it’s destination.

Upon receipt at the army headquarters, the commander would encrypt a reply, and the stone throwing would be repeated in reverse order. This was the invention of two way text messaging; cellular communication in it’s infancy.

Dear Mr. GOOGLE;

Since I cannot reach you by email (because you have no email link anywhere in your 234,543,876,732 webpages, and you have nothing similar to a site map, and you don’t respond to hard copy letters mailed via USPS) maybe you or someone who knows you will pass the word to the software guys or the IT guys who can (or will) fix a recurring problem in your portal…

When I go to: http://www.google.com/ and when I click on PREFERENCES; I put a black dot on: ‘Do not filter my search results’. I also mark ‘Do not provide query suggestions in the search box’. Then I click SAVE PREFERENCES. When I decide to search again, you continue to filter me and provide 452,657,998,312 suggestions in the search query box.

WHY???????????????????

and now, yet another ASAR…

An Ancient CD ROM
According to renowned forensic anthropologists, this is a Compactus Discus/Read Only Manuscript from the ancient Byzantine Empire, circa 573 AD.

     Back in those times, scribes and para-scribes who enacted laws and rendered judgements were forced to chisel their briefs in standard lined yellow clay tablets. Since acronyms and abbreviations had not yet been invented, an average brief could easily fill a dozen or more tablets.
     A journeyman pictographer reasoned that more words could be incised if the lines of test curved in an unending spiral around the tablet. Since scribes were paid by the word, more money could be demanded for circular writing. The reduced cost of materials would result in greater profit per tort.
     Since the round tablet was considerably smaller than the prevailing legal stones, it became known as a Compact Discus. Because the text could not be erased or overscribed, it became known as Read Only manuscript.

Another Authentic Simulated Antique Reproduction

Beverage Container

Assyrian, circa 1983 BCE

 

 

In the days before the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, Assyrian artisans and scholars would gather in the city central square and drink a thick dark beverage and read books.

The beverage was a proprietary mixture of gum arabic, crushed hemlock, and powdered eggplant. It was not particularly appetizing but it did quench the thirst on a hot desert evening.

This delicate and extremely fragile drinking cup was discovered in brilliantly-uncirculated mint condition by an amateur paleontological student working under a grant from the University of Epocan Department of Antiquities.

Unfortunately, the stupid student dropped the vessel on the way to the cataloging tent. It was subsequently reassembled and glued back together by indigenous natives. It looks almost as good as new…except for a few missing pieces.

 

 

What ever happened to Margarine???

(subtitle) I can’t believe it’s ALL butter!!!

Until recently, all the major chain supermarkets here in the Silicone Valley carried a wide variety of margarines. Today, the shelves have been restocked — replacing the dozen brands of margarine with even more brands of butter.

Those of us who grew up on margarine (and still love it) are wondering what happened? Why?

Is the sale of margarine illegal?

Does it contribute to global warming?

Have all the margarine salesmen got fired?

Have the margarine manufacturers gone belly-up?

Since my weblog is (supposedly) read by people all over the country, those of us addicted to margarine are wondering if it’s just a local thing? or is it national? or what???

Prehistoric Yellow Lined Tablet

According to forensic DNA evidence, plus follicles found in the vicinity of the archaeological scene, this alleged artifact is guesstimated to be late 4th millennium {+/- 3.9} BCE; to wit:

Approximately sometime around the year 4102.95 (BC) a Sumerian scribe invented a new form of communication called the ‘hash mark’. It was his hope that a number of these marks could be combined to form syllables, words, and eventually even sentences. He dreamed that someday everyone would be able to transcribe the spoken word using this unique form of preservation. He named this discovery: ‘writing’.

 

Unfortunately the idea never got very far in the southern Mesopotamia kingdom because the inventor didn’t have anything upon which to inscribe his writings. All he could do was make his marks in the desert sand with a dead olive branch.

 

Around the third millennium (also BC) an itinerant day laborer discovered an outcropping of vermiculite that could be mined, cut, polished, and formed into portable slabs called ‘pads’ or ‘tablets’. The pocket-size pieces of rock became so popular that people soon started covering them with hash marks and even writings.

Hey buddy, can you spare a dime?

I know I can’t talk about donations and contributions on this blog because asking for and taking contribs and donats is illegal.

That’s why I’m not asking. I’m telling.

Food Network wants you to send in your donations to help fight hunger. NASCAR wants you to contribute to help needing kids. The christian charity(s) want you to send a monthly payment to help who knows who all.

Fine. Good. We are a helpful people. It’s in our genes and DNA.

But before you shell out the tip at Starbucks or the monthly United Way contribution, take a good hard look at where your hard-earned $$$ will actually go. If you give a buck, does the 501(c)(3) organization pass that buck right on to the person(s) in need? Not hardly.

Remember, they are a recognized non-profit organization/foundation and being an organization or foundation in the USA means you have to pay the rent, utilities, salaries, accountants, form fees, and a host of other overhead expenses. Then, what’s left, you can pass on to the outside world. What’s left of your buck? Cents. Sometimes a lot of cents, other times just a couple pennies.

And the way this depression is growing, more and more needy are standing in line hoping to get their two cents worth.

How do I know all about this? Well, I’ve spent quite a few decades working (unpaid) for local and national non-profits and I’ve seen where the buck really goes. Because of this experience, I came up with a brainstorm the other afternoon.

I was out in the yard mowing the grass (to generate more precious oxygen) and squashing snails (to stop global warming) when it hit me. Why not start a NON-non-profit operation. Nothing more than a simple bank or PayPal account that could accept money from those who can afford it around the world. When there are enough bucks to withdraw, take a ride downtown and pass them around DIRECTLY to those who need them most. No middle-persons, no monthly and quarterly and annual forms to file, no employees to pay, no overhead…period. A guy in Maine could sacrifice his cup of latte’ to help a girl in California buy a loaf of bread. Of course, the guy in Maine couldn’t declare it on his 1040…but he can’t declare the tip at the coffee shop either!

Multiply one person ‘donating’ (giving, sharing, shelling out, contributing, whatever you want to call it) by a million persons all across the country. This would be more helpful than another federal economic stimulus package for those folks who really need it most.

Is this a great idea? Or what? Your comments will be posted (guaranteed), no matter what they say.