My apologies for not blogging in the last few days. Some things came up, that kept me AFK.
To make up for that, I promise that this will be one super-long blog entry!
On with it!
Quick-hitters:
- It’s been triple digits here in the last two days, after being in the high 90s over the weekend. My tower fan has been getting horribly overworked the last few days. At least I get a reprieve tomorrow; it’ll only be 99. Yay!
(It seems like perfect barbecuing weather, though.)
- I just realized that women’s clothing is numbered just like bubble mailers (0, 00, 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.). Why the arbitrary numbering system?
- YAY! I got part one of my new computer: the Gigabyte GA-MA69G-S3H motherboard. Onboard HDMI + dual PCI-E + onboard Firewire! Oh my!
I’m actually quite excited with this build, because this is the first time I’m actually going to use a “modern” motherboard. Usually, when I build a computer for myself, I like to use older parts (one generation prior, for example). I don’t need the newest, fastest, and greatest; all I need is a solid upgrade from my existing system (P4 2.4Ghz). This time, I couldn’t resist the deal (thanks to the PayPal $20 off $100 coupon), so I decided to go newer.
My CPU is waiting for me at home, and hopefully the RAM will be there by the end of the week. I can’t wait!
- We took a second trip to Costco today, looking for some MexiCoke. Unfortunately, no such luck. We did pick up some paper towels, juice, and Tony Dungy’s autobiography: Quiet Strength: The Principles, Practices, & Priorites of a Winning Life.
- So yesterday morning, I got a series of annoying phone calls on my cell phone. The phone number was some 916 phone number, and as far as I knew, I knew no one with a phone number of that area code (my “family” living up there retained their 626 phone number on their cell phone, or so I thought) . On the first call, I picked it up and heard some random babbling, so I hung up. When the phone rang the second time, the exact same thing happened. Frustrated, I picked up the phone on the third call, and heard some more babbling. I screamed “Who the hell is this?” and heard silence, so I quickly hung up. When the phone rang the fourth time, I just hit “Ignore” on my phone and let the call go to voice mail.
I checked the voice mail a few minutes later, and was astonished to hear my cousin’s voice. Turns out that she changed her phone number, and the babbling was the voice of her three-year old brat (the same one that somehow broke into my office and damaged a whole bunch of my blank DVDs a few months ago). Oops!
(Well, now I know that, if he starts cursing, it will be partially my fault :P)
More on this next time, as I really want to get to the next story.
- I had to get in on this Vonage deal at Circuit City. $24.99 (or $14.99) a month, a $300 Circuit City GC instantly, and a possible $175 mail in rebate? Hot deal, right? I thought so, but had second thoughts after the ordeal I went through today.
We dropped by Circuit City after Costco and immediately went to the Vonage display booth, where, to my dismay, I didn’t see any PAP2 adapters (devices used to connect to your Cable/DSL modem or a port on your router, providing you with two phone jacks for voice-over-IP (VoIP) service). After about ten minutes of standing around, I flagged down a Circuit City salesman for assistance. Unfortunately, he was helping another customer, so I got passed off to a guy who was a college freshman at most.
I immediately asked him about wanting to sign up for Vonage, and he had a blank look on his face. Immediately I knew this transaction was not going to go smoothly. He flagged down a superior, and I could hear them talking about the item not being in stock. The salesman came back to me, pulled a different item off the shelf–a more expensive VoIP device/wireless router–and said that this one would work for me. I asked him specifically about the PAP2, and he said he would check to see if other stores had it in stock. He also suggested doing a special-order on the adapter.
While he went back to his terminal to check the stock, I browsed around the store. I went to look at the shelves containing routers and networking adapters, and tucked besides a few Netgear routers, I saw a small blue box with the Vonage logo on it. I pulled it off the shelf, and lo and behold, I found a PAP2!
I turned around and saw the salesman back at the Vonage display, looking for me. I walked towards him, and before he could say anything, I told him I found a PAP2 in a different area of the store. He then told me that his system showed one in stock, and I must have found it =). The salesman went to his terminal to ring up the PAP2, then realized that we had to have the Vonage service activated before he could ring up my purchase.
(Yeah, like my story was going to end THAT quickly.)
We walked all the way to the front of the store–his terminal was all the way in the back–where another salesman handed the guy a “Vendor Services Help Sheet”: a printout on a quarter-sheet of paper, in font size 1 (maybe), with instructions on how to process this Vonage promotion. On the way, the salesman was nice enough to apologize to us for not knowing, exactly, what to do, and we accepted. We walked over towards the customer service desk, and the salesman called up Vonage directly to start the sign-up process. After waiting on hold for a few minutes, he finally got in touch with a Vonage rep, mentioned a few things, and then handed me the phone to give Vonage my information (name, address, email contact, phone contact, etc.). After about fifteen minutes of this, the rep gave me my temporary Vonage account password: 12345678. I couldn’t help but laugh at that, and began thinking about the scene in Spaceballs where President Skroob points out that his luggage has the same passcode (12345) as Druidia’s airlock.
The Vonage rep then started explaining Vonage’s E911 service, clearly reading off a piece of paper. That, in itself, took about five minutes. At the end of that speech, she asked me to verbally agree to those terms and conditions with a “Yes” answer. I guess I didn’t hear her, so I said “OK.” She then said that she would give me my order confirmation number, but she had to quickly go over “a few things”–Vonage’s terms and conditions–and I had to verbally agree to them. But, before she read those, she scolded me, explaining, “Sir, for this series of questions, I need you to give me a clear and straight “YES” answer, and not “OK” or “yeah.” Is that understood?”
Wow.
She then fired off a series of questions (”Do you accept our terms and services?” “Do you accept paying the activation fee?” “Is your credit card valid?” “Do you have brown hair?”), and I said “YES” to each question, in a clearly annoyed voice.
(At this point, I had spent nearly 45 minutes on this freaking deal.)
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the CC salesman and my sister mocking me, laughing and pointing at me every chance they got (I’m glad they enjoyed themselves :P). Finally, after about eight YESes, the rep gave me my order confirmation number. I copied it down, confirmed it with the rep, and handed the phone back to the salesman.
On the way back to his terminal, I mentioned her lecture to me, and the awesome temporary password, and we all had a good laugh about the call. At the terminal, he asked me for my ID, and I just handed him my wallet (my wallet has an ID window, and due to the heat and the fact that I have eleventy billion cards in that slot, I could not get my ID out of there). He took down my address, and proceeded to ring up the item. Amazingly (NOT!), we ran into yet another snag, and the salesman was told to go back to the customer service desk. He started walking back to the front of the store, and I half-jokingly asked for my wallet back, which he had left on top of his terminal.
On the way back to the customer service desk, the salesman pointed out that this was the first time he had processed a Vonage order (no, really?). He also mentioned that his store had very few Vonage orders prior to this week, and noticed a bunch of new signups starting this past Sunday. I mentioned that the promo probably had something to do with it. He then realized how awesome the deal was–I’m pretty sure he didn’t know about the $175 rebate–and then we somehow got to a discussion about early termination fees. I pointed out how bad canceling the Vonage contract early would be, noting that I would lose out on the ETF to Vonage AND be charged by Circuit City for the gift certificate.
(Hey, we had to talk about something; that was a long trip back to the customer service desk!)
We got back to the customer service desk, and the salesman spotted one of only two guys on duty that knew the procedure on how to ring up the $300 gift card. He processed the “purchase” of the GC, handed it to me, demanded it back on the spot–to make sure it had $300 on it, citing that a customer had once bought a GC and walked out of the store without it–verified the funds on the card, wrote “$300″ on it, and handed it back to me. He then went ahead and bagged the PAP2, and handed it to me.
Of course, I had not yet actually purchased the device, so I made mention of that. My original salesman ran it up, had me sign my receipt, and (not surprisingly) the signature-capturing device that CC uses didn’t accept my signature. I tried again, uttering “what else?,” and it worked the second time. He handed me my PAP2, my receipt, and the $175 rebate form that had printed out, and wished me a good day. I thanked him profusely for the help, and walked out of the store, over an hour after I had initially walked in.
I am hoping that the entire ordeal was worth it. Thank goodness I had a nice salesman who was willing and able to crack jokes both with me and at me during the entire transaction.
Apologies for the length of today’s blog, and if it sounds rushed (it was).
Tags: costco, phone call, vonage by Peter
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