Tuesday, July 1st, 2008

Time	Event
3:38p	SunTrust is a crock of shit Okay, so, I thought I was doing okay with my SunTrust bank, despite the fact that they have no branches out here in the west. Whenever I move, lost of things get all screwed up when I switch bank accounts, so for ease of use (ie. allowing automatic withdrawals to continue as usual without missing any payments), I figured I would just keep that account open; in addition, I opened an ING Direct account which truly DOES rock. No fees, free ATM usage, 4%-5% interest on accounts -- with no minimum balance; electronically send money to anybody without fees, etc. Only drawback is: no brick-and-mortar branches (it's all online) But anyway, like other crappy banks I have dealt with (*ahem!* Wachovia), this one must care not for keeping business or having my money in their possession. Due to a late processing of a check I had written a while back, I didn't realize my account was running low and I took an ATM withdrawal of $80 when I only had $25 in the bank (the even more annoying part? It LET me take out more money than I have!!) So, for going about $50 in the hole, they charged me a $35 NSF charge. And -- get this -- the next day or so, my direct deposit paycheck got processed to go into the account. So we're talking, what, 2 days or so of a $55 debt, and that incurs $35? (oh yeah, ps -- ING Direct has automatic overdraft line of credit for like $150-$200 at 8%-10% interest) F that shit. I wrote them a polite email explaining the situation as follows: Is there any way to please waive the NSF fee that was recently incurred? A check was processed later than I expected and I thought my direct deposit (which is still currently pending) would have covered the fee which caused the NSF withdrawal. Their response? They don't even provide a yes/no answer to a simple yes/no question. Instead, I get this cut/pasted FAQ crap: This message is regarding your account ending in 2970. To help prevent non-sufficient funds fees in the future, you may wish to consider enrolling your account for overdraft protection. You may use any one of the following types of accounts as a source of overdraft protection for your checking account: SunTrust deposit accounts (checking, savings or money market accounts) SunTrust Access 3 lines of credit SunTrust home equity lines of credit SunTrust Visa credit cards (with $2000 in deposits or a SunTrust Mortgage or equity line) Business credit cards (with applicable products) If you do sign up for overdraft protection, funds will be transferred to your overdrawn checking account in $100 increments and a $10 transfer fee will be assessed for this service. If you would like to enroll your account in overdraft protection, you are welcome to reply to this email or call us at 800-786-8787 for further assistance. If you have any additional questions or comments, please feel free to contact us via email or by telephone at 800-SUNTRUST. We are available from 6:00 am – Midnight EST, 7 days a week and look forward to satisfying your future financial services needs. Thank you for banking with SunTrust. We appreciate your business. Sincerely, Nathan N. SunTrust will never send unsolicited emails asking for your personal or account information, such as passwords, Social Security numbers, PINs, Credit or Check Card numbers, or other confidential information. To learn more about online fraud and how you can help protect your accounts, visit www.suntrust.com/alert. Thanks, asshole, so... basically if I don't have shitloads of money lying around, OR A HOME FOR AN EQUITY LINE, I'm fucked? Hmm, let's see... if I could afford all that, would I be RUNNING OUT OF MONEY IN MY ACCOUNT, asshole? "We appreciate your business." My ass. Kiss it goodbye. Here was my response: So then... I take it that's a "no" to the request to reimburse the NSF fee (hmm, a charge of $35 for a debt of approx. $50?) Okay, I will be closing my bank account with you, then. No, I do not have enough money to bother opening another one for overdraft protection; especially when I already have an ING Direct checking account which: a) Pays me interest on any balance I have and b) Includes automatic overdraft protection / line of credit with no fee (at 8%-10% APR) Clearly, if you cannot waive a $35 fee for a one-day overlap of funds that are now plentiful in my account, then you do not want my business. I will post my online review(s) of your (lack of) customer service, and would like to close my account. Since you clearly like to copy and paste FAQs instead of responding to the question, please find what I need to know about account termination and copy/paste/forward it to me. Thanks. EDIT: Well, it looks like I'm not alone: RateItAll.com Epinions.com SunTrustBankingSucks.com Complaints.com Screwed Central ComplaintsBoard and more... wow. too many to list Current Mood: pissed off (Comment on this)
5:43p	Not EVERYBODY sucks at customer service, thank god After dealing with the stupid SunTrust fiasco, I had to look into what I need to do to transfer all my auto-debits / direct deposits / etc. over to ING Direct. In the process, I had to deal with Sallie Mae (for student loan debt) That was not a fun experience either: 1) If you have auto-debit payments set up from your band account, it gives you a 0.25% discount on your interest rate (hey, with $21,000 STILL REMAINING in student loan debt, I'll take anything I can get); when you go to the Auto-Debit section, it shows you information about which accounts you have auto debit payments set up for, and it gives you two options: sign up for auto debit, or terminate auto debit (as soon as you do this, your interest rate goes up.) THERE IS NO OPTION FOR EDITING/CHANGING an existing auto debit payment (for example... to use a different bank account?) Yes, I'm sure no young grads end up MOVING OR CHANGING BANKS at all. Freakin retarded. 2) So I look for the information to call them about it which is, of course, buried behind FAQs and "Click here to see if your question is answered!" BS before they give you a phone number. No, the question wasn't answered in the FAQ, and the 888 phone number says they are available "M-Th 8 am - 8 pm (all continental time zones)" Hmm. I call at 5:10 pm PST, and it takes me (of course) to automated, computerized menu. Par for the course so far. So I make the selections I need for "existing account", and then as it asks for "Additional information for security measures"... it suddenly "cannot verify birthdate. We need more information to verify your account." Then it cannot verify my telephone number. Then it says "If you'd like to talk to a customer support representative, they are available 8 am - 8pm. *click*" and hangs up on me. WTF??? 3) So, I go online to EMAIL them and, after jumping through the "Read our FAQ page first!" hoops, it allows me to send an email wherein I explain the situation. After clicking submit, it forces me to read the list of FAQs again before confirming I'm sure I want to send the email. Now, guiding people to FAQ before phone call or email is fine and understandable (hell, that's how I would do it); but to make them REREAD the list of common queries again AFTER they've said they want to send an email? Gay. Anyways. That was not the good news. But the good news comes from tech (not financial) companies: A) GoDaddy.com called me about a week ago to confirm that I had just auto-renewed 2 domain names and wanted to be sure that I really wanted these renewed. I forgot to call them the next day or two, and just now remembered today when I saw the charge on my credit card statement. So I call them, and before too long I got a friendly-sounding, laid-back guy who brought up my account and when I asked if I could still cancel and get a refund, he put me on hold for a few seconds, then came back and said "Sure, no problem. Anything else?" I thought for sure they were going to pressure me into their other services (like they do on the website), but not at all. It was so no-nonsense. He processed a refund immediately, double-checked to confirm that I wanted to keep another recent renewal, and then he noted that I have 7 more domain names coming up for renewal soon (long story short: I have a website I am working on but the spelling is not entirely phonetic, so to avoid word-of-mouth/verbal advertising confusion, I registered multiple logical spellings of the same pronunciation); he said "if you want to go ahead and renew those now I'll give you 30% off; $7/yr instead of $10/yr" so I said "sure, go for it" and boom, done. Then he politely asked if he could email a satisfaction survey to me, and that was it (but first he helped me remove the old credit cards I didn't want on my account anymore.) Very professional, very nice. I really didn't expect it from GoDaddy. They know what the fuck they're doing. Perhaps I will go ahead and get my SSL security certificate from them, after all. B) I got an email from Lynda.com (an online training/video tutorial website for learning tech stuff; I got registered for free Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional tutorials for registering my software) about the new Acrobat 9 Pro tutorial. WTF??, I thought, considering I just bought version 8 like a MONTH AGO and at that time I even went to the Adobe website to check and see if they had any newer versions on the cusp of release, but of course they did not advertise this anywhere easily visible apparently! I went to AcademicSuperstore.com (where I get all my expensive programs at educational license discount) and, lo and behold, there's my Acrobat 8 Pro for the same price I paid but now with an offer for free upgrade to version 9 through Adobe That kind of ticked me off, so I called the Adobe support number they listed, and again got through to a nice-sounding guy (amazing -- both of these competent phone service employees sounded American. Coincidence? Doubtful) and I explained the situation and wondered if I could get the free upgrade (despite the listing saying only valid on purchases after June 2); a few moments on hold, then he returned and said it was okay and he signed me up, got my credit card (for the $6 shipping fee), verified my account info, and boom done, no problem. Between this and the free training materials (Tutorial DVDs, reference books, etc.) that Ted the "Flex Evangelist" sent me, I am lovin Adobe right now. If I had money to buy stock in one company, it would be Adobe. (actually, I DID own stock in Macromedia back in the day, about 8 years ago... but I guess I was just too "forward thinking"; the stock stagnated, but that was before DSL and Cable made broadband so widespread, so Flash wasn't really catching on yet. And now, merging forces with Adobe, they really have the market cornered. And with these FLEX and AIR frameworks, they are really poised for even greater greatness.) It's reassuring that not EVERYBODY dons the deadly "knife strap-on" from the movie Se7en before giving me "customer support" Current Mood: relieved (Comment on this)
11:39p	"Exactly what the establishment wants you to believe... and you just eat it up." So, recently I've been on this kick where I am really amused/fascinated by old-school "educational"/social-propaganda films. I'm not sure when it started. In fact, maybe I've always found them amusing. I mean, they are so blatantly over-the-top ridiculous. Like "Leave It to Beaver" with Cheez Wiz on top. I remember, even when I was back in 5th grade or whatever and we had "Family Life"/"Health Ed" (ie. sex ed); they were still playing somewhat-antiquated movies from the 70s or whatever [cheap ass school systems. not much changes] -- and I remember a little gem called Am I Normal? about a boy hitting puberty and getting random boners, wet dreams, etc. etc. and freaking out over it and stuff. It was actually pretty hilarious. I guess it was effective, because I've never forgotten it. Much later -- about 5 years ago -- I acted in a small independent film that was the thesis project for an SF State University film major (grad/master's program) named Allie Sultan. Anyway, it was a lot of fun, but to make a long story short she is a lesbian and her films sort of have the LGBT theme in them (ie. confusion of identity/coming out; social norms and pressures, etc) I played a high school wrestler/jock a.k.a. popular-crowd jerk and total asshole to his girlfriend, who ends up sort of getting seduced by a quiet, artistic, loner-type girl who is her classmate. The whole film starts with students blithely watching one of these "sex ed" (ie. heterocentric sex ed) education films; as a souvenir, she signed an old, somewhat homophobic "All You Wanted to Know About Sex" sort of teen-guide propaganda book (I guess she found a lot of them lying around the SF high school where she worked as a teacher?) Anyway, I found that pretty interesting to read through. Not sure if it's the blatant propagandistic properties that amuse me about these things (because the USA tries to act like we're not Reds or Nazis but we do the exact same shit), or if it's just because I'm fascinated by sociology and it's interesting to see cultural trends and evolution. Well, last year when Sarah and I visited Santa Cruz on the way back from Monterey, we popped into the Santa Cruz Bookstore (great independent book shop! a must-stop for us when we're there) and on the bargain DVD rack, I found a DVD for $4 or $5 (new) which really caught my eye, entitled Atomic Age Videos, vol. 2: Hygiene, Dating, and Delinquency. I saw that it was a collection of "Atomic Age" (ie. 1940's-1960's) educational/public-service films all on a DVD, so of course I had to buy it. Watching these productions is just so... intriguing on so many levels, I can't describe it. It's so alien and bizarre to watch them, especially never having grown up in that world. But also some of the strange messages that seem to be everpresent, like the "dangers of going steady": the message is this -- you should whore it around, but not in a sexual way (god forbid you have pre-marital sex, but by all means... date and dance with and maybe even kiss as many people as humanly possible when you are a teenager) Or the one which tells girls they basically better put their makeup on and do a good job primping themselves, because if they aren't well-groomed-but-humble-and-demure sex kittens, no man will ever want them and their youth will be squandered. Just some seriously weird (and often funny) shit. Anyway, that got me even more curious about the rest of the collection, so I went ahead and ordered: Volume 1: Manners, Courtesy, and Etiquette Volume 3: A-Bombs, Fallout, and Nuclear War Volume 4: Veneral Disease and You Volume 5: "C" is for Communist (by the way, the USPS really botched the shipment and ended up sending it to the billing address -- Sarah's mom's house -- instead of my new address, so when I contacted Amazon about the missing shipment, they sent replacements. But then Sarah's mom brought the mysterious package, and lo and behold I have duplicates of Vols. 1, 3, 4, 5, so I'll be listing them soon on eBay for basically nothing but shipping cost... in case you're interested.) Well, now somehow I've managed to find all sorts of crap like this online on Google Videos and YouTube and I... can't... stop... watching. Case Study: LSD (from 1969 -- this one's the best. It is scary and stupid and hilarious at the same time) LSD: Trip or Trap? LSD Educational Video and then there's the classic "Reefer Madness" (entire movie on Google video! I found this randomly... was looking for a link about the movie Freaks, which is freaking fantastic, because I wanted to point out how the Blondie video for Good Boys basically took from Freaks -- in a good way -- the same way Tonight, Tonight used Melies' A Trip to the Moon (also a great classic, and probably much better known than Freaks -- though "Tonight, Tonight" much more known than "Good Boys", as well. If you're into finding more of these old B/W groundbreaking and fantastic films, also check out "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari", "Metropolis", and "Night of the Hunter" -- major inspirations to multitudes of filmmakers, and you can probably even detect the influences if you watch...) Current Mood: amused Current Music: Blondie -- Good Boys (1 Comment | Comment on this)

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