A Letter I Just Emailed To Duke Energy

Dear Maam or Sir,

So I thought about signing up for your ebill services. So I go to the form, first question, SSN. Sure, no problem, I enter all 9 digits. Oh, but your form wants me to enter dashes. Are you serious? Can the folks that maintain the website not create a form that can parse the number and enter the dashes itself? I mean seriously, a 9-digit number is a nine digit number no matter how you dash it. Is there a legit reason why you have it setup this way? If so, I'd like to know before I sign up for ebill.
Usability gets a thumbs down.
Also the Flash on the main page does not display correctly in Firefox on Ubuntu. Please look into this issue as well, I'll send more as I find them, but I don't plan on spending a long time on your website.
Oh, while I'm at it, how about some online payment options? C'mon, it's 2007, you can have online payments? Maybe accept some Paypal or Google Checkout? I'd love you forever.
Please reply via email.

Kisses,
Ben

Letter to Ebay

I want to appeal the suspension on my account (mrcustomerservice).
First off, the accusation is ridiculous. In the original suspension notice, I was cited for 3 things to reinstate my account: Item #160059356115 had an open dispute with the buyer, I resolved that quickly with a refund to the buyer. Second, I had to pay all my current ebay fees. I also did that immediately. Third, I was cited for negative feedback for item #160010448529, which was sold over 6 months ago. Now your policy on seller non-performance states it takes "high levels" of negative feedback to generate a non-performance status. I hardly think 2 transactions out of 141 feedback is a "high level". Also, item #160010448529 was sold over 6 months ago. Why now? So far, I have emailed the buyer multiple times, no response. I have filed with Squaretrade as I was told to, and I can't get a response from them in almost 3 weeks, no emails nothing. And they wont answer my emails. I can't even log in to their page to check the status. I emailed ebay about this issue and I've received no help whatsoever.
So, in closing to my call for appeal, I would like my account reinstated immediately. If I am forced to go through much more run-around and this and that with the emailing buyers from months ago for something that wasn't a problem till now....you know, I'm getting very frustrated with what used to be a pretty decent auction site. You guys are starting to fall off the wagon. You're trying to prevent fraud, I can understand that, but you started too late. There's thousands of scammers out there and you're aiming to alienate your core customers, like me. In my years on ebay, I've made money for you, hundreds, if not thousands of dollars. Right now, by having me suspended, you're losing money, not making it. And if this frustration on my part continues, I'm bound to just give up and never use ebay again. I'm sure you're thinking, "who cares, we've got plenty of customers?". Well, bad PR is never good. Remember the old story about how if a customer has a bad experience they tell ten people, and those ten people tell ten people and so on? Yeah, that's never good for business. Perhaps you've forgotten our relationship? I'm your customer! You're suppose to be taking care of me. Not hassling me and frustrating me. If I treated my customers like that in my industry, we'd go under in a heartbeat. Does the nature of ebay give it the right to treat it's customer, me, like this? I don't think so.
My email is benmarvinATgmailDOTcom and my phone number is 803.474.3100 and I expect a response and resolution within 24 hours.

Thank you,
Ben

And they responded [very quickly, only 3 hours]:

Thank you for writing eBay in regard to your Seller Non Performance
Suspension.

As a venue, eBay takes a neutral position when we receive a complaint.
However, please understand that multiple complaints on any one account
poses a liability to our community, especially when that account has
been reported for potentially fraudulent activity. At this time, we
would like to offer you the opportunity to respond to these complaints.
Please note, in order to treat both buyer and seller as fairly as
possible, we require documentation.

Upon review, I found that 160059356115 - stacyyates@cebridge.net -
stacygreiner has been resolved. Please be aware that your account
balance has been paid in full.

In regards to your remaining complaint 160010448529 -
trs5@mindspring.com - ejskj, once you have completed the dispute
process, if there is no response from the buyer, SquareTrade will send
you an email informing you there was no reply to your dispute case.
Please forward us this email with the full headers. This will be
considered a valid form of resolution. If you do not have this email,
please fax us screenshots of your dispute case. Please keep in mind that
you must provide your buyer with sufficient time {14 days} to respond to
your dispute. If the cases are closed before the required time frame,
the screenshots will not be accepted.

We appreciate your patience and understanding regarding this matter and
look forward to hearing from you soon.

And my terse response:

I was reported for potential fraud?? So which buyer was it? The one that I took care of immediately or the one that won't respond? Am I just insane that I'm viewing that situation as ridiculous?

I will be faxing in a screen shot from Squaretrade showing that the buyer has not responded to my case since it was opened on January 22nd, almost 3 weeks now. I expect a full account reinstatement by Tuesday.

Letter to Stayontheroad.com

Do you chaps insure folks here in the USA? I know we're some crazy drivers over here. For instance, we drive on the RIGHT side of the road! Crazy, I know. In case you weren't aware, we also measure speeds in MILES per hour. Perhaps the premiums would be higher, but I guarantee it'll pay off for you. We don't have as many speed cameras as the UK, since we have lower taxes and no VAT and lower gas prices. Not to mention, we're capitalist, instead of socialist like the rest of the world.

Please respond with the quickness. And don't use that excuse that it's Christmas, cause I know you haven't had Christmas in the UK since you guys and Germany lost World War II to the super fantastic, crazy-driving USA.

Kisses,
Ben

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

Open Letter To Google

I recently signed up for Google Apps and purchased benmarvin.com to use. I have used Google Page creator and that was an ok experience, but I don't mind doing my own HTML. I would like to use the benmarvin.com domain and just upload a main HTML file and perhaps a couple of pictures or something and use as a personal homepage. I do not need to have "users creating accounts" or people personalizing their startpage to my domain, or any of the Google Apps really. No offense, I just don't want that. Did I sign up for the wrong thing? Am I screwed now? Can I somehow redirect benmarvin.com to another site with flexibility? Can I take my purchased domain and host it elsewhere or is benmarvin.com tied to Google Apps until next year?
Please help me, I love all Google products and I've never been disappointed before. But the one time that I pay for a service, I end up being frustrated and running in circles from help file to forum and back to help file without an answer.

Thanks,
Ben

*Update*
All I got were a couple of general responses pointing to the help files that I already read and the forums that I already posted to that already had threads complaining about the same thing. Downgrade.
Until I can figure this out, you can find my personal webpage at http://benmarvin.googlepages.com

Time Warner, we need to talk

A letter I just sent to my cable company:

First off, your online "Express" bill payment method and setup is a bit lame. For the past 3 months, it has shown no charges, no paid amounts, no amount due, nothing. This is my primary method of checking and paying my bill. Honestly, I'd love to pay my bill and I'd love to know how much I owe without having to search for the paper bill (you know how those things get lost), or without having to sit on hold for 1.6 hours waiting for your call center to tell me. I would love to know why it doesn't work for me. Or does it work at all? Please, I urge you to fix this.

Second, within the online payment system, it shows my contact info as my previous address, yet I do get paper bills showing up to my current address. There's an implementation for changing my address on the paper bill, but not on your "Express" system. I would like to know why. Sure, I could send in a change of contact request with the paper bill, but wouldn't that seem silly since it's already coming to my current address, eh? Please, show me how to update that "contact info" box. Although, apparently, it's never used, since I wouldn't be getting those easy-to-lose paper bills. How about an email bill instead of and email that says my online bill is ready? Cause, as we already discussed, Time Warner's online "Express Pay" is not the cat's pajamas, nor the bee's knees.

Please respond my email only.

Kisses,
Ben

Inefficenciency via inconvenience

Have you every gone to get gas, and went to lift the handle before you jammed in your credit card? Noooo! There's big warning stickers telling you to insert card first. Yes, I realize the point, pay before pumping. But if you lift the handle, god forbid, it takes 3 minutes for the cashier to reset the motherfucker so you can pay. They might even make you walk inside while they figure it out. Is it not possible to make a gas pump that let's you pay after you've lifted the handle? Not that you can pump gas, but it really shouldn't matter. They accept cash at the pump, you can even buy a carwash, but they can figure out how to make a pump that let's you buy more efficiently.

It's just like web form date parsing. The form will let you enter the date anyway you wish, even input letters, but if you use slashes (9/11/01) and it was looking for dashes (9-11-01), or a full 4-digit year... You may as well have entered Swahili. What would it be? 2 maybe 3 extra lines of code? C'mon. Get with it!

What's so hard about taking a few extra minutes during development to add these things. I'm sure thousands of hours are wasted by forcing the user to sort out the idiosyncrocies of your poor planning.

When the Saab 9000 engineers added that little flap of rubber to the trunk shelf, they knew what they were doing. Sure it probably added about 4 dollars to the price of the car. And it might add 2 minutes to the assembly time. But when the driver has to retrieve his spare tire, that little bit of rubber saves 10-20 minutes of hassle because the door to the sparetire storage is held up. No need to wrestle with it, no need to prop it open with the tire iron while you unscrew the tire retaining nut. It's all inclusive.

When you make a product more efficient from the beginning, people take note at the intended convenience.

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless handheld

*Update 9/22 @ 5:47pm*

Just sent this letter to Char-Meck:

To the Char-Meck Utilities:

Just noticed something when making an online payment of my water bill. When you have to enter your account number, it specifies to include the dashes. This is 2006, and there's amazing things you can do with web scripting languages, such as parse the number any way you please to insert the dash were appropriate for your data entry people to correctly read. For instance, my account number is 123456-7890123. With proper scripting, I should be able to enter 123-45-6789-0-123 or 1234567890123, and the script would pick out the unecessary dashes or add where needed. Just a little hint that would save a lot of time.

PS, you can do the same thing with dates and other form entries too!

kisses,
Ben Marvin

Letter Sent To YorkCountyGov.com Webmaster From A Form Other Than Webmaster Contact Because They Don't Have A Generic Feedback Form

I'm not sure what GIS is, but I do have a suggestion for the site in general. First off, if you could forward this to the webmaster of the whole www.yorkcountygov.com, that would be great. Considering there is no general webmaster contact form. That's my first suggestion. Secondly, if the website is configured properly either www.yorkcountygov.com or yorkcountygov.com will take you to the same site. Not so here, yorkcountygov.com gives a 404, and can be frustrating to a new user. I knew in a heartbeat the issue, but that's besides the point, this is a public service, and your public is not as web-proficient as I am.

And lastly..I just noticed this one. Why is a link to GoogleEarth under the Public Safety Information? That doesn't make sense.

I haven't tried to view your site from a Blackberry, but I'm sure it's unnavigatable, and there is no WAP version.

Wait, got one more. When you're filling out a form, normally you hit enter from any field and the form will submit. Such is not the case with this site. Even the search box is handicapped with this ailment.

Please advise if you will implement these changes, I am a busy man, and cannot check back till next year when I pay my taxes.

Kisses,
Ben

And yes, I got my taxes paid. No, my car is not worth $4,444.00. Where do they come up with this shit? The Apple Auto Sales Price Guide, 2002 Edition?

A Letter To Sprint.com (sent today)

How about making this site a tad easier to use. I have a suggestion. For accounts that only have one phone on them (like mine), just eliminate the option for a user (me) to have to be the account administrator. And don't even try that rhetoric about how it can't be done. It's 2006, if you say it can't be done, you're just lazy. If you want me to pay my bill, I have to have admin access to my own account. Mind you, I'm the only person on my account, I should be default admin, but no....no worky. Then, when I try to sign up to be the admin, it won't accept my SIM ID #. Nevermind that I'm entering it from the phone and from the account info provided by this site. Then, it won't let me use the same username that I'm logging in with. There are some real usability issues you guys need to work out here. If they are not resolved in a timely manner, I will be requiring a discount on my acccount for my personal time invested towards attempting to figure out your interface.

Kisses,
Ben

A letter to the SC DMV

-----Original Message-----
From: "Benmarvin" <benmarvin@nextel.blackberry.net>
Date: Tue, 3 Jan 2006 02:38:50
To:help@scdmvonline.com
Subject: Greetings

Just dropping you a note to let you know that your site is impossible to browse using a Blackberry handheld. If you could correct this problem, and it is a problem, it would show that you care about this state and its drivers. And I'm sure the citizens of this state are your primary concern, not just how quickly you can get done with your work and get a paycheck. Let me know how you're coming along on that project and perhaps I'll consider voting for the candidate that endorses funding the DMV.

Kisses,
Ben Marvin
704.622.5050
Benmarvin@Nextel.blackberry.net

A Letter I Sent To 3M Public Relations Department

Dear 3M,

Your packaging tape dispenser with the retracting cutter head is worthless. It doesn't work right upside down and I don't feel justified paying more money to accomodate the clumsy and I don't like owning products made for parents that can't control their kids. I would hope you take my opinion into account when you design future products. If someone hurts themselves, it's their fault. I wouldn't blame you if I was being an idiot. And you save money by not having to worry about designing extra features that only appeal to a select few people. This brings up your profit, and I'm sure your shareholders will sleep better at night. And don't feel bad about creating this horrible product, I've made mistakes in my life too. Thank you for understanding.

Kisses,
Ben Marvin

A letter I sent to JCPenny's advertising department

To whom it may concern,

This is in response to your latest television commercial. More specifically, the one that portrays young school children dancing to a hip-hop song. This is the most idiotic, monkey-ass, 30-second waste of my life. Did you really think it was going to sell clothes? How do you rationalize feeding people with such crap? I want those 30 seconds back. It would have been better spent than watching your horse-shit commercial. I cannot even begin to explain how horrible that commercial is. Please, I urge you not to put out such stupid commercials, and I might consider shopping at your store. Customers put a lot of value in meaningful and intelligent advertising and on that point you have failed miserably.

Please respond, and not with a 'thank you for your comments' letter or with 'check out out new deals' letter either. If you send me ads, I will report it as unsolicited spam.

Kisses,
Ben Marvin