Two Wrongs And A Right

I'm in a mood to bitch. Deal with it.

There are a few things around here that just irritate me. I thought I should share them with you.

Let's start with the radio. The only time I listen to the radio is in my car. Since I don't drive far, I sure as heck don't pay for satellite radio. I listen to the local channels and I am a channel flipper. I listen to this channel, if i don't like the song or the topic of conversation, I change to the next channel. I have six preset channels on my radio and I hit them all. When I'm not listening to a CD that is.

I know one of my six stations plays nothing but Christmas music from Thanksgiving day to Christmas. Hello? Are you for real? Fine, your station, your call. I have a choice to listen or not. I choose not. Now, Cleveland has added another station that seems to be off their rocker. I don't know when it started, but I noticed it earlier this week. Nothing but Christmas music on whatever station is on 106.5. Are you freakin' serious? It's early November! I hate to piss on your parade, but believe it or not, not everyone is jiggy with Christmas music to begin with, let alone almost two months early. Call me a scrooge, I don't care. Bah humbug, I am only listening to CDs now until after the first of the year.

Aah, now that's off of my chest. Let's move on.

I grew up and lived in Erie PA for the first 30 years of my life. It's a great town, Erie. And, it sure did some things right. Let's talk about garbage pick up.

Garbage pick up is a necessary evil and I give the men and women out there working a tough job serious kudos. They do the job that not many people are willing to do, and even better than the postal service, neither rain nor sleet nor snow will stop them. And, unlike the postal service, the garbage workers only get five holidays a year! Every other day, they are out there cleaning up after us.

That said, what Erie does right that Lorain County does wrong is schedule the time for the garbage pick up. In Erie, garbage (or at least it was when I lived there) is picked up on third shift. In Lorain County, garbage is picked up on first shift. Why is this bad? Because these huge ass trucks tie up traffic during rush hour! For real, who thought this was a good idea? Someone in charge needs to put on their thinking caps and realize that Erie is on the ball with this one. There is no need to tie up traffic to the degree that the garbage trucks do. Before you go to bed at night, you put out your garbage. You get up in the morning and you bring your cans back. Easy peasy. No putting garbage out before going to bed, and then leaving it out all day long until the truck comes after lunch. Oh please.

Damn, it feels good to vent! I could solve all of the world's problems right here on my blog! At least in my world.

Now let's look at something good. Well, it started bad but it ended good.

I blogged awhile ago about a credit card I used to have. We fought over the fact that while I signed up for an online account only, they felt it necessary to mail me statements. I told them (Capital One) to stop mailing me statements and I was told they'd try, but if they wanted to, they would mail them out again. I do not want my credit card information sitting in my mailbox. So, I canceled that card and opened a new one.

I did do some research but for real, for as little as I use my credit card, one credit card is pretty much like next. So, I closed my eyes and chose a card. I went with CitiCards. Everything has been fine in the six months or so that I've had this card. Then, yesterday I came home from work, and saw an envelope on the table from CitiCards.

The envelope had the side ripped open, which happens to be the way Ron opens his mail. I asked if he had opened it, as I myself have gotten carried away opening mail and opened up more than I should have. He said he didn't touch the envelope. That's not good. When I opened the envelope, what was inside was those insidious checks they send you to transfer balances to their credit card. And the envelope was open. My heart was beating in my chest so hard I thought it was going to come out.

It's like 5:30 in the evening, I still have my coat on and I'm on the phone with CitiCards. Poor Shawn was lucky enough to be the one to handle my call. I started our conversation with an apology to him. I told him I was sorry if I was going to yell at him but I was highly upset at the moment! Eh, he took it in stride. I told him my story and he immediately said his job was to make it all better.

The first thing he did was to stop the damn promotional checks. I told him I don't want them, don't need them and won't use them. Off of the mailing list, check.

Then, as a matter of safety, he immediately closed my account and reopened another one for me. Seriously, that fast.

I told him the last charges I made were at the grocery store the night before and that was the last I authorized. I couldn't tell how many checks started out in the envelope, but there were three left in there. Even if someone didn't take the actual check, they have the account number and routing number. That's all they need.

Shawn told me he'd send me fraud paperwork so that if at anytime, unauthorized charges show up on this card, I have to fill out this paperwork and CitiCards will cancel the charges.

Since my account was closed due to a safety concern, Shawn also said he'd expedite my new card. Keep in mind, this is 5:30 last night I'm on the phone with Shawn. I couldn't believe it, but UPS brought me my new card TODAY. I have no idea how they printed up a new card and got it in UPS's hands in time to get ME the card like 18 hours later. Unbelievable.

So, to Shawn in customer service at CitiCards: Again, I apologize for yelling. I was really upset. But, as promised, you did make it all better and then some. What a credit to that organization!

I just felt like I needed to bitch tonight, but I still wanted to give a shout out to Shawn. Aaah. Every once in awhile, you just gotta get it all off of your chest. Check!