Travel, Gadgets and Networking

Ritz Camera Customer Service Problems

2006-12-11T15:35:00.000-08:00

On Oct 29th, I ordered a Camera from Ritz. When I arrived home from my trip, I opened the box and found that they forgot to include a lens with my Camera. Ok, no problem I thought, a simple call to Customer Service would solve this problem. I called 8 different times to find out the status. Everytime I called, they stated, they needed to send an email to the warehouse and to call back in a day or two. I did this each time, only escalating my frustration. I asked that they call, they said they couldn’t even call the warehouse to find the status!

Here are the dates of my calls:

Nov 18th, 2:15pm Spoke with Jason
Nov 22nd, 11:15am Spoke with Dave
Nov 27th, 2:45pm Spoke with Lamar
Nov 28th, 2:50pm Spoke with Rebecca
Nov 29th, 12:47pm Spoke with Walter
Nov 30th, 1:13pm Spoke with Dave
Nov 30th, 1:30pm Spoke with Lawrence, he stated that Lamar owned the issue
Dec 4th, 12:25pm Spoke with Dave

Today, on December 11th, I called back, after hearing nothing and spoke with Tonya. She told me that they shipped the Lens on the 7th of December. Nice of them to call and let me know!

Hopefully in the future Ritz will improve their customer service. I really hate waiting 1.5 months to get my order.

Why am I waiting to buy a house

2006-12-11T13:27:00.000-08:00

Why am I waiting to buy a house.

The first house I bought was in 1998. It was a small house in Morgan Utah. In 1999, I moved to California. At the time, I felt the Bay Area real-estate was overvalued. $300K - $400k + for a small house on a small lot. I just couldn’t bring myself to buy at the time. In 2001, I bought a 4500 SQ Foot House in Utah for $350k. I thought now this is a good deal. After a year, I moved with my family to Washington and we sold the house in Utah. We had planned on moving back to Utah but work didn’t work out that way.

Fast Forward 5 years. We are living back in the Bay Area and the housing has continued to go through the roof. Those$300K - $400k houses are at least double what they were when I was looking around. So instead of buying, we live in a apartment that cost us $1700/month. What is interesting, while housing has doubled in the past 5 years, the rent has actually gone down! In 2000, we paid $2400/month for an apartment in Santa Clara. That same apartment was renting for $1800/month last year. I know rents have gone up a bit in the past year, but it might be in the $1900 range today. Because they don’t allow pets, we moved into another complex.

We are on the sideline for one reason, we feel that too many people have over extended themselves and are not really able to afford the houses they bought. Which means, many people will have to either put their house up for sale or the house will go into foreclosure. Please don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to see this happen to anyone. It is just that the numbers just don’t make sense. How could anyone making under $100,000/year qualify for a loan on a $700,000 house! Roll in Pick-A-Payment. Pick-A-Payment is just a fancy name for Negative Amortization Loans. What does this mean? It means, unless you pay the min Payment, either Interest Only Payment or the Full amount, more principal is added to the balance to the loan. So the amount you owe only goes higher! Today, in the LA Times, it was reported that 1 in 3 new loans in California are Negative Amortization. http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-option11dec11,0,4921051,full.story?coll=la-home-business

New negative amortization mortgages in California:
2003 -- 8 of every 1,000
2005 -- 1 in 5
2006 -- 1 in 3

What people forget to tell you, is when you only pay the Min amount, the loan resets at 115% of your loan. And then you are stuck with the highest payment. For the person in the article, that means going from a payment of $1106 -> $2848/month (example used in the article).

My take, during 2007 the housing market will go even slower. It is like a pyramid scheme. Those on the top will do well while those on the bottom, or last to enter, will be the ones paying the price. You can no longer count on the rising market to cash out and buy something smaller. People will foreclose and will be desperate to sell. This will be a perfect opportunity for me and my family to move in and buy a nice house in a nice neighborhood, one we know we can afford on 1 salary. 2007 will be a good year for buyers like us. And please don’t be offended if we come in and offer you 20 – 30% less.

I need more email storage.

2006-12-10T21:04:00.001-08:00

When I first got my Gmail account, I thought, wow, enough email storage to last me ‘forever’. Well, almost 3 years later, I have now collected enough email to cause no end of problems for me. Here is my current email storage:

You are currently using 2780 MB (100%) of your 2793 MB.

I know a few people at Google and asked them how I get more storage. They said to stop using my email for file storage. I explained that all the mail in my box legitimate email. With 6061 emails, it is a little hard to find out which emails I should keep and which I should trash. One of the suggestions was to keep opening up multiple email accounts and just change the forwarding every time a box fills up. But this doesn’t work if I want to have one place to search all my mail.

I know there are some large emails that I wouldn’t mind getting rid of, but Gmail makes it hard to sort by file size, which outlook does very well. When I start running into file limitations on my Exchange email account, I just do a quick search on all files over 100k. This put them in order of size so I can quickly get rid of large files I know I can dump.

So I have a few a couple of options:

1) Off load the messages to my home PC. Don’t like this option as I like having the files anywhere.
2) Open up multiple email accounts. Don’t like this option as it would require me to search different accounts for information.
3) Have Google increase my email storage.

I would rather have more storage. I would even pay at this point! And hopefully, by paying, I would get my mail on a faster server.

Take my money, Please!

2006-12-09T10:11:00.001-08:00

What is it about stores that close either right on time or 5 minutes before they should close? Tonight I wanted to go check out some of the stores in the area to see if I could find my two Sons a small present. Of course, by the time I got to these stores, they were closing or trying to get people out. There were even two people standing in the entrance saying they were closed for the night! If it were me, I would let people in but tell them they have x amount of time. Something along the lines of, “We are closed right now, but if you want to come in quickly for 8 minutes, please feel free”. Wow, I would rush in and most likely buy something knowing I didn’t have much time. Sadly, this is not usually the case. When I open my store I hope I remember this.

24 Hours of only Airline Food!

2006-12-08T17:17:00.000-08:00

I just completed flying SFO – LAX – ORD – DUB – ZRH. This entire one way trip took me 24 hours. During this trip, I wanted to see if I could do the entire trip, from the time I left my house to the time I arrived at my hotel, without spending any money on food, water or snacks.

When I arrived in SFO, I went to the Admirals Club. I have a lifetime pass with Qantas, another time about that, and was able to get a bottle of water and a very small muffin. The SFO – LAX was uneventful and they provided ‘biscuits’ and water. In LAX, I was able to go into the Flagship Lounge with AA. They have more food choices there. If you ever wanted to see stars at LAX, this is the place to go. They all get escorted to the Flagship Lounge before their flights. I was able to enjoy a bowl of Muesli and free bottled water. I was upgraded to Business Class on the LAX – ORD flight. They had a breakfast Quesadilla.

In ORD, I was able to use the Flagship Lounge. They had Shrimp, Chicken, Beef and Cheese. Free waters were put into my bag for the flight to DUB. On the flight, they served Lasagna. Something about Airline food where I find the Pasta the best choice 80%+ of the time. I asked them to let me sleep if they were serving Breakfast since I would rather sleep and try to adjust (here that it is now 2am, I guess I am not adjusting quickly). Once in Dublin, I had to exit through customs and come back in. Singapore has a better handle on this! When coming in, I had to dump my water, so I drank one and tossed the other. I went to the EI lounge and all they had was small snacks. Nothing great. After doing email for a couple of hours, and watching my battery die, I went to check out the Priority Lounges (shared). They didn’t have much of a selection. I did get some cheese.

Flying DUB – ZRH I got nothing. EI sells everything, you want water/coke? 2 Euros. Everything has a price. And since I didn’t want to spend any money, I bought nothing.

After about 24 hours of traveling, and nothing but free airline food, I finally arrived at my hotel. Hopefully my trip back will be better but I might bring something a little healthier with me.

US Safe from Lost/Stolen Passports?

2005-09-07T09:11:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend, my passport as well as my wifes passport was stolen. Because of the weekend holiday, we weren't able to report a lost passport to the US Government for 4+ days. That is 4 days of a US Passport which could be used to gain entrance to the US. Even the 24 Hour Hotline was closed. Why wouldn’t the United States open a 24 Hour Hotline to take information to cancel passports or at least flag them if there are problems? I can get 24/7 service from most companies but not from Homeland Security?

Google Talk

2005-08-24T14:49:00.000-07:00

Ok, big deal. Downloaded it. I have no friends using it. Zero friends on Google Talk, hundreds on MSN Messenger.

The Best Wireless Mouse

2005-05-04T11:15:00.000-07:00

Like most people, I am tired of all the cables and cords that fill my desk when working with a computer. One of them, the mouse cord, has been something I wanted to remove for a long time. About 6 months ago, I bought the Logitech MX1000 Laser Cordless Mouse. From all the mice I have bought and used, this is the best one out. With Laser Tracking and not LED Tracking, you get a better user experience. If you want to reduce clutter and buy a very good mouse, this is the mouse for you. The only thing that would make this mouse better would be to get rid of the power supply and have it draw the power from the USB port.

.

5 Free Songs on MSN Music

2005-05-02T17:42:00.000-07:00

This is a great deal, you can get 5 free songs on MSN Music when you buy 1. No waiting, no mess, no fuss. Once I saw the deal, I bought my first song, thinking I would have to wait sometime to get my 5 free songs. After I completed the purchase, 5 songs showed up. This is better then the Pepsi iTunes giveaway! Here is the link: http://music.msn.com/buy1get5

St. Regis London (Lanesborough) for 35GBP a night!

2005-04-27T18:09:00.000-07:00

I have been following the thread on the St. Regis Landesborough for the past few days on Flyertalk. On the Today show, the so called ‘Travel Guru’ Peter Greenburg talked about people booking this rate. Of course, it seems all Mr. Peter did was read Flyertalk and the Wall Street Journal to glean information for his report.

Starting with the Wall Street Journal Article:

"In the case of the Lanesborough Hotel, within 10 hours of posting the price, 34 people made 86 reservations -- in at least one case, for a block of 30 nights, the hotel says. At first, the hotel offered to rebook the customers at £350. About 24 hours later, Starwood backed down and offered the three-night compromise. (Customers who reserved through Cendant Corp.'s Orbitz got all the extras, including daily breakfast with champagne upon arrival.)"

As you will note, Orbitz is honoring the rate completely. Starwood has stated they will not. The only thing Starwood will do is honor the rate at 35 Pounds/Night. I find this interesting that Starwood would take this position as they have on their website the following:

CUSTOMER SERVICE. Rest assured that your reservation will be error free. That means no surprises at check-in

Now, Error Free? Why would Starwood publish on their website that your reservation will be ‘Error Free” yet not honor a rate at their hotel? In the past, I have been held accountable for room reservations I made. I have been charged an early check-out fee and a no-show rate/fee. One time, my wife’s grandfather passed away and I had to quickly fly back to Seattle. The Hotel charged me and early departure fee, even though they hadn’t even cleaned the room. Another time, I booked a room with the W Suites in California and forgot to double-check and cancel the room. I was charged one nights stay. Both these were Starwood Owned Hotels.

Now on the Today Show, Mr. Peter reported that some “greedy” person booked 30 Days at this hotel for low rate of 35 Pounds Per night. Did Someone Really Book 30 days at the Lanesborough? Well, yes they did. And that person was me.

What is wrong with booking a hotel at a great rate? And 35 Pounds does not seem unreasonable to me. You see, I hold confirmed reservations at the St. Regis Aspen, the sister property to the Lanesborough, for $85/Night. Which includes more then what was offered. Hotel Transfers, Free Access to Fitness Center, and Club Lounge Access where they have more food then a simple breakfast. And I earn SPG Points at the St. Regis Aspen, hence the extra few dollars a night I guess.

And Mr. Peter, the question I have for you is this, do you pay for your stays? Are you defending the Hotel hoping to get a free night with them where they can wine and dine you? I wouldn’t call booking 30 days greedy, just being a company man and saving the company money when traveling. Since the company I work for has an office within a 15 – 20 min walk from this Hotel, I thought it would be good to stay here.

Check in: Aug 5, 2005
Check out: Sep 4, 2005

1 Room, 2 Adults Per Room, 1 King

Total For Room Rate Only: GBP 1,050.00

Stay requirements 3 Day(s) Minimum
31 Day(s) Maximum