Screw you, Vonage. I hate you. You have made the past 2 days miserable.

What an ordeal. Here is a word of advice; if you have something that is auto-debited from your checking account, make sure you check it every month. I had auto-debit for Vonage all set up. All of my information was correct, yet, they did not debit my payments for about a year. I now owe them that money. I am angry both at myself for not catching it as well as Vonage for not notifying me at all that my account was in this state. If you don’t pay your gas bill for 2 months, don’t they threaten to turn it off?

I then spent hours dealing with their support which, I think I spoke about last night. My whole experience is summed up in the letter that I sent to the Customer Care Department:

To whom it may concern:

I would like to take this opportunity to voice my displeasure with Vonage billing and customer support. I had auto debit set up on my account at some point. Yesterday I noticed that my account balance is $<a lot>; an accumulation of around 13 months of phone service. I did in fact verify that all of my account information is correct.

My account had not been debited in over a year. I would like for it to be clear that my anger is not displaced. I absolutely should have noticed that this was not being paid via my checking account.

My displeasure stems from the way in which this was handled by Vonage. I received absolutely no communication from Vonage indicating that my account had a balance or that a single payment was late. My account never went into a grace period and was never terminated. Additionally, I spent upwards of 2 hours on the phone yesterday with one of the most subpar customer support teams I have ever experienced. After 2 hours on the phone I felt more frustrated than when I initially called and felt that I was no further along. As a support engineer myself for a very large company, I make it a point to not waste people’s time on the phone. I suggest your engineers attempt to do the same.

I am now in the process of paying my balance to Vonage. Once it is paid in full, I do not plan on using Vonage services again in the future.

On a positive note, the only engineer that I felt really helped me was Sal. He did not give me his last name, but his ID number is 24856. He was extremely polite, efficient, and about 1000x more helpful than the first line of outsourced people that you have “helping” your customers. Had I spoken to Sal initially, I probably would still be a Vonage customer.

Sincerely,

Bryan <last name>

If you ever have any issues with Vonage. I will be happy to give you the address that you need to write to.

Note: The opinions expressed here are my own. If you have Vonage and you have had good experiences, more power to you.

Well… things have been sort of crazy lately. I know it has been a while since I last wrote so I will try to sum it up.

I guess, really, the biggest thing to say is that we are getting house. The process is almost done. We actually close on Friday and I absolutely cannot wait for this all to be over and for us to move so life can finally get sort of back to normal.

We spent this entire week packing. Almost everything in the apartment is in a box somewhere. Even the bed is ready to go. We have actually been sleeping on the futon. It’s been like a slumber party every night. I can’t actually remember the last time I woke up in the morning and felt like I had rested.

I had to call to set up my utilities today. I wouldn’t recommend this as an activity to pass an afternoon. For any of you that have had to do this before, you are probably with me when I say that it suuuuucks. Mostly, my biggest gripe is with Time Warner. I waited on hold for about 45 minutes today, then gave up and hung up. I decided that I would go to the office which is usually like a ghost town. When I got there, there were 33 people in front of me. It was like the DMV. So I gave up on that for today.

Next, I was showing a friend of mine the dashboard for Vonage. As I was going through the tabs, I realized that they had not auto debited my account since last April. Oh yeah… that’s 13 months of bills that have not been paid. Granted some of this is my fault, however, I do know that with ANY other service, if you are past due on one payment, you certainly know about it. I have received nothing from Vonage.

I thought to myself, well, maybe my checking acct information is wrong. So I checked it and it was all perfect. I then made the dreaded decision to call support. After an hour of “oh you need to talk to <x> team, let me transfer you”, wait 10 minutes and repeat, I finally got to the people who I had hoped would help me figure this out… only to have the call drop. Without a ticket number, I had to call back and do it ALL over again. I finally hung up at 530pm b/c I needed to go home. I’ll try again tomorrow.

I know that this wasn’t the direction that I was going in when I started writing this, however, a point that I would like to make is that Vonage’s customer is support could have been better if I didn’t call at all. It did nothing but further frustrate me and almost 2 hours later, I was no further along than when I started. This it totally unacceptable and a stark reminder of why outsourcing sucks more than I can explain. Sure, the tard that I was talking to on the other line who’s first name contained more consonants that the English alphabet ( who asked me to call him “Joe”, by the way ), was very nice and courteous and I’m sure costs a fraction of the price of someone here in the US, however, when is it no longer worth the savings when all of your customer’s are frustrated and think that your customer support is a joke?

I work in a call center. That is what I do. I talk to people on the phone all day long. My biggest goal is to not waste their god damn time otherwise they will not want to call anymore and I will not have a job and that would be bad. I don’t care that I can call you “Joe”. I don’t care that you have perfect manners. All I care is about is that you can solve my god damn problem. That is why I am calling you. This is such a simple concept. Why in the hell does no one get it?

I guess while I am on a roll, I might as well talk about how utility companies rape the shit out of you when you sign up with them. Why in the hell does the electric company need a $150 deposit? Why does the gas company need a $65 fee? Why do I have to pay $100 for water that is already on?? For the record, all of these things are already on in my house. Why do we allow ourselves to get suburbanly raped like this?? Why do these companies get all of this money for putting a record in my name for some shit that is already turned on and working just fine. WTF man… I don’t get it. My ass hurts. Apparently, the lube is extra.

I need to go to sleep… or hit something… really hard… jgdfc…. ( figure that one out )

The search continues…

I really do not like getting responses to interviews where they tell me that I don’t have the skills that they are looking for. Now, I understand that I can’t possibly know everything about everything under the sun, but I’ll tell you what I can do… LEARN anything about anything under the sun. Now, I am sure that no one likes to hear that about themselves, but I try to do the best with it that I can. Try to turn a negative into a positive I suppose.

The particular response that I got today informed that I was not well versed enough in Webshere Portal and WPS. I don’t even know what WPS is.. so well I guess that is a correct statement. As a result, I will attempt to learn some of this stuff. All I know is that the clock is ticking and and I am really itching to do something else.

In other areas, check out the new pictures that are posted in the archive. They are from Monday night ( 4.23 ) when we went to see Bowling for Soup downtown at Antone’s. Before you start calling me names, please let me state that I don’t particularly like them. They were OK live and the tickets were FREE. Plus it was a good time with friends overall. So.. get off my back.

In the martial arts world, things are going good. I am continuing toward my Black sash in Tai Chi and my 2nd Brown belt in Kung Fu. I think I am almost to the end of the Chen Tai Chi form ( finally ) and almost done with the last kata that I need for 3rd Brown material which is called “Night Battle Broadsword” form. It’s a lot of fun… it’s also fun to see Troy hopping around like a graceful Rhino.. hahaha sorry buddy.. you said it…

I am tired… going to sleep… laters…

Driving to work this morning, I realized that I really miss my NYC friends. But then I thought, it’s nice to have friends to miss.

So, they made the book into a movie. If you are not familiar with this book or this story, you should really change that. This book was a life changing experience for me. Check out the trailer for the movie:

http://www.thepeacefulwarriormovie.com/

Also, here is a link to Dan Millman’s site. Check it out:

http://www.danmillman.com/

So, Steph showed me this post on MySpace. It was a bulletin that someone posted. Read on for some reading enjoyment.

Without further ado, here is the post:

y must so many ppl bullshit 1 another these days? if it’s not females bullshittin guys like they jus tha shyt or every nigga wanna get at them like chea rite babygurl dnt mean 2 bust ur bubble but u ain’t really suppose 2 be up on that pedistaol.. lol excuse me as I laugh.. I jus dnt get that shyt.. or when sum 1 ask wats da deal.. babygurl dat mean mean I wanna holla atcha dat means wats da deal.. no more no less!!! I dnt kno who put all tha helium i ya big heads but i’ll let dat shyt go.. an my fella’s come on now stop tryna holla at these lame females makin think they da shyt like dat when they aint!!! not sayin’ all tha females but u kno who u r.. yall nigga’s need 2 get ya shyt str8 an stop playin’ cause u makin us real nigga’s look bad mayne!!!

As far as as I go I got a music page so dats a reason y I hit up some ppl I gotta kno if u like my shyt or not ya feel. u dnt a dude 2 send u a request w/o readin ur shyt.. then read mine an u would kno wat I do..

I jus think nigga’s an females need 2 get they shyt str8 these days!! a if ya on here 4 freak purposes then say so, an if not then say that shyt 2.. u gota mouth.. damn it use it!!!!!

DIS TROUBLE AN IMMA END DIS WIT REAL RECOGNIZES REAL!!!! 100

I am so taking it easy this weekend. My body needs a break.

So I found out this week that higher level belt classes are really that much harder than that lower belt classes. I actually did know this already, but I do not think I was prepared for actually how much harder they are. In light of this, I am taking the weekend off. Between the way that work has been and these new classes, I am pretty much shot.

Right now, I am waiting for Steph to get back from running. We went to Sherlock’s last night w a few of my friends from work to see this cheesy ass 80’s cover band. Some of their songs were good… then, for some reason, they started playing Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, which is a) NOT AN 80’s SONG and b) well, they were really bad at it. It was almost comical.

I think I went off on a tangent. Anyway, when she gets back, we are going to grab a bit, then head to the outlet mall for some summer stuff b/c its starting to get warm here already… yay… Texas … summer… I… can’t…….. wait…. blech…

Later tonight we are going to Bagpipes with a few friends from the school to watch the UFC PPV. I can’t wait, it is going to be a lot of fun.

This weekend was really really good.

Thursday – Tested for my 3rd level Brown belt in Kung Fu and my 1st level Brown sash in Tai Chi. I passed both with no problems.

Friday – Didn’t really do much. I was pretty fried after work. Me and Steph ate dinner, then went to the Drafthouse on South Lamar to see Reno 911!. It was really funny… I would definitely recommend it.

Saturday – Relaxed for most of the day then went to the Kung Fu demo from 7-9pm. There was some really cool stuff. Steph liked it too which was nice. I hope that I can do something in it next year. I think Skewer The Sun would be nice. I want to compete in the tournament as well.

Sunday – Attended Dragon Pa Kua seminar from 1pm-4pm with Grandmaster Sin. It was rally awesome. That is a really nice form and I am happy that I was able to retain all that he taught.

Ok, so one test down, three to go.

I passed my Kung Fu pretest to 3rd Brown belt. Tonight, I am taking my pretest for my 1st Brown sash in Tai Chi, which I feel will go smoothly. I am very confident in my Tai Chi material. Thursday, however, is the most important day. I am very much looking forward to it.

I am pretty tired today. I had to come into work an hour early and have to work an hour extra, but whatever, I was going to be here anyway. I have an important meeting coming up this afternoon that I am looking forward to and hoping that it will help me in the near future.