I wrote previously about buying a 2008 Kia Rondo, a car that I am still happy with, now 7 months later. I get this e-mail from Kia this morning, asking if I am interested in buying THE EXACT SAME CAR I ALREADY BOUGHT. E-mail campaign fail.
So back in August I posted this about my experiences in a Chase branch in NYC. I’ve been a busy guy since then, so haven’t had a chance to get back to Chase and talk about this whole “your account goes inactive” thing. The post ended up on the Consumerist website as well, and it got a fair amount of comments. In typical interweb fashion, some thought me an idiot. Some screamed conspiracy. And some more thought me an idiot for choosing to save my money in a savings account.
So I went back to a different Chase branch today, and asked to speak to the branch manager. The manager knew about accounts going inactive, but couldn’t tell me if it happened after 3 months or 9 months. He knew about an account going dormant, but didn’t know when that would happen after going inactive. He knew about the state taking the money after a certain amount of time, but didn’t know when. He did say that setting up an automated transfer between my checking and savings account to avoid inactive status wouldn’t work, because “what if you up and died, you wouldn’t want the automated payment to keep going, would you?” Well, actually, I think a $1 transfer payment on a monthly basis wouldn’t be my biggest problem, in that case.
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Here’s what I saw when getting on a New Haven line Metro North train last night headed towards Stamford:
From the notice:
The significant delays (of one hour or more) that you experienced during this morning’s commute resulted from a train’s pantograph getting caught in the overhead catenary wire at a major track crossing in Bridgeport at approximately 6:00 AM.
So MomWonder, KidWonder and I packed up and moved out of NYC and into beautiful Westchester County this past week. The move went reasonably well (I would recommend Moishe’s moving company in the NYC area), and we had Con Ed turning the lights on btw 8am and 12pm and Cablevision btw 11am and 2pm. Con Ed came late, which is not a good thing when you have a 4 month old and its nearly November in the Northeast. When MomWonder reminded them of KidWonder, they hurried up.
So this post is not about Con Ed… no, its not. Its about Cablevision. I thought I’d be let down transitioning from Time Warner Cable to Cablevision, but I wanted to be optimistic. MomWonder and I had grand plans for the install, one digital phone line downstairs, and one upstairs, one cable box downstairs, and one upstairs. Everything was great, until the serviceman got there – and flatly refused to do *any* in-house wiring. Now, I’ve lived in apartments in NYC for 14 years before this, and have NEVER had a serviceman refuse to wire. So with the chaos of the move going on, and the serviceman staring at us, wanting so desperately to leave, we relented. Now I’m typing on my computer which we had to put in the master bedroom, instead of in the small bedroom we had envisioned being an office, and both phone lines are plugged into the cable box, also in the master bedroom.
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Tom loves working on the internet. Since 1997, he has built and maintained consumer internet sites for Barnes & Noble, Online Retail Partners, Yahoo! HotJobs, Ask Jeeves and most recently at AOL. The opinions expressed in this blog are his own and do not reflect those of his employer.