QT (QuikTrick) Card Hold Scam

A bonus post today.

Just a warning people, stay away from QuikTrip is you’re going to pay with debit or credit. I’d stay away if you have cash too. Don’t encourage their fucking greed.

As I was making the kitty and Charter trips today, I noticed I needed some gas. A QT was on the way and I pulled in.

Big mistake, don’t do it unless your account has lots of money in it. Too late I noticed a very small sign saying QT may put a $125 hold on your account for using plastic at the pump.

I’ve had retailers put an inflated hold on a debit transaction before. But it has always been a rounded up amount. Like, $38.00 hold for a $37.48 bill.

I checked when I returned from giving Charter a hard time. It wasn’t $125, only $100 extra for $37.80 worth of gas. Lucky I happened to have an extra $100 in my account. If I tried to purchase that $37.80 in gas and only had $50 in my account, I’d be a walkin’.

They did reverse it later. But for a while they had an extra $100 of my money to play with. I wonder just how much they are making on the float? And do the banks give them a cut of the overdraft fees they cause unsuspecting customers?

Or perhaps it’s a way to induce you into getting a QT credit card.

Avoid QuikTrick people!

Sorry no QT massacree today. The Charter bait & switch massacree took it out of me. But tomorrow, I’ll be in shape to track down the QuikTrap corporate sods and give them a good reaming. But don’t wait on me. Stay away from QT NOW!!!!

Charter Communications Massacree

Some may be waiting to find out how the Charter visit went. I didn’t delay to build suspense. Oh no, brothers & sisters. I got distracted by QT’s $125 hold scam, Jimmy ‘Oh Lord I sinned’ Swaggart, the Video religion industry, Frank Zappa and the accompanying paranoia in cranking him up in Lilburn, GA.

But if you follow my posts, y’all know I get distracted and have to wait for it to come around again on the guitar. You can get anything you want at Alice’s …. Sorry it almost happened again. Well here it is in 6 part harmony and full orchestration, The Charter Communications Massacree.

I decided to stop by the apartment offices to ask the if the papers stuffed in my door were indeed legitimate and not a Charter scam. I related the story of last fall’s bait & switch where a Charter statement offered a cable box for $0.00/month that was switched to $12/month because the $0.00/month boxes didn’t exist except in a Charter bait & switch scam.

One of the lovely ladies said it was for real. But I’m sceptical on my best days and paranoid the rest of the time. I never worry that I’m paranoid only am I paranoid enough? I took care of the kitty supplies first of all before enjoying myself at Charter.

For some reason they seemed to be in a hurry to get me the hell out of the store. It could have because I started complaining about last fall’s bait & switch scam and inquiring if the present offer is another. They seemed upset with my question of how much a month Free would cost me.

They wanted the phone number associated with my account. “There isn’t one.” How about account number. “No don’t have one of those either. Georgie Porgie winced when I told him, loudly, “I got suckered into a Charter Bulk Scam when I rented my apartment.” That brought Git #2 running to help Georgie.

They looked over the papers I brought along and conferred. “Oh yes, you get 2 Free cable boxes, sir.” I asked, knowing the answer ahead of time, “For how long is it free?”

Georgie and Git #2 chanted in unison, “For the life of Charter’s bulk contract with your apartment complex!” It made my day because I caught them in a bare arsed freakin lie. “That’s not what it says on the papers I was sent. You just lied to me, didn’t ya? Now again, how much a month will Free cost, $12, $24, …” The looks on their faces were freakin priceless and I had a hard time keeping a straight face.

That sent them off into a huddle. I think they had to help each other read. They puzzled out that the offer was 1 box free for the life of the bulk contract and one free for 1 year and their standard monthly charge after that.

They started working together in an effort to get me out and away from the other suckers in the store. Georgie Porgie asked how many TVs I had. “Two.” He tried to give me 2 boxes and was puzzled when I would only accept the lifetime of the bulk contract free one. “I don’t want to have to return it to keep from get hit with a monthly charge. Now how much a month is Free going to cost me?”

I doubt they’ve ever moved that fast on the job before. A cable box magically appeared on the counter from the other end of the store. Georgie scanned the barcode on the box and while the form was printing put the cable box in a bag. I can see the relief on their faces that I’d be out of there soon. Wrong again.

I slowly took out my glasses and carefully read the form they wanted me to sign. Now if I want I can read 2500 words a minute. I don’t think I broke 25 on the form as I continued to inquire about how much a month would Free cost me.

On the form was the serial number of the box. I’m a geek and know if his scanner read the barcode at all, it did so correctly. But I insisted they get the box back out so I could compare the number on the box to the number on the form.

The sigh of relief when I picked up the pen was audible. As Georgie Porgie handed me the bag, thinking it was over, he got one finale bit of advice. “You know people wouldn’t hate Charter if it wasn’t for their pervasive business model of deceiving and misleading customers.”

“I’ll go out of my way to give business to a company that treats me fairly & honestly. Charter on the other hand, I stay away from if at all possible. A prime example is all the junk mail from Charter saying ‘Important Information.’ To be honest Georgie boy, I see Charter and Important on the same envelope, it goes in the trash unopened.” Actually the recycling bin but trash sounded better at the time.

I was in pain today but still had a great freakin time. If I feel better tomorrow I may just pop in to ask again “How much is Free going to cost me per month?
;-)>>>>

Quack Dammit

I’m feeling somewhat better today. I ate for the 1st time in 3 days last night, a little fruit.

I’ll feel even better once I’ve fired my primary quack. That’s right quack, not quack?. He proved he didn’t deserve the courtesy of the ‘?’. He’s the 4th one to lose the ‘?’, but the others lost theirs in promotion from Quack? to Dr.

It’s fairly easy to earn promotion, all you have to do is be an at least semi-competent physician or at least be man enough to admit you don’t know. My 1st neurologist earned his promotion for not wimping out and calling my problem idiopathic. Idiopathic is just Latin for I dunno. He admitted in English he didn’t know and referred me to another who did diagnose the problem.

I attempted to discuss these rare bilious attacks I’ve been having. Even though I had told him I was not taking Ibuprofen, he insisted that ibuprofen was causing the problem, take tylenol. When he first came in, he made it obvious he hadn’t reviewed my medical history. When he asked if my entire colon had been removed, I should have bailed then.

I hate it when people don’t listen to what I’m saying, particularly when I’m paying for the privilege. If you want to tell me I’m full of crap when I’m done, that’s fine. But listen to me first!

Women bitch about men not listening. There may be something to that. I’m going to try a female primary quack? this time.

Fifty-Fifty

Most Paranoid Moment

It was outside Atlanta Georgia. I was working a telco, finishing software on site because sales would promise any delivery date.

“You want it yesterday? Yes Sir! What time yesterday”

So you wrote the user interface first so training could begin while you finished writing the rest of the system on site. Usually in a noisy Teletype room.

The company leased turnkey systems and was always shipping parts to techs all over the country. Many times unneeded parts were shipped with special herbal padding.

I had went to the Atlanta airport after escaping the teletype room. I picked up some padding and headed for the motel.

On my way to grab something to eat, I pulled out the bag of weed and started stuffing a bowl. I crested an overpass and on the other side was a road block. Seems a prisoner escaped somewhere.

With no time to stash anything, I stuffed bag & pipe between my legs, thankful I hadn’t fired yet. It wouldn’t have been a big deal normally, smile, show ID, and get waved on.

ID was the problem. I had it but it didn’t look like any licence he’d every seen. It was an IL Probationary Licence. It doesn’t have the restrictions of a hardship licence. I was free to drive anywhere, any time.

But, it is printed on flimsy paper that you must fold to fit in a wallet. And on the back it says something like, ‘If you catch this here boy doing anything. Y’all just take this licence away, right quick, hear’

When Mr. GA State trooper saw that, I got the eye, though those mirror sunglasses. “Y’all wait right heah, boy!”

That’s when the real paranoia set in. No way to stash evidence with an army of troopers around. I dreaded him coming back and asking me to get out. An ounce and a pipe falling on the ground, fuck.

After what seemed like hours (was only a few minutes), he came back after checking the licence was indeed official. He said I could go. The big smile and thank you were not forced.

I grabbed some fast food crap and headed back to the motel a different way. No police this time but I waited until I was back at the Motel to fire up.

Fugitive

Dr. Kimball’s quest was for the one-armed man.

What friends fail to realize is I’m a one armed man.  Oh, I have two arms and they work fairly well. But I am almost always using one hand to hold on to something to keep from falling.

It may seem efficient to stack shit on top of other shit. But when the one armed man is trying to get what’s on the bottom it is a major pain.

And like today when I tried to extract a paper towel roll and a fucking bag of baggies falls out, I might trash it or may just fling the offending item somewhere out of my way.

That’s why there are baggies all over my dining room. They can fucking stay there.

Fuck SPAMers

I set up a Wiki for the Celebrate Granite City group with the intention it would be used to create a collaborative history of Granite City.

Of course, as with anything free, SPAMers are using the Wiki to create fraudulent pages for their fraudulent SPAM to link to. I’m working on making access more restrictive but until then, I watch what pages get created. If they have SPAM links, the user is blocked, forever and the page(s) created get a redirect to this page.

I’d love to see their faces when they try and visit ‘their’ page(s) wondering why their SPAM isn’t getting them suckers.

http://www.celebrategranitecity.org/YourGCStories/index.php?title=User:CharlinMcCaffer

#fucqueSPAM

54-40 or Fight!

I’ve been thinking about which country the US is going to invade next in the never ending quest to make the world safe for Big-Oil.

Who could it be? With the military downsizing, we should pick an easy country to invade, I’d think. That’s not just a measure of how good their military is. Logistics is a bitch. So I’m figuring the next country is Canada. We can whup them polite Cannucks and logistics is a snap.

The TeaBaglicans are going to bring up the old ’54-40 or Fight!’ slogan and demand we invade Canada and take back what’s rightfully ours. The Demonican James Polk campaigned on that slogan, then traitorously compromised for the 49th parallel.

Righting that wrong just happens to take in a good chunk of the Alberta Oil Sands. I’m betting they go for all and change the boundary demand to ’60-40 of Fight!’ Snappy, eh?

Highest Life Form?

As an agnostic, I’m unsure of the existence of a Supreme Being turning the crank. But if there is one, he’s got to be fucking Japanese.

There are 50 Trillion cells in your body. Most have a nucleus containing a folded strand of your DNA. Straighten out that single strand and it’s 6 feet long.

So the Supreme Being has to one Origami folding mother fucker to fold 6 feet into one cell and 55+ Million miles of DNA into your body. Has to be Japanese.

All that DNA is organized into pairs of chromosomes.  Fruit flies have 4 pairs, a banana 11, a Rhesus monkey 21, and finally humans with 23 pairs of chromosomes.

Y’all jes might assume from that, the more chromosomes, the higher the life form.

Lets continue and see what the highest life form is. Chimpanzees have 24 pairs (WTF!?!) Cows have 30 (WTFF!?!) and chickens  have 39 pairs (WTFFFFFFF!?!).

Does this mean Foghorn Leghorn is the planet’s highest life form?