It turns out my account has not been credited as I had been promised nearly a week ago.  She was able to tell me that there were notes on my account from the supervisor that had called me back on Tuesday and left me her desk number.  The note said she hadn’t noticed the credit I told her I was supposed to be receiving and that she was investigating it further and planned to call me regarding it.  So I’m left waiting for her to call me back.  It is good that she’s attempting to be proactive about it, but it’s too little too late I’m afraid.  I told the person I was speaking with that I wanted to go ahead and cancel my phone and cable internet service.  You’ll never guess what she said … that’s right, I had to be transferred to someone that could help me with that.  Heh, I should have known that one was coming.

Anyhow, I got the two services cancelled, and I’m considering canceling the entire account.  I can use my AppleTV to get HD movies, and I can use Netflix/iTunes to get TV series when they hit DVD.  It’s beyond poor customer service now, and is well in the land of absurd.

Comcast … /sigh

On the upside, DSL has been installed.  Amazingly it has, so far at least, been nothing but a pleasant experience.  I called in to order it, no problems there (although that’s nothing special, they’re always GREAT at customer service when trying to sell you something).  The guy came out to install it in my house.  He was pleasant, and actually fun to talk to.  We had minor difficulties getting the activation program to run on my MacBook, but then we ran it on my PC and things went through quickly.  My router was acting up, likely because we’d been flipping it between computers and shutting it on and off so much, so I let him go before I had it working with my router.  Shortly after he left I got the router working and called into technical support to get some help with making it work with my DSL modem.  They had no problem with the fact I wanted to get it working with a router.  The phone support simply asked me for the model on my cable modem and the model on my router, and quickly guided me through the steps on both devices (yeah, he even knew every place I needed to click in my routers config) and things were working great.  I get the full bandwidth on it (luckily I’m near a central office apparently, which I didn’t know until the installation guy told me) and things have been smooth so far.

So, I’d have to say, two thumbs up for Verizon and their DSL service.  I’m even considering getting phone service from them now.  However, two thumbs down on Comcast.  They’re having trouble even keeping my cable TV account at the moment.

I had originally hired Starving Students to do the move for me. I had scheduled the move with them in March. The local office was supposed to call me about two weeks before the move in order to get the specifics, confirm the date & time, etc. Well, about 1 week before the move, I still hadn’t heard from them so I called the local office. They said I was in the system but had been canceled for some reason. “Luckily” they still had room for me on the day I had planned to move, so he went ahead and uncanceled me and proceeded to go over the pricing. Most of it was what I’d already been told. It would have a 2 hour minimum, 1 hour on top of that, $75/hr, and then he told me there’d also be a 9.5% charge on top of the total cost for fuel. The fuel charge really didn’t make sense to me. I just don’t understand why a percentage on the total move would be added for fuel. Makes no sense in my opinion.

Luckily, I had talked to a neighbor a night or so before and he told me about a company he was using, Kid Gloves Moving & Storage. He said they’d treated him well and worked really fast. I called them and scheduled my move. That was one, of few good decisions I made through-out the process I later learned. They were great. They had told me to be ready to let them start moving me by 8am. They arrived at 7:50am, took a quick look around the apartment and started taking action. It was 3 guys, and none of them stopped moving until everything was packed. They followed me over to the new place, took a quick look at the inside, and then they started moving me in. They were finished moving me by 9:45am. That’s just shy of 2 hours for a cross-town move. No walls were touched, no items were broken, they were extremely professional.

The only hitch in the actual move itself was that the box spring for my bed couldn’t fit upstairs. So for the past week I’ve been trying different remedies. For the first couple of nights I just put the mattress on the floor. Then I had some slats cut for the bed, but they were constantly falling out (which can be quite loud on a hardwood floor). Then finally I found a bed store close by that was able to sell me a split-queen box spring. So tonight, basically a week after moving, I will finally be sleeping in a real bed. I’m pretty excited about that.

Until Friday (2 days ago), I was unable to get WiFi up in my new home. I’ve determined that Comcast is perfect example of how evil corporations can become in this country. When the technician came out to my house to do the “install” he was rushing everything. He also had obviously not been told anything about why he was at my home. I had all of my equipment, it was just a transfer of service. I even had everything hooked up, all he should have really needed to do is “flip the switch” that gave my home service, and then verify that everything worked. Well, in his impatience, he decided to swap my cable modem, because the one I already had was taking too long to sync up (he gave it all of about 1 minute max). Well, he swapped it out, we finally got it to sync, and plugged it into my Macbook, and with a little playing around, it was able to surf the web. Shortly after he left. I figured it would be no problem to then get it working with my wireless router. After all, I’m a pretty resourceful guy when it comes to “computer stuff” and all that. Well, my router couldn’t pull an IP off the cable modem. So for the past week I have had to take my laptop over to my cable modem and plug it in directly whenever I wanted on the internet for something (pretty much all the time). I tried all sorts of things, powering everything down, bringing it up one device at a time, making sure things were powered off for the “10 count”, all the typical trouble shooting stuff including making sure my router was cloning my Macbook’s MAC address.

Well, Friday night, I’d had enough. Thursday before I went to bed I had unplugged and powered off every device. When I came home Friday, I slowly turned on each device, giving each device some time to “boot” before bringing the next item on. It still wouldn’t pull an IP. So I called customer service. Ugh, I’m still so flustered from the experience that I don’t think I can explain it all here. Basically, I ended up having to call in 6 times before I finally was able to talk to a supervisor. No one was able to help me. While on the phone all night with them, it magically started working somehow. I have no idea what finally allowed it to happen

Basically, I’ve asked them to credit my account for 1 months worth of service (roughly $200) and I intend to seek out services to replace all things I’m currently paying Comcast for. I’ve had nothing but poor experiences with them for the past year, and I pay them way too much money each month to put up with it. I imagine I’ll just be outright canceling my home phone service, and I’m going to see if I can get DSL to replace the cable modem. As for television, FiOS isn’t offered in my area yet, so I may try to check out some of the Dish Network-ish type providers and see if I can replace them there as well. I just see no need to be paying so much money per month for what can’t even be called sub-standard customer support. It disgusts me.

I want my Daily Show back :(

(via xkcd)

It doesn’t annoy me that the story is being told, it annoys me that the story is there to be told.  Music companies in particular, and companies across all industries need to learn not to bite the hand that feeds them. It’s not the artists that feed them, it’s not iTunes that feed them, it is the consumers buying the music.  Stop pissing on us or sooner or later, we’re going to take away that multi-million dollar roof sheltering you from the outdoors and the fine foods that you eat (yeah, I’m being dramatic, I know).

To say that one language is better than the other is meaningless. Better in what way? The question should always be asked in a particular context.

I definitely agree, in general, I’m just tired of language vs. language debates … more on that in a moment.

I don’t want to talk about the ads, though, because they have their own agenda and it certainly doesn’t match mine.

Works for me, but keep in mind that most of my original post was working towards making the point that the video’s were doing an apples to oranges comparison of PHP (minus framework) to Ruby on Rails. Jeremy and I disagreed on the validity of this comparison.

For me, that’s why I am using open-source tools in the first place.

…

For me, the bulk of my language preference comes from language philosophy.

…

but for my tastes, I appreciate the additional power that Ruby metaprogramming allows.

These are some key points that I can agree with, but again, more on that in a moment…

PHP =~ COBOL is not an analogy I would make, but at the same time I’d urge you to consider your claim “You’ll always be taking over a Java project or a .NET project or a PHP project” in light of COBOL, or FORTRAN, or VAX or any other platform that’s been a dominant success in the past. Current popularity is no guarantee of future popularity. In our industry, better mousetraps are ruthlessly adopted.

I totally agree, as I even said, I can see PHP going by the wayside one day, but today is not that day, and I still believe it’s extremely premature to be concerning myself with but so much. It seemed Jeremy was arguing that Ruby on Rails projects are more easily taken over, so my counterpoint was simply that RoR, like any other language, is not likely to be so widely adopted that his point would ever really become something you could rely on. Just to be sure I’m clear, I’m saying that it is unlikely that RoR will become so widespread that you can count on commonly taking over other RoR projects. This is not me slamming RoR, the same statement could be made in the direction of PHP, .NET, etc. You’ll always be taking over projects built on other platforms. Even as a PHP developer I experience this commonly. Just the other day I had to take over a .NET project and we chose to redo it in PHP for various reasons. I hope that’s clear, and if it’s not I wish someone would ask the questions I need to answer to make it clear.

If your focus, like in your last paragraph, is only on user experience (by which I think you mean developer experience), then language preference may truly not matter. But if your focus as a developer is on avoiding future “forced” language changes, then it might make more sense to attempt to determine which new technologies might eventually usurp the old. My claim is that Ruby and Rails are better positioned to do so that PHP and its framework set.

Ok, finally to the point I kept putting off above. I actually was not speaking of developer experience. I was speaking of end-user experience, the folks that visit our websites. THEIR experience is what matters in the end. PHP, RoR, .NET, etc are all capable of providing similar, if not identical user experiences. So if I prefer to provide that user experience with PHP, using mainly procedural based programming, then why not? If you want to do so with RoR, or any other platform, then more power to you. As you indicated, there are things about RoR that make you prefer it over PHP. I see no problem with that. But to say those ways are better then mine, if achieving a particular user experience is the ultimate measure, is sort of pointless, unless you disagree that the languages are capable of producing similar/identical experiences.

I also want to comment on the fact that it seems in these conversations I keep getting pegged as being resistant to change, not eager to learn new languages, etc. To be blunt, it’s pissing me off. I’ve lost count of the languages that at some point I’ve been well-versed in, let alone the languages I’ve “dabbled” in. Just because I’m not actively learning RoR at the moment, does not mean that I think PHP is Gods gift to programming nor does it mean that I am resistant to new languages as a whole. PHP has its flaws. One day it will be replaced (just like .NET, RoR, and even Java) but I don’t think that day is tomorrow or the day after, so I don’t feel pressure to move on yet. I think RoR is doing some great things for the development community as a whole. Some things I see in RoR, I adopt in PHP. That kind of thing is good for all of us. But again, just because I don’t choose to use RoR, doesn’t mean that if something else came along I wouldn’t take the time to consider how it might could benefit me. At some point I’m sure I’ll re-assess RoR, and who knows, maybe I’ll dive in. Right now, it just doesn’t make sense for me to.

Akismet has caught 17,491 spam for you since you first installed it.

That number is growing at an increasing rate too. For instance, about 1 month ago, it was only around 4-5,000. It’s just sort of sickening. It’s to the point where some of the comments/trackbacks are getting through. Given how many it’s killing, I’m not overly upset about it though I guess. That’s a pretty good ratio.

I just wish it wasn’t a problem at all.

Are we (programmers, developers, engineers) still really having these debates? Give me a break. Java vs. .NET, Java vs. PHP, .NET vs. PHP, now Ruby on Rails vs. PHP.

The other day, Jeremy, sent me these. They’re a series of videos created by Ruby on Rails fans, basically comparing PHP vs. Rails. I watched the videos and told Jeremy something along the lines of, “they’re funny, but they’re not really a valid comparison of the languages.” I’ll be honest, I’m too lazy to look up his initial response, but at some point he told me, “they’re entirely valid comparisons.”

My main point was that if you only compare based on what the video’s show, PHP is capable of doing everything Rails is, although the videos, if you knew nothing about the two languages, would lead you to believe that wasn’t the case. I conceded the point that at least to some extent, Rails would win when it comes to Migrations. But even that, you can mimic in some way for PHP, but it might not be QUITE as easily done. You can, without much trouble in fact, abstract your database from your code, you can do MVC, you can do OOP (in fact PHP5 has greatly extended OOP in PHP).

Then I allowed myself to be pulled into the language vs. language debate (although he will most likely claim that somehow we weren’t having a language vs. language debate). It was all quite silly … on both sides if I’m being entirely honest.

I like the fact that PHP will let me put together a quick script without having to go through MVC/OOP/etc etc if that’s all I want to do. I like that it doesn’t make assumptions about how I’m going to set things up, I also like that if I want to get very structured, or even apply a framework, I can. He believes that the fact that Rails forces (force is my word, he would most likely say it just makes a certain way so easy why would you choose another) you into a structure is a plus for the language/framework. He even went on to say/imply that a language that didn’t force that was inferior.

Some of the silliness came in to play later. For instance I think some of the helpers and whatnot available in Rails, while lowering the entrance barrier for new programmers, also create lazy programmers that don’t actually know how things are actually being done, or why it is being done that way. It was silly because earlier in the discussion I had argued that just because PHP allows sloppy code to be written, doesn’t mean the language is at fault, the programmer is at fault. I still don’t really back off of either of my points, I guess that line is just a little fuzzy for me. But I will admit that I could see how me arguing it one direction in one instance then flipping could be seen as odd.

Then later he made the comment that one of the problems in our discussions was we were comparing PHP (the language) to Rails (a framework). That being silly because everything up to that point, and past that point was and continued to be comparing PHP to Rails. Somewhere along the lines I asked if we were comparing PHP to Ruby or PHP to Ruby on Rails. Because if we were comparing PHP to Ruby, the videos were just nonsense. If we were comparing to Rails then we’d need to introduce Cake or Code Igniter on the PHP side, which would again make the videos invalid. He, in some fashion, agreed. Not sure why we continued from there, but we did.

He argued that the great thing about working within the framework and doing things the easiest/forced way was good for when picking up projects from others. My opinion is, you can easily setup standards and processes to create maintainable code within your organization regardless of your chosen language. So that leaves us with having to deal with picking up projects from outside developers. If you think that enough development firms are going to pick up one language so that when acquiring projects from another development firm that it will be easier because it’s written in your language, you’re living in a dream world.

Somewhere he brought up that he thinks PHP programmers are eventually going to go the way of the mainframe programmer, using COBOL as an example. Honestly, one day, that will probably be the case, but good grief that is a premature statement. There are organizations that would label PHP as cutting edge (I wouldn’t agree, but regardless, me myself and I are not the majority), not to mention the large number of large sites running PHP (Wikipedia, Digg, Facebook just to name a few), and Yahoo’s involvement in the community. I would say PHP is still growing, if not exploding. It’s hardly the time to be making funeral arrangements.

So anyhow, I think I’m done ranting about this, but needed to throw it out there. Just to be clear, I think Ruby and Ruby on Rails are great. I consider them powerful tools for development and have not and will not ever consider someone silly for wanting to learn them, nor will I think that my tool-set (PHP + framework or no framework) are somehow superior. I know the language vs. language debate is not going to end here and now. It never will. But, GAH! I’m sick of it. Use what you want to use. User experience is what ultimately matters and they’re all capable of providing similar if not exactly alike experiences. Anyone who disagrees with that needs to come out of their cave.

In short, your customer service is horrible.

On Sunday, March 25th, I placed an order/reservation on your website for 1 17′ Truck, 1 dolly, 1 hand truck, 10 small boxes, 10 medium boxes, and 10 large boxes. Later that afternoon I received a call from a local U-Haul. The lady on the phone confirmed my truck reservation date and pick up time. I asked her if she knew how I would go about getting my boxes. She said, “the internet orders, I don’t know. We don’t know how that works.” I sort of chuckled to myself, remembering my customer service training where I was taught that “I don’t know” is never an acceptable response to a customer, but simply said, “ok,” figuring I could call the toll-free number on my internet receipt and get things straightened out. So today, March 27th, I call the 888 number located on the bottom of my receipt. They tell me that they didn’t have any record of my order for boxes, but if I took in my internet print-out, I could pick them up at any local U-Haul location. So I went to do just that. I figured I would go to the location that had confirmed my truck reservation.

I arrive at the storefront and track down someone to help me (the store was completely empty). She tells me that she’s not sure, but seems to be willing to help out. So she calls, as best as I can tell, the regional office, I later heard her refer to it as “Traffic.” She does this on the speakerphone. The lady on the phone tells her to allow me to pick up my boxes, and they hang up. Then she calls the number right back and says she didn’t understand how that would work. Since I wasn’t giving her money, it would look like 30 boxes had disappeared from her inventory. That made sense to me, at least to ask the question. The lady on the phone says that she had asked someone else in the office and they said the same thing. The lady in the store asked if she could speak to a supervisor, but they had all gone home. The lady in the store calls another number and speaks to someone else who tells her my card hadn’t been charged, but they didn’t exchange any reference numbers or anything, the guy she was speaking to knew nothing about my specific order, and I was standing there with a sheet of paper that showed the dollar amounts and showed an amount that it said would be billed to my card. She tells me to get anything further done I’ll need to call 1-800-GO-UHAUL. So I left to do that from my car.

While sitting in my car, on hold waiting for a representative, a gentleman comes out of the storefront and tells me that in the store they would like to speak to me on a conference call. So I go back in and am put on the phone with what I later find out is the 888 number at the bottom of my receipt. She looks up my reference number and says she has no record of the boxes. I asked her, “Well I’m standing here with a piece of paper that shows the whole order, so what do I need to do?” Her response was, “I’ve done my job.” I almost lost it. If I had not been in your storefront I can assure you, that she would have had a new orifice by the time I was done with her. I asked to speak to a supervisor, she said she was the supervisor. I told her that I wanted to speak with a manager or someone above her and she said that would not be possible. I told her that just won’t work and that I was getting led in circles and that something needed to be done to straighten this situation out, and that I couldn’t believe this was all going on. She responded, “I’m sorry you feel that way.”

So I leave the store again to call the number on my print-out. It’s the same lady from the paragraph above. I told her to transfer me to someone that could do something to help me. I’m assuming at this point that she transferred me to 1-800-GO-UHAUL. I get a representative on the phone and tell him that “I am having trouble with an order/reservation and that I’m having a very bad experience with Customer Service.” I explain the story up to the present with him and he tells me I need to speak with the regional office first. I ask for his supervisor and he says I need to go through the chain of command. I told him with all the circles I had been put through that that was ridiculous. We finally argue down to the point that I asked him for the number because he said he couldn’t transfer me to the number (funny since he later transferred me to a different number). Once he’s given me the number I realize it is the same 888 number that was on my printout. He sort of stops and places me on hold for a minute or two. Then comes back but doesn’t say anything, as I can hear the other customer service rep’s trying to get what I assume are other customers to also call the regional office. Then I hear the phone go back to being on hold for another minute or so. Then he comes back on the line and says he’ll transfer me to someone who can assist me.

I get on the phone with that person and they tell me that my card hasn’t been charged and that I would need to go into the U-Haul store and purchase the boxes. At that point I was just livid. I couldn’t even take it anymore. I had been standing in the parking lot of one of your storefronts for 45-60 minutes and I’d had enough. So I went back in the store and purchased the boxes, figuring that if I later see a charge from you on my credit card I’ll demand a refund or dispute the charge and file a charge-back.

I have most definitely had bad customer service experiences in the past, and I’m certain that I’ll have more in the future, but I cannot recall another time where within a confined time period I had the same business tell me:
- I don’t know
- I’ve done my job
- There’s nothing more I can do
- You’ll have to talk to so-and-so at this number, and no I can’t transfer you

This is completely insane. I can’t wait for my move to be over, I only wish I could say it was out of excitement for the move. Unfortunately at this point, it is largely so I can put behind me having to deal with such poor customer service. As I’ve said, in my training through the years I’ve learned that “I don’t know” is not an acceptable response, and that displeased customers are more likely to tell a larger number of people about their poor experience then a customer which had a good experience. I can assure you, that I will gladly explain my experience to anyone I have the opportunity to, and give them detailed reasons as to why they should NOT use U-Haul. At this point I am hoping that I can locate another truck company and cancel my U-Haul reservation. There is NO excuse for me to have had this experience.

Update: Well, I received a call from the local U-Haul manager today (for the store I had visited).  She apologized in all kinds of ways for my experience, but didn’t seem to know the answer to my original question either (whether I should have been able to just pick up my boxes, or they were being shipped to me).  She did give me her name and told me when she would be in over the next week or so, and told me that if I was double charged or needed something further, that I should give her a call.

When I got home this evening, I had 2 boxes full of boxes waiting for me.  It turns out my card had been charged and they had shipped them to me.  This is a great service for moving, but frustrating that at all levels of Customer Service I spoke to, no one knew this was how the operation worked, and not only did they not know, bust some INSISTED that my card had not been charged and I needed to still purchase the boxes.

Hopefully tomorrow I’ll be able to speak with the manager again and if I can have it “my way,” I’ll go for taking the shipped boxes and my receipt from yesterday in and have them just refund yesterdays purchase.  If that or something really close to it doesn’t happen … well, you can expect another rant here I imagine.

Large corporations are really sucking these days. I wonder if these will teach them any lessons? Somehow I doubt it, since most of the time it’s only a slap on the wrist at best that is being sought in the suit.

And honestly, there are many small corporations that aren’t doing much better then their big brothers.