David Pitkin

I have had a new habit of writing a blog post and then never posting it. This trend might continue and it might not but at least I will have shared.

This sob story goes back to a simple misplaced debit card when we had some rooms in the house painted a few months ago. I called the bank and canceled it, no problem. A few weeks later the internet did not work at home, this was the first time I think that my Verizon FiOS service had been down. A day later I called in the evening and was told my account was not active and I would have to call back during regular hours.

I called the next morning, turns out I was without internet because the card which Verizon tried to charge (the lost and cancelled debit card) had been declined. In response to this my account was closed and canceled. Strange but that’s how the “system” worked, it was easy enough to turn back on, or so I thought. This all seemed fine two days without internet, a crazy system at Verizon that seemed to make now sense, but no harm no foul and the internet would be back on by the time I got home.

I got a mysterious phone call on my mobile last week from the number “00000000000” in caller ID, it said my bill was in error and to call Verizon, I checked and we paid verizon 80 dollars on the new credit card just last week I attempted to call but both my phone numbers home and mobile took me down total dead ends in their automated phone tree, when using the old home number, the phone tree actually told me that my account was final and then hung up on me.

Two days ago I received a letter that I owed Verizon $31.46 and that it would be sent to an outside collection agency! All this without ever recieving a paper bill. Ugh, so I would have to deal with this. . .

Again both my numbers took me along dead ends, my home phone number is on a final account and my mobile number would take me to a automated recording where I was always informed to call back during business hours even during business hours.

The 4th try through a frustrating 5 minute automated call I gave up and just started saying “no”, “no” at all voice prompts after about 4 tries it gave up and let me go forward without my phone number! Huzzah! I could talk to a person.

The first representative Mrs. Dillon was not sympathetic to my cause. She informed me that she could not take care of the bill that it would be fastest for me to talk to the collection agency! I said sure, I just needed to know their name and also can we cancel my account. No way am I going to keep giving them 50 bucks a month for this service, I can switch to cable EASY.

Well that call did not go well, I was accused of being sarcastic, and put on hold for long periods of time, I am sure Mrs. Dillon did not want to deal with me. The end result was I was given a $3.50 credit to cover the cost of the automated bill payment transaction charge and transferred to the automated payment system. I entered in my account number as provided by Mrs. Dillon and the next prompt required my invoice number!!!! I had never seen an invoice!!

Okay so hung up, called again and fought the first voice prompt. I only had two things to do, one find out the invoice number and cancel my account, I could call Charter and have new service and give up on this craziness, and be a happier person.

Well Carol in the Tauton office was a super star!!! She just credited the old account the 31 bucks so I wouldn’t have to deal with a collection agency and even offered to credit the activation fee that I had been charged during the inadvertent disconnect. The Verizon system breaks this charge up over 3 periods meant she wrote on her calendar to do the credit next month so I did not have to call, that’s above and beyond. I also learned that because I only have internet and not TV or Telephone I can’t get any paper invoices so as a warning if you have FiOS only there is a little bit of a loophole that I fell in, I never saw that invoice and I was locked out of the “final” account, we laughed about it a little and I checked how much it would cost for phone service so I could get a paper bill.

Cliff Notes: Verizon FiOS has complicated bureaucratic systems you can get caught in, and my only hope is that they keep people like Carol in Tauton to clean up.

My new browser homepage is Umair’s “How to Build a Next-Gen Business Now”. Reading the comments I found this amazing gem, hope you like it even 5% as much as I do:

Open innovation and Nokia Philosophy, Dr. Bob Iannucci, CTO of Nokia and Head of Nokia Research Center. from DevilsRejection on Vimeo.

[edit] the peak oil title was lame

I love my energy detective. It is a display that shows our household electricity usage converted to $/kWH all the time. My favorite usage so far is checking when I leave the house to ensure that the usage is below 0.10$/Hour, if its higher we forgot something left on. I wanted to share the Groton Electric settings for it… if you pay your bill early (10% discount included)

Tiered Rates T1 (0-500 kWh) = 0.0612 + 0.0088 + 0.03157 + 0.01842 – 0.0126 = 0.10739 T2 (>500kWh) = 0.0717 + 0.0088 + 0.03157 + 0.01842 -0.0126 = 0.11789 Annual Charge = 0 Fixed Monthly = 0 Min. Monthy = 5.62 Tax Rate = 0%

My meter is read on the 23rd of each month, all this information was easily available from Groton Electric

A few pictures of installing mine, don’t forget that the red dots on the clamps need to be on in the same direction.

I wonder where this blog now belongs… I could upgrade Typo to the latest version, which would fix some interactions. I could turn it into the new trendy thing which is a lifestream like Jaiku. When I started the blog if you had something you wanted to publish online it was not easy. Now with Twitter/Facebook/FriendFeed/Google Reader I can pretty quickly share an idea and get lots of feedback without the overhead of a blog post.

It has begun, the special sauce that was facebook is fading. Things like not sending the content of a message or a wall post to your email box and just sending a link to the information on the site has now changed, due to user feedback.

via: Publishing 2.0

This allows me to interact with the real world and the internet in a great way, even better is if at that link I can leave a comment, or imagine the GPS coordinates where I found the link.

The address book/activity stream/presence will be a foundation of a great application, in this category plaxo has some strenght but being able to resolve/sync find conflicts between your IM, facebook, linkedin, mobile and email contact list will really start to make the mainstream user enabled by this technology instead of being overwhelmed.

I thought I would throw this up after seeing it on Thoughtfix. This is my bag for the Web 2.0 summit, I try to pack super light which is why I also like my N95 so much. I think the DS might get left in the car at the airport but we will see. I hate running out of juice hence the inflightpower gizmo and the CA-100 chargers. I also debated taking my MacBook but the NINE hours of battery in my work laptop wins out for a cross country journey. I would need four batteries to get that out of this notebook computer. Wish me luck and you can follow on jaiku. I wish I had an invite to the Nokia breakfast, anyone know anyone who will be there?