Archive for September, 2007
Rhapsody: Not Music to My Ears
You would think I’d know better than to mess with anything related to Real.
So if you didn’t know, Rhapsody (the music subscription service by Real), Verizon, and URGE (Microsoft’s music store) have merged recently (read more here). Well, I’ve always had issues with RealPlayer—it’s buggy, slow, and a resource hog—but I figured I’d give the Rhapsody store a spin.
They were offering a free 30-day trial on their site. You sign up, give them your payment information, and you have 30 days to cancel before you get charged the $15/month. Okay, sure, I’ve done this before plenty of times with other services, why not? So I sign up, and download the software.
Okay, not the nicest looking player, tried too hard on the shiny, glossy effect. Sorry guys, Apple does it better. Anyway, so I go in and download a few albums, then go listen to some radio stations, and it’s all pretty cool. However, I have an iPod, and subscription tracks aren’t supported on it. I knew that going in, of course, but after giving it some thought and realizing I really don’t download that much music, I figured it wasn’t worth continuing with, and so I went to go cancel my subscription.
Yeah, this was the fun part.
So I log on to the website, and go to My Account. I hunt through a few menus on there until I find a button that says “Cancel Subscription”. Great! One click, and I’ll be done, right? If only.
So I click “Cancel Subscription”, and I’m greeted with this lovely screen:
To cancel your subscription, please call us at 1-866-597-5465.
Thank you,
Real Customer Support
Wait, what? Why do I have to ca—ah, forget it, it’s no big deal. So I give them a call, and am again greeted with one of the most bizarre, but not completely unexpected, messages on a support line. “Due to an extremely high number of calls (let’s not forget this is a Sunday afternoon), wait times may be as long as ten minutes. You might want to try calling back some other time.”
What happened to “Your call is very important to us; Please continue to hold”?
So I set my phone on Speakerphone, and listen to the crappy elevator music for the next EIGHT MINUTES. Finally, someone from India picks up, and asks for my email address. Two minutes later, I’m finished repeating myself for the tenth time, and he gets my name, and all that information. Then he puts me on hold again. More elevator music.
He comes back, and the dialogue goes something like this:
CSR: “So how are you doing this morning?”
Me: “Fine I guess, I just need to cancel my account.”
CSR: “Can I ask why you wish to cancel?”
Me: “I just don’t have any plans to use it”
CSR: “Well, what features was it that you were needing?”
Me: “I – nothing, I just don’t want to use it”
CSR: “Did it not work correctly? Was there something we can help with?”
Me: “NO. I just need to cancel my account.”
CSR: “So, were you just not happy with the software, or was there any other issues with it?”
Me: *sigh* “No, just cancel my account.”
CSR: “Okay, give me just a couple of minutes here…Okay, I have cancelled your subscription, but it will not expire until Oct. 10. Were you happy with your call experience today?”
Me: “Well, no, not really. I’d much rather I could do this online, since I can easily sign up online, but yeah, sure, it’s fine now.”
CSR: (insert generic conclusive greeting)
Why do they have to make it so dang difficult to cancel with them anyway? I sent them an email afterwards, after I hunted it down off the website (conveniently hidden away off of the main page), basically comparing them to AOL. Meh, I guess just take it as a heads-up, and don’t bother with their software unless you plan to stick with it.
Total Call Time: 15m 28s.
Who Is Chris and Why is He Here?
All of you down in the Cullman to Birmingham, AL area probably have noticed the several billboards along Hwy 31 and along the interstate that simply read “Who is Chris and Why is He Here?” There is no other explanation or anything else written along with it, simply white text on a blue background. I’ll see if I can add a picture along with it later.
After doing some Google searching on it, I’ve found a few other blogs that refer to this, and list them here:
http://lazyside.wordpress.com/2007/08/28/who-is-chris-why-is-he-here/
http://speakerwiggin.livejournal.com/433867.html
Also, there is a website with this simple statement as well:
So I did a WHOIS lookup on the registrant of the site, and got this information:
Whois info for, wicawihh.com:
Registrant:
OHSI, inc.
4558 S. Shades Crest Rd.
Bessemer, AL 35022
US
Domain name: WICAWIHH.COM
Administrative Contact:
Floyd, Andy
US
I haven’t called him or anything, or emailed, though I probably will later on, just because I’m curious. If anyone else would like to chime in (or even make the call) and figure out what this is on about, go for it!
UPDATE: Okay, so I sent Andy an e-mail, and got a response:
Sadly it’s not me – I got the domains after seeing ONE billboard and
getting an idea – I did extensive research and found NOTHING on it so
I thought it was safe – then like hte next week i heard about a ton more…STILL don’t know what it is, but I heard from one person who said
they heard it was just some new billboard salesman trying to sell
billboard space… but i’m not 100% on that.
So the hunt goes on. Even so, I’m pretty sure it’s just a marketing thing from Lamar. That’s what I first thought, anyway, I always see their ads on bulletin boards on the interstate, but they typically have a contact number or website at least. We should know by Friday for sure, anyway.
UPDATE AGAIN: Okay, so it’s just a salesman from Lamar trying to drum up business. Way to kill the mystery, dude! *sigh* So I guess just keep waiting–eventually something interesting will happen in Cullman, haha.
