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The Gripe Line | Ed Foster

May 13, 2008

Suing Sony

May 08, 2008

Apple Leaves Hawaiian Investor in the Cold

You'd think a technology company would be able to figure out an online system to allow all of its investors to cast their proxy votes. But one reader reports that for years he's been unable to participate in proxy voting for Apple's annual meeting, apparently because he resides in Hawaii.

The reader recently copied me on a letter he wrote to Steve Jobs, Apple investor relation, and InvestorVote.com. The letter read:

"I spent 20 minutes on the phone today trying to reach you, but neither I nor the friendly folks in your tech support department had any luck. A few years ago I moved to Hawaii, and unfortunately InvestorVote.com, the company which handles your annual meeting proxy cards thinks it is amusing to send the materials to Hawaiian investors a few weeks late! I don't find this funny at all."

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May 06, 2008

Riding the Autorenewal Express

Do credit card companies protect their customers from online services that automatically renew annual subscriptions without clear notice, or do they collude with vendors to keep the transaction fees flowing? As autorenewals by security software vendors and others become increasingly common, we need to know whose side our financial institutions are on.

Credit card companies are coming under increased scrutiny for unfair and deceptive practices these days, so it's a good time to look at the role they play in autorenewal situations. And some very pertinent questions in that regard were raised by readers in response to my recent story about automatic renewal of Spyware Doctor subscriptions. In that case, the reader was told by an American Express representative that automatic renewals of all kinds of subscriptions are now the "norm" and thus not open to dispute even if the customer didn't get proper notice during the original transaction.

Some readers thought it was to be expected that the credit card companies would more

May 02, 2008

Comcast gets nominated for worst ToS

OK, so my challenge to readers last week to find a worse ToS (Terms of Service) than Dilbert.com's looks like it's going to be pretty easy. We've already got one very worthy candidate recently pointed out by a reader: Comcast's broadband subscriber agreement.

"In my area Comcast is my broadband provider of choice and recently I happened to read some of their terms of service document for their High Speed Internet (HSI) service," the reader wrote. "To my amazement, I learned if you accept the Comcast TOS, you give up all rights to privacy of your email and anything else that is content. They not only can access everything you send using the Service and can publish it on the Internet if they so desire! Sounds unbelievable, right? But it's true:"

more

April 29, 2008

Taxing Software Experiences

Every year I try to publish all the significant gripes I get about tax software before April 15th, in the hopes it will keep some last-minute tax filers from choosing the wrong program. But, except for one short piece we had about H&R Block's TaxCut earlier this year, that proved impossible as the complaints about the 2007 tax-year software flooded in. And it wasn't going to help to weed out the bad apples anyway, because it seemed like just about all of the programs came in for criticism on support, accuracy, or even privacy grounds. So instead, I gave myself an extension and now file this late return on the 2007 tax programs for future reference.

As is the case every year, the largest number of complaints concerned Intuit's TurboTax. "This year TurboTax got my Massachusetts state return flat wrong, and I had to do something that's probably illegal to avoid being cheated out of $60," one reader wrote. "I'm a federal employee under the old Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS), which is not under Social Security. My CSRS withholding is shown on my W2 in a different box than Social Security, Medicare, etc. In the past, TurboTax added the amounts in the two boxes for MA returns, so there was no problem. Not this year - it just left out my CSRS deductions. I tried manually adjusting the correct line in the MA form -- no dice. When I tried to e-file the state, TurboTax informed me that MA accepted only the amount shown in more

April 25, 2008

Terms of Ridicule

Dilbert is a great comic strip, always good for a laugh. In fact, as one reader points out, there are even a few chuckles in Dilbert.com's Terms of Use.

"Hey, Ed, I know how you love nonsensical, stupid, and impossible EULAs and Terms of Service," the reader wrote. "Well, I've got a priceless one for you, and from a sorta unlikely source. Check out this paragraph:"

"You must be 13 years of age to use the Web Site and if not of majority (18 in most states) your parents must complete your registration and supervise your use."

The reader puzzled over more

April 22, 2008

Sneakwrapped Medical Forms

We are all increasingly inured to the daily assaults various institutions make on our rights and privacy through the sneakwrap terms in their forms, mail stuffers, warranties, monthly statements, etc. But some medical patients in one metropolis that will remain nameless are just a little safer today from such outrages because of one reader who read the fine print, took the time to think about it, and then said no.

Like many of us of a certain age, the reader had been told by his doctor that a colonoscopy was in order. "Included with my preparation information was a one-page form from a genetics institute that I'd never heard of asking for my family's medical regarding several types of cancer," the reader wrote. "OK, even as a layman, I can understand how such information might be pertinent to this procedure. The form also asked for my name, date of birth, address, phone number, and Social Security number. Then near the bottom it said: more

April 18, 2008

A Genuine Microsoft mistake

Mistakes happen. But when software publishers make mistakes with their anti-piracy programs, it always seems to be the users who pay the price. That's certainly been the case with Microsoft's Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) program throughout its less-than-illustrious history, and now a new pilot program for Office Genuine Advantage (OGA) Notifications nagware has started off on the wrong foot.

On April 15th, a day when many of us are busy enough as it is, a reader saw a "critical update" for Microsoft Office in Windows Software Update Services (WSUS). As he always tries to keep the Windows and Office users at his company up-to-date, he started to download it until he saw it was something called Office Genuine Advantage Notifications (KB949810). The reader is familiar with OGA and was certain all of his Office installations were good, but he also knew he wanted no part of OGA Notifications.

"This is not just the Genuine check that happens when you try to download some of Microsoft's Office content from more

April 15, 2008

Sound and Fury for Dell

As long as we're on the subject of soundcards, another reader recently had an issue over a Sound Blaster board. But his problem wasn't with Creative - it was in trying to get Dell to send him the $99 card that he'd paid for rather than a cheaper unit. And what's really remarkable is the amount of noise he had to make just to accomplish that seemingly simple objective.

"I purchased a brand new XPS-420 with all the trimmings from Dell for $3,000 cash," the reader wrote. "The problems began when, after reformating the drive to remove all the bloatware, I tried to install the driver for the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic soundcard I paid Dell $99 for. I tried the driver on the Dell CD that came with the computer and it would not work. I got error message stating: 'Setup is unable to detect a supported product on your system. Please ensure that your product is properly installed before running this setup program. Setup will exit.' Next, I went to the Dell website to the driver section customized for my XPS-420. I downloaded the driver for the soundcard, tried to install it, and again got the same error message. I downloaded and installed all the other drivers they had there. None of them would work. Then I went to the Creative website and downloaded more

April 11, 2008

Getting Creative with crippleware

If you discovered a device driver was malfunctioning and published a fix, you might assume the manufacturer of the product would be grateful. In very public fashion though, Creative Labs in the last few weeks has made it loud and clear that users who tinker with their drivers risk being shouted down. As far as Creative is concerned, it's not for you the user to decide how badly your Sound Blaster card will or will not function.

As he described in an e-mail to Wired.com, user Daniel Kawakami was angry when he discovered that Sound Blaster X-Fi soundcards -- advertised as being Vista-compatible -- actually had many features deliberately turned off. "Creative purposely modified the Audigy drivers to disable some features when Vista is detected and also purposely introduced some bugs to prevent some XP utilities from running," he wrote. "I did a complete analysis of the driver to determine where all the checks and bugs were introduced and started modding."

Kawakami began posting his modified drivers on Creative's forums, much to the delight of other Sound Blaster customers more

April 07, 2008

Yahoo's not getting the message

I couldn't help but shake my head a bit over today's announcement about Yahoo's plans to re-make online advertising. While I truly wish them luck, my readers keep telling me that Yahoo still has a problem with a much more basic part of the Internet -- e-mail.

Many of the readers were prompted by last year's story about how Yahoo's attempts to inhibit spam often cause more problems than they solve. "Hey, I have the same bloody issue with Yahoo's grey listing," wrote one reader recently. "Here's a dumber point though -- Roger Communications, the media giant, is tied into Yahoo so all their e-mail goes through Yahoo. Imagine how much mail they are losing. Case in point, while your communications logs show the messages eventually getting transferred to the Yahoo servers, many messages still do not make it to their intended recipient. Another one of their stupid practices is they cap the allowed recipients of any given message at five. Ask yourself how many distribution groups do you have the have more than five recipients? Like, give me a break. I think all their techs with any experience have moved on -- I've been fighting with the morons who are left for weeks!"

Yahoo's vast experience at dealing with the spammers more

April 03, 2008

HP aggravates its failure rate

It's annoying enough when you suffer a high failure rate on the PCs you're getting from a vendor. But, as one reader has recently experienced with HP, what can be vastly more aggravating is when you can't get them to tell you the solution, even though they apparently know it.

"I have some news for you regarding HP that, on one level, really isn't news...but it's still pathetic," the reader wrote. "Ten months ago one of my clients accepted delivery of 24 HP DX2200 desktop systems. We bought extended 3-year next-business-day onsite warranties for each system -- we only buy warranties because we expect a small number of failures. To date I've called in three bad motherboards, with a fourth call about to be placed later this week; plus two dead hard drives; and today, I found one hard drive on the brink of failure. That's a 25 percent failure rate."

The reader felt that such a failure rate should elicited some serious concern more

April 01, 2008

All charged up over Comcast's quadruple play

Today's announcement of CHARGES, Comcast's new home energy management system that will be combined with its TV, phone, and Internet services in a new "Quadruple Play" offering, has generated a lot of excitement. To help customers get charged up about this new service, following is a transcript from a Q&A session at Comcast's press conference.

Q: What is the CHARGES program all about?

Comcast: We see CHARGES (Comcast Harvesting Additional Revenues Generating Electricity Surcharges) as a terrific opportunity to tap the potential of our cable set-top boxes to enhance our quality of life. Oh, and maybe yours, too.

more

March 27, 2008

Logitech mouse features get shifty

Sometimes it's not clear if a vendor is deliberately promoting a feature it knows the product doesn't have, or if it just can't be bothered to change the information on its website. Such is the case with one reader who recently found the feature that led him to buy a Logitech mouse was missing.

"Last year, I happened to have a chance to use a Logitech MX Revolution mouse," the reader wrote. "I liked the feature where you could switch between free-spin and click-to-click modes by changing settings in the mouse driver software or by pressing down on the wheel. I didn't want to pay $100 for a mouse, though, and didn't need the rechargeable feature or the side thumb wheel. I saw later that an online retailer was offering a good price on a Logitech MX 620 mouse, which appeared to have the same features, except for not being rechargeable or having the thumb wheel."

The reader went to Logitech's website and studied closely the differences between more

March 24, 2008

Liquidated damages

What do you do when you're denied warranty service because the vendor claims your system was damaged by a mythical spill of some liquid? I often hear from people who know they didn't spill the milky substance they are being told has invalidated their warranty, but can't prove it. One reader in such a situation however recently found a way to get his warranty honored, and in the process made a point from the discussions we've had about the questionable value of extended warranties.

Two-and-a-half years ago the reader bought a Toshiba Satellite M45-S355 laptop and a three-year Technology Assurance Plan (TAP) extended warranty at his local CompUSA store. "Last July the system started to have a problem where it wouldn't stay powered up, so I took into the CompUSA to get it fixed under the extended warranty," the reader writes. "Four weeks later it came back, but it still had the same problem. After being on for an hour or so, it would die and it would only power on again after I took the battery out and reinserted it. This time it time it took six weeks before it was declared fixed and returned to me."

On October 22nd the reader received his laptop and discovered immediately that the system more

March 21, 2008

Autorenewal lurks in Spyware Doctor

As we recently saw, automatic subscription renewals seem to have become de rigueur for antivirus software vendors. But one reader recently discovered that the practice is creeping into the anti-spyware category as well.

"Should I be outraged or not?" the reader headed his message to me. "I purchased copies of PC Tools' Spyware Doctor several years ago, and have been satisfied with it up until last week. Instead of merely sending me a reminder to renew my one-year subscription, PC Tools took the liberty of renewing it for me and charging my credit card."

If the reader had "agreed" to the renewal in a PC Tools EULA, he wasn't aware of it. "To my knowledge, I had never been asked more

March 18, 2008

Not a class Act!

As with many readers previously (see "Some Sage Advice"), the reader wrote me earlier this year about his frustration over how Sage has handled Act since acquiring it. "After 20 years as an Act! Certified Consultant I'm hanging it up because of the current got-to-have-this-year's-version mentality of Sage. They put out buggy products and don't fix them because they are too busy with next year's release. They've left their client base in the lurch in the process. I was in the first class of Act! Certified Consultants back when Contact Software was in Dallas and have been one ever since, through today. But I am dropping the product in 2008 - at least my formal affiliation with Sage. I've had it with their total revenue mentality and their terrible end-user support from Bangalore."

Sage's apparent philosophy of bringing out a new version every year more

March 14, 2008

Reader voices: subscription scams

Magazine subscriptions have always been something of a racket, but they seem to getting worse both in scope and in the depth of their sheer fraudulent nastiness. But does the blame for this sorry state of affairs belong to the magazine publishers themselves, or does it perhaps lie elsewhere?

The magazine publisher we've heard the most about here -- the Eli Journals/New Hill tech publishing outfit with its threatening invoices to people who often never subscribed in the first place -- is still generating lots of gripes from readers. "Some time ago, I got an e-mail inviting me to subscribe to the 'Inside Adobe InDesign' publication from Eli Journals for tips and tricks," one reader wrote recently. "The offer was for a trial issue, after which I could pay for the full subscription or cancel. I accepted, and before too long an invoice appeared in my mailbox for $147, but no trial issue. I let it ride, thinking that the invoice was just faster than their trial issue. I did finally get the publication, and decided not to continue, writing unsubscribe/cancel on the invoice and sending it back. Since then I have gotten two more invoices from New Hill Services, telling me I am seriously past due. Today I tried calling the number they have listed on their invoice, was given a variety of numbers to press, but none of which got me anywhere. Even the number to leave a message, just routed me back to more

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