Do Not Call Registry – FAIL?

Could be.  It seems that more and more telemarketers are growing some brass gonads and calling people anyway, even if they are on the list.  This isn’t just a New England thing, it is going on everywhere, and the calls are coming from everywhere, as well.  Many of these jerks are blocking their numbers from being visible on Caller ID, while others are “spoofing” numbers so that a fake number shows up on Caller ID, but when you call it back to yell at them, you get a recorded message saying that the number is not in service.

The good news is that if you get repeated calls from the same number, spoofed or not, you can block these calls.  Where I live,  Verizon doesn’t offer a call-blocking service.  But fear not – many cordless phones are available out there that offer a call-blocking feature.  When our old landline phone was dying, we took advantage of that to look for a new one that had the call-blocking feature.  We read a lot of cordless phone reviews, looked in a lot of stores, both online and brick & mortar.  We found that we’d have to pay more for the call-blocking feature, but if it meant that we’d have to get fewer repeat telephone calls from annoying people, it would be worth every penny.

We bought a nice cordless phone set from Panasonic, and we’ve been very pleased.  What happens with this phone if you block a number is that it will ring once, then the computer inside the phone checks the number, and if it is on the blocked list, the caller on the other end gets a busy signal.  We have found that eventually, the calls will stop because people get tired of the endless busy signal.

Still, the government needs to do better with the Do Not Call Registry.  Not sure exactly WHAT they can do, but they need to work on it.  In the meantime, consider buying a new cordless telephone that has a call-blocking feature.  It also works great when you are getting calls from collection agencies for someone who had your number before you did.  We were getting these all the time, and now that I’ve blocked them, they stopped calling completely.

Now I wish I could find a cell phone with call blocking.  Can the CrackBerry do this?  i was thinking of getting one, but if it has call blocking, I’d definitely buy one!

Opinion – The Massachusetts Bottle Bill

So now, Massachusetts wants to expand their current “bottle bill” by including containers other beverages, such as water, juice, iced tea, etc.  Right now, only containers of soda and beer come with a five-cent deposit, to be refunded upon return of said containers.  Story here.

My opinion?  Not only is this a bad idea, but I wish they’d do away with the whole bottle bill.  It’s nothing but a time-consuming annoyance that is completely unnecessary.  If more cities and towns would encourage recycling, then people could just put these containers out in their recycling bin once a week, and have them taken away.  See?  You can recycle without it taking up too much time and hassle.

Most stores that are convenient to us have bottle/can return machines, as shown here.  You just stick the containers in one by one, and when you are done, you push a button, and they give you a receipt, kind of like one that comes out of one of those Epson tm-t88iv receipt machines. You take it to a cashier in the store and they give you your money. Simple, huh?  But not so fast…

Every single time I have tried to use one of these things, I am pushed and shoved by other people trying to use them, you’d think it was Fort Knox, the way they go crazy and can’t wait their turn to use the machines.  It’s absolutely insane!

There are two Kappy’s stores near us that have a redemption counter, and for the most part, those are easier to deal with than the machines.  But sometimes there are lines, and often, even if there is no line, you have to wait for someone to come and take your stuff.  They do not have a dedicated container redemption person, usually it’s one of the cashiers who comes over and takes care of it, when s/he is not busy ringing up customers.  And the fact is, the most convenient times for us to return anything would be evenings and weekends, when Kappy’s and similar stores are the busiest.  So there you have the time-consuming part!

So, you may ask, why don’t we just put them into the recycling bin and let homeless/poor people take them if they want them?  After all, there are a LOT of people in our town who go around with carts that they stole from Stop & Shop and pick through people’s garbage looking for deposit containers.

Because they can’t just be satisfied picking through the recycling bins, that’s why?  They have to rip through every single garbage bag looking for more, and they often leave a mess.  And now that we have a Pay-As-You-Throw program here, we have to pay up to $2 per trash bag.  If the bags are all ripped up, the trash collectors won’t take them, we have to put the trash into another $2 bag and hope that it won’t get ripped up again by the time the garbage truck comes back next week.  And anything that is strewn on the ground, WE have to clean up.  More time-consuming crap!  By not putting out ANYTHING that might be worth money, we’ve managed to keep these people away from our trash.

Up in New Hampshire, they do not have a bottle bill.  People just put their beer and soda containers into their recycling bins, they get picked up, end of story.  No skeevy people picking through the trash and making a mess.  Another good reason to move there.

When  we go up there for a weekend of Fisher Cats ball games, we always buy beer to drink in the hotel room, and we buy it in New Hampshire.  We always leave the empties in the room, in the beer box they came in, when we leave, because if we bring them home, we’ll have no choice but to put them into our recycling.  And since they LOOK like deposit bottles, they will attract the undesirables.  However, they will not work in the machines here, they have a special bar code on them saying that they came from NH.  But the hotel we always stay at has a restaurant/bar downstairs that serves bottled beer.  So they have big recycling barrels somewhere.  They can just dump our bottles into that.  And yes, I do leave a decent tip for housekeeping for this service.  I also don’t want to put them in the trash at home, because of Pay-As-You-Throw, it can get very expensive.

For a while, I was saving empty Sam Adams beer bottles, to use for bottling my own home-brewed beer.  These bottles do not have screw-top grooves on top, and can be capped using the bottle-capping tool that commonly comes with most home-brewing equipment kits.  I saved far more than I’ll ever need for making the typical five-gallon batch, we have a ton of them in our storage area, more than enough to allow for the inevitable breakage.  But now we have more than enough, no more room, we have to get rid of them somehow.

In our town, there is no limit as to how much we can put out each week for recycling.  This is a very good thing.  I think that a state law that would require people to put out more stuff for recycling would go a lot further than any bottle bill in keeping the streets clean and helping the environment.  Then there’d be no homeless people and such ripping open residential trash bags and leaving a mess.

As for people who buy a can of soda or a bottle of water at the store – why not put recycling containers next to regular trash containers on street corners, to make it easy for people to dispose of the containers?

Most working people are under serious time constraints.  But anyone, no matter how busy, can throw all of their empties into a bin and stick it out on the curb.  It only takes a couple of minutes, anyone has time for that.  It’s time for the bottle bill to go bye-bye.

Another warning about online hotel reservations

I posted the other day about why you should not use third-party websites to book hotel rooms.  Today, WBZ-TV News is warning people about an online scam that is affecting vacationers on the Cape.  Story:  Cape Inn Losing Business In Online Scam.

Apparently, people who wanted to reserve rooms at the Orleans Inn through a third-party website were being duped.  Rather than being given a room at this beautiful hotel (they showed some footage of what it looks like inside), they were put in a cheap motel up the street.  The scam website was telling people that the cheap motel was a “sister property” of the Orleans Inn, which is absolutely not true.

Here is the scam website :  http://www.cape.cod.hotelguide.net.  I’m not going to give them a free link; if you want to visit that site, copy and paste.  And whatever you do, please do not use them.  If they are doing this with the Orleans Inn, they are likely doing this in relation to other properties, as well.  If you would like to stay at the Orleans Inn, their website is:  http://www.orleansinn.com.  I’m making this one clickable because it is the real deal.  You can either make a reservation through their reservation software, or just call them on the phone.

I’m guessing that the people who run that scam site own the cheap motel, and are diverting business from the Orleans Inn to themselves.  Not cool.

This looks like a very pretty place, I know I’d be angry if I tried to book a room here and was put in some cheap motel.  They do weddings there, and of course, if you want to have a wedding there, you’ll speak with someone over the phone to make the arrangements.  They seem to provide everything…food, lodging, wedding favors, etc., and of course, gorgeous scenery.

Anyway, just another warning about third-party hotel websites!

Should you use third party websites to book travel?

After reading this letter on Planet Feedback, the answer to that is an emphatic NO!

Here’s the letter.  If you click the above link to go to the letter on the Planet Feedback website, you can see the comments.  Pretty much, they suggest that this guy book directly through the hotel of his choice in the future.  I agree with that.

Tried to use their new top secret hotels service. They showed me a 3 star rating would be what I got so I agreed since the 3 star hotels were hotels like Embassy Suites. After I paid I got confirmation back that I was getting the LaQuinta Inn. Curious because of the other 3 star rated hotels I did some research to find LaQuinta as well as every other travel site rates it 2 stars. I called Travelocity to see why this happened. They continued with the lies that it was a 3 star hotel. Even spoke to a supervisor (over 40 minute wait) who said he called the hotel directly and they confirmed it was 3 star. At this point I just hung up. I then called LaQuinta who confirmed that the hotel was a grade C, tier 3, 2 star hotel. I then called Travelocity back since Dan had lied to me. I got to speak to another supervisor James (nearing 2 hours now) who said Dan hadn’t spoken to LaQuinta headquarters he spoke directly with the hotel. I asked to soeak to someone who doesn’t lie and could fix this lie. While I was on hold I decide to call the hotel directly and the one girl working there said she had no idea what the star rating was and neither did the other guy working this evening, confirming Dan’s lie on the first call. James comes back to the phone (15 more minutes) to tell me that LaQuinta does rate it 2 star, but the company Travelocity uses rates it a 3 star. How bogus is that? This means they can put whatever rating they want and just say its done by the company they use. James agreed that this was deceptive and attempted to contact Travelocity headquarters to get authorization for a resolution. He was denied because they use their own rating system, which in my opinion isn’t valid since the rest of the world sees it as 2 star. I then got to speak with a manager Samuel (2 nad a half hours now) who continued to say he couldn’t do anything about it. He gave me an email address (executive.offices@travelocity.com) that I could follow up with as next step.

Just give me the refund I deserve. You lied to me to get me into an agreement. If you would’ve just done the right thing from the start I would’ve just rebooked thorugh you with another hotel. Now that you’ve lied to me multiple times and continue not to resolve the lies. I just want the money back.

This guy has every right to be angry. I wouldn’t have thought that LaQuinta was a three-star hotel.  He was led to believe that he was paying for a three-star hotel, and didn’t get one.  Not that there is necessarily anything wrong with LaQuinta, but it is definitely a budget hotel, a step above a Super 8 or a Motel 6, and not what this guy was looking for.  And now Travelocity won’t give him back his money so he can book elsewhere.

I have found that you don’t necessarily save money by booking through one of these third party websites.  I used to do some online promotional work for a hotel reservations site, and at first, I was booking through them.  In these cases, I was able to choose the hotel I wanted.  However, I found it very difficult to impossible to make specific requests.  For example, the Hilton Garden Inn in downtown Manchester…there was no way to request a room facing the NH Fisher Cats ballpark, and actually get it.  These rooms cost $10-20 more per night, and the third party site only listed the less expensive rooms, with a panoramic view of the parking lot.  It didn’t take me long to figure out that a room with a view of the ballpark could be mine, if I’d only book through the HGI website.

Also, neither Mike nor I are good with climbing too many stairs, and having to lug a suitcase up them makes it worse.  When we go to Portland, we always stay at the Inn At St. John, a quirky old hotel that has lots of stairs and no elevators.  I don’t think that the Inn At St. John even uses any of those third party booking sites, but if they did, we would not book that way.  When I book through the hotel’s website, I can put in the notes section a request for a ground floor room.  If I plan ahead and book early enough, I get it.  Someone at the hotel’s front desk will usually respond within the hour, confirming that we’ll be put in a ground floor room.

If you travel a lot, brand loyalty can pay off.  We stay at the Manchester Hilton Garden Inn several times a year, and once I started booking these stays through their website, I joined their HHonors loyalty program.  Each stay earns points, which can be redeemed for free stays.  The points can be earned/redeemed at any of the Hilton Family hotels.  So when we traveled to Mystic, CT, to visit the Mystic Seaport Museum, I chose the Hampton Inn there.  Not as many amenities as HGI, the main one being that they don’t have refrigerators in the rooms (but they do in the suites).  But still a very acceptable choice for a budget hotel.  The only reason we don’t stay at the HGI when we’re in Portland is that we’re usually there for Sea Dogs games.  The Inn At St. John is an easy walk to the ballpark, the HGI is not.

Another bad thing about letting Travelocity pick the hotel is that you don’t get a chance to read online consumer reviews before you plunk that credit card down.  I always try to look for reviews before booking a place we’ve never stayed at before.  There have been a few times when I could not find any reviews but took my chances anyway.  I had mixed results.  So now I write reviews, good and bad…you can read them by clicking the links at the top of this page to Yelp, TripAdvisor, and FourSquare.  I also write reviews right here on this blog.  All of my reviews are 100% honest, I am never paid to say something nice about a hotel or restaurant.

Booking through the hotel’s website can often get you discounts that you can’t get anywhere else.  The Hampton Inn  and HGI often have super-low rates, if you are willing to pay in advance.  The downside is that these rates are non-refundable, but if you are sure you’ll be able to make the trip, some great savings can be had.  We’re going up to ManchVegas over the 4th of July weekend, for Fisher Cats games, of course.  Because Manchester is not the tourist capital of the world during summer holiday weekends, and because I was willing to pay in advance, we got a room at the HGI, facing the ballpark, for just a little over $100 per night!  Sometimes, simply choosing to travel to a place where everyone and their dog doesn’t go can pay off in big savings.  Everyone seems to go up to the mountains, the lakes, or the seacoast for summer holidays, and as a result, ManchVegas is rather quiet.  Good for us when we come, that means that the restaurants and bars are not so crowded.  At least we noticed that when we were there over Memorial Day weekend!

So that’s my take on this…always book directly through the hotel to be sure you get exactly what you want, with less hassle!

Don’t ask the Governor’s office for help…

…at least not if it is a time-sensitive matter.

In my last post, I talked about how Mike had trouble getting his drivers license renewed.  He called Rep. Ed Markey’s office in Medford, and the issue was settled within the week.

But when this first happened, I was emailing everyone I could think of in an effort to get this settled.  Including Governor Deval Patrick’s office.  I figured that since this was an election year, they’d be wanting to kiss our asses to help.

To their credit, they did respond.  Only it was a bit too late.  Mike’s license expired on Saturday, and he was risking it by driving around for a couple of days with said expired license.  He had called Markey’s office on Thursday, they got the problem cleared up on Monday, he renewed the license on Tuesday.

Patrick’s office sent an email in response, and they called Mike today about the problem.  He was polite, told them that it had already been fixed, and thanked them.

It’s probably a good think that Rep. Markey’s office got this fixed as fast as they did.  The Governor’s office might still have taken forever to resolve this, as it goes on Beacon Hill.  We’d have a better chance of finding diet pills that work, than we would in getting a speedy response from anyone on Beacon Hill.

But any response at all is still better than the many other people who ignored us!