Tag: complaints

Friday Laments

More first world blues…I’m just cryin’ in my coffee.

  1. One problem with the local C-19 vaccination plan: teachers are a high priority. Great! Many agree with this. But, boo, the shots are being administered during school hours. It’s not a dash and do, either.
  2. Our biggest issue in Oregon is as it is elsewhere, just not enough C-19 vaccine to do the job. People are generally accepting and patient, because that’s how it goes for now.
  3. I went for years without a doctor. Then I had trouble in Peckerville and ended up with a urologist. The trials exposed my hypertension, so I ended up with a GP. Each prescribed medications for conditions – BHP and BP – that I’ll probably take for the rest of my life. Less than three years later, both of these medical professionals are gone. They’d moved into the area, it didn’t work out, and they moved away. I liked both and they did a good job, but I’ll need to find someone new when my prescriptions expire this year.
  4. The healthcare insurance front grows more expensive for me. As a veteran and military retiree after twenty years, I had good healthcare insurance via Tri-Care. There were no premiums. That went on for years. Now, starting this year, I must pay $25 per month premiums. Not bad. But, since I’m turning 65, I’m required to get Medicare Parts A and B in order to keep my Tri-Care. A is free; B is about $150 per month. Guess this is all due to that wonderful ‘support the troops’ rhetoric that I often hear. As it so often happened, big promises were made with great patriotic fanfare and furor. Then, when the bill came, everything changed.
  5. I’ve ordered meals online from restaurants three times in the last three months. Each was to give us breaks from what’s in our larder and breaks from cooking. It’s a treat. But each time, they’ve offered a coupon, and then, each time, there’s no place to enter the coupon code when the order is processed. Small matter, but irritating: like a lot of modern life, it seems like a false promise.
  6. What I’m watching: “Baptiste” on PBS via Prime — terrific series; “His Dark Materials” on HBOMax, very strong, good production values and acting, faithful to the trilogy; “Doom Patrol” on HBOMax but it’s falling in our appreciation as the characters become sillier and seem to take forever to come to grip with matters; “All Creatures Great and Small”, a remake of the first series of that name, based on the books, and it’s almost as entertaining and charming as the first go-around. We’re not watching “The Undoing” which just seemed too insipid in too many ways after three episodes; we prefer more dynamic and intelligent characters. Just recommended to us is Portait of A Lady on Fire and Mary Shelley, so they’ve been added to the list. Still working through the last of “Vera” and “The Wire” during late night down time.
  7. Hulu manages to continue to irk me. Their system often seems to think we’ve watched an episode that we haven’t and wants to jump us ahead. It’s happened enough times that I don’t just click and go, but make mental notes: what’s the season, episode number, and title that I’m watching now? What was the last one watched? What’s the summary? Did we see this? No. I saw others experienced this. The fix is the digital equivalent of a hard reboot or a hammer to an appliance: sign out and sign back in. That works most of the time, it’s claimed. Guess I’ll try it. Haven’t done so yet because logging in with a remote is a pain, you know? I’m such a whiner.
  8. Meanwhile, Prime Video, the service previously known as Amazon Prime Video, has the opposite issue, insisting that I haven’t watched an episode when I’ve already watched it.
  9. Got my coffee. Time once again to write like crazy. Meeting Text for the first time today. She’s the late Zipper’s daughter. Looking forward to what she has to say.
3

Med Frustrations

Okay, gotta vent. This is one of those first world blues rants, the kind that deal with technology, systems, and customer service taken for granted that ends up failing and pissing me off.

I’m on two medical prescriptions these days. One is for my enlarged prostate and was prescribed for me when I experienced problems in peckerville in 2019. It’s all benign and is working well enough now.

The other prescription is for high-blood pressure. That was discovered as a result of my peckerville issues. I’d been borderline high pressure throughout my life but it was suddenly over two hundred thirty.

Changes were made in diet and exercise, and the prescription, Amlodipine, begun. I was always getting thirty day prescriptions. I shifted that to ninety day for convenience, and then, concurrent with COVID-19, I started using a mail service to refill my prescriptions back in February or so.

This was being done through Express Scripts. I set my meds up for auto-refill. All was going well. I was satisfied.

But, last week, I noticed I was down to nine Amlodipine pills. I hadn’t heard from Express Scripts. That surprised me. I went into my email and did a search to verify that I hadn’t received something from them. Nope. I logged into my account.

Finding the Amlodipine prescription, I noted that it wouldn’t be automatically refilled until 10/23. Well, that was too late. I put it in the cart and ordered it. Done and done. Went to my email. A confirmation email had been received. Wonderful. The system was working.

But…

Everyone expected the but. But what happened, I’m sure people are wondering, to set off the rant?

But, I didn’t hear anything else.

Days passed. I logged back into my online Express Scripts account after not receiving further emails. I checked my recent orders and shipments. Why, there are no recent orders and shipments. I searched via the order number they provided me. That order wasn’t found. I searched via the invoice number provided. Nothing.

WTH? I’d copied it from the email and pasted it in.

The email also had a ‘click here for order status’ button. I clicked it.

It took me to the login page, where I went through the same thing as before.

WTF?

I did this several times, re-reading the email and tracing steps, trying to understand what went wrong. I couldn’t. I’m sure this wasn’t good for my blood pressure.

I reached out to them via an email and explained my issue.

That was Wednesday evening. I heard from them today, Friday. One was an email. Call us. Two was a phone call. ANONYMOUS.

I didn’t answer that call; I don’t talk to ANONYMOUS in this day of scams where everyone and their dog is trying to con me, asking for donations, or pleading for political contributions. Their message: call us.

I called them. They claimed that the order put in was for my other medication. That was ordered the 18th. It’d been canceled because it was an overfill. By the way, my Amlodipine isn’t on auto-refill. Do I want to put it on auto-refill?

Seriously.

I don’t think this exchange did my blood pressure any good.

My response: how did my Amlodipine go from auto-refill to non-auto if it wasn’t the one that I ordered the other day?

Two, if I ordered a prescription, whether it was overfill or not, why didn’t I receive an email notifying me that it’d been canceled? Didn’t they think there was a reason I was ordering it? Isn’t it just good customer service to notify a customer when an order is canceled?

Three, if I ordered it on the 18th, why did I have an email from them that I received on the 17th telling me that they were working the order?

Four, if the Amlodipine wasn’t on auto-refill and they don’t show me or anyone else changing it, how was the order previously automatically refilled? Was that just magic?

They didn’t have answers for any of these things.

Perhaps I did push a wrong button on the 17th when I was processing online. Given their system, I find it doubtful. The product must be selected. Then, it’s right there in front of my face. Perhaps I had a brain fart and shifted from thinking Amlodipine to the other one, Tamsulosin. I’m not infallible.

And, yeah, given time differences of one or two hours, I suppose I can accept the idea that the order I put in at ten PM on the 17th showed up as being received on the 18th. That doesn’t explain the rest, especially the lack of an email telling me that the order had been canceled.

And that sucks.

Fortunately, I have an excellent local pharmacy. I shifted from them mostly because of the whole COVID-19 thing. Getting my meds through the mail with auto-refills took a few things off my place, thereby reducing stress, and eliminated the need to leave the house to get refills.

I called that pharmacy today for a short term refill. They were understanding. They would need to call my doc for the prescription, but no problem, they would do that. They’re so nice, I feel bad about abandoning them.

Then I called my doc’s office to provide a heads-up that they would receive a request, and why.

Well, the rant is done. I don’t feel any better after ranting. Too many loose ends. It’s gonna take a while to get over it. Meanwhile, my trust in Express Scripts has dropped significantly. There are just too many open questions about what happened for me to have complete trust. It’ll take time, probably years, for them to earn that. That’s what happens when a trust is breached.

Thanks for reading. Hope you’re having a better one. Please wear your masks.

Cheers

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

Someone said something about complaining. I thought, oh, boy, a new complaint.

I guess my mind’s Alexa thought that I’d requested a song with those lyrics. Next thing in my mind was Kurt Cobain shouting, “Hey! Wait! I got a new complaint.” Then it was on, and Nirvana’s “Heart-Shaped Box” (1993) was raging.

Such a dark song it is. Despite the morning’s sunshine, these feel like dark times. We were being pretty self-congratulatory about flattening the curve. Rona said, “Hold my beer.”

Out here in our little semi-rural county, we’ve seen a jump. Announcements came today that the jump was traced to a party. The original carrier was found to be from out of state.

Hey! Wait! I gotta new complaint.

I was reading about the chaos in other states yesterday. There’s little consistency between counties and cities. There’s no consistency between states or across the nation. The Golfer-in-Chief is more concerned about his rallies, convention, and poll numbers to bother about doing something decisive about the friggin’ rona.

Hey! Wait! I gotta new complaint.

In an ironic twist, the GOP, at Trump’s urging, dumped Charlotte, NC, for the convention site because, masks! Now Jacksonville, Florida, new site of the convention in eight weeks has ordered, masks!

Hey! Wait! I gotta new complaint.

Give me a little time. I’ll think of it. Here’s the music.

2

Weird WordPress Issues

A quick rant, if you please. Just some first world blues.

Don’t know if others are experiencing WP issues. Here are mine.

  1. Couldn’t see what anyone was viewing, liking, commenting on, etc, from my homepage. Had to go to stats for that.
  2. Couldn’t like others’ posts. I confirmed that I was logged on.
  3. I could post without issue. However, my categories button was buggy, refusing to respond unless I clicked on the gear icon first.
  4. Then discovered I wasn’t logged in. Surprise! I’d been logged in; I’d been posting. Just couldn’t do the other things. Then, once I logged in again, all resolved.

So, if you notice that I haven’t visited your posts, I probably have, but I couldn’t comment, etc. Nothing personal; just WordPress.

7

Mr Gander

Mr Gander rolled into the noisy sports bar, grunting and waving at others while signalling for a PBR. As Gander’s ample weight found a stool, Tilly observed that Gander seemed down.

“The wife.” Gander pointed his eyes at the TV and sampled his beer’s head.

“What ’bout ‘er?”

“Nothin’. I have little complaints ’bout ‘er. They’re so small, you could say they’re shards of complaints.”

“You ever tell ‘er ’bout ’em? Maybe that’d help.”

“Naw, man. If I tell ‘er my complaints ’bout ‘er, she’ll tell me her complaints ’bout me.” Gander sipped his beer. “Who wants to hear that crap?”

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And Another Thing

Someone asked me if I could tell them where there’s an “ATM machine” nearby. 

WTF? Really? What do you think that M in ATM stands for? Money?

That kicked in a memory stream. I remember when ATMs first came out.

Yes, I am that old, children.

(I also remember when cable sprawl began, and when we started having color televisions, microwaves, and all the kinds of satellite things we now have. Get over it.)

We thought ATMs were great. Before them, you had to park, go inside, get in line, and take care of business, or drive into a line, if there were drive-through tellers, wait, and take care of business. Whichever option you chose, waiting was involved.

There was a forty dollar limit on what we could withdraw from ATMs back then. Forty dollars was a lot more money in that era. A tank of gas cost me less than ten, or maybe just over ten, dollars. Coffee – hello? – was a dollar a cup. Believe it, children.

Banks touted ATMs as a wonderful invention. It would save them so much money, and they would pass all those savings on to you through increased interest rates on your accounts and certificates of deposit. You could get your money from any ATM. Isn’t that great? Yes, it was wonderful!

Then, the banks and credit unions started complaining about the unanticipated costs. There were lines at the ATMs because there were longer lines in the bank, because they’d cut back on tellers to reduce overhead. The number of ATM transactions started to be capped. Going over that number meant you’d be penalized.

Then came the networks. Networks were formed to share the costs and reduce the burdens – for the financial institutions. What it meant for you was that if an ATM wasn’t in your network, you’d be charged for the luxury of using that machine to access your money. Piss me off?

You betcha. We were always wandering around towns, looking for ATMs and asking, “Is that one in our network?” Everyone had their eyes peeled for ATMs, crying out, “There’s one!” Then we’d aim the car that way. Yes, children, this was before ATMs came to be in other businesses, or stores. This was also before debit cards.

The ATMs typically had a list of networks that the institution belonged to. You’d need to figure out if one of those networks included your institution. If you couldn’t find one, you could be charged, with good ol’ Bank of America (who else, right?) leading the way in outrageous fees. Eventually, the banks and credit unions were forced to warn you if you were going to be charged, and accept that fee before going on.

Of course, the reverse of this was not having ATMs, but depending on your bank and credit union by writing checks, or going in, standing in the lobby for a while, and withdrawing some funds. That wasn’t fun, either.

So, even with my complaints (I am Michael, hear me complain), the ATMs are a lot better than the way it was. Just remember to heed the unspoken warning, “User beware.”

2

Inundations

Don’t you hate it when you decide to sign up for a newsletter or magazine delivered by email, or sign a petition, or join a group, and they just inundate you with emails? One a day isn’t enough – they have to send you three a day. Doesn’t that suck? It’s like they all believe that the more emails that they send to you, the more you’ll remember and support them.

Yeah, I remember them, all right, but for the wrong reasons. I come to remember and resent them for all the emails they send me, and for making it difficult for me to unsubscribe or “manage” my subscriptions with them.

Politicians and political causes seem like the worst. I’ve reduced my donation levels because I don’t want them to have my name any longer. I’m tired of hearing from them. So often, they send things with weaponized headlines to grab your attention. “YOU WON’T BELIEVE WHAT’S HAPPENING.” “WE NEED YOUR NAME TO STOP THIS! WON’T YOU STAND WITH US?”

That’s why I attempt to cap my posts to five a day. I know, they’re innocuous, with little thought behind them (yes, it shows, right?), and it’s mostly about me and my endless string of complaints, but they’re part of that greater burden of emails roaring into your inbox, demanding your attention.

Feel free to unsubscribe from me to reduce your load, because I feel your pain, brothers and sisters.

0

Whinge Binge

Our Roomba is dead. Long live our Roomba.

Well, maybe not dead. The motor runs, it makes all the expected noises, the lights come on, it runs around, and air comes out, but the brushes aren’t turning, and it’s not picking up. Roomba support is urging me to call them, which I’ll do. I want to get to the bottom of this.

The Roomba has lasted only a few years. It’s our third Roomba. The first two died mysterious deaths. I eventually learned that my cat was pissing on it.

The Gray Lady 2

That surprised us. Lady was a sweet rescue. Never put a paw wrong. All she wanted was some food, a quiet place in sunshine, and a warm lap. We were happy to oblige.

It was a surprise to discover she was pissing on the Roomba in her final months. She didn’t like the Roomba; it disturbed her rest. I figured she said to herself, “I’m dying and I’m going to piss on that machine before I go. What are they going to do? Kill me?”

The Roomba folks were good about it. A refurbished machine was provided at a discount price. We kept Lady away from it.

The Roomba’s decline and possible death is parcel to a larger pattern. We bought our house in 2006. They’d just finished building it. Brand spanking new to use a cliche that I know but don’t really understand (how does spanking fit in?), my wife and I were the house’s first occupants.

All the appliances were new. Everything. Yet, in the eleven years we’ve lived here, we’ve had issues.

  1. The central vac system developed a control board problem at five years. We had to replace the unit.
  2. The water heater’s thermal coupler went out after seven years. When it happened again a year later, we replaced the water heater.
  3. Also at seven years, the gas furnace’s control module died and was replaced.
  4. At nine years, the central air’s capacitor died. It happened again the next year, but the repair tech had taught me about it, so I saved labor and replaced the part myself.
  5. At seven years, we became suspicious of the range’s oven. It’s a gas unit. Gas isn’t something we like to mess with, so a repair tech was summoned. Parts were tested but nothing resolved. We bought an internal thermometer to hang in the oven. It confirmed that the oven is erratic and unpredictable, rarely at the temperature that it’s set.
  6. Our solar panel’s inverter’s control board died earlier this year, one month short of its tenth anniversary. We received a new board free of charge but paid for labor. We’ve been keeping an eye on the system.
  7. Meanwhile, plastic panels that house the buttons on the range, dishwasher, and washer have all cracked and splintered, which we first noticed in 2013, when these appliances were but seven years old.
  8. The microwave began collecting condensation inside the door, and then rust appeared inside the door, and grew.

Naturally, these things angered my wife and me. These are Maytag, Kenmore, Rheem, etc. Supposed to be quality stuff, maybe not the apex of quality, but high enough up the pyramid that you wouldn’t expect these issues.

So, I did what I always do when encountering problems: I researched. I looked for how common these issues are, and how difficult and pricey they are to fix. I did this each time things happened.

I learned that water heaters will usually last seven years in modern America. Most other appliances die at ten years. That’s our new standard.

We learned that most dishwashers are manufactured in one giant factory. So are ranges and microwaves.

I learned that the control panel’s broken plastic can only be repaired by replacing the entire control panel assembly, and it’s not cheap. Replacing that still leaves us vulnerable to other parts and assemblies breaking because, hey, they’re ten years old. That’s their expected life.

Appliances are being replaced. We’re not happy about it, but we’re fortunate that we’re financially secure and can do this without significant strain. Let me tell you, it’s not a cheap process.

We’re beginning with the microwave and range. New ones have been purchased. We’re awaiting their delivery and installation.

We’re not certain what we’re going to do about the rest. Only our refrigerator, a Jenn-Air, is still running as expected and hoped for when we purchased it. We’ve looked at washers and dryers, and dishwashers. They’re not cheap, America. More, it annoys us on a fundamental economic and social level, even philosophical, you might say, that these appliances require replacements. Our parents had appliances that lasted them a lifetime. So do our older friends. It’s irritating that America has succumbed to this new and wasteful approach.

Meanwhile, I’ll call the Roomba folks tomorrow.

 

 

 

3

Apologies, Universe

Well, universe,

Here I am again. I was a little hard on you in Spiteful Stuff yesterday. I guess I was disappointed because I thought I was your favorite. I was hurt, and I ranted.

Since, I’ve had time to consider the entire situation. Sure, I still believe you were a little spiteful. Perhaps I was being ungrateful and taking you for granted, and you were mad about that. If so, forgive me. After all, as I think about it, the visit with family was enjoyable. The house didn’t burn down in my absence, and no catastrophes were reported among the feline population. The United flights, while wrecked by creeping delays, were not disastrous. We’re alive and well. You did take care of me.

So, my apologies. I hope this episode is in our rear view mirrors. Maybe we can get together and have a beer or cup of coffee or tea, or a glass of wine.

Please let me know. Cheers

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