Right now my father is using a pre-paid MCI calling card. Which he states that he pays about $0.03 a minute for a phone call from Idaho to Florida. Same would be true from his home to my home and he figures that is the best rate he can get.

That made me wonder: is it cheaper to call per minute on a pre-paid card or is it better to have a plan or something similar?

I started to look on the internet for “calling cards” and found one called PennyTalk Calling Card. Wow this looks like the best thing out there right now. But wait, look what I found in the fine print.

“Are there any additional charges?”

This was the response on the FAQ question:

“With PennyTalk, there are no hidden charges. There is a 49¢ connection fee which is charged at the time each call is made and answer supervision is received. There is also a 99¢ monthly service fee that applies to all accounts and is charged on each monthly anniversary of activation. Calls made from Alaska are billed an additional 10¢ per minute. Surcharges may apply for calls made from a cellular phone. A 90¢ payphone operator recovery fee will be charged on calls made from payphones.”

So PennyTalk may allow you to talk for a penny a minute, however, there are other charges that apply that make the call cost considerably more than one penny a minute.

I didn’t research much more but I did find that the MCI card does not have a per call charge and as long as the call is between your land line phone and you don’t get charged for making 800 calls your cost to complete the call through the MCI card is only three cents a minute to most places nationwide. AZ and a few other states have eight cents a minute but still on short calls this is far cheaper than what your cell phone, long distance provider, or that PennyTalk card would provide you.

Please send me comments on articles that have done much deeper research than I have done. I would love to read about them.

Until the next time,

Thirteen

Let me give you a history lesson first.  Verizion Wireless bought Airtouch which I believe bought LA Cellular which I became a customer of in the mid ’90s.  I have been a loyal customer for a long time.  But as you will see that doesn’t mean squat when it comes to service.

I could go on about the things that upset me prior to mid July when this story begins, but that would require too much research at this point and it really doesn’t matter.  All you need to know is that I called to cancel my service and spoke with a gentleman who actually had the tools and the brains to be helpful in my situation and was able to give me the type of service I had come to expect from VZW.  So I stayed with them. 

Now onto mid July.  My spouses phone died a horrible death mind you and we went into a Corporate VZW store.  We were looking to upgrade her to a phone that would sync with Outlook that way would never loose all her contact information (as we just had done with this last phone.)  I asked some specific questions on how does the phone sync, what protocol does it use, can it work with an exchange server, will it pull or push or both with the exchange server, etc. Here is where it starts.  The sales associate said “I have worked here for 3 years and I have never heard that question, so it must not be a big [deal or concern]“  What I heard was, “I have worked here a long time, your question is stupid and unimportant, go away.”  Needless to say I was flabbergasted that a sales associate, that makes money on sales, would have the gall to say your question is not important.  This happened to be my spouses birthday and we were getting the phone to urgently replace the dead one, and as a gift.  I walked out of there letting the store manager know that his associate successfully lost a 10+ year customer with that stupid statement.

Went over to Sprint and asked the same questions, about the same phones.  This sales associate also did not have the answer I was looking for, but was willing to point me in the right direction to get the answers.  I ended up purchasing a phone there and getting service with Sprint, porting over my spouces VZW number.

While this process was completing, I spoke with a VZW customer care person about the change and what happens with my account now that it only has the one line.  I was told nothing would change, nor do I need to worry about it, she did try to get me to come back to vzw, but she did not have the tools in her belt that could match the tools that Sprint had and by this point it was going to take a lot to get me back.

 This still leaves the situation with my phone.  About a month later I get a phone call from VZW telling me that since the “primary” line was tranfered away, we need to change my plan because it no longer existed and requries a primary line.  Oh by the way, the primary line was always my line, but some sales rep had switched it when we bought new phones so he could make commisions on two new accounts rather than one. (This inforation was provided for me from the customer retention when I inquired about the primary change and who authorized it.)  I was told I had until the end of the billing cycle to pick a new plan.

Well I called today to pick a new plan (because I am not financally ready to buy the Sprint Mogul that I want) and wait it out until I can get the Mogul from Sprint. 

Here is where my blood begins to boil.  I was told by the rep my service had been billing me at $0.35 a minute for every minute used since I didn’t have a primary line and had no plan.  WHAT THE HECK!!!!!  I usually use 700-1500 minutes a month.  To see what had transpired I was told they can’t see the bill because it was just cut yesterday.  In todays technolgy, they can’t see a bill for 3 days after the cut off? That just doesn’t make sense to me. 

Long story short, They screwed me big time, and to make matters worse, as I am leaving the Verizon ship, they are screwing me again and again and will keep screwing me until I get off that pile of dung ship called Verizon Wireless.

Basically this product is a 2 GB USB flash drive that is disguised as a severed USB cable.  Neat idea but why would anyone need such a thing?

First of all, if the data was important the possibility that the “cable” would just get tossed because of the way it looks is not something I am willing to take a chance on.

Second, why would you want to answer the question of “Why do you have a broken cable plugged into your computer?” over and over again?

But I am sure this product will sell as it is a great gimmick.

Until the next time,

Thirteen

 Would you wear something like this?  Where would you wear it?

 As always comments are welcome.  Until the next time,

 Thirteen

What does this mean for Internet and TV personalities that are using YouTube as their media outlet for their video blogs and shows. People like Chris Pirillo, and even Katie Curic? Will there be a substitute that will come in place of YouTube? Will Google sell YouTube at a loss and another company keep it going? I can’t imagine the Internet with YouTube can you?

Thirtee

[00:35:21]  so OmniDragon were you here when I said I got a new lappy?
[00:35:36]  what did you get :O
[00:35:41]  dv9820 hp
[00:35:47]  coooooool
[00:36:03]  specs? then i’ll know how nice to be :\
[00:36:37]  yea thirteen, specs?
[00:36:43]  uh
[00:36:46]  specs…
[00:36:47]  hmmm
[00:36:51]  give me a sec
[00:37:01] * Thirteen hasn’t opened the box yet
[00:37:10]  Was gonna do that on camera tomorrow
[00:37:24]  record it and everythign ya know
[00:39:58]  specs of laptop http://tinyurl.com/6fww69
[00:39:59] -Neptune.WyldRyde.org- Elle kicked me out of #Chris (Watch your language!)!
[00:39:59] * You were kicked by Elle (Watch your language!)
[00:39:59] * Attempting to rejoin channel #Chris
[00:40:00] * Rejoined channel #Chris
[00:40:04]  lame
[00:40:17]  i would’ve thought you’d known that by now
[00:40:20]  what language did I use
[00:40:31]  the not so large url aint allowed in here
[00:40:38]  tinyurl
[00:40:39] * Elle sets mode: +b *!*@privatehost-DC0BB7C4.irc.seaver.info
[00:40:39]  yeah i was just thinking that Thirteen
[00:40:39] -Neptune.WyldRyde.org- Elle kicked me out of #Chris (Watch your language!)!
[00:40:39] * You were kicked by Elle (Watch your language!)
[00:40:39] * Attempting to rejoin channel #Chris
[00:40:39] * Unable to join channel (address is banned)
[00:50:49] * Unable to join channel (address is banned)

 For someone like me this seems harsh.  I am by my nature a g-rated person, so being accused of bad langauge is obsurd to me.  My thoughts was that there was “69″ in the URL I posted so the bot figured I was being sexually preverse.  So when I said it must be that tinyurl I didn’t think I would get the boot since i didn’t create a URL with it just the name of the company.  Nothing clickable there and BOOM over 10min ban. After 10 minutes and discussing what happened with one of the ops, I understand that tinyurl has been used to hide unwanted websites.

I wouldn’t have even thought of using tinyurl but Chris twittered about three times with a tinyurl in his twitters today so I figured they were ok.

What can I do, accept say sorry, and maybe offer services to fix the obvious error that calls “tinyurl” foul language.  That is confusing to anyone who gets the boot for it.  If I am Perm banned because of this, it was nice meeting all of you people.  To bad it had to go like this.

I do feel strongly that the ban will be lifted as it was clearly not an attempt to break the spirit of the law.

Humbly submitted and Until the next time,

Thirteen

Car plows into a bike race along a highway near the US-Mexico border, killing one and injuring 10 others.

read more | digg story

My search of the internet did not turn up many results that I expected.  I did find a how to decline page that I will share with you. How to decline invitations gracefully

This was the google search I did to come up with the above post

If you know of any links that go into detail on this, or have great ideas yourself on this topic, I would love to hear form you.

Comments welcome.

Until the next time,

Thirteen