Since I'm on a Chopin kick, I thought "why not" and did another recording today. This piece tends to fall in and out of my favor - sometimes I get bored of it and I wouldn't play it for weeks on end, and sometimes it's the most lovely piece ever and I play it over and over again. Next to the Waltz in B minor, it's probably the one I am most familiar with, even if I only learned it in late high school.
Jul 17, 2012
Chopin, o my Chopin!
Since I'm on a Chopin kick, I thought "why not" and did another recording today. This piece tends to fall in and out of my favor - sometimes I get bored of it and I wouldn't play it for weeks on end, and sometimes it's the most lovely piece ever and I play it over and over again. Next to the Waltz in B minor, it's probably the one I am most familiar with, even if I only learned it in late high school.
Jul 16, 2012
A Pinch of Chopin and a Dash of Pepper
Someone said "needs moar Chopin", so here is more Chopin. :)
This is one of the oldest songs in my memory, learned around late elementary. It was also the one that my last piano teacher in high school had selected as THE example to use to start torturing my playing into shape. We must have torn the piece apart over a period of three months before I finally understood what true "legato" meant.
It also has the minor distinction of being the first and only piece to which I have composed an entire, original fantasy scene for, and the images always flash through my head whenever I play. I don't know if the "story" has helped its expression, but maybe one of these days, I'll find a moment to write it out.
(Also, the reason why I have all these weird camera views is not because I'm trying to be all artsy but because I am lazy. In the first video today I was still in my PJs. In the second, in my taekwondo uniform as I'd just returned from class. Not exactly classy classical pianist mode today!)
Chopin's Raindrop Prelude
This is one of the very, very few pieces that I learned on my own after my long piano hiatus in college, and like many of the pieces that I picked up afterwards, it is also one that I have had to relearn several times now. Unlike the pieces that I practiced all my life, it seems only a month is necessary to erase these from memory, as opposed to the years that have lapsed for my older repertoire.
While this is one of my favorite pieces ever, I had not given serious thought to making a recording of it until, funny enough, I watched Prometheus yesterday with a friend. I had stayed over at their house overnight and while I was waiting for them to get ready in the morning, I plunked out a piece on the piano - just one - and that was the Raindrop Prelude. Then we left for brunch.
Then we watched Prometheus.
And the very first song to open for the movie is this exact same piece. That, on top of what happens in the movie and the recap of the Prelude at the end does not exactly promote warm and fuzzy feelings for it. Creeeeeeepy ...
(Btw, I noticed that the Fazioli Luminal makes yet another movie appearance! At least one can see it in all its glory this time, unlike in Percy and the Olympians, where you could barely even tell there was a piano back there. If you're ever in Vancouver BC, check out Showcase Pianos, who is the one who had loaned it out for at least the shooting of Percy. The owner, Manuel, is a sweetheart and will let you play it if you ask nicely. :)
Jul 14, 2012
ForScore and Seven Days Ago ...
For the high-tech musicians ...
I have been using my iPad solely for reading music for at least a year now. Previously, I had been using PDFNotes, which is simply a PDF reader, but which supported hand annotations and some basic organization, and thus, was perfect for my needs. Or, at least, that's what I thought.
Unfortunately, one of the updates to the app broke it for me. About 10% of the sheet music I had in the library would inexplicably cease to open, and a few back and forths with support did not solve this. Rather disheartened, as I had spent a long time not only organizing the music (I had the complete piano works of Chopin, Brahms, Debussy, and Faure in it along with quite a few standalone pieces), but several of them I had written extensive notes and fingerings into. All gone.
So, for a few months, I actually allowed the iPad to languish, unwilling to consider the monumental effort it would take to reload, rename, and recreate all of my previous work. When the new OS came out, I had some meager hope that an update might fix the problem, but when I started the update and it warned that it would erase all my loaded apps, that just scared me into storing the thing away again until I had some "proper time" to back it up.
Of course, that proper time didn't come for ages, and it was months before I finally became so fed up that I decided to bite the bullet and get it all over with.
Well, as it so happened, the wait did me good, because I then discovered ForScore. An app that is DEDICATED to displaying sheet music, it gave me all that I wanted from PDFNotes and much, much more. While I wish there was a way to view more pieces at a time when navigating, I certainly have absolutely nothing to complain about the ability to batch edit, to search by keywords, and categorize by composer, genre, newest, etc. A gem off a feature I also discovered that bookmarks show up in the main menu, so that one can jump directly to the bookmark - for instance, Claire de lune doesn't show up until page 14 of the Suite Bergamasque. While before, I had to load the Suite before I could jump to the bookmark, now I can select the bookmark directly from the main Debussy listings.
I think the annotation mode is a little too button-reliant, but otherwise, I am so delighted by ForScore that I'm not even that frustrated anymore by the fact that I'll have to reload and re-tag all my sheet music. ForScore almost makes it fun.
So, for any other musicians out there with an iPad - ForScore gets two thumbs up from me. These days, there be some other really awesome apps out there, that - though relatively pricey for an app at $10-$15 - are more than worth the money for the serious composer or musical artist.
I have been using my iPad solely for reading music for at least a year now. Previously, I had been using PDFNotes, which is simply a PDF reader, but which supported hand annotations and some basic organization, and thus, was perfect for my needs. Or, at least, that's what I thought.
Unfortunately, one of the updates to the app broke it for me. About 10% of the sheet music I had in the library would inexplicably cease to open, and a few back and forths with support did not solve this. Rather disheartened, as I had spent a long time not only organizing the music (I had the complete piano works of Chopin, Brahms, Debussy, and Faure in it along with quite a few standalone pieces), but several of them I had written extensive notes and fingerings into. All gone.
So, for a few months, I actually allowed the iPad to languish, unwilling to consider the monumental effort it would take to reload, rename, and recreate all of my previous work. When the new OS came out, I had some meager hope that an update might fix the problem, but when I started the update and it warned that it would erase all my loaded apps, that just scared me into storing the thing away again until I had some "proper time" to back it up.
Of course, that proper time didn't come for ages, and it was months before I finally became so fed up that I decided to bite the bullet and get it all over with.
Well, as it so happened, the wait did me good, because I then discovered ForScore. An app that is DEDICATED to displaying sheet music, it gave me all that I wanted from PDFNotes and much, much more. While I wish there was a way to view more pieces at a time when navigating, I certainly have absolutely nothing to complain about the ability to batch edit, to search by keywords, and categorize by composer, genre, newest, etc. A gem off a feature I also discovered that bookmarks show up in the main menu, so that one can jump directly to the bookmark - for instance, Claire de lune doesn't show up until page 14 of the Suite Bergamasque. While before, I had to load the Suite before I could jump to the bookmark, now I can select the bookmark directly from the main Debussy listings.
I think the annotation mode is a little too button-reliant, but otherwise, I am so delighted by ForScore that I'm not even that frustrated anymore by the fact that I'll have to reload and re-tag all my sheet music. ForScore almost makes it fun.
So, for any other musicians out there with an iPad - ForScore gets two thumbs up from me. These days, there be some other really awesome apps out there, that - though relatively pricey for an app at $10-$15 - are more than worth the money for the serious composer or musical artist.
Jul 13, 2012
<3
One of the random charms I grabbed while putting together these bracelets was a heart locket. While I'm not sentimental enough to spend hours thinking up something significant to stuff in it, I did happen to have the tail end of a conference call to fill up, and so I decided to give it SOMETHING to hold at least. (No empty hearts for me!)
Who knew, but all those logic classes actually came in handy in Real Life. My handwriting's neat, but even for me it was a bit of a stretch (or shrink) to get the line to fit across a scrip of paper of this width, so it was logical notation to the rescue!
(For those who don't read logic, the fortune cookie says: "health and happiness for all my friends and family".)
Who knew, but all those logic classes actually came in handy in Real Life. My handwriting's neat, but even for me it was a bit of a stretch (or shrink) to get the line to fit across a scrip of paper of this width, so it was logical notation to the rescue!
(For those who don't read logic, the fortune cookie says: "health and happiness for all my friends and family".)
Jul 12, 2012
Be-charmed
I've always been smitten with Pandora bracelets, but utterly smited by their accompanying price tag. It's been in the back of my mind to recreate them on my own, particularly after experiencing Joann's for the first time a year or two back, but it's been rather low on the priority list. I was in the store anyway a few days ago, though, and decided to check out their supply of beads and other crafts. Just for "research".
I left half an hour later with a bag's worth of beads, snake chain bracelets, and charms.
It took a little while to get the hang of prying all the grouped charms off of their rings, to make new attachments, and then re-order everything on the bracelet. I also had to do some research on the web before finding out about stop-charms, and learned the hard way exactly how long the bracelet had to be to fit my wrist properly.
One nice side-benefit though, is that working on these things helped me stay focused during conference calls. I used to pace, but with something brainless that fully occupied my hands, I was absolutely FIXATED on the conversation. The difference was so pronounced, I've half a mind now to make more for sale simply for the excuse (and get paid twice for the same hours - woooo, work the system!).
I left half an hour later with a bag's worth of beads, snake chain bracelets, and charms.
Who knew, but there's something of a learning curve to making these things. I picked up an extra set of needle-nose pliers, thinking that the one set I had at home (stolen in days of yore from my EECS labs) wasn't needle-nose enough, but as it turns out, they were exactly the same. Thank goodness I had a second set though, as I almost couldn't feel my fingertips anymore after bracing the miniscule chain links against them to pry open and closed. With one set of pliers acting as brace and the other as prying force, I was still able to squeeze in a full night's practice on the piano a few hours later.
It took a little while to get the hang of prying all the grouped charms off of their rings, to make new attachments, and then re-order everything on the bracelet. I also had to do some research on the web before finding out about stop-charms, and learned the hard way exactly how long the bracelet had to be to fit my wrist properly.
One nice side-benefit though, is that working on these things helped me stay focused during conference calls. I used to pace, but with something brainless that fully occupied my hands, I was absolutely FIXATED on the conversation. The difference was so pronounced, I've half a mind now to make more for sale simply for the excuse (and get paid twice for the same hours - woooo, work the system!).
Living(-not-so-)Social
I can't remember the last time I ended up in a diatribe about any particular company's customer service practices, much less wrote about it. Not that I am either that saintly, or that I haven't encountered any problems in all that time - there's just much better things to do with my time, and it's usually no fault of the people who are trying to deal with the irate customer. But today I happen to be procrastinating on some errands, I'm too bored to read news, and the email conversation I found myself engaged in was so mind-bogglingly astonishing, that I couldn't resist posting it.
So. I may not be LivingSocial's most prized customer, but I'm pretty regular - I subscribe to deal alerts in at least 5 counties, and usually end up purchasing something maybe once every one or two weeks. All this time, I've never had the occasion to take advantage of one of their Me+3 offers, but a few weeks ago, the stars aligned, and it seemed I would finally be able to do so.
Except, I couldn't. Because, apparently, there is fine print that was not advertised anywhere except on a separate page that I would have only thought to look for if I was bored and anal and wanted to randomly log into my account on LivingSocial and read their help documentation. I will freely admit that I "should have known" there would be conditions attached, but maybe I had become too laid back thinking that the only fine print I had to read was actually on the same page (which I DID read through ages ago, the very first time I bought a deal - the fine print only dealt with the purchase itself, not the Me+3), or that there would be a link next to the promotion, maybe even a piddly little asterisk, alerting me to the fact that there is more to it than meets the eye. For heaven's sake, they advertise the "share me" link on TWO different locations of their page - is it too much to ask for that they use some of that real estate for a "see details here" link in 8-point font? (In fact, they very blatantly show that they know this fine practice by not only putting a separate section at the bottom of the page titled "The Fine Print" for the deal, but then an additional link at the end of the fine print called "Other conditions apply", which you can click and open a second window for the, as advertised, other conditions.)
But, to add insult to injury, the customer "service" responses were utterly inadequate and borderline insulting. I've worked tech support before and it's not a fun job - I sympathized. But clearly, there was absolutely no comprehension occurring, and even more, it tweaked my business and marketing sensibilities that customer feedback was being so thoroughly ignored. Yes, I'm peeved that I missed out on the deal, but I'm a big girl, I can swallow a pill without being bitter about it for the rest of my life. But the manner in which this was handled had done its fair share of throwing oil on the fire.
When I first inquired about the lack of refund for my ticket, I received the following response (names replaced with asterisks):
Hi *******,
Thank you for contacting us. We're sorry we weren't able to fulfill your request today.
It looks like only two people purchased from your link. You must have three people with three separate accounts purchase from your link.
Please let us know if you have any remaining questions, and we'll do our best to help.
Thanks for LivingSocial!
*******
Straightforward enough. However, this was the first indication that I had received at all that there was more to the Me+3 arrangement than I had thought, and so, instead of railing about the unfairness of it all, I bided my time for a few days. I wanted to do my research, and make sure I had a leg to stand on where my confusion was concerned. Since I had already discarded all the materials I had previously received, I waited until I bought another deal before attempting to go through whatever I had received or seen on my screen for these details which customer service was referring to. Not seeing anything obvious unless I wanted to strike out from the immediate documentation and search LivingSocial's site thoroughly, I wrote the following response:
Hello,
I am an avid LivingSocial participant - I enjoy seeing what's available locally and participate as frequently as I can. I waited on responding to this because I had not retained all of the original materials and couldn't be certain of what the fine print had said, and so I actually went ahead and purchased another deal, just to make sure I wasn't being careless when looking through the things I received for requirements.
Attached is both a PDF print-out and a screen-shot of a page from which I can access the share link. Please note that, IF you write it anywhere on the page that everyone must purchase through a separate account, that it is nigh impossible to find. In fact, there is not even an asterisk or any other symbol near EITHER of the TWO mentions of the 1+3 deal indicating that there is any "fine print" associated with the sharing process at all. The only fine print I found at the bottom pertains to the event itself, and not on the 1+3 deal.
For the IRIS performance, I helped to sell 4 extra tickets for Livingsocial. I had thought it was rather obvious that someone buying 3 same-night show tickets is not going to be using them all for themselves, and never thought that these had to be separate purchases. If anywhere you had indicated that there were "catches" to the deal, I assure, you, I would have adhered strictly to your protocols and asked my friends to purchase separately as opposed to simply buying them in a group for convenience's sake. As it is, I feel rather like I was the victim of a bait-and-switch scheme. Would it really hurt for you to add an extra line of text to the links indicating that these need to be purchased separately?
Please, it's not as if I'm unwilling to jump through the hoops - I can understand that you want more exposure, and I wholly support that because I think you offer a great service which I wish to continue to use. But as it is, every time I see a Livingsocial advertisement in my inbox now, I am reminded of this very disappointing experience.
Sincerely,
*******
Click here for the screenshot. The references to the share links are both at the top of the text and just below the gray pricing box on the right.
Yes, I fully admit that my tone may have been a little testy. I would understand if the poor customer service person gave me a very stiff and formal response. But what I got absolutely boggled my mind:
Hi *******,
Thank you for contacting us. We're sorry we weren't able to fulfill your request today.
For more information about how to share with three friends to get your deal for free, check out our help site article: How does the Me+3 promotion work?
Please let us know if you have any remaining questions, and we'll do our best to help.
Thanks for LivingSocial!
******
Seriously? That's all that could be said in response to everything I had sent?
I responded. Yes, I still sounded ruffled, but I did try to keep it curse-free:
Dear *****,
I wish you to know, first and foremost, that having played tech support in the past as well, I have nothing against you personally, and I have no idea what the company policy is on how you respond to customer complaints or how long you are allowed to spend on each one. Please feel free to forward this to a manager or anyone else who might care. But the rote cut-and-paste quality of the responses I have been receiving is not only not reassuring, but highly insulting considering that I went through extensive effort, on my own time, to perform research to ensure that I had a reasonable basis for my complaint, and did not simply make wild accusations against LivingSocial. There is nothing in the responses I have received thus far which indicates that I might be talking with more than just a web bot.
Did anyone read my complaints about the lack of callback to the Me+3 details directly from the promotional areas, or has it just been guess-and-match stock responses to the subject-matter of my emails? I've worked with enough web businesses to know how much of a difference this detail can make in customer satisfaction, and right now, I am almost more unsatisfied with the interaction I have had over this issue than in the fact that I apparently have to look up and read documentation in separate areas of the site to find the caveats, whereas every other professional site I've dealt with at least gave me an asterisk as a heads-up, and most will provide a direct link to the conditions that must be fulfilled. As a former web programmer, I know this is an easy item to add, and as a former market and business strategist, I know that this is almost a no-brainer unless hijinks are involved.
I've certainly learned my lesson now. If support is not even able to write a direct response to my complaints, even if it's a noncommittal "thank you for your suggestion, we'll take it under consideration (even if we decide to never implement it)", I certainly should not waste any more of my time or efforts in helping to promote the site.
*******
Well. I thought, by this point, that maybe this would be escalated to someone else. At least, shown to some administrative type who will give me a politely worded but stern letter saying "We're sorry you're feeling frustrated over this, and we'll think about it, but we can't do anything for you right now." But nope. We're right back to the tape recorder again:
Hi ********,
Thank you for contacting us. We're sorry we weren't able to fulfill your request today.
We apologize that you feel these emails are not read. We can assure you that each is answered by a real person. We cannot issue a refund for your deal because it would be a breach of our Terms and Conditions. If your link was not shared with three friends, we are unable to give you your deal free.
******
(I didn't notice this till later, but they dropped the copy-pasta "Thanks for LivingSocial!" at the end, which made me both laugh and facepalm. Of all the c/p responses they could have stopped feeding me, that was the one?)
I stared at the response for a full minute trying to decide whether to laugh or cry before I could crank out a final reply:
Thank you for assuring me that you are actually reading and responding directly, though you have clearly missed the larger issues at hand. Forget about the botched deal. It's just appalling to me that, as a company that appears to be striving to work the social network, LivingSocial is not even willing to consider feedback on making their site a better experience and, thus, its customers more agreeable to spreading its name. I had previously posted my LivingSocial purchases to both Facebook and Twitter ... I'll be removing those now.
Well. I guess no managers are going to receive my feedback. Which is, perhaps, just as well, as I usually like to word these things in a more neutral tone.
So, no $75 back in my account, which is actually not such a big deal to me. Not because I don't care about the money, but I had originally bought into the deal not expecting to have it for free, so it's not like I hadn't budgeted for it. My friends had been nice enough when I had offered to split the difference with them (when I had still thought it was a done deal) and said I could have kept the returned amount, so I didn't even have to deal with the embarrassment of having to renege on the offer. But really, was the learning experience and aggravation worth $75? I would have happily offered to put the extra text into their website for them for free and WITHOUT the $75 refund by this point if I had received any indication that someone was looking at my responses seriously at all.
So. I may not be LivingSocial's most prized customer, but I'm pretty regular - I subscribe to deal alerts in at least 5 counties, and usually end up purchasing something maybe once every one or two weeks. All this time, I've never had the occasion to take advantage of one of their Me+3 offers, but a few weeks ago, the stars aligned, and it seemed I would finally be able to do so.
Except, I couldn't. Because, apparently, there is fine print that was not advertised anywhere except on a separate page that I would have only thought to look for if I was bored and anal and wanted to randomly log into my account on LivingSocial and read their help documentation. I will freely admit that I "should have known" there would be conditions attached, but maybe I had become too laid back thinking that the only fine print I had to read was actually on the same page (which I DID read through ages ago, the very first time I bought a deal - the fine print only dealt with the purchase itself, not the Me+3), or that there would be a link next to the promotion, maybe even a piddly little asterisk, alerting me to the fact that there is more to it than meets the eye. For heaven's sake, they advertise the "share me" link on TWO different locations of their page - is it too much to ask for that they use some of that real estate for a "see details here" link in 8-point font? (In fact, they very blatantly show that they know this fine practice by not only putting a separate section at the bottom of the page titled "The Fine Print" for the deal, but then an additional link at the end of the fine print called "Other conditions apply", which you can click and open a second window for the, as advertised, other conditions.)
But, to add insult to injury, the customer "service" responses were utterly inadequate and borderline insulting. I've worked tech support before and it's not a fun job - I sympathized. But clearly, there was absolutely no comprehension occurring, and even more, it tweaked my business and marketing sensibilities that customer feedback was being so thoroughly ignored. Yes, I'm peeved that I missed out on the deal, but I'm a big girl, I can swallow a pill without being bitter about it for the rest of my life. But the manner in which this was handled had done its fair share of throwing oil on the fire.
When I first inquired about the lack of refund for my ticket, I received the following response (names replaced with asterisks):
Hi *******,
Thank you for contacting us. We're sorry we weren't able to fulfill your request today.
It looks like only two people purchased from your link. You must have three people with three separate accounts purchase from your link.
Please let us know if you have any remaining questions, and we'll do our best to help.
Thanks for LivingSocial!
*******
Straightforward enough. However, this was the first indication that I had received at all that there was more to the Me+3 arrangement than I had thought, and so, instead of railing about the unfairness of it all, I bided my time for a few days. I wanted to do my research, and make sure I had a leg to stand on where my confusion was concerned. Since I had already discarded all the materials I had previously received, I waited until I bought another deal before attempting to go through whatever I had received or seen on my screen for these details which customer service was referring to. Not seeing anything obvious unless I wanted to strike out from the immediate documentation and search LivingSocial's site thoroughly, I wrote the following response:
Hello,
I am an avid LivingSocial participant - I enjoy seeing what's available locally and participate as frequently as I can. I waited on responding to this because I had not retained all of the original materials and couldn't be certain of what the fine print had said, and so I actually went ahead and purchased another deal, just to make sure I wasn't being careless when looking through the things I received for requirements.
Attached is both a PDF print-out and a screen-shot of a page from which I can access the share link. Please note that, IF you write it anywhere on the page that everyone must purchase through a separate account, that it is nigh impossible to find. In fact, there is not even an asterisk or any other symbol near EITHER of the TWO mentions of the 1+3 deal indicating that there is any "fine print" associated with the sharing process at all. The only fine print I found at the bottom pertains to the event itself, and not on the 1+3 deal.
For the IRIS performance, I helped to sell 4 extra tickets for Livingsocial. I had thought it was rather obvious that someone buying 3 same-night show tickets is not going to be using them all for themselves, and never thought that these had to be separate purchases. If anywhere you had indicated that there were "catches" to the deal, I assure, you, I would have adhered strictly to your protocols and asked my friends to purchase separately as opposed to simply buying them in a group for convenience's sake. As it is, I feel rather like I was the victim of a bait-and-switch scheme. Would it really hurt for you to add an extra line of text to the links indicating that these need to be purchased separately?
Please, it's not as if I'm unwilling to jump through the hoops - I can understand that you want more exposure, and I wholly support that because I think you offer a great service which I wish to continue to use. But as it is, every time I see a Livingsocial advertisement in my inbox now, I am reminded of this very disappointing experience.
Sincerely,
*******
Click here for the screenshot. The references to the share links are both at the top of the text and just below the gray pricing box on the right.
Yes, I fully admit that my tone may have been a little testy. I would understand if the poor customer service person gave me a very stiff and formal response. But what I got absolutely boggled my mind:
Hi *******,
Thank you for contacting us. We're sorry we weren't able to fulfill your request today.
For more information about how to share with three friends to get your deal for free, check out our help site article: How does the Me+3 promotion work?
Please let us know if you have any remaining questions, and we'll do our best to help.
Thanks for LivingSocial!
******
Seriously? That's all that could be said in response to everything I had sent?
I responded. Yes, I still sounded ruffled, but I did try to keep it curse-free:
Dear *****,
I wish you to know, first and foremost, that having played tech support in the past as well, I have nothing against you personally, and I have no idea what the company policy is on how you respond to customer complaints or how long you are allowed to spend on each one. Please feel free to forward this to a manager or anyone else who might care. But the rote cut-and-paste quality of the responses I have been receiving is not only not reassuring, but highly insulting considering that I went through extensive effort, on my own time, to perform research to ensure that I had a reasonable basis for my complaint, and did not simply make wild accusations against LivingSocial. There is nothing in the responses I have received thus far which indicates that I might be talking with more than just a web bot.
Did anyone read my complaints about the lack of callback to the Me+3 details directly from the promotional areas, or has it just been guess-and-match stock responses to the subject-matter of my emails? I've worked with enough web businesses to know how much of a difference this detail can make in customer satisfaction, and right now, I am almost more unsatisfied with the interaction I have had over this issue than in the fact that I apparently have to look up and read documentation in separate areas of the site to find the caveats, whereas every other professional site I've dealt with at least gave me an asterisk as a heads-up, and most will provide a direct link to the conditions that must be fulfilled. As a former web programmer, I know this is an easy item to add, and as a former market and business strategist, I know that this is almost a no-brainer unless hijinks are involved.
I've certainly learned my lesson now. If support is not even able to write a direct response to my complaints, even if it's a noncommittal "thank you for your suggestion, we'll take it under consideration (even if we decide to never implement it)", I certainly should not waste any more of my time or efforts in helping to promote the site.
*******
Well. I thought, by this point, that maybe this would be escalated to someone else. At least, shown to some administrative type who will give me a politely worded but stern letter saying "We're sorry you're feeling frustrated over this, and we'll think about it, but we can't do anything for you right now." But nope. We're right back to the tape recorder again:
Hi ********,
Thank you for contacting us. We're sorry we weren't able to fulfill your request today.
We apologize that you feel these emails are not read. We can assure you that each is answered by a real person. We cannot issue a refund for your deal because it would be a breach of our Terms and Conditions. If your link was not shared with three friends, we are unable to give you your deal free.
******
(I didn't notice this till later, but they dropped the copy-pasta "Thanks for LivingSocial!" at the end, which made me both laugh and facepalm. Of all the c/p responses they could have stopped feeding me, that was the one?)
I stared at the response for a full minute trying to decide whether to laugh or cry before I could crank out a final reply:
Thank you for assuring me that you are actually reading and responding directly, though you have clearly missed the larger issues at hand. Forget about the botched deal. It's just appalling to me that, as a company that appears to be striving to work the social network, LivingSocial is not even willing to consider feedback on making their site a better experience and, thus, its customers more agreeable to spreading its name. I had previously posted my LivingSocial purchases to both Facebook and Twitter ... I'll be removing those now.
Well. I guess no managers are going to receive my feedback. Which is, perhaps, just as well, as I usually like to word these things in a more neutral tone.
So, no $75 back in my account, which is actually not such a big deal to me. Not because I don't care about the money, but I had originally bought into the deal not expecting to have it for free, so it's not like I hadn't budgeted for it. My friends had been nice enough when I had offered to split the difference with them (when I had still thought it was a done deal) and said I could have kept the returned amount, so I didn't even have to deal with the embarrassment of having to renege on the offer. But really, was the learning experience and aggravation worth $75? I would have happily offered to put the extra text into their website for them for free and WITHOUT the $75 refund by this point if I had received any indication that someone was looking at my responses seriously at all.
Jul 9, 2012
I usually have a conference call every morning, but today's was canceled, so I decided to take advantage of the bright sunny day to have a walk around the neighborhood. As luck would have it, the landscapers were out in force dead-heading and trimming, so there were piles and piles of scraps lying all over the sidewalks waiting to be gathered up. I must have looked a sight, burrowing through them and strolling home with arm-fulls of grass.
I didn't pretend any color coordination whatsoever and most of the stems were really too short to work with, but I'm not too unhappy with the results! Certainly my mother had no complaints when she found this waiting for her in her kitchen. :)
Jun 11, 2012
It's been so long since I've paid any attention to Facebook that I didn't even realize that they had taken out the feature where it auto-posts my blog to the Facebook notes. In a fit of procrastination the other night, I researched up another app which would do the same (even if I haven't posted anything in forever - but that's what procrastination's for, doing things that go nowhere), and so now I'm going to make a spurious post to test it.
So, whenever I travel, I take a portable Monster power strip with me, because usually there is only one outlet that can be reached anywhere convenient in the hotel room and I'm always carrying twenty thousand electronic items with me that need charging. It's usually great, but it has this great big ol' LED logo that lights up BRIGHT BLUE whenever it's plugged in to show that it's receiving power (of course, the precise color that promotes wakefulness, and not at all what one needs at 3 am). This time, the outlet happened to be right next to my bed - so, when I'm going to sleep, it's like an alien invasion about to happen.
Well, I managed to sleep initially, but when I got up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, I apparently decided it was too much to take anymore. But rather than doing the logical thing and simply unplugging it, I apparently decided that the best thing to do was to put a sock over it. But, as it turned out, the LED was so bright, even the sock wasn't able to completely muffle it. So, instead, I had an amorphous blue jellyfish sock-light as a nightlight:
So, whenever I travel, I take a portable Monster power strip with me, because usually there is only one outlet that can be reached anywhere convenient in the hotel room and I'm always carrying twenty thousand electronic items with me that need charging. It's usually great, but it has this great big ol' LED logo that lights up BRIGHT BLUE whenever it's plugged in to show that it's receiving power (of course, the precise color that promotes wakefulness, and not at all what one needs at 3 am). This time, the outlet happened to be right next to my bed - so, when I'm going to sleep, it's like an alien invasion about to happen.
Well, I managed to sleep initially, but when I got up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, I apparently decided it was too much to take anymore. But rather than doing the logical thing and simply unplugging it, I apparently decided that the best thing to do was to put a sock over it. But, as it turned out, the LED was so bright, even the sock wasn't able to completely muffle it. So, instead, I had an amorphous blue jellyfish sock-light as a nightlight:
Jan 22, 2012
More new (old) videos! (part 3)
I am on a roll! After tracking down the much more difficult foreign cartoons from my childhood memory (part 1 and part 2), I started tackling the English/American ones.
As it turns out, one of them was actually German, and it proved to be quite the elusive one, since it was based on a very common fairy tale whose original name was spelled various ways. (I literally tracked it down searching for terms like "pillow", "winter", and "well".) Then, once I pinpointed the fairytale, it turned out the cartoon had one of the most generic titles absolutely imaginable for a fairytale.
But, perseverance won out in the end, and I now have another pair of DVDs in my hot little hands:
As an added bonus, while looking for Jack and the Beanstalk, I found that the ENTIRE MOVIE had been uploaded to YouTube! So I had the instant gratification of watching the whole thing again while waiting for Amazon to deliver.
Let me tell you, it is just as fabulous as I remember it. From the craptastic 70’s music (that I still remember down to the singers’ pitch and inflections!) to the hilariously emotional voice acting of the animals. And I swear there is more subtlety and shading to the characters in this (even the lug-nut giant!) than what I’m expecting of current Hollywood offerings. Why, even the dog, who doesn’t talk, gets his own song! (And I still love the bean-sprout dance musical the best.)
If you have 88 minutes to kill? DEFINITELY spend some quality time with this.
As it turns out, one of them was actually German, and it proved to be quite the elusive one, since it was based on a very common fairy tale whose original name was spelled various ways. (I literally tracked it down searching for terms like "pillow", "winter", and "well".) Then, once I pinpointed the fairytale, it turned out the cartoon had one of the most generic titles absolutely imaginable for a fairytale.
But, perseverance won out in the end, and I now have another pair of DVDs in my hot little hands:
As an added bonus, while looking for Jack and the Beanstalk, I found that the ENTIRE MOVIE had been uploaded to YouTube! So I had the instant gratification of watching the whole thing again while waiting for Amazon to deliver.
Let me tell you, it is just as fabulous as I remember it. From the craptastic 70’s music (that I still remember down to the singers’ pitch and inflections!) to the hilariously emotional voice acting of the animals. And I swear there is more subtlety and shading to the characters in this (even the lug-nut giant!) than what I’m expecting of current Hollywood offerings. Why, even the dog, who doesn’t talk, gets his own song! (And I still love the bean-sprout dance musical the best.)
If you have 88 minutes to kill? DEFINITELY spend some quality time with this.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)