It's probably no surprise that I'm no fan of reality TV--I really hoped that the whole Borat lawsuit hurricane would put an end to the industry altogether. But every once in a while I run across something that surprises even me. This time, it's a proposed reality show modeled on the old "Dating Game"...but with a twist. The winner just might get to marry a U.S. citizen and gain citizenship!
Thinking that doesn't quite sound legal? I agree completely: Who Wants to Commit a Crime?
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
US Energy / NICOR Gas Scam - What They Really Want (and Why NICOR Won't Help You)
Late Sunday afternoon, a man in a US Energy jacket and a NICOR cap came to my door. He introduced himself as being from US Energy, but had a conspicuous NICOR label on his clipboard. He asked to see a copy of my gas bill.
I couldn't think why he would need that.
He explained that NICOR had sent him, because the company was planning a rate hike, but that if I "qualified" they wouldn't be able to raise my rates, and he needed to see my gas bill to determine whether or not I qualified. US Energy, he said, actually supplied the gas; NICOR just supplied the lines. "A lot of people don't know that," he said, and launched into an explanation of the utility's structure. I didn't care all that much and I'm not at all sure that it was accurate, but it sounded very official.
I learned early in my career that letting people know I was on to them was a bad way to gather information, so I asked as innocently as possible, "Doesn't NICOR have that information?" Well, yes, he conceded that they did, but it was up to US Energy to find out whether or not I was qualified to avoid that rate hike.
I couldn't help myself. I asked why they didn't get the information from NICOR.
He said it was because I was the one who had the paper copy of my bill. So, yeah, of course, that made perfect sense. Who would want to get a database import file with sortable information all in one place when they could go door to door on a cold Sunday afternoon, wait on the porch while people hunted up their gas bills, and then check one paper bill after another?
He flipped convincingly through the pages on his clipboard, creating more confusion. See, he'd told me more than once that he just needed to LOOK at my bill, yet someone's gas bills were attached to his clipboard. And he wasn't carrying a copy machine. I guess the gas bills he carried were meant to show me that other people were handing theirs over, but instead it showed me that he was carrying props...if his story were accurate, those gas bills would have been returned to their rightful owners by now.
I told him (truthfully) that I paid my gas bill online and I didn't have a paper copy of my bill. He asked if maybe I could print one out. (So much for that whole "because you're the one who has the paper bill" thing, hm?)
He said he'd come back.
Monday morning, I called NICOR. The customer service rep at NICOR confirmed that NICOR hadn't sent him, and asked whether I'd signed up with US Energy. Apparently, this is the company's standard approach to getting people to switch their service. As soon as I said I hadn't, though, NICOR lost interest. When I pointed out that these people were going around defrauding people in their name, NICOR said there was nothing they could do about it.
"It's fraud," I said. "It's illegal."
"Well, then," she told me, "you'd have to call the Citizen's Utility Board or the Better Business Bureau or someone like that. We have to remain neutral."
They have to remain neutral.
US Energy, certainly, is dirty. The man on my porch told me at least two direct lies in an effort to divert my business, and the extensive misleading props he carried and wore (along with his repetition of the same information in different words in response to my questions) made it clear that it wasn't just a spur of the moment departure or a case of accidental misspeaking. It's clearly a dishonest business practice and very probably a crime.
But who are the good guys? Why does NICOR "have to remain neutral" when it knows that an outside company is using its name to defraud NICOR customers? It seems to me quite the opposite, actually. I haven't had the chance to research it yet, but it seems to me that if NICOR knows that someone is holding himself (or themselves) out as representing NICOR in order to perpetrate fraud and chooses not to act on that, it's a ratification that just might mean NICOR is just as liable to its defrauded consumers as US Energy.
Definitely bears further investigation.
I couldn't think why he would need that.
He explained that NICOR had sent him, because the company was planning a rate hike, but that if I "qualified" they wouldn't be able to raise my rates, and he needed to see my gas bill to determine whether or not I qualified. US Energy, he said, actually supplied the gas; NICOR just supplied the lines. "A lot of people don't know that," he said, and launched into an explanation of the utility's structure. I didn't care all that much and I'm not at all sure that it was accurate, but it sounded very official.
I learned early in my career that letting people know I was on to them was a bad way to gather information, so I asked as innocently as possible, "Doesn't NICOR have that information?" Well, yes, he conceded that they did, but it was up to US Energy to find out whether or not I was qualified to avoid that rate hike.
I couldn't help myself. I asked why they didn't get the information from NICOR.
He said it was because I was the one who had the paper copy of my bill. So, yeah, of course, that made perfect sense. Who would want to get a database import file with sortable information all in one place when they could go door to door on a cold Sunday afternoon, wait on the porch while people hunted up their gas bills, and then check one paper bill after another?
He flipped convincingly through the pages on his clipboard, creating more confusion. See, he'd told me more than once that he just needed to LOOK at my bill, yet someone's gas bills were attached to his clipboard. And he wasn't carrying a copy machine. I guess the gas bills he carried were meant to show me that other people were handing theirs over, but instead it showed me that he was carrying props...if his story were accurate, those gas bills would have been returned to their rightful owners by now.
I told him (truthfully) that I paid my gas bill online and I didn't have a paper copy of my bill. He asked if maybe I could print one out. (So much for that whole "because you're the one who has the paper bill" thing, hm?)
He said he'd come back.
Monday morning, I called NICOR. The customer service rep at NICOR confirmed that NICOR hadn't sent him, and asked whether I'd signed up with US Energy. Apparently, this is the company's standard approach to getting people to switch their service. As soon as I said I hadn't, though, NICOR lost interest. When I pointed out that these people were going around defrauding people in their name, NICOR said there was nothing they could do about it.
"It's fraud," I said. "It's illegal."
"Well, then," she told me, "you'd have to call the Citizen's Utility Board or the Better Business Bureau or someone like that. We have to remain neutral."
They have to remain neutral.
US Energy, certainly, is dirty. The man on my porch told me at least two direct lies in an effort to divert my business, and the extensive misleading props he carried and wore (along with his repetition of the same information in different words in response to my questions) made it clear that it wasn't just a spur of the moment departure or a case of accidental misspeaking. It's clearly a dishonest business practice and very probably a crime.
But who are the good guys? Why does NICOR "have to remain neutral" when it knows that an outside company is using its name to defraud NICOR customers? It seems to me quite the opposite, actually. I haven't had the chance to research it yet, but it seems to me that if NICOR knows that someone is holding himself (or themselves) out as representing NICOR in order to perpetrate fraud and chooses not to act on that, it's a ratification that just might mean NICOR is just as liable to its defrauded consumers as US Energy.
Definitely bears further investigation.
Sunday, December 2, 2007
Blogs that Appall Me # 1
I've been debating for a while about whether or not to write about blog like this. On the one hand, I didn't want to give them any "press" or inbound links that might help boost search rankings or traffic. I didn't want to facilitate getting like-minded people together to do evil. And most of the time I'm pretty negative on negativity.
But sometimes you just have to shine a bright light on something and encourage the world to take a closer look in hopes that most people will recoil in horror and give an extra moment's thought to the little things that we let slide by every day, dismissing them as mildly unpleasant or letting them roll off altogether or--worst of all--finding humor in them.
Of course, this happens everywhere in life, including the blogosphere. But some blogs are more shocking than others, just like some of the things people say to one another in person are more shocking than others. For the past few months, my # 1 spot for poor taste and lack of humanity has been reserved for a blog astonishingly named "Counterfeit Humans - How to Maintain Sanity over Everyday Stupidity".
The premise seems to be that the blog's author was gifted (without having done a thing to deserve it) with an above-average intelligence, and that since she already has that little bit of good fortune up on the rest of the world, the general population should get right to work making her already easier-than-average life even easier by having the common courtesy to realize that they're just in the way in her world and, if they aren't gifted with her native intelligence, they don't have the right to participate in everyday activities where they might slow her down.
Oh, wait...did I say "people"? Apparently I misspoke just a little, since (as the blog's title makes evident", Keli doesn't believe that these lesser beings are actually human at all. She doesn't even call them people; she calls them "stupers". Yep, that's right--a term she defines again and again as shorthand for "woefully stupid persons". The whole blog is about stupidity, and the enormous strain of being a superior being forced to deal with "stupers" everywhere she turns. We have stupidity at the holidays, stupidity at the hospital, stupidity field notes, stupidity of relatives, stupidity "behind the counter"...but nary a word about the stupidity of taking the gifts you're given so for granted that you come to believe you've earned them and achieved some sort of moral superiority through your good fortune.
But sometimes you just have to shine a bright light on something and encourage the world to take a closer look in hopes that most people will recoil in horror and give an extra moment's thought to the little things that we let slide by every day, dismissing them as mildly unpleasant or letting them roll off altogether or--worst of all--finding humor in them.
Of course, this happens everywhere in life, including the blogosphere. But some blogs are more shocking than others, just like some of the things people say to one another in person are more shocking than others. For the past few months, my # 1 spot for poor taste and lack of humanity has been reserved for a blog astonishingly named "Counterfeit Humans - How to Maintain Sanity over Everyday Stupidity".
The premise seems to be that the blog's author was gifted (without having done a thing to deserve it) with an above-average intelligence, and that since she already has that little bit of good fortune up on the rest of the world, the general population should get right to work making her already easier-than-average life even easier by having the common courtesy to realize that they're just in the way in her world and, if they aren't gifted with her native intelligence, they don't have the right to participate in everyday activities where they might slow her down.
Oh, wait...did I say "people"? Apparently I misspoke just a little, since (as the blog's title makes evident", Keli doesn't believe that these lesser beings are actually human at all. She doesn't even call them people; she calls them "stupers". Yep, that's right--a term she defines again and again as shorthand for "woefully stupid persons". The whole blog is about stupidity, and the enormous strain of being a superior being forced to deal with "stupers" everywhere she turns. We have stupidity at the holidays, stupidity at the hospital, stupidity field notes, stupidity of relatives, stupidity "behind the counter"...but nary a word about the stupidity of taking the gifts you're given so for granted that you come to believe you've earned them and achieved some sort of moral superiority through your good fortune.
Saturday, December 1, 2007
When Brilliant Men Have Dumb Ideas
It was bound to happen someday.
It appears that the guys at Google had a very bad idea.
They were on a streak, what with revolutionizing web search and coming up with that friendly and easily identifiable little logo and becoming so popular that they had to fight to try to keep their trademarked name from becoming a standard-English verb and all that. They did pretty well for themselves making billions of dollars and buying up major players in closely related industries. Their "foothold" in web search became a stairway and then an escalator, and now few people even know the names of the early search engines and Yahoo! threw up its hands last year and said, "Maybe we should do something else."
But for some reason, these guys who understand technology and algorithms and the value of a good, free lunch onsite and the need to encourage employee creativity have missed the boat on Blogger comments. In fact, I don't think they even know where the shore is.
I can think of a lot of possible reasons that the outbound linking process from comments on Blogger blogs has changed (without notice), but they're all guesses.
I am sure of one thing, though. Someone has radically underestimated the importance of this functionality to bloggers and to those who leave comments on blogs. It's possible that the hope is that everyone will quickly sign up for a Google account so that they can leave comments with links in them, but it seems more likely that people will quickly move their blogs to other platforms where this issue doesn't exist...and that those who don't will see diminished traffic and a decline in comments.
They've also either overlooked or dismissed the fact that Blogger bloggers who do get visits from comments on other blogs will no longer be able to identify where they're coming from. Since they'll all be routed through the Blogger profile, all stats will show is a lot of referrals from the profile, not the actual source of the traffic.
I hope it doesn't turn out that we all have to abandon Blogger; I hope it mostly for selfish reasons, because I like Blogger a lot from a user perspective and would prefer not to move. But I'm not optimistic.
Of course, from what I've been hearing recently about disappearing blogs and comments, it may just be that after this post, I WILL find myself shopping for a new host...so watch this space. If I'm moving VOLUNTARILY, I'll let you know in advance.
It appears that the guys at Google had a very bad idea.
They were on a streak, what with revolutionizing web search and coming up with that friendly and easily identifiable little logo and becoming so popular that they had to fight to try to keep their trademarked name from becoming a standard-English verb and all that. They did pretty well for themselves making billions of dollars and buying up major players in closely related industries. Their "foothold" in web search became a stairway and then an escalator, and now few people even know the names of the early search engines and Yahoo! threw up its hands last year and said, "Maybe we should do something else."
But for some reason, these guys who understand technology and algorithms and the value of a good, free lunch onsite and the need to encourage employee creativity have missed the boat on Blogger comments. In fact, I don't think they even know where the shore is.
I can think of a lot of possible reasons that the outbound linking process from comments on Blogger blogs has changed (without notice), but they're all guesses.
- It MIGHT be because Google, which uses backlinks as part of its algorithm for determining the value of a page, doesn't want to allow people the ability to create their own backlinks by commenting on blogs--even when the blogger has deleted the default "no follow" tag in the comment section.
- It MIGHT be to prevent non-Google-registered commenters from leaving URLs; this would encourage everyone to sign up for a Google account whether they needed on or not--a solution that won't be of much help to bloggers with multiple blogs, anyway.
I am sure of one thing, though. Someone has radically underestimated the importance of this functionality to bloggers and to those who leave comments on blogs. It's possible that the hope is that everyone will quickly sign up for a Google account so that they can leave comments with links in them, but it seems more likely that people will quickly move their blogs to other platforms where this issue doesn't exist...and that those who don't will see diminished traffic and a decline in comments.
They've also either overlooked or dismissed the fact that Blogger bloggers who do get visits from comments on other blogs will no longer be able to identify where they're coming from. Since they'll all be routed through the Blogger profile, all stats will show is a lot of referrals from the profile, not the actual source of the traffic.
I hope it doesn't turn out that we all have to abandon Blogger; I hope it mostly for selfish reasons, because I like Blogger a lot from a user perspective and would prefer not to move. But I'm not optimistic.
Of course, from what I've been hearing recently about disappearing blogs and comments, it may just be that after this post, I WILL find myself shopping for a new host...so watch this space. If I'm moving VOLUNTARILY, I'll let you know in advance.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
LinkWithin
