Sunday, June 3, 2012

Saturday 6/2/2012

Edit: I am not finishing this post, got distracted yesterday and just didn't have time, just posting it in whatever form it is.

Umm, so, these leaf eating wasps or whatever they are are destroying a certain kind of my pond plants and attempting to do in my Taro.  I had enough.  Got some insect killer and started spraying the leaves of the plants that are out of the ponds.

Lo and behold, however, I stood there and watched a Dragonfly going after one of these leafeaters.  Sight to behold.  The leafeater was flying it's brains out, attempting to get away from the thing, the Dragonfly was like a laser guided missile: honed in and not letting up.  I dunno how that ended, they both disappeared.  Dragonflies or not, they are not doing the job in keeping these bastards from eating up my plants and I am now on the warpath.

I saturated the entire swath of plants that are hanging over the side of one of the ponds-  that stuff isn't going to get in the water and kill my fish.  The portion of this very dense and large plant IN the water, I sprayed lightly on top.  These little darlings came spouting out and - I just hope my fish are not adversely affected.  I was spraying roach killer, the only thing I had available.

Verizon Wireless.  Starting to piss me off.  Send me emails after watching 2 movies and a couple of Star Trek episodes while at mom's property saying that I am at or over my month's usage allotment.  In other words, a total ripoff.  I was told if you use a "lot" of streaming video, go for more expensive package.  Yeah.  So, 6 hours or less of movies and "normal" usage - which isn't that much lemme tell ya - should cost me more than the $50 per month charge. I pay $45 per month for unlimited at home use.

I will have them stop the service and will try another company now that I have my "feet wet". Which simply means I have a much greater understanding of this situation and their dealings and - I will play my game on them, since they want to play their games on me.  I am a VERY persistent person when it comes to shams from very large corporations.  Oh, back to the original thing?  I will not be paying them anything for disconnection fees.  They can have their device back.  I will try another company.  Perhaps one that works in the 5th largest city in the United States.  Yep, they sent me a replacement device which  - has to be turned off and restarted frequently for it to work.


6 comments:

Fin said...

Re Verizon Wireless- If I didn't tell you so, I sure meant to!

You worked real hard on your credit rating. SO-- Be very sure you don't win the battle and lose the war if you try to break a contract with them without fulfilling the terms of so doing.

BenB said...

They're all the same. I don't see any large corporation in it's dealings with it's customers different from another anymore. I will go through their process - to send out a person to verify that this device does not function properly - and that may take some time. This isn't anything surprising to me. What got me was the apparent overage charges I am going to incur for watching 2 movies and 3 episodes of Star Trek. Ridiculous and I refuse to pay for use of a device that doesn't give me some reasonable amount of use time.

BenB said...

I'm sorry, to clarify: what I didn't know about was usage. Will I get enough out of the $50 monthly usage or will I need more data and a higher rate? If I had known I would need a higher usage, I would have done more research into other companies offering unlimited usage. But I didn't. I don't see Verizon Wireless as any different than Direct TV or Century Link in the way they deal with their customers: we are irritations to them. We are bugs out to be squashed. They will dictate to us, over the phone, what is and is not to happen. Just at this point, I don't tolerate them talking to me like that.

Anonymous said...

Well, you may recall they slowed my internet connection speed to a useless trickle once I exceeded 5 gig for the month, despite my having an 'unlimited' usage contract.

The NY Attorney General was able to get them to behave in a much more tolerable fashion following my involving him in the matter. And I have never, once ever, had the types of problems which have beset you with direct tv.

BenB said...

Well, I seem to recall you having a problem with Direct TV that you posted about in your blog not too terribly long ago. Regardless, I am not going to pay more than $50 for whatever usage. I am not sitting here 24 hours a day using that thing. It doesn't get used at all when I am at home. I use it here and there in the truck. The most usage was up at the mountain property - and that was hardly that much. If their idea of "usage" is to rape people with overage charges with as little use as I have been using the thing, they can go piss off.

Fijufic said...

They all throttle bandwidth. Movies are massive hogs of bandwidth.

 Thursday night I am finally home. The ending of the ordeal at the TA truckstop did not go without a hitch.  When I got there yesterday and ...