I recently discovered that my last exam scheduled for the 15th of December, has been moved forward to the 10th. The significance of this is now I can fly home for the Christmas holidays 5 days earlier.

Upon calling the airline carrier to change the flight, I discovered the new date 11th Dec would have been $48 cheaper than the previous one on the 16th December. Great news, or so I thought!

However, the cost of changing the flight details was $150. Why so much?! I was willing to pay it, in order to spend 5 extra days at home, but still, it doesn't seem fair to charge customers so much for what seems like a relatively insignificant change.

Can anyone help explain this?

Bleecker Street Cafe

This is an unresolved issue, and hopefully I'll be able to explain it well enough that everyone can understand it.

The Bleecker Street Cafe is a small cafe on the first floor of VCU's new business/engineering building. The food is reasonable, and students can use their meal plans to get food there. Because I'm around that building a lot during the week and have a small meal plan, I get food there somewhat often.

I've gotten food there often enough to notice this:
Students use meal swipes to get certain amounts of food around VCU. My plan had 100 swipes. In the Bleecker St. Cafe, one or two swipes can get a student a variety of sandwiches and salads, each with a side and a drink.

The problem is that most sandwiches cost one meal swipe. Paninis cost two swipes. But, the greatest difference in price in cash is only about $1.10. I'm certain that my swipes cost a lot more than a dollar and ten cents each. In fact, I'm sure VCU doesn't offer any meal plans where the swipes have such a low value.

What's worse though, is that there is one sandwich on the menu that costs 1 swipe, and one panini on the menu that costs 2 swipes, but in cash, they both cost exactly the same amount of money!

I emailed VCU's dining services about the issue, and received a response from someone that claimed they would personally look into the issue and get back to me. About two weeks later, I followed up to see if they had made any progress. It has been quite a while - and I haven't gotten a response yet.

: (

ISP Frustration

A while ago my Internet stopped working and I had to call my Internet service provider's technical support. This wasn't the first time I'd had this problem. In fact, about a month earlier I also had to call for repair, but by the time a 'technician' came to my apartment, the Internet was working again.

This time was much different. I called and received support for over an hour the first time. We worked through all of the steps to make sure everything had been configured properly, and after trying several other fixes, the support technician was baffled. Shortly after consulting a few others in his office, my cell phone's signal faded. NO!!!!!!!! It was even more unfortunate that my ISP didn't have any phone number saved in their database by which to reach me.

I called again and went through many of the same steps with a new technician. Eventually, she seemed to give up. She told me that in my area there were only two people connected, so I wasn't the only customer with that problem.

Following that conversation, I called again to speak with someone else, who confirmed my suspicion that the last customer service rep. had fabricated the 'situation' my service area was experiencing. We repeated many of the same steps in order to diagnose my problem. This conversation, like the first, ended with the technician suspecting that my computer(s) were the issue. So, after all of the time I'd spent on the phone, nothing had been done.

I began to seriously consider canceling my service if my ISP continued to ignore the problem. I did some research on my own to determine that the modem shipped to me by my ISP probably wasn't configured properly anymore. I called again, repeated some diagnostic steps, told them what I thought was wrong, and they finally agreed to replace the modem.

Then someone else called the next morning to make sure I needed a new modem - this involved following the same steps I'd followed with all of the other technical support people. I'd certainly reached my boiling point - but I'm sure they were only doing their jobs. I tried to be kind to everyone and explain the situation well.

In the end the Internet returned, but it was a very long and frustrating phone quest.

That Darn Budget

I am sure many people have experienced budget cuts. Sometimes they unfortuantely come in the way of lay offs, other times they come in spending habits being minimilized. Working for the State we just had a round of budget cuts that made life a little bit harder. We are no longer able to travel to any conferences nor are we able to send print jobs outside or do non essential printing in house. Now, I would much rather have to endure these then have my collegaues or myself lose a job. Of course you have your normal people who dont think like me and whine and moan about these cuts. I do feel bad when we cannot copy a tutors handout that they wanted to share with their students for learning purposes, or when a study guide cannot be distributed. It forces us to use the forms of technology that we have at our fingertips like Blackboard, Facebook, etc. A lot of companies are experiencing the same thing and I think it forces us all to go back to simpler times and work with what you have. I dont think there is anything wrong with that.

Roles Reversed

I work at a front desk that offers free tutoring for VCU students. I pride myself on great customer service and hope that my student workers follow in my footsteps. Our "clients" or customers are students, faculty, staff, and anyone who walks off the streets looking for information about the Univesity. I am a strong believer that even students need and deserve the upmost respect when being dealt with. I had an example just the other day when a girl called, not very happy, because her appoinment that she had made was cancelled. When I asked the girl her name it refreshed my memory as a girl I had callled earlier that morning because her tutor, other students, had called in with an emergency meeting she had to attend. The girl started saying that this has not been the only time she has been cancelled on, turned away or became frustrated with the Campus Learning Center, which also encompasses the Writing Center. After I let her rant for a bit I asked her if she could tell me more about the other times she became frustrated. I wanted to get a sense of what we were doing wrong and how I could help her. She mentioned that the writing center turned her away because they did not have any open appointments and she did not understand the process. Another time her tutor had cancelled because she was sick. She also made a comment that she felt the Learning Center tries to discourage students from coming so that we do not have to higher more tutors. I reassured her this was not the case and that we understand she has made a big step in coming to tutoring. I explained briefly about the Writing Center's wait list and told her to please come in next time and I can explain further. I wanted her to know that we do not want students getting frustrated and our main goal is to help students succeed. To fix the problem at hand I told her to come in between 12-2pm because we had her subject being offered in Drop-in tutoring and I gave her the name of the girl who was doing it. I mentioned that I was going to let Emily, the new tutor, know to expect her. She was pleased with this and I reminded her if she ever had any problems or did not understand somethng to come see me, making sure I gave her my name. I told Emily all about her and she moved to a quiet room awaiting her arrival. They had a great appointment and hopefully she will have many more.
I believe a lot of people take advanatge of younger people and do not treat them with respect. I on the other hand think it should not be this way. I also commend the girl caller for speaking her mind. Even though this is a free service, she (or her parents ) are paying tuition and deserve to get help when needed, within our rules. I believe this is an example to try your hardest to make someone feel welcomed and that you care, especially in the business world. A lot of big corporations have bad reputations but it could take one person to turn that around.

Recently I went to a store (I won't mention the name - I'm sure you can figure it out) and was helping my mom shop. When we got to the checkout line, we had a sale item that rang up as the regular price. My mom happened to catch the mistake and asked me what the sale price was. I told the cashier but, of course, they didn't believe me and had to check up on it. They used their nifty little walkie talkies but only got one person who would do a price check on the item. That person never did a price check. Four other cashiers/employees just so happened to be standing around the register we were at (literally standing around it) and when asked, they all refuse to do a price check. They weren't doing anything else but, apparently, this was too much work for them. They dismissed the cashier that was assisting us so we were left standing at the register with no cashier. Finally one of the cashiers that had refused to do a price check told us to come to a different register. He stupidly rang the item up and, of course, it still rang up at the wrong price. So of course the smart thing to do is to make us bring all of our stuff to yet another cash register. He's still refusing to do the price check himself and continuing to call people on his little walkie talkie to find someone to do a price check for him. And of course, no one will. Finally I do the price check myself and rip the sale sign down. When I bring it to him, he had a bad attitude like I did something wrong. If the employees would have just done their job, gone to the product aisle and checked for a sale, we could have been done with the whole ordeal in five minutes instead of twenty minutes. Instead, the customer had to do their job for them and they had to "help" us for longer than was necessary. They could have been helping more customers, making more money for their company had they just done their job.

After having some issues with my cell phone, I called my operator off my landline so I could discuss the problems I was currently experiencing.

I explained to the representative that although my phone would turn on, and I could receive calls, the display screen was always blank. Unfortunately, although she sympathized with my problem, she explained there was nothing she could do for me over the phone and recommended that I take it to my operator’s local store for more help.

I was more than happy to oblige, after all, the phone was only 8 months old and therefore still well within its warranty. I was expecting no issues when talking over the problems with the store worker, however, his diagnosis was that I had dropped, or somehow allowed the phone to get unnecessarily wet. Obviously I disagreed, yet he still insisted that this was the case, even offering to jog my memory by asking if I had dropped it down the toilet or into a swimming pool.

After becoming more than a little agitated by the presumptions of the worker I left the store, and vowed to not use the company in the future.

To my knowledge I had done nothing to alter the functioning of the phone, however was left high and dry by the company. I received no help or compensation.