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?
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Monday, December 1, 2008
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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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