Category Archives: Shopping

Which of the two following facts is more unlikely?

1. The following strange Dell tech support story recounted by a law student blogger:

I think the best part about all this is the time I was waiting on hold for one of the tech support people to transfer me. I heard music. Suddenly, I was listening to a phone sex line! I am not making this up. Let me repeat this: While I was on hold with Dell, I was somehow transfered to a phone sex line. Seriously. This really happened.

2. Or is it this: the law student blogger didn’t even speculate as to the various ways in which such conduct could give rise to major-league liability. Update (2/5/06): Ok, now he did, and the universe is back to its normal balance…

My sporadic search for a new cell phone took me to an ad for the highly overpriced Motorola Ultimate U6 Quadband Bluetooth. The ad includes the usual marketdroitspeak (“Quadband operation and an integrated digital video camera makes the Motorola Ultimate U6 the perfect phone for your active lifestyle.”). But it also touts a feature I’ve never seen before in an ad for a phone:

Fungus resistant coated mini jet black clamshell design

The mind boggles. Is this a common problem with cell phones? With Motorola phones particularly? Are buyers of overpriced phones especially fungus-phobic, making this a selling point?

I would have thought it was a turn-off, myself…

If only this Duo-mode GSM WIFI Phone — quad band no less! — was a flip phone form factor, I’d buy one just for the coolness of it all.

As it is, even though my old phone is gradually getting electronic Alzheimer’s, I can’t find a flip phone that does what it did when it worked right. Certainly, neither of these seems like the ticket.

In the course of a very interesting and serious rumination about proposed air travel regulations ostensibly designed to allow the Center for Disease Control to react to epidemics — but which conveniently enact the surveillance regime on air travelers that this administration has been seeking for some time, Ed Hasbrouck throws out this great aside,

If you are ever denied transportation by an airline, ask them for a copy of their conditions of carriage, which they are required to have available at every check-in counter. Ask them to tell you under which specific clause of the conditions of carriage you are being denied transportation. Try to get them to put that in writing, preferably either on airline letterhead over the signature and legibly printed name of the station manager for the airline at that airport, or as part of a complete printout of your passenger name record , in which the reason you were denied transportation, citing the specific clause of the conditions of carriage, has been entered. (If you made your reservations from Canada, the European Union, or certain other countries, you are entitles to see what’s in your PNR. But not, unfortunately, if you made your reservations in the USA.) If the airline balks at giving you reasons, point out that your eligibility (or not) for a refund of your ticket is dependent on the reasons and the clause of the conditions of carriage under which you were denied transportation. So you need documentation of the reasons for their denial, in order to establish your refund claim. (If the airline refuses to transport you because you refuse to consent to being searched, you are entitled to a full and unconditional refund, even if your ticket would otherwise have been an entirely nonrefundable. Presenting yourself at the airport, and refusing to consent to search, is perhaps the most foolproof way to obtain a refund of an otherwise nonrefundable ticket.) The airline cannot refuse to transport you, except as provided by specific terms of their published conditions of carriage, without grave liability under the common carrier clause of the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978.

I’m sure it would be one @#%@$ of a hassle, but it’s an interesting idea nonetheless.

If you are looking for wood furniture in Miami, I recommend WoodWorks Home Furnishings. There are days when it feels like we got half our furniture there. Possibly because we just about did. Nice, honest people who know their stuff, stand behind it, and charge reasonable prices given it’s solid wood.

Another reason I love the Internet: finding this list of Hard To Find Internet Retailer Phone Numbers took about six seconds.