Friday, August 29, 2008

MasterCard Sucks

I like Citibank, where I have been a customer pretty much my whole life, but they only provide Mastercard credit cards, which just became a problem for me today.

A few months ago I ordered something from a telemarketer. They charged my credit card $300 and I received an unmarked bag from India with some pieces of paper and cloth in it. The bag had no return address, there was no receipt in it or anything with writing, and absolutely no way to contact the merchant.

The 800 number they had given me and which showed up on my bill was out of service. So I filed a dispute with my bank. Somehow the bank was able to contact the merchant because the merchant disputed my dispute and said that they had proof I had signed for the package (I had signed for it). The bank was not able to give me any method of contacting these people, other than the 800 number which was out of service.

So then a few days ago $250 of the $300 is recharged to my card. I called the bank and they told me that Mastercard's policy is that since the merchant has a "return policy" that says that no opened items may be returned I had to pay for it since I had opened it.

This is so ridiculous for quite a few reasons:
  • I got a package with no return address - how do I know where to return it? How do I even know what it is without opening it?
  • The merchant never told me anything about a return policy.
  • I had no means of contacting the merchant.
So I'm stuck paying $250 for a bag of god knows what. These people certainly have a good scam going. And there is nothing I can do about it since I have no way of contacting the merchant. I can't even report them to the FBI since I have no name, nothing.

I am going to put in a complaint to Mastercard, however.

Friday, August 22, 2008

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Hadoop and Twitter

The Register has an article on Hadoop and compares it favorably to Twitter. This is actually some very funny stuff, and they really blast Twitter. I have never really understood Twitter. It just seems stupid to me. Apparently some people really like it, but I just don't get the point.

Monday, August 11, 2008

Ennio Marchetto

Some Italian comedian type guy. Very funny stuff:

Wednesday, August 06, 2008

Paris Hilton Campaign Ad

I haven't seen the John McCain ad referenced but this is still pretty funny:

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

Tuesday, August 05, 2008