Category: product complaints

whose butt can I kick at Calgary Transit?

On By Rick McIn product complaints5 Comments

Another in my series of Calgary vandalized bus shelters.

I will keep posting these until someone at Calgary Transit explains why the taxpayer should keep repairing them.

This one is right outside my front door, stop #8633, route 112. The broken glass had been cleaned-up by the time I took the photo. Since then the shelter has been completely repaired so vandals can have another go at it next time they get the urge.

100_5752-bus.jpg

==== last post from June 14, 2006

angry guyWho keeps buying glass bus shelters that can shatter?

These are conspicuous targets for vandals.

Is there no transparent material which does not shatter?

I’ll complain directly to Calgary Transit and Kevin’s Bus and Rail.

bus-stop.jpg
trashed bus stop on 37th St. S.W., Calgary, Canada

Hey, and what’s with bus drivers who leave the motor running when the bus is parked? At some point they should be saving fuel. (This issue is sweeping the internet after some bloggers Mom posted it. Her pet peeve.)

iPhoto – 250,000 Photos?

On By Rick McIn Apple, photos, product complaintsLeave a comment

I’m still looking for a solution for organizing 30,000+ photos conveniently. And having them backed up.

Warren uses ACDsee to VIEW his images. But they do not make a Mac version.

I just tried putting 20,000 photos into one iPhoto library. It’s slow. Weird things are happening. It’s crashing when I try to import some file types.

I’m just about to give up.

Suggestions?

Don’t worry about giving iPhoto 6 too many images to handle. It’s just not going to happen.

With support for up to 250,000 photos, iPhoto 6 will elate even the most prolific shutterbugs. To capture that many photos, you’d have to shoot 1,000 a month for 20 years.

Apple – iLife – iPhoto – 250,000 Photos

250thousandphotos20060120.jpg

I’m looking at Portfolio. And iView Media Pro.

Home Outfitters – stop with the junk mail

On By Rick McIn product complaintsLeave a comment

angry guyHome Outfitters is tagged “Canada’s Largest Kitchen, Bed and Bath Superstore”. They seem to be an HBC company.

Why did they deliver 12 copies of their $20 off Christmas flyer to C-162, 4331 Sarcee Road, Calgary, Alberta?

Are they paying for delivery so much per piece?

I forwarded my complaint to Mariana Di Rezze, Media Relations Specialist, Hudson’s Bay Company. mariana.direzze@hbc.com

This is bad PR, Mariana.

You should direct my concern to those responsible. They can send someone over to collect the extra 11 flyers.

Junk mail is not much better than SPAM. This is wasteful, HBC.

Explore new methods of promoting your companies.

Flickr: search for photos you can use

On By Rick McIn photos, product complaintsLeave a comment

Services like YouTube and Flickr live a lie.

Many of their pages state that everything is copy protected — but then do everything they can to encourage “sharing”.

Flickr has a “Blog This” button. But … if you blog the photo it is slightly possible the original creator will be ticked-off.

But I finally discovered how to search flickr just for photos posted under a Creative Commons licence. Normally this means you can use the image under some restrictions. Usually you must give proper attribution and link back to the source.

If interested, here is the search page: flickr.com/creativecommons/

When I first tried the service, I searched for “West Coast Trail”. Look what came up:

wct-search.jpg

My own photos are licensed under Creative Commons.

gift cards a great idea – but a rip-off

On By Rick McIn economics, product complaintsLeave a comment

Obviously, my credit card should be charged only after someone cashes in the gift card I gave them.

Under the current system, companies should sell gift cards at a discount, knowing that some people will lose or forget to use them.

Last winter, Best Buy Co. reported a $43 million gain in fiscal 2006 from cards that hadn’t been used in two or more years.

Retailers profit from unused gift cards – Yahoo! News

Ecto blogging software? … not yet

On By Rick McIn blogs, product complaintsLeave a comment

This blog is published directly to my web host through a fairly clunky interface. It’s also slow.

Ecto is the best alternative on Mac, so far, desktop software, much more powerful, much faster.

But I will not be switching to Ecto … yet.

I had a couple of minor complaints

  • No “bug report” link.
  • When you click “Retrieve Entries”, nothing shows until ALL the entries are available. Better would be to show them as downloaded.
  • I cannot add a new “category” from Ecto.

But mainly I just could not get “into” the interface. I will wait a few months, I think.

Feature request — “built in video tutorials” under the HELP menu, please. Short video clips are by far the best way to get new users “into” new software.

Greenpeace says Apple not “green”

On By Rick McIn Apple, blogs, health & fitness, product complaintsLeave a comment

UPDATE:

One guy with a computer and a blog can make change.

See the reference to Canada below? You can thank RickMcCharles.com for getting that added.

apple-recycles1.jpg
source

The error was certainly not Apple’s, I was assured by Apple.

I insisted on a free laptop for "pain and suffering" the error caused me. Will let you know when it arrives.

=== original post === Dec. 11, 2006 ===

I love the hilarious Apple spoof site posted by Greenpeace at GreenMyApple.com.

greenmyapple.jpg

Apple is still not feeling the love:

Environmental group Greenpeace on Wednesday issued the first quarterly update on the technology industry’s performance on environmental issues. While the group recognized many companies are improving Apple does not appear to be among them — Apple remains in last place.

“We were surprised they were in last place again,” Zeina Alhajj, campaign coordinator for Greenpeace, told Macworld. “We are hoping that by the next ranking they will be the biggest mover.”

The report ranks the 14 top manufacturers of personal computers and cell phones. …

Representatives from Apple were not immediately available for comment. …

Nokia continues to hold the top spot in the ranking for both its chemicals policy as well as disposal of electronic waste.

Apple gets low score in Greenpeace e-waste report

My own experience backs up the Greenpeace claim.

I’m trying to recycle two Apple laptops. Though Apple says they offer a program in Canada here, here and here, when I phoned their recycling partner (888-638-2761), I was informed the Apple recycling program has not come to Canada.

When directed to the recycling partner web page, there is no mention of Canada.

In the USA I could pay US$30 to ship up to 60lbs of Apple product to be properly recycled.

I emailed Apple (irecycle @apple.com) to inquire. I asked they correct the wrong information on their web pages if the program is not running in Canada. No response yet.

Perhaps the local recycling program here in Calgary is just as good, I’m not sure.

Still. Apple is usually as good as their word. They do not make mistakes on web pages.

What’s up Apple?

Apple phone to flop – heresy?

On By Rick McIn Apple, product complaintsLeave a comment

… And it will largely fail.

Initially, of course, it won’t look that way at all. As with any Apple product release, it will be ushered into the world on a wave of obligatory gushing. “It’s the greatest advance in communication since cave painting,” some will proclaim. “Like Star Trek, but without the clingy Qiana shirts.”
The iPod looks like it may turn out to be a non-repeatable experience

It’s predictable. If Apple got into medical devices, people would come out of Steve Jobs’ speech proclaiming “The iBag is the easiest, most user-friendly colostomy device I’ve ever encountered.” …

The Apple phone flop | Perspectives | CNET News.com

internet speed – Shaw cable vs Telus

On By Rick McIn internet, product complaints, product endorsementsLeave a comment

George Novak works in cabling and computing at University of Alberta.

Turns out these speed tests are highly inaccurate. The better way to check is with a stopwatch. Upload or download a large file and see how many minutes it takes.


I am attaching my internet speed test for my University connection. Internally we’re all on 1 gig switches and have a 100+ Mb pipe to the outside world, no firewall. As you can see it shows that we’re only about 3x faster than your Shaw connection, in reality it’s so much faster that you would hardly believe it.

Capture

I think the problem is that it does not indicate the route that is being taken when the test is done, the number of hops, the physical routing etc. Unless you can always test from the front end of your ISP you will always be at the mercy of the physical path taken to whatever destination you’re testing to and from. I would say that these kinds of test tend to be rather inconclusive as to your real speed capability.

In my own personal experience, I have never experienced better throughput on a Telus connection as I have on Shaw, even though they always claim it’s faster.

Stephen Neal who works for Telus would disagree. According to him, “Telus Rules, Shaw Drools!”

It’s time for a speed test with a stopwatch.

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Shaw Cable internet SUCKS … I think

On By Rick McIn internet, product complaints5 Comments

Am I wrong?

Still trying to figure out how slow “sucks” is on this chart.

Tonight my QOS is only 20%. (whatever that is)

Kristian out in Okotoks on Telus (DSL) Highspeed wireless came through at 98% !

Warren in Saskatoon reports 87% though it drops dramatically depending on what he is doing.

shaw-cable.jpg

Download: 1,185,032 bps
Upload: 119,800 bps
QOS: 20%
RTT: 77 ms
MaxPause: 527 ms

Leave a comment below if you want to record your own connection using Internet Frog.