Posts Tagged FAIL
The EZPass Controversy
Others have already lamented the new fees that one now has to endure for the privilege of having an EZPass to use at the toll facilities in Maryland (and, by extension, most of the East Coast). In case you don’t know, here is the new fee breakdown.
- Monthly Account Charge
- A monthly account charge of $1.50 will be deducted from all E-ZPass Maryland accounts. Please note: this charge is per account and not per transponder.
- E-ZPass Transponders
- All new or replacement devices must be purchased. The following rates apply for transponders:
Standard – $21.00
Exterior – $33.00
Fusion – $40.00
- All new or replacement devices must be purchased. The following rates apply for transponders:
- Commuter Discount Program
- The duration of E-ZPass Maryland commuter discount plans will be reduced from 60 days to 45 days.
- E-ZPass Shoppers Plan for the Bay Bridge
- A new Bay Bridge plan will be offered for Bay Bridge customers. The Shoppers Plan costs $10 and is good for 10 trips that may be used Sunday through Thursday only and expires after six months.
- Notice of Toll Due
- Traveling through any lane in the toll facility without providing sufficient payment for the toll due will cost $3 + toll due. The notice will be mailed to the registered owner of the vehicle.
- Toll Violation Charge
- Failure to pay the toll due by the deadline will result in a $25 fee in addition to the $3 + toll due.
The big fee that has many people up in arms is the monthly account charge. According to public information from the Transportation Authority, the cost of maintaining dormant accounts is huge–$1.9 million.
The cynic in me is not surprised that the state would levy a fee as opposed to actually addressing the root cause of the problem. The more reasonable stance would be to create a policy of inactivating accounts after a set period of unuse. Of course, that would rob the Transportation Authority of money. Still, this seems reasonable to do.
Of course, my favorite part of keeping abreast on this change has been reading Michael Dresser’s coverage of this. I continue to be amazed that this man has a job. His post admits to his journalistic failings as a better investigator–he stood by while the EZPass program was touted as the wave of the future. Still, though, I have to question why he is not challenging the authority more on this question of account maintenance. Why not push them to inactivate dormant accounts? Dresser FAIL!
RAZR2: Study in FAIL
In recent weeks, I have been incredibly annoyed by the wafer-thin source of fail that is my personal cell phone–the Motorola RAZR2. Here are some of the various reasons why I have come to label this phone as FAIL.
- The protection for the power outlet on the phone is a small rubber gasket with a aluminum cover attached to it. The cover allowed for the gasket to be closed and maintain the lines of the phone. About 6 months ago, I lost the small aluminum cover. This was inevitable, as the cover appeared to be attached to the gasket with some sort of adhesive. It made very little sense to attach a piece to the phone that is opened and closed so often with glue, and it was even worse when I lost the cover unexpectedly.
- While I cannot determine for sure if the battery is dead or if the phone refuses to charge the battery. In the last 8 weeks, I have had periods where the phone could be plugged in all day yet not recharge. There has been no specific method I have employed to correct this behavior, but it comes and goes. For the last couple of days, though, it appears to have gone for good. I am going to replace the battery to see if that is the source of the problem.
In any event, I thought that this RAZR would be an improvement over the shortcomings of the first-generation RAZR. Heck, through the years, I have stuck with Motorola phones given their resiliency and long-life. Let’s look at my personal cell phone history through the years:
Motorola used to have a reputation for good phones. My E815 still works quite well, considering it is 3 years old. Even then, it still holds a charge pretty well. The RAZR2, however, is just such a letdown. Apparently, the decline in quality of Motorola phones seems to eerily coincide with the performance of their mobile phone unit.
Barring my battery purchase, I am quite close to considering getting a new phone to replace this POS.
E-ZPass Maryland: The New Look of FAIL
In an attempt to bring back some humor and ranting to my blogging, behold the latest recent example of FAIL.
Tonight, while trying to perform some maintenance on my E-ZPass account, I visited the E-ZPass Maryland website. I noted last week while reloading my account that the site had been rebranded to fit with the standard visual style of various Maryland government websites. Note the use of the common Maryland logo in the top navigational banner of the site–common to all Maryland websites these days.
I logged in using the new password I selected last week, and after looking to edit a portion of my profile I had to select another password. I played along with this, and then I went to select a new plan–changing from the Commuter plan to the Standard plan. It was then that the site truly achieved FAIL.
Good thing I paid my toll for the tunnel of FAIL. Here’s hoping someone was paged to fix my web application.
The Aftermath of my Verizon Experience
As I mentioned in a previous post, last Wednesday was my appointment with Verizon to repair my phone line following the wind storms we had on 8 March. Of course, this was 10 days after my service went out. Verizon’s service appointment scheduling is much more onerous than that of Comcast’s. For one, you do not even speak to a technician, as it uses an interactive voice-response system. For another, you don’t even get convenient four-hour windows; your appointment is between 8 AM to 5 PM.
I began the day working from home on Wednesday morning around 7 AM, so I was home all day for a technician’s visit. I waited, and as noon approached I started to worry a bit. Finally, after not ringing for about 10 days, my home phone rang! I answered the phone, and it was the Verizon technician. He provided a none-too-technical explanation about my problem, stating that they were able to resolve it “here.”
Effectively, my problem was resolved by some technician plugging in or checking the wiring at my local central office! Even worse, it took them 10 days to do so. Now that is some spectacular customer service. Thanks, Verizon, for all of my telephone needs!
Dining@Large: You Fail at Blogging
In an attempt to make their publication relevant, the Sun has chained some of their reporters to their keyboards and made them enter the brave new world of blogging. I have had a love-hate relationship with many of these blogs, and only a few of them have made my aggregator.
On a lark a few weeks ago, I decided to add the blog of the Sun’s Restaurant Critic, Elizabeth Large: Dining@Large. It was an occasional good read, but the author insisted on using a trick to clearly increase pageviews for her blog. The use of the “More” tag when composing various posts, forcing me to click through to read the rest of her content.
In a post where Large decided to discuss the benefits of her blog, “What you missed,” she ran down some interesting stats for her blog thus far and jokingly implored her readers to bookmark her blog and visit frequently. I decided to leave the following comment on this post:
Actually, you have caught on to the way blogs are supposed to work: encourage and engage conversation among authors and commenters. Kudos to you for being an old media type and embracing this medium.
The bigger problem, Ms. Large, is that I don’t need to bookmark your blog if I have an aggregator to get the blog’s feed. A bit technical, of course, but it sure beats hitting refresh on the main page of the blog. It does make your surfing a bit more concentrated, though, and can potentially lead to information overload for the uninitiated.
Finally, would it be too much to ask for full text feeds for your blog. Nothing is more annoying and disappointing for me having to click through to finish reading a blog entry. If it continues, I will do what I have done with other blogs: remove it from my aggregator and pay it scant attention. So, do me a favor, and do full text feeds and don’t do the whole “continue reading” link. I know it is a stupid MovableType trick that needs to stop.
Large responded inline to my comment–another annoying trend she exhibits on her blog–with the following response:
The problem is that not every entry is of interest to everyone, so I want you to be able to scroll through quickly to get to the ones that do interest you. When my entry is short, I do keep all of it on the main page.
I left a response to that comment that was never posted for one reason or another. In that comment, I lambasted Large for essentially relying on a hack to encourage pageviews. I stated that the need to conserve space for people consuming blogs in aggregators was unnecessary, and the argument that browsers needed to be able to skim down a page seemed especially foolish considering it takes but an extra click or two of the scroll-wheel of my mouse.
Following this exchange, I removed this blog from my aggregator. I refuse to waste my time reading a blog whose author maintains some befuddling notion that a few extra clicks of the mouse are taxing on folks who browse her blog. It was useless to convince someone that folks will scan the headlines of various post and pay attention to those posts that interest them by commenting on them.
Dining@Large: FAIL
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