Aaron Shear - ideas, rants and drivel

United Customer Service

2009-06-11T02:35:00.000-07:00

So on my way back to SFO from LAS tonight, there was a mechanical failure of my flight that was heading in from Denver. The delay started to get out of control, first 20 minutes, then 40, then an hour, then 2 hours, then 3 hours and so on. As a 1k, United will get me a ticket on most other carriers when an issue like this pops up. Tonight Virgin America was the only carrier that had a flight even close, except they do not honor tickets from other carriers. Even though their employees can fly free on United. Odd???

The gate rep told me that there was a mechanical problem keeping the flight from leaving Denver. Without any doubt, I believed this and it made total sense. I called the 1K desk and asked for help, the agent told me she might be able to get me on a US Air flight, but could not be sure. At this point I was loosing it, my birthday is this weekend and I wanted to get home and see friends. The supervisor comes on the line and told me that the reason the flight was delayed was due to weather in SF. This just set me off, as I had been told that it was a mechanical issue. Instead of helping me, this supervisor just lied to me without any research.

How can a company like United operate like this? They finally pulled out a "spare" plane and got us off the ground 3 hours late. We did have a 20 minute delay on the tarmac due to weather in SFO. Not a big deal, but it added to the problem and just enraged me a bit more.

Before we took off, there where 2 passengers with dupe seats, so they had nowhere to sit. The computer kept the seat next to me open as it should, since the flight was not full. The flight attendant just put both next to me without checking to see if I was 1k or not. I mentioned it to him as he was placing a non economy plus passenger next to me. He just blew me off and then walked away, when he came back with the manifest he offered to move me to a row further back. He should have just put these passengers there.

United seems to be blowing off status left and right, I know their flights are more packed but these benefits keep me flying them. What is the point?

iPhone 3.0

2009-06-10T13:18:00.000-07:00

So I put the iPhone 3.0 software on my phone yesterday, was freaked that it was going to start crashing like it did earlier. The install was very simple and no real problems other than it put an extra page between apps, I thought most of my apps where wiped out.

The new texting is awesome, instead of waiting for a text message to go out, you can hit back and start on a new one right away. For someone like me who sends and receives over 2-3k texts a day, it is very helpful.

I am looking forward to the new iPhone 3GS, will be nice to have a camera that works and be able to take drunk videos. Err I mean videos of my friends.

I am sure that AT&T will find a way to gouge the hell out of us for the tethering capability.

United Pilot

2009-05-18T16:34:00.000-07:00

So on my way to Vegas last night a actually got a Thank You card from the pilot, they have not give those out in years. Either this is a fluke or United is getting desperate.

Was a great gesture!

Elements Summerlin

2009-04-29T09:46:00.000-07:00

Yes, I know sorry haven't written for a while. Been really busy, but I finally have a Starwood property worth talking about. Well it's a franchise, which must be why it is so nice. I just switched from Planet Hollywood, where I have been staying the past 6 months or so and moved over the Elements in Summerlin.

The hotel is about 15 minutes west of the strip. I was skeptical with it's very low prices and figured it was just another build and dump property. Well I was very wrong, first of all when you get to the hotel the lobby is well put together, clean and very charming. I tend to always check in late, so finding the lobby staff can be a challenge at times, but not that big of a deal.

They have rooms with small kitchens that I highly recommend, they are furnished with all of the cooking stuff anyone may need or want. The snack room just behind the lobby is full of frozen organic dinners and other healthy choices, so you don't have to go out and eat garbage every night. This is a huge plus on my review scale.

When you get up and hit the lobby there is complimentary breakfast, actually some decent stuff egg whites in a bagel or, breakfast burrito, or English muffin. Changes all the time, plus a large selection of juices, pastries and breads etc.

After you get back say, after 5 there is usually a hot treat of some sort, again complimentary and not bad. A nice little pool out back, with NO SCREAMING CHILDREN!!!! A 24 hour gym, not open from 10 til 6 with a $25 fee, cough Planet Hollywood.

What else can I say, leave your kids at home, otherwise I will hunt you down and make you pay for ruining a decent place to stay.

This place is listed as Elements by Westin, no Westin I have ever stayed at is this nice! PERIOD! The Westin in Las Vegas barley comes up to a Motel 6, well that might be a high point for them, Super 8 sounds like a better fit. That place is disgusting!

United customer service

2009-03-30T00:24:00.000-07:00

So I am confused, with the current economic decline, airline travel has slowed dramatically. However, United has ordered that all changes in non-changeable tickets must carry a change fee no matter what. For the past 4 years I have paid these fee's without question. However a few weeks back I booked a ticket along with hotel and car. The night before travel I attempted to check in online and found that my itenerary was one week off.

I called the 1K desk at the time, which switched me to Hawaii. The agent understood and was sure the change fee would be taken care of since it was a very odd situation and I never ask for such a credit. I was told that the supervisor denied the credit so I asked to speak with him. He got on the phone and right off the bat accused me of lying. Note, I am a 1k flyer which is nearly the most rediculas level of any airline to earn. He said that there is no way an agent can make a mistake, thus I must be wrong and he won't help me!!!

I took down his information and called the main desk and the supervisor explained to me that they are unable to give credits of any form. They are supposed to try not tell this to any customer. But she was able to apply special upgrades that allowed her to help me without violating her instructions as a supervisor.

I am so shocked that with such competition and lack of customers available, United is so willing to throw away a top end Customer as AA wants me to move so badly!

Starwood Platinum Upgrades

2008-12-12T12:50:00.000-08:00

I am not sure if anyone else has noticed this, but almost every property that I stay at within starwood is making excuses that all their suites are under construction. Except Planet Hollywood. I have been at the W Chicago City center and got the same useless excuse as the Westin Dublin. I never get upgrades at the Sheraton Towers in Times Square, but heading there tomorrow, we'll see what happens.

The funny thing is that I know employee's who get upgraded without any question and never an excuse. I will play along for a little longer, but at some point I will give up on this sham. I am naming this the Platinum blow off, they think we have all tasted the cool aid and we will continue to fall for it.

SES Chicago

2008-12-12T12:46:00.000-08:00

Well another round of SES is over in the warm 15 degree city of Chicago. There is a definite change in focus from the retail segment, they seemed to have slowed way down in experimenting around and really focusing on their businesses with this new economic climate. I am not really seeing a slow down in spending online, but then my clients have a decent SEO strategy and are doing quite well with it.

I think we will not be able to see how 2009 is going to look until the end of Q1. But this should be a very interesting year to come.

Pat Boone is a red neck racist

2008-12-11T11:14:00.000-08:00

Pat Boone a country singer, has called the peaceful protests of prop 8 an act of terrorism! What the hell is wrong with these red neck racist hicks? No one should support this uneducated price of white trash. I would love to hear what he has to say about Obama, I am sure he calls him a radical Muslim leader, who is going to kill us all. Where did the land of the free open up to allowing these people to be figures in our country?

Bush Peso, is it worth something again?

2008-11-03T11:28:00.001-08:00

I am in shock, it looks like the Bush Peso is turning back into a currency that is worth something again. I wonder if it has anything to do with him leaving office soon?

Free AT&T WIFI

2008-10-31T11:22:00.000-07:00

Wow another joke from AT&T, look free WiFi for iPhone customers. That is great, but it NEVER works! I have tried at 3 separate Star Bucks and none of them even make it to the sign in screen. Does anything work? They already got in trouble for over loading their cell towers, to the point of most people without even basic 911 services.

How again did AT&T the cheapest carrier get the contract with Apple? Verizon and Sprint at least have back bones that can handle this load.

Proposition 8

2008-10-30T00:37:00.000-07:00

So I do not like getting political at almost any time, but we are in the midst of an election and Proposition 8 has become personal to me. Many of my friends who cannot get married have recently been given the rights to be equals and share the same basic, yet common rights that Americans have enjoyed for decades.

The simple fact is, domestic partners in California do NOT have the ability to gain benefits if a partner dies or becomes unable to respond. Only a family member can decide what should be done with his or her benefits and not the partner. Thus if an employer provides benefits for spouses, domestic partners are typically excluded. This is one of many differences the state of California has provided as a basic level of discrimination.

Proposition 8, which has been funded largely outside of California is a written in stone amendment stating that marriage can only occur between a man and a women. Something written specifically in the "New Testimate". When the original settlers of the US left the old country, they wanted a place to be free, from not only religious persecution but all levels of intolerance. Thus when our constitutional rights where written, it was made clear that there was a fundamental difference between Church and State! Ironically, Europe, which most escaped from has now become very tolerant of difference and provides tremendous levels of protection to all.

This same group has used young children, without the consent of their parents to create miss leading ads that convey they are being taught about same sex marriage in their schools and it is swaying their views. A significant portion of these parents have publicly asked that their children be removed from these ads, I hope that they choose to take legal action against these "Child Abusers".

When making your decision, I only ask one thing. Is it right, to treat "Americans" differently based on race, gender and or sexual orientation over religious views? In a country founded on such differences?

Maybe we should only use the oldest religions as a base in all of our decisions. This would help determine all of our choices in life. That could be Judaism, Buddhism or we can just simply go back to the Roman Gods.

Why should our friends be treated so differently? Even though you may think that no one around you is being effected, I can assure you, they are!

Virgin America

2008-10-13T16:46:00.000-07:00

So I have to say, I have become a huge fan of Virgin America, took it for the first time to Vegas this past weekend since United was sold out. I was very impressed with the seats, toys and the staff. They are MORE expensive than United for the same flight from SFO, but might be worth it. I wish they flew more places, they make it so hard to switch when United has such a good Mileage program.

Well they are new, so let's see what happens.

iPhone 2.1 on 3G

2008-09-15T13:05:00.000-07:00

I am happy to say, my iPhone 3G is finally behaving after installing 2.1. It seems to have solved a ton of issues, plus I love some of the new logos on it. Battery does seem a little more plentiful but can't say for sure until I have used it for another few weeks. My phone did break a few weeks back and they gave me a new one, restoring these phones from backup is not as easy as they claim! But this update has put some hope back into the quality of this phone.

Apple Care Upsell Email

2008-09-15T11:43:00.001-07:00

So I thought this was funny, I just got an email for my macbook air offering me apple care. When you click on it, it says...

Seems to me there is a better way to sell a gross margin heavy product. But I could be wrong.

AT&T 3G

2008-08-31T03:32:00.001-07:00

AT&T has the fastest 3G, well I beg to differ; recently I switched over from Verizon to AT&T when I picked up the iPhone. The phone is great! However the data speed is not as so prominently advertised. Yes, it is much faster than the prior version of the iPhone, however not nearly as fast as any phone I tested on the Verizon network.
Recently I tried a test, I purchased a Cradlepoint wireless access point, where I can plug in my Verizon Broadband card. The idea was I could easily attach my Macbook Air and friends could share the card if needed. For the heck of it, in a setting where I had full strength on the iPhone in the 3G network. I was connected my phone to my cradlepoint, which was connected to my Verizon Broadband with 50% signal strength. All web access on the iPhone increased by 400% over the 3G from AT&T.
After further research I found that AT&T uses a very fast interface on their towers for 3G, however the majority of their towers only have 2 T1’s to cover (x) users. Most cable modems provide greater levels of capacity than a total of 3mbps, the total of 2 T1’s. Just to be sure my phone wasn’t the issue, I asked a buddy in the UK to load the same US page and his phone responded at least 4x faster.
How is it AT&T can advertise the fastest 3G network, when clearly they do not have the fastest working network in the US?
I have even tested my Verizon Broadband Card against a late model 3G AT&T card on the exact same laptop. Both having the same signal strength, however the Verizon card out performed the AT&T card in every single test. I am lost; can someone explain this to me? I have heard all of the reasons why from a top-level guy at Sprint, that knows this stuff inside and out.

iPhone 2.0.2 update

2008-08-31T03:02:00.000-07:00

I have been a great fan of Apple's products, to the point of completely switching all of my machines to the Mac environment. I had been holding out for the iPhone 3g especially since the first iPhone was so slow on the AT&T network. My friends have enjoyed the stability of the iPhone and so I jumped on, especially knowing that the software was so well integrated with the computers.

This last update has shown a very Microsoft level of instability and is quite shocking. Even with a few major bugs with the new operating system, they where able to respond quickly and keep most of the problems at bay. But none of those updates crippled the computer like what is going on with the iPhone. As a past owner of several Microsoft Smart Phones, I suddenly can start to compare issues. These issues may not be a direct match, like the locking up when the phone rings, which for now is not an issue.

When will we see help? Apple's silence is not helping the situation at all.

Citibank is down

2008-08-31T02:00:00.000-07:00

It is a total amazement to me how the largest bank in the world has an outage of their website. Most likely they are in the middle of a major update.

Just so people are aware, there is technology, simple to setup that will say "we are in the middle of an upgrade" or we will be back online by "x". However, it seems to me that a large company should have something more interesting than a basic server error.

San Francisco Business License

2008-08-17T00:39:00.000-07:00

Out of utter shock I need to write about my experiences dealing with the city of San Francisco over a simple business license. You would figure any city that wishes for growth would do anything in their power to make this process as simple as possible. San Francisco on the other hand is simple to deal with, IF you wish to create a tax ID under your own name.
If you wish to take your normal business and turn it into a business name, which does not include your surname, then you need to do the following. Enter the fictitious business name department; this department also handles wedding certificates as well. Bring them the form for your new business name, as long as it is not conflicting with a current CA business. They will make you go to the business license office on the other side of the building. After you wait in line, they will look up your account and make sure that your taxes as up to date. Which in most cases are not, since the tax code is so convoluted it is nearly impossible to stay on top of. They will send you to the tax desk, which will inform you that you need to pay a tax that you most likely have never hear of or you do not understand.
At this point, they will send you to the tax desk, near the business license desk for payment. Oh, they only take cash or check, wow for such a sophisticated city; they cannot take a credit card. After this, they will send you back to the tax collector desk to confirm payment. This person will say all is good and you should go directly to the desk that creates the fictitious business name. This desk will force you to wait for a ridicules amount of time just to tell you that they need a certification from the business license desk. So you go back and wait in line for them to provide this form, which takes at least another half hour to complete.
Now that you have this silly form, you must go back to the fictitious naming department and try to file once again! Another 40-50 minutes go by and you are up again. You are asked to pay a fee and publish the new business within an authorized publication. This publication must file a form to the city within 30 days to ensure that it was actually posted to the public. Instead of the city providing you just a simple list, they become creative and sell your information to ALL of the publications in the bay area.
You are now subject to a bombardment from these publishers of ads and offers, to post your new business name. For as little as $20 to well over $100 for the exact same offer. Many of these publishers have automated this process and offer a way to complete the requirements online. However, when I attempted to access these sites, they where ALL down!
After missing the deadline, I was forced by a publisher to go back to city hall and re-publish the exact same form and pay the BS tax that I have already paid. Of course you must stand in line and fill out all of the same documentation out once again.
For such a so-called “green” city, there sure is a ton of paperwork that should have been automated years ago. Thus the corpus of my bitching comes to fold, why is it a city of such great power and progressiveness cannot streamline their processes? It seems to me that they are just trying to keep jobs for the sake of “not offending anyone” for their lack of skills. Why not have one desk that handles all of the business issues? Oh well, I will never get the 10+ hours that I have wasted back.

Web Site Performance and SEO

2008-08-11T02:47:00.001-07:00

If you keep up with my posts on Search Engine Watch, you will notice that I regularly talk about how site performance can be a significant driver in SEO, especially with Google. Many large companies take this data for granted; they are worried about up time and browser performance. Which in most cases is a good thing, however a search engine like Google may be testing your response rate and attempting to predict your level of capacity. In both IIS and Apache it is possible to throttle a search engine so it crawls at a lower level. In most cases this application or module may produce a 500 server busy error. Search engines interpret this as an end user experience and may limit the number of pages and or keywords that may rank at the same time. This practice ensures users commonly find an active page when they click on a listing. How fast are your servers?

United Airline Double EQM Elite Qualifying Miles Deposit Date

2008-08-06T15:55:00.000-07:00

So, you may remember me talking about the Double Elite Qualifying Miles or EQM being posted to the accounts on July 31, but I just spoke with the 1k desk and they pushed that back to Friday August 8th. So hopefully we will see that hit on Friday! It will be the only way I hit 1K this year.

Finally iPhone 2.0.1 is out

2008-08-05T10:09:00.000-07:00

It’s installing on my phone, I hope the bugs are gone. Yesterday, I got a text message at the exact same time I was switching the phone from silent to normal and it locked up. I had to reset it 3 times before it came back to life. I love the phone but come on Apple; a few more tests would have not hurt. You delayed the release for a month.
I must say the Loopt application is my favorite, being able to figure out where my friends are when we go out and loose each other bar hopping is great! I am not sure it was designed for that, but that’s the best use for me!

Starwood Price Guarantee is Fake!

2008-08-05T10:03:00.000-07:00

As much as I love Starwood properties, I have to say their customer service has fallen through the floor. Having a fake price guarantee on their site is the last straw. Expedia shows a property in Chicago for $299 a night, with a 100% guarantee for a refund for Elite members. SPG.com has the same room for $399 a night and the only way you can earn stays or Starwood points is to book on their site. After submitting a claim on their site before booking as they specify, they automatically decline your request since the terms are not exactly the same. Which they are! Then they say, well that is not a set of terms available to everyone. But they say nothing about the specifics of these terms.

This is the same hotel chain that offers massive discounts to large organizations and the same room would be $100 a night. But for the common business traveler is not nearly enough for them. If they wish to blatantly lie, I implore an attorney with spare time on their hands to go after Starwood for this “FALSE ADVERTISEMENT”!

It is time someone calls these companies on their bait and switch guarantees and services. It is not fair to the rest of us trying to rely on services offered. Anyways, I needed to get that bitching off my chest this morning.

iPhone 3g

2008-07-11T10:15:00.000-07:00

So I stood in line to be one of the first to pick up the iPhone this morning. Well I bribed a friend with pizza and blankets to hold a place for me. The process was a nightmare, AT&T's billing system was all on the fritz. While I was waiting for the system, which took over 40 minutes to work. Chanel 5 news here in SF was filming and interviewing me.

After the long wait, I am now home. My Verizon phone is shut off and the iTunes store is overloaded. So I am without a phone due to poor capacity planning on Apple's part.

I must say, this is one of the worst cell phone activations I have ever gone through. The phone will not work without talking to iTunes.

I hope no one needs to get a hold of me today.

PS3 Customer Service

2008-07-10T02:05:00.001-07:00

Unboleiveble, I just got a new PS3 and just tried to setup their network. This should be a simple and very easy setup. Especially since, well I am sure that they are expecting a jump in revenue for this feature like Microsoft gets with the xbox 360. But in this case, I go through all of the hoops and carefully input in my credit card and billing information into the system.

No matter what I put in, it keeps rejecting me. Thus I assume that the cards I have been trying are just protecting me, which is normal. They want to cover their own butts and make sure that no one is spending money that they will have to refund at some point. But in this case, I call both cards that I normally use and find that they can see the pre-authorization to determine if the card is ok and all went through just fine.

So after 30 minutes of screwing around with the console and the credit card companies, and of course useless manuals that come with the console, I turn to the website. The website has only one form of contact, a form in which you fill out for a return call. When you buy a game system that costs over $400 and has little to no support I begin to wonder how things will be down the line.

Wow, what a mess! So far not a huge fan of this system.

Picked up a PS3 and Guitar Hero

2008-07-10T00:58:00.001-07:00

So out of a bit of pressure from a buddy, I picked up a PS3 and Guitar Hero over the weekend. Images and quality are great, but I have to say the amount of network updates so far are too often and very slow. Living in the middle of San Francisco with a 33mbps down load rate, I expected so much more from Sony.

Just bought call of Duty 4 and its sitting, slowly, very slowly downloading the update to get online.