Butt Sensitive - Computerisation Gone Mad?

Instead of scribbling a post for today, I spent yesterday afternoon being passed from one "agent" to another at the Chevrolet "Customer Assistance" department. (Quotation marks used advisedly!)

We have a Chevrolet Impala of last year's vintage, with which we've been very happy, except for one recent detraction. When we bought the car, up in Nebraska last year, I found the passenger seat very comfortable - much more so than our 2015 Impala which we swapped-in as part of the deal. Recently, though, I've had a bit of lower back trouble from the passenger seat and have needed a seat cushion to assist. However, I noticed that when using a seat cushion the passenger seat airbag sign began showing as "off" - i.e. deactivated.

The car's manual, I later discovered, tells that one cannot use any kind of cover or cushion on the front passenger seat because it deactivates the air bag. We made enquiries of our local dealership when having the car serviced a few weeks ago. Husband was told that there's nothing to be done about it - that "they're all like this now". So, unless my car seat feels my real, flesh and blood, backside upon it, it ain't going to save me with an airbag, should we meet with disaster!

Computerisation gone mad, I guess!

I do not believe that I'm the only one with this problem. There has to be a remedy.

So, I decided that this isn't right, found a Customer Service phone number for Chevrolet, for some expert assistance. A couple or so hours later I was no wiser, but considerably more frustrated. Apparently they have opened "a business case" to be passed on to some person higher on the scale of knowledge about these things. None of the 4 or 5 folks I was passed around amongst had any idea that this problem is actually "a thing". It surely is!

The person supposedly "higher on the knowledge scale" called me back sometime after 6 PM (central time), and assured me she will try to find a solution, but cannot promise anything. She said that she had never come across this particular complaint before. I suggested that perhaps nobody else with an iffy back has noticed what happens when using a seat cushion. I am surely not the only person with an iffy back riding in the front passenger seat of a 2017 Impala, in these United states.

TSK! We await further information...or frustration.

Complaints

They Used To Last 50 Years, piece by Ryan Finlay is a good, and informative read.
Snip:

Now refrigerators last 8–10 years, if you are fortunate. How in the world have our appliances regressed so much in the past few decades? I’ve bought and sold refrigerators and freezers from the 1950’s that still work perfectly fine. I’ve come across washers and dryers from the 1960’s and 1970’s that were still working like the day they were made. Now, many appliances break and need servicing within 2-3 years and, overall, new appliances last 1/3 to 1/4 as long as appliances built decades ago.........

Adding a complaint of my own reflecting, again, how things ain't what they used to be: parcels and packages used to be shipped to the customer simply and efficiently in the USA, using USPS or UPS or, for large and more expensive items FedEx. I've recently discovered, from frustrating experience, that during the last several years a new shipping plan has taken root. This involves more than a single small package carrier. It works like this: the package initially ships with UPS or another, newer, outfit - Newgistics is one I've come across. Once the package arrives in, or close to the buyer's home state, shipping responsibility is transferred to USPS for actual delivery of the package.

This might have seemed like a good idea at the time. Dual-shipper system seems usually to be what happens when the buyer chooses the cheapest shipping method offered by the seller. From my own experience, twice recently, and from commentary online in a number of places, there's universal criticism : "this system sucks!"

Once the first carrier deposits your package at the mid-way destination it can sit there for several days. Tracking goes dead, does nothing but confuse rather than assist, indicates several estimated delivery dates which do not happen. I don't how this system can be seen as efficient for the buyer or cost-efficient for the seller. Small packages that would have been delivered within 3 or 4 days by USPS alone can take anything up to 2 weeks to arrive, and occasionally longer, using a dual-shipping plan. Packages can sit, day after day, after day waiting for attention, and often at a location only a short drive from the buyer's home!

I suspect there's method in their madness (there almost always is!) Once burned by experiencing this two-handed delivery system, when next ordering online a buyer is far more likely to pay a higher price for faster reliable delivery time.

In the case of shorter lives of appliances, and unreliable delivery times for packages - cui bono? Who eventually benefits? It's not ever going to be the customer, is it?

"One's life must seem extremely flat with nothing whatever to grumble at!" ~W.S. Gilbert

I'm not one of those serial complaint makers to manufacturers or retailers - but more power to 'em - I'd join them more often if I could be bothered. How frustrating it is though, when after getting up steam enough to write a detailed complaint to a manufacturer about one of their products, all you get, at best, is a standard format reply with no evidence that they've read what you've written - even if they refund the purchase price.

Back in December we bought a couple of cartons of Dole soup - a new kind not seen before. We thought they'd be handy to have in the cupboard in case of power outages during the winter - it'd be something easily heated on our little camping stove.

"NEW!" the cartons exclaimed - "Dole Garden Soup, all natural. No GMO. No MSG, preservative free, no cholesterol, low in calories and fat". What more could one want?

We chose the Carrot and Ginger flavour and the Tomato and Basil. A few weeks later we decided to try the Tomato and Basil on a lunchtime of a particularly frigid day; if the soup was good we'd buy more for emergencies.

Yikes! The soup was downright nasty! "Something's wrong with this!" we both said, and poured both servings away after first tastes. I detected a taste, and smell similar to chlorine. Husband thought the nasty taste to be more like cardboard (never having eaten cardboard myself I couldn't comment on that!) We decided this carton might have been stored in the supermarket or warehouse too close to a heater, or maybe frozen and wrongly defrosted - or something. Probably a one-off slip-up. A few days later we decided to try the Carrot and Ginger, just to check. The nasty taste and smell were there, exactly the same as before.

Because the soups were not cheap and tasted so wrong I decided it might be a good service to warn Dole about, at least, the consignment from which ours had come. I filled in their online complaint form, with all the detail required: consignment number, other numbers, expiry date from the carton, address of supermarket where purchased, dates, etc. and wrote a note in the available space telling exactly our findings, and explaining that I no longer had one of the cartons so detail given was from the Carrot and Ginger carton only.

A letter arrived this week from Dole - not bad for a complaint response, a cheque for $7 enclosed. Cheque is nice -letter less so. They hadn't paid any attention whatsoever to what I'd said about the strange taste and smell common to both flavours - simply went on about how they beta test flavours and were sorry we didn't like the Carrot and Ginger, so enclosed a recipe leaflet for using carrots!

Ah well...Dole did respond in timely fashion, and did refund, which is more than can be said for my other complaint (two in such quick succession - maybe I'm becoming a serial complainer!) This one happened a couple or three months ago, when my foot problem first began. After buying three compression bandages from an outlet online, to supplement the 20-year old supply I had (from my previous problem back in the UK), I found the new product, now manufactured by a different company (Mölnlycke - previous company was Convatec) to be vastly inferior. The bandages are probably made in China now, though I've found no label to that effect. The bandage didn't seem to me to have the same firm compression value, and it slipped around on my leg, soon became uncomfortable - just quite different - not good at all, yet being sold under the same patented name. The new company must have purchased the patent from the original company in intervening years.

I received no reply at all from the seller website, even though I'd sent a detailed, typed, snail-mail letter and suggested that, at the very least, they might pass my letter on to the manufacturer. What did I receive in return - from anyone? Niente, nada, zilch, or as we'd say in Yorkshire now't! I carried on using 20-year old bandages.

FAIR USE ?

I received my first ever "cease and desist" letter from Blogger this week. Blogger, of course, is responsible for the content published in blogs it hosts, so any official complaints are received first by them. The letter told me that Blogger has "taken down" (i.e. reduced to a draft that remains unpublished) a post of mine from August this year.

The notification advised me that something in my post allegedly infringed on the copyright of others.
The letter didn't give me any detail of the complaint but linked to a site called Chilling Effects where cease and desist notices are filed for perusal. I was advised to see detail there. Unfortunately that site hasn't been updated since 4 December and Blogger's notice to me was dated 5 December. So I am not sure what part of my content was the source of a complaint, nor was I told the name of the complainant (which would be a clue, at least). I immediately informed Blogger Support of this, asked for further detail of the complaint, but 48 hours later am still in the dark.

I try to be very careful about the "Fair Use" guidelines in respect of copyright. In the relevant post I had used a paragraph from an astrologer's website to illustrate a point made with regard to a musical composition. I was careful to use a minumum of copyrighted content and added a long link to the astrologer's website with a very clear recommendation that readers go see the whole article there.

Maybe (if he be the complainant) that astrologer is especially sensitive about having a small amount of his content copied, even when intended as "fair use". But I'm not absolutely certain that the astrological quote was the problem.

I had also copied some extracts of song lyrics, which, again were used to help "prove" a point, as well as a couple of lines from another website about musical composition - also very clearly linked back to the original site.

All the linked content was, to my mind, being used fairly, and in accordance with Fair Use guidelines, in the interests of "education" or clarifying information - about astrology and how it "works". My blog's title: "Learning Curve on the Ecliptic" should give a clue as to what I try to achieve in many of my posts. I try to illustrate astrology "working" in real life, in such a way that those skeptical about the subject might pause to think about their objections, and wonder for a moment or two whether there could be another side to it after all.

As my profile declares, I'm not a professional astrologer. I offer nothing for sale, ask for no donations, carry no commercial adverts. I refer often to books or websites of "the pros", simply to illustrate a point or to add substance to my own, less-experienced, less astrologically-educated views.

Whichever brief quote I used in the "taken-down" post was the subject of complaint, I do not feel unjustified in using any of them. However, since I do not know to exactly what the compainant referred, I must leave the post in draft or delete it. I'm unable to modify it by removing the offending portion, without further information.

PS ~~ These lines are a means of "letting off steam"! If I have sinned, then I am entitled to know details of my sin, and the name of the person or body I have offended, it is unfair to simply have my post removed with no further detail offered. Still no response from Blogger.