Maybe "Final" Finally Means Final

Months back, Barry posted a piece about those scum-sucking auto warranty folks who had given me more last chances to "renew" my non-existent and supposedly soon-expiring auto warranty than a permissive parent gives a rotten kid to stop hitting his brother. After pressing the necessary numbers to decline their service "once-and-for-all," on at least three separate occasions I began to figure out that they were only kidding. About the final chance part. About me even having a warranty. About being able to remove my name from their list. I suspect that, even if I'd bought their probably phony (ooh, accidental pun there) warranty, they'd have still kept offering me one last chance to buy it again.

At the time of Barry's post, I completely sympathized with his complaint and put the draft of a seconding post in my Dashboard, but never found time to finish it.

In my case, most of the calls were arriving through my Google Grand Central account, so I was at least able to block each number they called from, for what little good it might do. Actually, I thought it had done some good. The calls finally stopped. But I learned today, again from Barry, that Verizon, bless their hearts, took the scum-sucking bastards to court and won a $50,000 judgment against them, which Verizon is donating to charity. Best line from the article: "The main part is, of course, that Verizon customers won't be bothered by these two jackass companies anymore." :-)

Verizon and I got off to a rough start while they were perfecting their "Easy Move" program, but for the last few years, I've nothing but praise for them. They'll keep my business. And AT&T wouldn't win it back if they were the last communications company on earth--but that's all another story. I carry grudges like that in the business world. Die scum-sucking Palm! (Oops. Was that out loud? Must've been channeling for all of us who are part of the five-to-one shipment ratio of new BlackBerry's to new Palms) . . . Want my business? Work for it. Work for it and you'll earn my steadfast loyalty. It's an old model, but it still works for me.