Tonight, we lost power again. While we were out for only about an hour, the astonishingly unreliable National Grid distribution system has me thinking.

First, National Grid should be heavily fined and their management replaced. Tonight, when I called “customer service” to report our outage (it takes real effort to talk to a human — they’d rather not actually speak to customers), I got an earful of how heroic their response has been. Well, that may be the conventional wisdom inside that company. But here, in the real world, the consensus of everyone I talk with is that National Grid should be tarred, feathered and run out of town in one of their bucket trucks. National Grid is patting itself on its collective back while people continue to suffer and their repairs don’t hold. (It’s an interesting marketing problem — but that’s a topic for a different blog post.)

Second, the fury of the people — some 85K of whom are still lights out in the sixth day of this event — has reached our politicians. Governor Patrick has called for an investigation. Senator Brown has written a letter expressing the outrage of the common man. As National Grid owns the DPU (see regulatory capture), the former will accomplish nothing to improve National Grid’s mismanagement. And Senator Brown is burnishing his lunch-bucket, regular dude populist credentials in an effort to get ahead of the real populism of his apparent re-election challenger, Democrat Elizabeth Warren. A pox on all these politicos’ heads for their cynical (and ultimately ineffective) manipulation of these events for their own political objectives.

Third, I am reminded of the first time I went to India on business. It was 1995; I was working at Lotus Development. We were there to deliver a symposium for Notes application developers. I was just beginning the heavy international travel for business that dominated my career in the 1990s. I was naïve. In those early trips, I assumed that the world was like home: you could drink the water wherever you went and nobody ever thought about electricity supplies.

I remember visiting a Notes reseller on my first full day in Delhi, accompanied by our country marketing manager. We sat with the reseller’s managing director at the end of a long hall. Running down the spine of this hall snaked more than a dozen folding tables placed next to each other on their short sides like you might see set up for an event . On each side of the table were employees, working furiously on a variety of terminals — DEC VT101 compatibles, IBM 3270 compatibles and generic TTYs (all antiques today). This was the beginning of out-sourcing. I was told these people were doing contract programming for companies in the US.

All of a sudden, the power stopped. Nobody looked up. The fans stopped, the humming of the terminals stopped. It was silent. The programmers sat with their fingers curled at the ready over the keyboards of their terminals, eyes staring straight ahead at blank, dark terminal screens. Each programmer was in his or her own world, trying to remember where they were in the logic they were programming. They were at the ready, waiting for the power to come up in a few minutes — for just a couple of minutes. It was as if they, too, had been stopped dead by the power outage.

At our table, nobody missed a beat — except for me, the provincial dork. “Why,” I asked, “is everyone staring straight ahead, waiting to pounce on the keyboards? In a US office, when this happens, people push from their desk, laugh, talk sports and gossip until the power comes back on.”

“Not to worry,” I was told. “They are mentally paused at the last set of programming instructions just before they lost power and saved the items they were working on. They won’t remember as much if they relax and start talking. Plus, this happens several times a day. They’re used to it.”

And so it did happen, twice more in my hour meeting. I left astonished at the adaptation these programmers had to develop to keep their train of thought going during repeated, random power outages. They adapted by putting them minds into pause when power went out as a way of preventing re-work. It was my first taste of what happens to people who have to rely on third-world infrastructure.

Tonight, it’s a metaphor for what National Grid is doing to Southborough: they are pulling us backwards into the third-world, where we will all have to adapt, somehow, to an increasingly unreliable electricity supply. And that adaptation can only mean a step backwards for our living standards.

So, no, Governor Patrick, calling for an investigation won’t help. And, Senator Brown, you can save your franking privileges; it’s not going to do any good and it’s an utterly transparent political maneuver.

Instead, how about making DPU accountable for the third-world condition of our grid? Why not replace management there with new blood, people who have been explicitly charged with making sure National Grid is accountable for its failures? Why not put some teeth into this regulator to make sure that, one day, Southborough can once again rejoin the first world?

In case you need a refresher, in August, 2011, Hurricane Irene blew through central Massachusetts and 400,000 plus National Grid customers lost power, some for almost a week. (We were out 37 hours.) In October, 2011, a nor’easter blew though Massachusetts and, surprise!, 400,000 plus National Grid customers lost power.

National Grid can’t control the weather. I understand that. But apparently, they can’t control their grid either. The same areas, in approximately the same proportions, were affected in both storms. Coincidence? I don’t think so.

A post-storm driving tour I took in August matched up perfectly with the tour I took today: cross from Southborough into Framingham and you move from no power to power. Cross from Southborough into Hopkinton, you get power. The difference? Hopkinton and Framingham are not National Grid service areas. How could the weather be so significantly different in those two communities from the weather in Southborough twice in 90 days? Answer: it can’t.

Worse, National Grid is repeating its ham-handed handling of pr with this outage. In August, I tweeted two screenshots from their outage website. One showed that after about 32 hours of outage, National Grid was still “assessing” the situation. Here’s the screenshot from their website for today’s outage:

Click to enlarge

It’s now 22 hours after the start of the outage in Southborough. And nobody at National Grid has assessed the conditions in Southborough yet? I and most of the town were out early today, cleaning up downed tree limbs and assessing our properties. I live off of Route 85 (on which there were no operable traffic signals). Does National Grid expect us to believe they couldn’t get a truck through the the heart of Southborough to determine the problems and use that info to update their website?

In August, 92% of Southborough lost power.

Remarkably, today 91% of Southborough lost power:

Click to enlarge

This speaks volumes to me. National Grid did nothing to improve its distribution network after the major outage resulting from Irene.

In public communications, National Grid continues to prefer bromides (“We’re working as hard as we can”) to actual information. I called the Southborough Police in August and today, asked what they’d heard from National Grid and got the same answer both times: “We have no information from them.”

I think the picture is pretty clear: a broken-down UK utility has bought up US utilities from New York to New England and operates them with minimal investment and maintenance in order to maximize profits. Meanwhile, they rely on the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities to continue to suffer from a classic case of regulatory capture to avoid having to operate and invest in the system in a way that would minimize disruption from severe weather.

It’s shocking that a public utility can away with repeatedly exploiting its customers, manipulating its regulators and avoiding accountability in crisis situations.

Finally — finally — after exhausting me, after calling me and telling me I had other devices on my router network (no kidding; we have computers and mobile devices, just like everyone else), someone deep in the bowels of FiOS checked the check box and enabled access.

Now, I wonder why I bothered. FiOS’s websites and apps have been designed by the same people who think IRS forms are art: “Hey, how about that 2010 revision to the W-9! Let’s use that for the website. And geesh…did you see that new GSA schedule for applying to be a vendor of paper clips? Wow…what a beaut. Let’s use that for our iPad app.”

I kid you not…FiOS websites and apps are the worst designs I have ever seen. irs.gov itself is an island of organization and consistency compared to this mess.

Love government forms? verizon.com is for you.

Let’s take a little tour. Click on the “FiOS TV Central” screenshot nearby. Wanna login? Sure, the login link is right where it ought to be. But where are userid and password fields? Halfway down the page. Below the fold (even on a WXGA-res screen) On the left. Verizon is so desperate to upsell you to an on-demand movie that they can’t even wait until you login to stuff the page full of ads for content.

How To Make People Hate The iPad

Now, check out this screenshot from an iPad running “FiOS Mobile.” I’ve titled the screen shot “how to make people hate the iPad because after about three minutes of this thing, that’s what many people will end up feeling. First, it takes forever for the app to connect. Switching away makes you have to re-connect. If all you want to do is use the iPad to control the DVR, you have to first bring up a DVR listing, and then — if you are lucky — you get this truncated picture of a FiOS remote. Punch a button, say pause, so you can grab a snack or make a pit stop, and wait for 30 seconds before you get the action.

The Worst Android UI Ever Designed

But nothing — and I mean nothing — equals the depths of poor design demonstrated by the Android FiOS Mobile app. Take a look at this screenshot. See the similarity between the iOS app and the Android app? No, try closing your left eye, standing on your right foot only and squinting into the sun. There, see it now? Still no? Well, you and I must be the only ones because Verizon thinks it’s the Android equivalent of the iOS app.

You know, it’s one thing to not care about mobility for cable subscribers. But it’s another to be so completely lame — and to be so completely oblivious to it. Back in the day, I was a systems engineer for IBM on the NYNEX account. This was one of the predecessors to Verizon. I was responsible for application and database design using IBM technologies at that time — and I encountered what used to be called “Bell-shaped heads” in their application development. Having a Bell-shaped head meant you did things the phone-company way — you know, “We’re a monopoly and we couldn’t care less about usability.”

You’d think that after all this time, Verizon would have lost that myopic view of applications — but it looks like time has not healed those misshapen heads.

I mentioned to my wife that I knew this was a complete rip-off because HDMI is a digital specification. If you plug two compatible components together and you get audio and video, the cable is working. I know how much big-box retailers need to find profitable items to sell, given the small margins on consumer electronics. Because phone cases, batteries, cables and other accessory items are often not included in a purchase of a consumer electronic items, the retailers have a business incentive to gouge people.

Click to englarge

And, boy, does Best Buy cut deep into your wallet for a generic HDMI cable. Take a look at this search from eBay for 6ft HDMI cables. Many cables are available for a tenth of the price of Best Buy’s cables.

Sure, you sometimes have to wait for something to arrive via air mail from Hong Kong and maybe the cable will be defective and you are stuck with a small loss.

Neither of those risks make up for, IMO, the cruelly efficient fleecing of Best Buy customers, cynically executed by their salespeople who are trained to push all sorts of “pack” (useless add-ons) from cables to warranty extensions on unsuspecting non-techie customers.

(I’m still upset with Best Buy over the way they treated us when I bought a Sonos system for my father-in-law. Long story short, the made us sign up for a store credit card with the most usurious terms I have ever seen, they had us wait next to the dumpster to pick up the equipment, then they tried to give me a receipt that contained the wording “This is not a receipt.” If they can’t treat a knowledgeable customer with any respect, what do you think their attitude is when Grandma comes in looking for a cellphone?)

Then today, in an episode of Jungian synchronicity I ran across this post from CNET, which describes in detail the signaling protocol in the HDMI standard, the differences in the standards and what can really go wrong. Suffice it to say, people buying HDMI cables — something you really want to take home with your new HDTV — are getting massively ripped off if you buy it on impulse at Best Buy.

While I do believe in buyer beware and all that, what frustrates me is how entities like Best Buy have convinced themselves it’s OK to do business like this. If I treated my consulting clients like “marks” from whom I needed to extract the maximum revenue, they’d know it in an instant. How does Best Buy get away with its warm and fuzzy image, which clearly covers up for a raging retail exploitation machine?

Was Charles Schwab a simpleton when it came to auction rate securities?

Tomorrow, July 21, 2011, yet another court appearance will take place in the long-running case People of the State of New York vs. Charles Schwab & Co., Inc. (WebCivil Supreme index 453388/2009).

Having convinced its lap-dog regulator FINRA to look the other way, the only thing left between getting away with auction rate securities fraud and having to make good on its misrepresentations to little guys like me is this case brought by the New York state attorney general.

As I have occasionally thundered about on this blog, Schwab has been hiding behind “principle” since the case was filed in late 2009, asserting it was just the victim of other players in the marketplace and that as a “downstream” seller of these toxic assets, it should not be held liable for selling them.

Coupled with its, ahem, principles, it has delayed and delayed and delayed the NY AG’s case. First, by trying to move it to Federal court — a move it lost — and then by slowing a determination on its own motion to dismiss the charges.

The motion to dismiss was filed in March, 2010. Between then and now, the motion was heard once. There have been 11 adjournments. Apparently, a change in judges is at least partly responsible for the delays. But it’s pretty clear that Schwab doesn’t intend to settle and that delay, despite the continuing pain of people with illiquid auction rate securities, works to Schwab’s advantage.

In reviewing the case documents available on eTrack, I ran across the NY AG’s response to the motion to dismiss. Originally filed in May, 2011, its introduction is a must-read for anyone who is interested in this case and its impact. Here is the entire document.

But you only have to read these short excerpts to understand in a New York minute how vapid Schwab’s stand on “principle” is.

…Schwab claims to have had a limited role in the ARS market, and that it somehow was a victim of the practices of the major underwriter broker-dealers whose ARS Schwab distributed to its customers. If Schwab truly was such a simpleton in the marketplace as it suggests, then it was reckless in selling products it did not understand. But the evidence alleged in the Complaint belies any claim by Schwab that it was unaware of the risks in selling ARS.

And…

At base, this motion is another attempt by Schwab to delay adjudicating the case on the merits, and, more importantly, doing something to alleviate the suffering of its customers who continue to experience illiquidity for twenty-eight months and counting since the failure of the ARS market.

On behalf of all of us who’ve been robbed by Charles Schwab, I want to thank the NY Attorney General for making such a logical and crystal-clear argument for the court to consider. I hope tomorrow the judge will agree, rule against Schwab’s ridiculous motion to dismiss and allow the case to proceed.

Click to enlarge

It’s Memorial Day and a little rainy here, so I pulled out the iPad to catch up on tech news. And I stumbled on to a piece of proposed legislation that scared the bejesus out of me. The so-called PROTECT IP act (S.968), now fortunately placed on hold in the US Senate by the same senator who prevented the misbegotten COICA legislation from moving forward, is something every Internet user should know about.

First, you want to know about PROTECT IP in order to call your Congressmen and Congresswomen to tell them you believe this bill is dangerous and ill-advised. Second, you want to know about PROTECT IP because a collection of academics and DNS experts has written the most informative and compelling description of PROTECT IP and the DNS itself I’ve ever read. The document in opposition to PROTECT IP is written for legislators and staff, so it has a primer on DNS technology and makes this crucial — and vulnerable — component of the Internet accessible to even newbies.

If you use the Internet (how’d you get here?), you need to read the Ars Technica story on PROTECT IP and spend an hour with the experts’ whitepaper on DNS describing why PROTECT IP is such a mistake.

I’ve been hoping since the case was filed nearly two years ago that NY courts would do the right thing and force the gonifs at Charles Schwab to make restitution to the thousands of customers they lied to about the safety and liquidity of ARSs.

But frustration has begun to boil over due to the constant legal delaying tactics by Schwab in the case (click on the image to enlarge). Since at least April, 2010, Charles Schwab has used the courts to slow down justice by delaying a hearing on its own motion. It must be pretty obvious to its legal team that the motion to dismiss will be denied, so the next best thing is to never give the judge the chance to rule. (And think of the billable hours for Schwab’s laywers!)  The motion has been repeatedly rescheduled without a hearing (“adjourned” in legalese). If only normal people like me could afford to stave off judgement day like these thieves are able to.

In Schwab’s twisted logic,  its refusal to provide liquidity for its victims is an issue of “principle.” That is, it was only a transmitter of the toxic waste ARSs sold to trusting rubes like me. But it defies logic that any business can be “downstream” of offal and not smell it — or as in this case, bathe in it.

Schwab gladly sold me ARSs on Monday, February 18, 2008 — the day before the auctions collapsed completely — when it knew for certain the auctions had been in turmoil for weeks before. On that day, they were still telling me these ARSs were safe and liquid. They lied then; they are lying now. And there’s that smell in the air.

Now, they’ve not only retreated behind an alleged principle, they’re cynically preventing that principle from being tested in a court of law. My message to Schwab (I know you read this blog every time I post on this topic): stop hiding behind your lawyers’ skirts, man up and take the medicine. Your claim of “principle” is undone by your scorn and manipulation of the judicial process.

Have you ever had a problem with a huge company that tries to “make you go away” by stonewalling and ignoring you? That’s what Charles Schwab has been trying to do since it sold me auction rate securities in 2008 on the day before markets froze. They had to have known when they took the order that these things weren’t liquid and safe, the two reasons they sold them to me in the first place. They were happy to take the order then…but today they, alone among retail brokers, have refused to make good on the ARSs they sold to conservative investors like me.

I have been using this blog (see my previous posts) and the interest of reporters to make my displeasure public.

Beth Healy of the Boston Globe missed the irony of Massachusetts residents lending the state money for the Big Dig and not being able to get it back by pointing out that the state “saved” money by not calling the notes.  Healy asserts, “…regulators say they’ve done all they can to help.”

Uh, no, not quite. I’ve never received a single response to repeated inquires to the governor, the secretary of state, the attorney general, my local representative and, above all, the source of these ARSs, the treasurer’s office. Why the silence? Simple: it would be too embarrassing for the politically ambitious Treasurer Cahill to force Schwab to settle. And no state department is going to make another department look bad. AG Coakley can get headlines for pursing fraud from just about any company. Why expose the shady dealings the state itself engages in?

Still, Schwab hated that Globe story enough to send me a letter terminating my accounts. No problem, guys, I was happy to leave.

So, you might think, why not complain to the SEC and to Wall Street’s “self-regulator,” the Financial Industry Regulatory Agency (FINRA)? I have, of course. In 2008 I filed complaints with both agencies. How’d that work out?

Just as you might expect. We all know how well the SEC has done at protecting people from Madoff, Stanford and CDOs. With so many larger fish to pry off the hook, paying no attention at all to individual investors stuck in ARSs is a natch.

And FINRA, known as Wall Street’s favorite regulator, actually contributed its former boss, Mary Schapiro, to the helm of the SEC. Miraculously, after years of doing nothing to protect the little guy at FINRA, Ms. Schapiro apparently grew a pair just in time for her confirmation hearings. Just saying you are for strong consumer protection is, I guess, enough to assure congressional committees you should run an agency we now know was dysfunctional.

Still, FINRA — like Schwab — is listening to the political discourse and is maybe (finally) rubbed a little raw by the attention their abject failures have generated. When Jed Horowitz of Investment News wrote about the lack of action in New York’s suit against Schwab, something must have clicked at FINRA headquarters.

A week or so after Horowitz’s article, I got a call from FINRA. I assume the timing wasn’t accidental. They probably hoped to convince me to shut up, at least for another year or two until they find a way to exonerate Schwab or the whole thing blows over.

They wanted me to know they were “actively engaged” and they’d “made progress.” They couldn’t say what, if anything, they actually plan to do. Or when, if ever, they plan to do whatever they decide they are going to do.

While Congress debates partially re-regulating Wall Street, the simple fact is that the entire industry is morally bankrupt and the interests of the country have been repeatedly subjugated to the greed of the industry. Worse, regulators, such as they are, are victims of “regulatory capture.” Even if FINRA wasn’t designed as Schwab’s concubine, it has willingly become one. Schwab asks, FINRA dances.

Well, growing a business ethically continues to defy Bank of America. First, it duped shareholders by concealing girnormous losses at Merrill-Lynch last year — then it agreed to paying ML’s brokers astronomical bonuses, all apparently in exchange for an extra $50B in TARP funding.

Next, it pissed off a Federal judge who wouldn’t let BofA off the hook for the ML debacle. The judge simply refused to approve a sweetheart settlement.

Now, its CEO is leaving early…much to the relief of taxpayers, shareholders and John Thain (who’s looking for a new office to redecorate for millions of dollars). And, worst of all from BofA’s perspective, slamming credit card customers is going to be much harder next year because Congress passed new, long-overdue credit card regulations.

So, I guess it’s no surprise that BofA’s marketing is as ham-handed and tin-eared as the rest of the company. Consider this: the well-known WalletBlog has taken Bank of America to task for misleading customers and congressmen on credit card charges. First, Bank of America said it wouldn’t increase fees; then it announced it will. When WalletBlog pointed this out, they got a call from BofA corporate communications, trying to explain how a fee increase isn’t a fee increase by using Clintonesque parsing of words like “pricing.”

OK, so I don’t begrudge a PR type arguing strict meanings with bloggers; they have lawyers who can assure them that the plain meaning of their promise to not raise fees — what normal people understand — doesn’t count…that it’s OK to write a letter to legislators that sounds like a commitment, then decide to do what they really want to: fleece people.

But what shows how completely off the planet BofA is…how tin-eared they are…is their request to WalletBlog to lay off:

Naturally, at the end of our call, Bank of America asked that we stop circulating our blog post from last week. But we’re going to hold off on that until they provide the public with some clearer answers. The more digging we do, the more it seems like Bank of America should be taken to task. And it’s possible that we’ve just cracked the surface.

Anyone with half a day’s experience in press relations knows you never ask a writer, blogger or journalist to retract a story in the absence of factual errors. It’s guaranteed to produce exactly what this did: a mention of your arrogance along with an enhanced determination to keep the story going.

Would BofA have asked the Wall Street Journal to recall copies of the paper with a story it didn’t like? How about asking MSNBC to stop talking about a story like this? No…it’s only because the fool who called WalletBlog thinks less of new media — that it can be more easily controlled — that he or she asked WalletBlog to quash the story. It’s emblematic of problems not just in the risk management side of BofA, but throughout the entire bank.

My message to the WalletBlog: keep it up and don’t ever consider retracting something because some corp comm hack who thinks you’re unimportant asks you to leave them alone.

Well, this is one of those times when the government acts and you get to chose your reaction. On the one hand, the emergence of the ‘net as the definitive source of reviews for everything from software to celery has become a bonanza for the shills of the world who review products for filthy lucre and who pretend or obscure that they’ve been bought.

On the other hand, while advertising isn’t a protected form of free speech, it’s sad that we need government intervention limiting speech to prevent these people from preying on grandma’s Google search for cookie dough.

Into this fray steps the FTC with new rules to take effect in December, 2009. (I’ve attached a PDF of the new rules to this post for your convenience.)

You can see the rules struggling to keep up with new and social media. That, in itself, is an interesting commentary on how technological innovation always outstrips government’s ability to keep pace, much less anticipate the impact of technological change. Consider this heavily parsed defintiion from the rules:

An advertiser’s lack of control over the specific statement made via these new forms of consumer-generated media would not automatically disqualify that statement from being deemed an “endorsement” within the meaning of the Guides….Thus, a consumer who purchases a product with his or her own money and praises it on a personal blog or on an electronic message board will not be deemed to be providing an endorsement.

In contrast, postings by a blogger who is paid to speak about an advertiser’s product will be covered by the Guides, regardless of whether the blogger is paid directly by the marketer itself or by a third party on behalf of the marketer.

…For example, a blogger could receive merchandise from a marketer with a request to review it, but with no compensation paid other than the value of the product itself. In this situation, whether or not any positive statement the blogger posts would be deemed an “endorsement” within the meaning of the Guides would depend on, among other things, the value of that product, and on whether the blogger routinely receives such requests.

You all clear on that now?

It felt so good to unload two weeks ago on Charles Schwab for lying about the safety and liquidity of auction-rate securities they sold me. Blogging as catharsis is underrated, especially if you have as much tied up as I do in these now illiquid ARSs. As I pointed out in my previous post, just about every other firm else has settled, but not Schwab. No, they blame everyone else — the underwriters, the customers and, now, even the New York attorney general.

Today, the big news is that the New York State Attorney General is making good on the threat to file suit. This welcome but not-unexpected turn of events gives me not only another chance to vent against Schwab, but also for the first time to document that I wasn’t the only customer they lied to.

Today, the Wall Street Journal has published excerpts of what the lies the brokers told customers. Check out some of what they told people:

Customer from Massapequa, N.Y. Customer: “You know, I’m not trying to make a ton of money. I just want to play it safe.”
Broker: “Understood.” …
Broker: “When you go to get out of this, even though you tell the rep sell it that means you want to stop the auction. The hardest part of this auction is getting into it. That is the tough part. Getting out of it is easy as just selling.”

Customer from Seaford, N.Y. Customer: “I can just get out every 7 days?”
Broker: “That’s right.”
Customer: “I can just give you 7 days and don’t renew and you put the money back in my account?”
Broker: “That’s correct.”

Customer from Remsenburg, N.Y. Customer: “It is some kind of short term muni-based piece of paper used as an alternative to [a] money market.”.
Customer: “So that is better than what I am getting?”
Broker: “Yeah, yeah. It is better than saving in the money market at the moment.”
Broker: “You pick up about 50 to 60 basis points over what you would get in a money market, and what you are giving up is next day liquidity.
Customer: “OK. I can adjust it by $100k amounts every week?”
Broker: “In terms of if you wanna get out?”
Customer: “Yeah.”
Broker: “Yeah.”
Customer: “I’ll know a week ahead of time if I wanna make a big investment.”

Customer from New Hyde Park, N.Y.
Broker: “And it’ll roll over monthly unless you call me and say, ‘Hey [Broker], don’t roll it over anymore.’”
Customer: “Oh, I see. OK.”
Broker: “And then next month I’ll stop the auction and all the cash will come back to your account.”
Customer: “OK, [Broker], thank you.”

Customer — location unidentified Customer: “Well I need the liquidity because I may buy a house soon.
Broker: “I see.”
Customer: “I sold my house and this is money that’s just there temporarily.”
Broker: “instead of looking for the highest yield, I would personally look at the highest security. And that would be my second thing. And probably periodic auction rate securities. That would work better than any bond mutual funds for you. That’s my humble opinion.”
Customer: “OK. And it would be safer?”
Broker: “It would be much, much safer, for sure.”

Assurances like these are what lead me to invest money. Schwab brokers delivered these same lies to me.

What’s Schwab’s response to this news? Well, they issued a press release this morning, saying, in essence, “Not our fault…not our problem…all those customers we talked to about safety and liquidity can schove it. We ain’t schettleing.”

Well, I’ve just read a blog post from zug.com called “The Verizon Prank” in which John Hargrave risks big dogs and angry neighbors to make a point I wish more people were concerned about: lax privacy controls. Maybe we have the beginning of a new meme: Hargrave standing outside Verizon’s CEO’s home with the amp on 11 yelling, “Can you hear me NOW??”

My kids often ask why I object to signing pin pads at checkout lines. Simple, I tell them. Would you like to have your signature digitized and placed on orders for everything from stocks to cellphones? Wouldn’t care for that, they say.

But that fuzzy “privacy stuff” is protected, they protest. We live in public on Facebook and Twitter (and I don’t?)…we don’t worry about privacy.

The upbrading from my kids helps the confused cashier who thinks I am a nut and who can’t restart the transaction…yes, the pimply dude will say, your kid is right. Trust [TJMaxx, Wal-Mart, Exxon, Sears, L.L. Bean, the corner spa, the library] to protect your information. Like your lovely daughter there (lascivious glances at my tender young kids!), I trust [Gulf Oil, Toyota, AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Charles Schwab, the IRS] with anything they want to store about me.

Not me. I remain very skeptical. And, after you finish laughing your ass off at this video, you should become more skeptical, too.

After over three years of blogging, I am officially nonplussed.

 

I just love The Consumerist blog. It’s snarky, fun and to-the-point. But it worried me no end when Consumer Reports bought it. You know, the people who have the temerity to “accept no advertising” but who continue to sell useless “car price information.” These are the people who hawk their magazine shamelessly while being among the very few magazines or newspapers left in the world that do not publish their editorial contacts’ email addresses. CR is happy to tell you what to do. Just don’t bother trying to contact them or, perish the thought, criticize them in any way. (Just ask Bose about that.)

So, when they bought a blog that actually understood the concept of community, I was scared that we’d start seeing the monthly preaching and supercilious editorial content (right next to ads for CR‘s overpriced “gift annuity”) that I’ve loved-hated  in the magazine since I was 12. After all, their blogs on consumerreports.org mirror perfectly the printed book’s preachy, holier-than-thou tone. If this was their idea of gettin’ jiggy with the ‘Net, I wasn’t buying it. I thought The Consumerist  would instantly become The Bloviatist.

But I was wrong.

Proof? You say you want proof? Just follow this link. The Consumerist is holding a public vote for the worst company in America. And the two contestants are Citibank and Ticketmaster.  No question for me there. Ticketmaster is the extortionist of the entertainment industry. Their business practices should be legal only in Tehran.

It’s not like it wasn’t close. Tomorrow — April 27, 2009 — is “Alex’s Freedom from Citibank Day.” It’s the day my last CD matures with these…uh…”bankers.” It’s the day that, if my 15 written and phoned requests, blood and DNA samples do the trick, Citibank will cut me a check for my money and mail it to me because that’s the only way they can get it to me. That, despite the fact they were able to transfer the money into the account to buy the CD. It’s the Bank of Kafka — your money goes in…government money goes in…and Gregor Samsa comes out.

But, given that Tickermaster charges a “convenience fee” for what can only be convenient for their bottom line, it’s nolo contendere for my vote. As I wrote this, it was Ticketmaster taking the “prize” 70% to 30%. Go vote…for Ticketmaster. Then, tomorrow, call Citibank and close your accounts there (if you can).

Good on, ya, Consumerist. I hope CR continues to let you live.

When you get a credit card statement, do you ever read all the legalese on the back of the pages with the I-owe-a-fortune-amounts? I’ll bet many people don’t, despite the imploring of many consumer advocates.

Consumer Reports, in particular, practically harangues readers to be aware of the ability of credit card companies to change terms and conditions as they wish.

So, when I got a 12-page statement from American Express this month full of amendments to the credit card agreement, I decided to give it a read. One thing stuck out, in a section entitled “Telephone Communications.” Check out what I am agreeing to should I use the card after April 2, 2009 (all emphasis is mine):

You authorize us to call or send a text message to you at any number you give us or from which you call us, including mobile phones. You authorize us to make such calls using automatic telephone dialing systems for … offers of American Express products and services... You agree to pay any fees or charges you incur for incoming calls or text messages from us without reimbursement.

You can read the whole section in the PDF attached to this post. As I read it, American Express is saying:

• The heck with Federal and state do-not-call lists. If you call them for any reason — say you are checking a charge — they get to call you back at that number for anything they like, including marketing purposes
• If you make the mistake of calling them from your cell phone, you can expect them to call you back on the cell phone whenever they like. And you pay for the airtime. I know people have lots of minutes, but do you like burning them up while listening to a pitch for American Express’s latest high-cost credit product?

It’s pretty interesting how American Express has slipped the marketing permissions — a sort of default re-opt-in for people who have explicitly opted out — into the middle of a section ostensibly about security and account protection. While I don’t think anyone would object to getting a call about potential fraud, I, for one do not want American Express to feel free to call me on any number their ANI system sees me calling from. It’s bad enough that they use ANI to identify me when I call from home. (Did you realize that even if you have the phone company block outgoing Caller-ID for all your calls, an 800 number you dial still gets the number? After all, they’re paying for the call.)

What bothers me most about this is this is precisely the kind of thing that makes people really resent big companies. American Express wants to become a bank — get its piece of TARP. Then it wants to use loopholes to get around telemarking regulations and privacy opt-outs. Otherwise, how will they sell us checking accounts and CD’s?

No wonder there’s distrust of businesses…when you get your attorneys to slip something like this into an agreement, using “business logic” to rationalize it, you only put customers on the other side of a bright line…one they will pressure politicians to ensure business cannot cross.

Maybe it’s your health care insurer manipulating your out-of-network health care claim reimbursements to increase their profits.

Remember last fall when you signed up for the significantly more expensive plan that lets you choose a doctor out-of-network? You thought you were being smart.

Instead, it turns out you’re being screwed. Your extra premiums are finding their way into the pockets of the same insurer who buys TV ads with happy, young, healthy mothers and fathers in the park playing Upsie with their cute, giggling babies. Not a care in the world, presumably, because they’re covered…but it’s really a picture of ignorant bliss because when that baby needs a specialist, that couple’ll have to sell the Chevy and walk to appointments to pay the doctor’s bill.

Check out this report from the New York State Attorney General on how insurance companies are screwing their policyholders on out-of-network reimbursements. It’ll make you sick (just be damn sure you don’t go out-of-network to see a doctor).

For me, this is just another example of the unrestricted greed that nearly 30 years of Reaganism (“government is bad…unrestricted markets are good”) has generated and the incalculable damage it has done to our society. If a business can figure out a way to screw you — and better yet, legally do it in the dark like United Healthcare did with the cost database it uses to reimburse policyholders — well, that’s just normal, right?

Everywhere you look, we’ve been  cheated. Big Business is totally out-of-control. The financial system has collapsed — and taken our security with it. Even our ideals were trashed mercilessly by a government that lied to us all.

But, oh boy, watch out. This country has had mega-pendulum-political-swings in the past (the Progressive Era, the New Deal). If there are more people out there who think like me (and you bet there are), politicians had better get the message and get some stuff done (health care, re-regulation of the business and financial worlds, a sane foreign policy). And they better get it done now.