May 192008
 

Performance Bicycle is a large retail chain that sells bicycles, components, etc. Their web site is http://www.performancebike.com/. You can be a member of their “Team Performance” club if you like. The cost is $25.00 / year.

On May 18, 2008 at 14:54 CDT I received an email from customerservice@performanceinc.com informing me that my American Express credit card had been charged $25.00 to renew my Team Performance membership.

I was a bit concerned because I did not receive any warning that my credit card was going to be charged on a certain date, etc., so I sent the following email in to their customer support:

Folks I’m a bit concerned about this. I was not aware that this was an “auto renew” account. I did not receive any warning about this. Furthermore, I just logged into the team performance buyers club site and I could not find any place that talked about auto renewing nor give me the ability to de-select an auto-renew option. –gordon tillman

I received this response back from Amber:

Dear Mr. Tillman, The information is posted on the website. http://www.performancebike.com/team_policy.cfm Regards, Amber Customer Service

So I went to the page that she referenced and found this:

Memberships are automatically renewed annually at the fee effective at the time of renewal. Consent to Automatic Recurring Charge–By purchasing your Team Performance Membership or Renewal, you request and agree that we may annually automatically renew your Team Performance membership by charging the most recent credit card you have used with Performance, Inc. The charge will be made within the month that is one year after this transaction. In advance of enacting such charge, we will send notification of the membership fee to the email or mailing address you are providing in connection with this transaction, and absent your notification to us that the charge should not be imposed, we will attempt to charge your credit card. If your credit card is no longer valid for any reason, such as that you discontinued or changed the account or if the expiration date has changed, or if the credit card processing company gives us notice that your credit card should not be used, the charge for the annual membership may not be processed and your membership may not be renewed through this process. Please therefore ask us about renewing your membership if the credit card you provided us is no longer valid (or has a changed expiration date). Contact us also if you wish to opt out of or cancel this consent by calling 1-800-727-2433, Mon – Fri 9am – 6pm EST. Consent to Use of Electronic Signature and Records–By purchasing your Team Performance Membership or Renewal, you are affirmatively consenting to the use of the electronic signature process. You understand that you have the right to have the Authorization provided to you in a non-electronic form, provided however that we may assess a copying fee for sending a paper copy of the Authorization to you. Your consent to use the electronic signature process applies only to this specific transaction and not to any other future transactions. If you wish to withdraw your consent to use the electronic signature process at any time or you wish to obtain a paper copy of this Authorization, please contact us by calling 1-800- 727-2433, Mon – Fri 9am – 6pm EST.

In that block of stuff I see that “In advance of enacting such charge, we will send notification of the membership fee to the email or mailing address you are providing in connection with this transaction, and absent your notification to us that the charge should not be imposed, we will attempt to charge your credit card.”

Well, I did not receive this advance warning or notification. I replied to Amber with the following:

Amber I’m pretty sure that I did not receive advance notification per this term: “In advance of enacting such charge, we will send notification of the membership fee to the email or mailing address you are providing in connection with this transaction…” Note that the above quote came from the policy page that you told me about, term #1. I’m hereby notifying PerformanceInc.com that, next year, if this happens again, I will contact my bank and dispute the charge. I like Performance Bike just fine, but I don’t like being charged without advance notification. Furthermore I’m going to post full details of our email conversation online for the benefit of others who may be concerned or confused about the policies of PerformanceInc. –gordon tillman
May 192008
 

One of our very favorite restaurants is Shade Cafe in the historic Heights area of Houston, Texas.

Every time we eat at Shade, we are delighted by the delicious food, the beautiful presentation, the excellent wine selection, and the gracious and helpful staff.

Here are a couple of pictures I took with my cell phone when we dined there on Sunday. Please keep in mind that the two food pictures really do not do justice to what we were served!

First of all, we ordered a bottle of a light and crisp Portuguese white wine:

Auratus

Mikie had a lamb dish:

Mikie's lunch at Shade

And I had salmon:

Gordy's lunch at Shade

A side note…

You may or may not know that a part of the Heights is “dry”; i.e., no alcohol may normally be sold there. Shade is able to get around this restriction by requiring patrons who which to purchase alcohol join their private club. There is not cost to do this, nor are you spammed or hassled in any way.

May 192008
 

There was a gathering at the Houston Art Car museum yesterday to remember our dear departed friend Tom Mitchell Jones who was tragically killed by a drunk driver.

Mikie took some photos before and during the procession of art cars and friends as we drove from the museum to Tom’s home and back.

Please click Continue reading to load the photo set. Continue reading »

May 152008
 

We use the Zogmo datacenter in downtown Houston for our companies 8 application servers. At about 11:45 the datacenter went down. I was finally able to get Jose in support on the line at about 12:05. He said that their “core router went down,” and that Lynn Boyd (the president) was working on it. Things should be up in 5 or 10 minutes.

I really want to know why this happened and why there is not some sort of redundancy for this component. This is a datacenter.

May 132008
 

I got a call yesterday evening while I was at the gym from Sgt. Hamilton at Fort Benning. He told me that Gordy Jr. should be arriving back in the states at about 21:30. I was thrilled. I immediately called Sprint’s customer service to have his mobile phone taken off military suspension so he would be able to use it as soon as he gets off the plane.

The first person I spoke with told me her name was “Iris”. I tried to explain to her what I wanted:

Good Evening Iris. My son is in the Army and is returning from deployment overseas. While he has been out of the country, Sprint put his phone number on military suspension. Would you kindly take it off suspension so that he can use it?

Well it turns out that was too much English for poor Iris, who sounded more like Apu’s wife Manjula. I apologized for bothering her and disconnected the call.

So I tried again about 15 minutes later. This time I spoke with “Michael” (who sounded more like Apu).

Apu (Michael) assured me that he could do what I asked. After about 10 minutes of waiting in silence, I asked if it would be OK if I hung up the phone and would he please just call me back when Jr.’s phone was reactivated. “Yes Mr. Gordon, that is fine.”

Great.

Well Michael did call me back about 45 minutes later to tell me that all was taken care of. I thanked him and went on with my evening.

About 00:30 this morning, Gordy Jr. called from a buddy’s phone to let me know he was back in the states. I noticed he wasn’t calling from his phone and when I asked him about it he said he had tried to use it but it wasn’t working.

I called Sprint customer service again. Keep in mind that now it’s almost one in the morning. This time Freddy took the call. I asked Freddy where he was. He told me he was in Texas. Freddy had Jr.’s phone working in a couple minutes…and tested it before I got off the line with him.

He also told me that if you call Sprint customer service in the wee hours of the morning you are more likely to get someone in Central support (i.e., the United States).

Lesson learned.

Sprint: You need to clean up your act. You’ve got some great technology but you are losing customers and losing money. Why? Go ask Iris and Michael. Oh wait … they probably won’t understand the question…

May 112008
 

The curator of photography at the Houston Art Car Museum, a long-time friend of the art world and all around great guy was forever lost very early this morning. Tom Jones was fatally injured by a drunk driver. Tom was sitting on the curb in front of the Art Car Museum when the drunk drove into a parked car next to Tom and some friends. The parked car was pushed onto Tom by the force of the crash.

This is a picture I took of Tom driving in the Art Car Parade yesterday:

P5100099.JPG

Here is a picture that Mikie took:

mikie

Tom will be missed by the many whose lives he touched.