Here is a blogger sharing some of her jobs she got off Craigslist in New York City. This is definitely one of the worst jobs I can imagine, and the idea of the service is so bad, I can’t believe it ever made it into a real business: Online Meal Sharing.
Category: Bad Product
Is Water a Basic Human Right?
In America, we get to enjoy life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as a basic set of rights. We also get to breathe the air without having to pay. Our water is also “free.”
Yes, we are willing to pay the water company to deliver it into our houses in clean pipes and meter it. We are not really paying for the water, but its delivery.
How would we feel if a company stepped in and took that right away from us? Now we need to pay for water.
That’s exactly what Nestlé is trying to do. At the World Water Forum in 2000, Nestlé successfully lobbied to stop water from being declared a universal right.
If water is not a universal right, how about air?
Check out this article. It makes my skin crawl. This is something we ALLOW to happen. Like sheep we stand and watch how our rights get taken away, and we gladly buy bottles of water that cost more than soft drinks in the United States, or wine in France, by volume.
The only way to stop this is to stop buying bottled water. I drink out of the tap – I honestly can’t tell the difference. Now, besides the cost of bottled water, I have another reason: Stopping Nestlé.
How would the world work if all food was controlled by Monsanto and all water by Nestlé?
Fake Positive Ratings Online
While I am on a roll complaining about Yelp removing negative reviews (see this post), I received this spam comment on this site today:
After flagging this as spam, I went to their site at Get Positive Ratings and was astonished.
First I noticed that the site is littered with strange grammar issues. I suspect the site originates somewhere in Asia, based on the grammar. Just see their front page (red arrow):
Don’t you want to be they’re choice?
When this got my attention, I went clicking around and found their pricing:
For only $49 a month, they will post 15 reviews about your business every month. If you want to spend $999 a month, you’ll get a whopping 680 positive reviews per month. You can go out and buy the Turbo package for $2,999 per month – wow.
All fake, of course.
Scroll down and find “Informations” below the prices.
Then I was curious and went to the FAQ section. Read above what they say about whether anyone can tell the reviews are not real.
So here is their business model: They are selling openly fake reviews to hapless businesses.
Ahhh, this would be a great solution for the unfortunate Union Street Guest House!
Yelp Removes Reviews It Does Not Like – Union Street Guest House – Take Two
I did not know that Yelp removes reviews it does not alike. Yesterday I wrote about a hotel in New York, the Union Street Guest House, and its disastrous policy about fining its own customers $500 if the customer posted a negative review online anywhere.
Of course, this went viral, and by the end of the day, 900 people had posted their feelings on Yelp, most of them were 1-star reviews, and a number of them were 5-star reviews as jokes. I also posted a comment, basically blasting the hotel for their terrible social media policy and reminding them that if they wanted to get positive reviews, they should provide excellent service.
This morning I received this mail from Yelp:
Hi,
We’re contacting you about your review of Union Street Guest House. Though we understand this business has recently received media attention and that users may have strong opinions, your reviews should be focused on your own everyday customer experience with a business. While you are welcome to post your comments on Yelp Talk, please note that at this time we will be removing any repostings from you to this business listing.
Please visit our Content Guidelines for more information (www.yelp.com/guidelines). We hope you’ll help us keep Yelp fun and useful for everyone!
Regards,
Clarence
Yelp User Support
San Francisco, CaliforniaYelp Official Blog | http://officialblog.yelp.com
Yelp Frequently Asked Questions | http://www.yelp.com/faq
Yelp for Business Owners | https://biz.yelp.com
I did not know that Yelp removes reviews it does not like. I checked this morning, and there are less than 100 reviews on Yelp, but the adverse ones are building up again, same as yesterday. People are pissed.
Yelp has just sunk in my estimation by quite a few notches. I don’t think Yelp should be censoring reviews. As a review site, they should let the market drive the ratings, not some censor.
If the Union Street Guest House wants business, it should clean up its act, treat its customers special, and the positive reviews will start rolling in.
With all the controversy, I am almost tempted to book myself there for a day and see what the hubbub is all about. I have a visit to the Catskill area planned to go to some art museums in the next month or so. Do I dare?
But then – I won’t be able to write an honest review if it’s adverse, for fear of losing $500 and being banished by Yelp.
What should I do?
Union Street Guest House – Possibly the Worst Hotel in the Country
Sometimes I come across a business so misguided, so self-absorbed, that it is hard to believe the business actually exists and limps along. Such a business is apparently the Union Street Guest House in Hudson, New York.
I have never stayed there, thank goodness, and I definitely will never stay there. But I can’t help but write about here.
The Union Street Guest House seems to cater to weddings. It got my attention today when news about it went viral that it actually charges the bride and groom a $500 fee for every guest that posts an unfavorable review on Yelp or Facebook or any other review site.
How did they come up with this policy? Apparently the service sucks, the furniture and décor is old, the rooms smell musky and smoky, there are mouse droppings in all the corners, the list goes on. So when guests that stay there, courtesy of the wedding party, and they don’t “understand the ambiance” of the place, and post a lousy review, the bride and groom get dinged afterwards. The hotel reminds them before the stay that the guests might not “understand the value” of the hotel, and the newlyweds should brief them ahead of time.
Like: “We’re putting you up at this dump called the Union Street Guest House that thinks it’s something special. But since we’re paying a lot of money for it, please just think it’s quaint and put up with it while you’re there, ok?”
So the hotel, I presume, had trouble with bad reviews and started strong-arming its customers to be quiet about it. That alone shows you that they have no clue about business in 2014. If you want superior reviews, you have to provide superior service. If you provide lousy service, and you try to cheat your customers and treat them as idiots, you’re going to get bad reviews. Get it?
So here is the Yelp page for the place:
When I picked the summary, I found this:
I am sure they had 20 or 30 1-star ratings before it went viral that they bully guests into not writing or removing negative reviews. So now, people start writing reviews about the place that have never even stayed them, blasting them for their narcissism. It is hard for me to imagine how a business that must depend on customer reviews can survive after doing this to itself.
If you want some amusement, I invite you to go to their Yelp page and read some of the reviews. You’ll be amazed. Even the 5-star reviews all seem to be jokes.
Here is their cancellation policy that I just lifted off their website:
PLEASE read our CANCELLATION POLICY carefully. Due to our size, cancellations affect us greatly and we cannot make exceptions for any reason. This includes weather, family issues, personal issues, illness, or anything that is not something we can control. We do not trade reservations for other dates. We RESPECTFULLY request that you do not ask us to do so.
CANCEL AT YOUR OWN RISK! Cancellations must be made via email and you must receive a response from us for a cancellation to be accepted at all. cancel@unionstreetguesthouse.com. There will be a $35 charge for any cancellation (per room). Cancellation of a reservation must be made at least 15 days prior to your arrival date for a non wedding reservation to receive any type of refund. Cancellations made within 15 days will be charged for the entire length of stay. 100% of your reserved stay will be billed to your credit card when we accept your online booking. Early departures and changes in arrival dates are considered cancellations. We reserve the right to refund at any time. Wedding guests are not refunded until after the event.
We do not give credits for future stays. If we have not worked out a mutual agreement for a credit within 29 days from the date or your reservation we will no longer honor any type of refund. We do not refund any fees that may have been added to your charge.
NOTE: If your stay is longer than 3 days we do not accept cancelations of any kind.
Holding more than one room or up to the entire Guest House for WEDDING guests requires a deposit. We reserve the right to hold deposit until we feel that all charges, taxes, fees, damages, or any other financial obligation has been resolved regarding you and anyone in your party. This includes credit card disputes, chargebacks, or any question regarding anything to do with billing with you or anyone in your party, or anyone of your guests. The deposit will not be refunded until we feel that everything is 100% resolved. If you hold the entire Inn you are responsible for every room. There are no “releasing” rooms prior. Any unused room charges will be deducted from the deposit.
Seriously, would you even dare make a reservation at a place that is so full of itself, it actually publishes this cancellation policy? That page starts out with “for MOST reservations we charge 100% of your stay when you make your reservation.” So it’s easy to get in, but there is no way to get out.
I read that after the controversy of the $500 penalty fee for bad reviews went viral, they took that off their website quickly. But I found what was supposedly there before:
If you have booked the Inn for a wedding or other type of event anywhere in the region and given us a deposit of any kind for guests to stay at USGH there will be a $500 fine that will be deducted from your deposit for every negative review of USGH placed on any internet site by anyone in your party and/or attending your wedding or event If you stay here to attend a wedding anywhere in the area and leave us a negative review on any internet site you agree to a $500. fine for each negative review. (Please NOTE we will not charge this fee &/or will refund this fee once the review is taken down). Also, please note that we only request this of wedding parties and for the reasons explained above.
I wish the Union Street Guest House good luck with their future endeavors going forward and particularly with their brilliant social media strategy.
Addendum 8/5/2014:
As it turns out, last night there were over 900 Yelp reviews, mostly negative, and even the 5-star ones were jokes. Yelp appears to have removed 800 of those reviews.
I didn’t know Yelp did that. My estimation of Yelp as a valid review site has just sunk quite a bit. 800 people took the time to weigh in with their concerns, and those 800 people were just tossed out?
Does Yelp also have a death wish?
Second Addendum 8/5/2014:
So then they claimed that the $500 fine policy was “just a tongue in cheek joke.” Hmm. Now they are not just stupid and ruthless business people, now they are also lying. Here is a legitimate Yelp review I just lifted:
Notice that it is dated 11/21/2013. They were threatening a customer THEN when they posted a negative review. So the “joke” either went on for over nine months, or they are just deceitful.
I call this deceitful.
American Airlines Needs to Fix its Website
I have used American Airlines’ website since the Internet started and they had a website. It used to work great. It was efficient, snappy, and elegant. I could quickly find the best prices for tickets, assign my seats, purchase and get out. I had it down so I could buy a ticket within a few minutes.
Then, a year or two ago, the airline decided to “upgrade” its site. Now it has pretty pictures:
As you can see, there is a very happy little girl surrounded by cherry blossoms. Sometimes it shows me places in Hawaii or in the Bermudas to entice me to travel to those exotic places. The problem is, it takes a long time for those pretty pictures to load, sometimes as long as it used to take me to search for my flight.
Ok, I can live with a slow loading site.
But then, when I finally type in my AAdvantage Number, which it does no longer remember even though I click on “Remember me” all the time, and I supply my password and click on Log in, it spins for a while, thinking about who I might be and then it comes back with this:
It tells me that I did something wrong. No, I don’t have multiple browser windows open, I am not using expired bookmark pages, too much time has not elapsed between submitting entries. It does this with IE 7, IE 8, IE 9, IE 10 and IE 11. It also does this with Google Chrome. Whenever I go to www.aa.com, it gives me an Invalid State Error after I log in.
When I contacted support, they were not helpful. I am just doing it wrong. It has been like this for years. Am I the only one?
Never mind that I have bought literally hundreds of tickets from American Airlines over the last few years, and I likely know what I am doing with browsers.
When I finally Log in again (red arrow), I get in, and I am good to go:
Now I can actually start work and book my ticket.
American Airlines’ new and improved website is clunky, slow, wastes my time with pictures and advertisements I am not interested in, consistently fails on login, requiring me to log in several times.
They need a website for expert users who are not interested in all the fluff and overhead. People like I don’t need to be sold, or upsold. I am here to BUY TICKETS, nothing else. Please make that simple and easy, and don’t bother me unnecessarily.
Right now, www.aa.com is a marketing website, and not a particularly good one.
I want a business website.
What is a Rape Kit?
This marvel on the Briefings page of Time Magazine gave me pause. I have so many questions about such a small statement.
1. What in the world is a “rape kit?”
2. Why does the government have 100,000 such rape kits and how it is the business of Congress?
3. Why are the rape kits, whatever they are, untested?
4. How expensive is a rape kit in the first place, if it’s worth spending $410 to test each of 100,000 of them?
With all these questions abounding, I went to search. Here is what I found:
Hospitals also bill $2 for a couple of pills of Advil that I can buy at Costco for $21.95 for 200 pills. So if hospitals sell a pill for 10 times what they can buy it for, they may be buying rape kits for $180.
Click on the above “rape kit” wiki link and you can see what’s in a rape kit. How can it take $410 to “examine” one of them? Let’s just throw them all out and make new ones.
There is only one more question I have not asked yet: Is a legitimate rape kit?
The F-35 is an Exceptionally Bad Plane – Pierre Sprey
Recently 60 Minutes published a report on the F-35. It’s the most expensive weapons system in history. The U.S. military is planning on buying 2,443 of the planes at a price of over $200 million EACH.
Here is Pierre Sprey, the co-designer of the F-16 and the A-10. He is an outspoken critic of the F-35 and in this interview blasts the airplane and the entire military strategy behind it.
What is the one thing the F-35 is good at? Spending money. Transferring taxpayer money to Lockheed Martin. It’s a big redistributor of wealth.
Here is Pierre Sprey:
The Truth about American Beer
Ah, looks so good, right?
Look again:
I found this favorite one of my beers on a list of Eight Beers You Should Stop Drinking Immediately. That was disconcerting.
While I read this article, I remembered that Germany has a “Reinheitsgebot” or “German Beer Purity Law” that was first enacted on November 30, 1487. It required that the only ingredients of beer were water, barley and hops. German breweries are very proud of their purity laws and standards to this day, even though there were some minor adjustments over the years. For instance, to accommodate wheat beers.
However, you can be pretty sure that you won’t have to worry about fish bladder or high fructose corn syrup in German beer.
A funny thing is – the Reinheitsgebot also set the price of one Maß (which is one liter as seen in the mugs below) at 1-2 Pfennig (which is about a penny). Surely, they didn’t adhere to that. A Maß cost between 8,30 € and 8,60 € at the Oktoberfest last year.
Zum Wohl!
Searching using Microsoft vs. Google
Today I was working with Microsoft Project and I needed to renumber the tasks I had created. The ordering was all messed up. Surely, there had to be a way to do that, but I could not find it in the menus. Microsoft Project is a fairly clunky program that they initially bought, probably 15 or more years ago, and never made consistent with the rest of Office.
So I went to the help file and searched for the obvious: “renumber tasks.”
What I got back is the list above, a totally useless list of documents and help topics, none of which even remotely addressed my actual question. May I remind you, this was right inside Microsoft Project.
So I thought I’d try Google:
This looked promising. I typed “renumber tas” and it already knew what I wanted. I didn’t even have to tell it.
Then it gave me this list:
Note the first entry is actually an Ad – somebody else thinks Microsoft Project sucks and he built a business around it.
The very first non-advertisement entry seems to have my question answered. So I clicked:
Sure enough, here was my answer. It worked.
Within about 10 seconds of trying Google for an answer about a Microsoft product, I was done and my list was sorted and renumbered.
Before spending 10 seconds on Google, though, I first looked for help in Microsoft Project, found it, typed my question, got a bewildering list of 20 possible candidates that I had to open and check before I discarded them in frustration. I spent many fruitless minutes in Help before I gave up.
Google wins hands down.
The Mysterious Design of the TreeTop Apple Sauce Jars
I love apple sauce. Costco has a great package of three TreeTop jars at very reasonable cost.
When I first use it, I just pour the sauce right out of the jar into a bowl. It has just the right consistency to flow evenly.
But at the end, when the jar is almost empty, it’s really difficult to get the final dregs out.
After I have poured everything that is going to pour, I turn it over and use a table-spoon to fish out the rest. If it were a smooth glass jar, like most fruit jars are, it would be easy.
However, I have noticed that this jar design makes it very difficult to properly empty the jar at the end.
There are two flat sections on both sides of the label, partially visible on this photograph, that are meant to give the full jar a good grip surface from the outside. But inside, there is a ridge below the flat surface that is a great place for remaining apple sauce to hide.
I decided to examine the jar more closely.
Here is the jar empty and rinsed.
In addition to the flat sections on both sites hanging up apple sauce on the bottom, there are washboard sections of plastic (see red arrow in picture below) that are attached on the inside to both the front and the back of the jar.
From the outside, you don’t even know they are there.
However, on the inside, these washboard sections serve to hang up lots of apple sauce in such a manner that even scraping with a spoon does not get it free.
After trying to empty a jar with a spoon, I noticed that at least five or six tablespoons of apple sauce remain in the jar at the end – and end up being rinsed and wasted down the drain. Also, using the spoon gets sauce all over my hand. There is no good way to get the last product out of this jar.
In the picture above you can see the indentation below the flat section on the left and right (green arrow) and the washboard inserts on the front and back (red arrow). There must be a reason why they went all out to make the jar this hard to empty, but I don’t get it.
All I see are intentional obstacles to keep the consumer from getting the last 10% of their product out of the jar.
TreeTop Apple Sauce is a great product in a very bad package.
Enlighten me, anyone?
Two years later (2/26/2016), after “Someone” tipped me off in a comment below:
Why do your plastic applesauce jars have indentations and ridges that make it difficult to remove all of the applesauce from the jar?
The indentations and ridges in the jar are necessary for structural integrity. The jars are filled with applesauce heated to 190oF. The ridges or indentations allow the jars to be filled at high temperature and then maintain their shape after sealing and cooling. As a suggestion in removing the last portion of the applesauce, try turning the jar upside down and tapping the closed container on the counter. This will help the remaining applesauce settle to the lid area.
Benefits of Being a Semi-Vegetarian
Recently there have been many headlines about problems with meat in China. While China has food safety rules, they are often not followed or companies don’t even know them. Wal-Mart buys a lot of meat products from China and has therefore suffered from some of these violations, both in China and the US. Some major restaurant chains have also been caught in the crossfire.
Examples cited are that DNA tests have shown that meat passed off as lamb contained fox or rat meat. Meat labeled as mutton was actually 95% duck. Wal-Mart in China had to recall donkey meat because it contained large quantities of fox and other animals. This is a frightening thought to me. And what’s up with donkey meat?
I have not eaten any red meat, venison, sausage, cold cuts, or processed meat of any type for over 30 years. The exceptions in my diet are: I eat chicken and turkey, usually in the native form where I recognize the actual animal. However, I have made exceptions when eating chicken strips or nuggets, or chicken in Chinese food. My only “processed meat” exception is pepperoni on pizza.
So, overall, this news about tainted meat from China does not affect me too much – but just writing this has made me think hard about chicken in Chinese food. How do I know that Chinese food chicken isn’t actually rat, fox, cat or dog?
I don’t!
Maybe it’s time for a change.
Fiat Multipla: The Ugliest Car on the Road
Reminiscent of the Gremlin, which was popular in the late 1970s, or the AMC Pacer, or the Yugo, or the 2004 Pontiac Aztec (Walter White’s car in Breaking Bad), or the PT Cruiser, may I introduce to you the Fiat Multipla:
To me, this car looks like a character out of the Simpsons. Who thinks of this stuff in car companies, and what do the committees say that approve these designs? Oh, a car that looks like Bart Simpson, great idea! It’ll be a best seller!
Good-Bye Amazon Prime
A year ago or so I signed up for “Amazon Prime” thinking I am going to get lots of value. It turns out, I don’t buy enough for the free shipping costs to add up what Prime cost me. I found a website that calculates it for me:
Now Amazon wants to raise the price to $99 per year. Thank you very much. It’s not even worth $79 per year to me.
They say you can watch all these free movies, but I haven’t been able to make it work. I can’t get it through Apple TV, I can’t get my Samsung blue ray player to load the Amazon app. I am not buying a whole new device so I can watch “free” movies from Amazon. And I really don’t like watching movies or shows on my Kindle. Besides, I read reviews that the movies and shows on Amazon Prime are crappy.
I won’t renew this service.
The Nastiest Spam Scam Yet from har.com
Today I got the nastiest spam message yet. Here it is – I removed my name from the image:
Even though I am pretty savvy with email and experienced in recognizing spam, when I got this my reflex was to open it immediately. It looks legitimate and threatening.
Then I looked at the sender’s address at information358@har.com and I got suspicious. Of course, the zip file attached gives it away. Anyone clicking on this file and opening it would undoubtedly unleash havoc on their computer. And I am sure with a message like this, it happens to a lot of people.
When I Googled har.com it didn’t take long to find other people who have the same problem. Here is a link.
The key to remember is: Anyone that legitimately needs your attention isn’t going to do it via email. So there should never be a reason to open up an email with any attachment from any stranger.
Delete!