Well, today has been rather frustrating

And it started out so promisingly, too.

I'd rather not get into what made it take a turn for the worse, not right now, but I am going to mention one particular thing that just added to the disappointment.

Some time last year, I ordered Raymond Queneau's Exercices de Style, the deluxe artbook edition that's divided in two, top and bottom, so that one can leaf through the illustrations and the text separately.

I'd seen it in the library and much admired it and finally decided to splurge on my own copy since I had some gift certificate money left over.

Like most of their French books, it was “Not In Stock, order now and we'll ship it to you” at Amazon.

Accordingly, I ordered, and waited, and waited, and waited…

I honestly wasn't expecting to ever receive it at all, because they twice sent me notices that there was a delay, that they were having difficulty laying hands on it.

So when it finally did arrive about a week or two ago, I was absolutely delighted.

I had glitches applying my gift certificate balance to the stuff I ordered late last winter, so it ended up charging my card, but I was happy enough I didn't care about that.

In any case, I thought I'd destress a little by leafing through the storylets and illustrations at random, as I often do, and got an unpleasant surprise.

One of the illos (they're spread across two pages each), had very noticeable damage to a portion of it, due to some sort of printing/binding defect which made the ink of one page kind of scrape off onto the other.

It seems to be just one picture out of 75, but this really upsets me.

If it had happened on one of the text pages, I would have been annoyed but more-or-less accepting, since it wouldn't have interefered with my reading.

But the damage is on one of the artworks, in an art book, and if I'd just wanted the text version I could have bought the decidedly non-deluxe pocket paperback instead.

Anyway, this worries me in more than one, not least because I'm not sure that Amazon will consider this flaw enough to be a defect and thus eligible for replacement.

Because in comparison to the rest of the book, which seems perfectly okay, it's about a half-centimetre at most strip down the center of just one picture.

And they did have such difficulty getting it in the first place, and they might not be able to get another to replace it, and maybe it's better to have a slightly damaged deluxe artbook edition than no artbook edition at all.

And for all I know, the entire print run might be like this and sending it back and waiting for another to be shipped would just be a waste of everyone's time and money, and not just mine.

Well, obviously I'll have to sleep on this and I'll see about comparing the library's copy if it's also got that same problem.

But yeah, this has kind of been the capper to a not-so-good day.

ETA: Finally checked out the library's copy and took pictures.

It either doesn't have this problem, or it doesn't have it enough to show.

My copy:




The library's copy:



And it looks like this may have been my last day to return it, and they raised the price of getting another copy, too.

Let's hope they go by the day the return authorization is requested and not by when they actually receive it back.

Chapters in reverse

So I went to Chapters today to return two books with a binding problem.

Actually, they were the same book, bought twice in an attempt to get a good copy, which according to their site seems to be the way to replace things.

In the FAQ on how to return defective/damaged goods, one is instructed to make the return, and then use the refunded amount to purchase a new copy, rather than simply making the return and waiting for its replacement to arrive.

Well, I was reluctant to do that, since shortly after I ordered the first one, they upped the price on the second and if I'd done it their way, I would have ended up paying an extra $1.04, including tax.

It turned out to be a moot point anyway, as it seems at least part of the print run that Chapters has access to is affected by the defect, not just the first one I got.

So, with that in mind, I decided to return them both when I got a spare moment.

In the meantime, I ordered something else, at the same time as the replacement. Chapters had another one of their price fluctuations, which affected not only both itemss in my new order, but also one pre-order item in my old, which coincidentally happened to be the same price difference before and after adjustment as the books I was about to return.

I wrote in and asked them to please adjust my order price on the pre-order item, because it hadn't been shipped and all. In passing, I commented on how I was disappointed that they'd gone and changed their site's price on my other order's item, pretty much the same time as they shipped me the copy I'd ordered, charging me the older, higher price.

In response, they did an adjustment to the item that just got shipped, and also refunded me an additional amount which I thought was supposed to cover the pre-order item. Actually, I thought it was a little weird that they didn't do it the more logical way Amazon does, adjusting the price you would be paying before you got charged, but at least they did it at all, hey?

So, fast forward to today, when I finally have the time and available transportation and lack of any other tasks to be accomplished and can take in both my defective books to be returned.

Before leaving, I made a note of the prices I was charged, with tax and all, because this one time I returned something, they didn't refund me the tax and I didn't notice until well after, when I had a look at the receipt again.

So when I get to the store, the return goes smoothly enough: I've marked the defective pages with stickies, and written up a description of the problem and stuck a copy into the front of both books, for the benefit of whoever has to process these things.

Until it gets to the amount refunded. I'm being refunded the lower price for both, and that doesn't seem right because I was charged slightly more for the second.

So I mention this to the cashier processing my return and log into their site to dig up my order records as proof, while she calls the manager.

My order records show the lower price, but Chapters keeps a copy of each email they send you which is related to the order in the same place, so I dig up my shipping confirmation which does indeed show the higher price.

He asks me if I did indeed get charged that on my billing records, because they might have made an error and all in the email, which might not be reflected in what I was actually charged.

I say yes, because I have no reason to believe that Chapters magically noticed and lowered the price before shipping, because they certainly didn't on that other book I got.

So he gives me the $1.04 difference in cash, even as the cashier processes the refund amount for what the Chapters order records say.

I go home and check my records, just to be sure, and I'm a little surprised to note that the second price difference refund I got was indeed for the defective book, and not for the pre-order item in the completely different order, which is what I had asked for an adjustment on anyway.

I had in no way mentioned anything about the price difference on the attempted replacement book, because by the time the non-replacement book shipped, I'd already recieved the 2nd defective one and knew I'd have to go and return it anyway, so why bother?

But from the looks of it, they completely ignored my request to adjust the pre-order (still showing at the older, higher price even though it's somewhat lower to pre-order now and not due to be published for some time) and price-adjusted both in the second order I mentioned in passing.

Anyway, I went back to the store to try and return their extra refund, but apparently they can't process it so the new cashier said I might as keep the money.

I spent the rest of the time in the store before the bus came browsing around for something to buy that I actually at least mildly wanted and wasn't cheaper online.

Apparently, there's going to be a sale next week, so I'll go back and pick up a paperback with the added discount and pay in part with the cash I got back today.

It seems the least I can do.

Also, the moderate profit of this does not in anyway invalidate or even come close to balancing out all the other crap from Chapters I've had to put up with previously, especially not the years-long problem I had with my iRewards card, finally solved two months ago. For fairness' sake, I'll note that they did give me a minor gift certificate as some sort of vague compensation.

Stuff I got in the mail today

Today I got two out of three parts of my order from the company formerly known as DeepDiscountDVD.

I was a little annoyed when I got the notice last month saying that they'd shipped two of the cds separately and together instead of waiting another day or so when one of them was projected to be in stock.

This, of course, is because Canada Customs has in my previous experience tended to charge duty and taxes on everything they can get their money-grubbing paws on. I still haven't forgiven them for the time that they charged the full handling fee + taxes on something that worked out to be less than a dollar over the 20 CAD non-gift limit. And then I had to write them to get a minor refund that time they charged tax on the shipping costs, which they're not supposed to do.

But although I had to walk to the post office and pay to get my parcel released, the CDs were just stuck in the mailbox, no extra charges or anything.

So I'm happy.

And I have a lot of DVDs to watch, which may or may not be a good thing, because while we're cancelling the cable, I'm still not caught up on the backlog of stuff I ordered during last year's sale.

April is the cruelest month

I haven't really felt like posting much, well I rarely feel like posting much anyway, but this month was just kind of even more so.

But a few updates on stuff.

The tape deck is well and truly disassembled. We tried putting it back together, but it wouldn't work properly after that, so it's junk.

I never heard back from Cambridge University Press regarding the cassette.

Fortunately, Amazon came through and I now have a replacement and will, hopefully, soon be Speaking Greek, or some version thereof.

I went and bid on something on eBay and remembered just how much I hate bidding on stuff on eBay. There's always some bastard who does the last day sniping.

I'd been toying with increasing my bid in increments, and the last one I tried put me at the highest bidder, which is a little annoying, but not undeserved, as I was pretty much pushing up the selling price out of sheer irritation.

Fortunately it's less than 25 cents over what my max bid was intended to be, and I feel a little better googling and finding out that someone seems to have recently paid roughly twice what I'll be paying for this item, not to mention it costing me less than it did for the last person who bought this same thing from the same seller, during the auction I'd bid on last month (in which I am happy to report that the first sniper in that auction got sniped by another).

Not to mention, the Canadian shipping is the same price as for the US, which is always a bonus.

So, even though it's a little more than I hoped to pay, at least I'm getting something I like for not as much money as it could have cost me, and it saves me hours of footwork trying to find one used in the area which I live.

Although with my luck, once I've bought it, I'll find one for half the price in the first place I look.

Ah, well.

Dear Academia: Everyone else switched from tape years ago, why can't you?!

Well, my tape deck is well and truly broken.

After taking it apart so I could get the damned tape out, I kind of wonder how they ever managed to put it together, since the design was not exactly conducive to assembly, much less re-assembly.

God only knows how much a new one will cost, now that everyone except for the Cambridge University Press is using CD.

The tape itself is now also unplayable, assuming I had something left with which to play it.

I've written the CUP, and hopefully I get positive word back from Amazon. I did discover and report the problem within 30 days of delivery, allowing for holidays, and their return centre did show it automatically as being part of an order I could return, and the thing is very definitely defective in a damaging way.

If I'd had it playing on and off for the entire month, I could understand, but this was its first time ever! And it committed murder/suicide on my tape deck!!

So yeah, I really hope I can get a replacement at no extra charge, since this thing has cost me far more than it's worth and I rather doubt Cambridge is going to put their courses on CD until they've sold off all their remaining stock, or whatever it takes to get them into the digital age.

I'm so not buying the remaining books in the series now.

And likely not anything else under their imprint for the forseeable future.

Well, at least this wasn't from a library set

So I finally get a chance to listen to my “Speaking Greek” cassette, which I got from Amazon last month, along with the companion books in the “Reading Greek” series, since I now have a little leisure time in which to try learning Greek.

I was really looking forward to finally hearing how Ancient Greek's supposed to be pronounced, since the library has only modern and New Testament Greek in its language kits.

The very first time I try to play it, the damn thing unspools and tangles up into my tape deck. No problem, right, I can gently ease it out?

Wrong. Apparently it's gotten so tangled, and in such a way that even breaking open my cassette deck to try and extract it doesn't help. I've tried with chopsticks and tweezers, and I don't know if I can get it out in one piece, or at all.

Right now I'm taking a break from about two hours of frustration. I'll probably vent some of it at the Cambridge University Press for making such a shoddy item which should have been transferred to CD a long time ago.

It's noticeably lighter than the other cassette I have which has the same play duration, and the tape reel seems much thinner and flimsier, though that could just be because it's brown instead of black.

The irony is that I'd just finished using my tape deck to play a different language tape without any problems right beforehand, and had no problems with it last week when I got that old Inuktitut kit out of the library, or the time before with those Icelandic ones.

So, in addition to replacing this cassette, I'll also have to find another tape deck. Damnit.

Anyway, I'm going to contact Amazon to see what can be done. It's defective and very definitely not compatible with my equipment, so at the very least, I'm hoping to get a refund, if not a replacement.

From the looks of it, I'm just barely within the "30 days from delivery return window", since I received this March 9th according to Canada Post records and today is April 9th, so hopefully I'll be able to replace it without having to pay for another, which would mprobably make me quit buying stuff from them, which would on the bright side save me several hundred dollars per year.

The automated return centre thing shows that particular order as being still returnable as I type this, so that ought to count for something.

Ideally, I'd prefer a replacement (hopefully non-defective) since this was part paid for with a gift certificate I earned by buying a bunch of stuff during their last promotion. And it did ruin my tape deck, of which I took some pictures, and the following are the least fuzzy.

I wish I could get a really good close-up of the damage (damn tape seems to have stuck to itself or melted), but I can't get the hang of the zoom function.




I'm just glad I didn't wait until after the holidays to finally check things out.

Catching up on stuff

Well, Amazon.ca went and shipped me a replacement Wintersmith without having me forfeit the buy 75$ get $10 back promo certificate eligibility. That was nice of them.

Their replacement came with a dog-eared page, but luckily I hadn't sent the old one back in yet and was able to swap the damaged cover so that it went with the dog-eared innards and pack it all up so that it could go back to Amazon.

Still don't know if I'll actually ever get the coupon, as the other books that made up the $75 minimum have now been thrice-delayed, and apparently they've overlooked my request to add another book onto the lot to make up the minimum again if the others get cancelled.

Other stuff I should mention: remember last February when I was posting about cleaning my room? Yeah. Still not clean, and over a year later.

But I have been sorting things, mostly into empty M & M boxes from the local Costco. These things are amazingly sturdy and well made, with carry-handles, slot-tab fitted stacking, and interior liners. You wouldn't think that choconut-filled candy shells would need that much protection, but there you have it.

Maybe this is the year I finally vacuum. God, I hate wall to wall carpeting.

In the meantime, I've got more sorting to do.

I can't recall if I blogged about it, but over a month ago, the intermittent Firewire issue on the PowerBook seems to have flared up by corrupting my boot partition. (This was when I was booting up from one of the external drives while I was reinstalling the system on the PB.)

Drive Utility says it's some sort of B-tree corruption error, which is apparently non-fixable except by rather expensive recovery software.

Thankfully, I was eventually able to get the partition to mount and grab my personal files off of it, but I have yet to restore the non-essential stuff.

And while I'm speaking of hardware failures leading to data loss, MyRealBox, which for years has hosted one of my primary email accounts[1] and was owned and operated by Novell, turned over the servers to Messaging Architects, who promptly had a hardware failure which ate my mail, along with most of everyone else's.

There doesn't seem to be much missing, as they did set up a kind of buffer for new incoming mail, and shut down IMAP access so that people who were using it would have a chance to backup their mailboxes before the resynch overwrote the contents, which was nice of them, but didn't save me from losing god only knows how much.

At least I still have my most recent backups[2].

I've also got some plans to sort out my hosting and stuff, perhaps move the blogging or at least mirror it on my own space. And I've got a few notions of what to do with all the other blog/journal/accounts I've picked up: use them in a useful way. After all, that other person using my name is still out there, and memetic warfare is probably the most civilized way to handle it, since I don't actually have the power to telepathically make people's heads explode.

[1] At least until I started getting all that picspam, most probably via LiveJournal's leaving my address in plain sight without any munging on my user profile page for a few weeks before I started backtracking every place I'd given that address to lately and found and shut their display default down.

[2] Not recent enough, though. I think I lost at least one message I would have liked to keep.

Retail Stuff

So, just to note, I finally did get my rebate from Mediasonic after emailing them. So, at least one relatively responsible company.

I hope to hear back from Visa week after next, depending on how soon my case is processesed. Hopefully it goes in my favour, even after the time lag, since DVDSoon was very clearly in the wrong, and even has a webpage devoted to showing how they were in the wrong, and why didn't the authorities do anything about it?

I've also contacted Amazon regarding my damaged copy of Wintersmith. I hope I can get it replaced without extra cost, but the weeks I spent thinking about whether or not I really wanted to seem to have eaten up the return window. Wish I'd bought it through Chapters instead. I'd have paid a few cents less, had free return if necessary via the store, and wouldn't have had to wait three months before reading it.

Oh, and CNL still sucks. I swear, they did their entire points program cancellation/remake just so that people would do last-minute buying to cash in their "rewards" and they could fleece their customers for short term profit.

So, where to shop now that I'm no longer shopping at the CNL?

Spent a couple of hours looking around for a replacement DVD retailer for the C & L Internet Club.

I really should have done this ages ago, but let a misguided sense of loyalty to a company which repaid that loyalty with bait and switch tactics keep me from taking my business elsewhere, and sooner.

It turns out that they're not that good a retailer either. They really haven't changed much in six years, if DVDTalk forum goers are anything to go by.

And their prices pretty much suck unless you're a walk-in customer who shows up at their inconvenient X% off times.

Even anime, which is supposed to be their specialty, is cheaper elsewhere if it's not on clearance or during their big once-a-year sale.

I was pretty surprised to find out that DVDBoxOffice, which has somewhat inflated regular prices to account for the fact that they offer free airmail shipping worldwide, often had cheaper "regular" prices for certain titles, like the Utena and Rurouni Kenshin boxsets.

The prices drop further when you consider that if you live outside of Ontario, or wherever they have their shipping centre, you only pay the GST and they have a long-standing arrangement with Visa, giving people who pay with it 15% off with a shopping cart coupon.

And all this from the convenience of one's own home, without having to walk down from poorly planned overpass onto a busy highway to trudge over to CNL's out of the way warehouse and getting one's shoes crusted with yuerrk from the walk and being treated like a criminal once one gets inside the doors.

Admittedly, the bus routes have changed in the past year, so that now there's a stop right outside, but that only makes it marginally less inconvenient to get to and from.

Another place that looks good for Canadian DVDs is CD Plus. Again, free shipping within Canada, no PST if outside Ontario, and while their regular prices aren't that great, they've got a nifty selection of Canadian-made DVDs which the CNL mostly doesn't stock, and the free shipping/reduced taxes offsets the difference.

For francophone DVDs, I've been buying from Archambault, which is quite decent. They have very fast pack and ship time for stuff in stock, give free shipping over $35, offer 10% off with Visa coupon, and will ship things as they come in at no extra charge. I try to load my orders there a little and get a bunch of stuff at once.

Of course, the prices for most DVDs in Canada is ridiculous, since a lot of times, the MSRP seems to assume that they're using an exchange rate based on the peso, as far as I can tell.

Best places to shop for big studio DVDs is, of course DeepDiscountDVD. They briefly had a Canadian site last year, but that died due to their selling at a discount from the Canadian MSRP, which, as I've already mentioned, are ridiculous.

But they had really good prices on Canadian-made titles, which I regret being unable to get because I was mostly broke and horribly distracted last summer. I wish I'd been able to buy something while they lasted.

They've since merged their operations to ship CDs and Books and other stuff as well, so I hope they keep up their habit of holding the bi-annual 20% off DVD sale. Now that I've finally got a little more in the way of disposable income, I intend to make up for lost time.

They've kept the flat rate Canadian shipping, which I think is a good sign, so far.

Amazon.com's also pretty good. They actually ship from inside Ontario, so while they'll charge PST and for shipping, your purchases will bypass Customs. And they tend to have a rotating list of 50% or better off of Box Sets and the like, which usually takes the prices down to about two-thirds of what you'd pay on Amazon.ca or elsewhere.

I haven't shopped there myself, but the RightStuf seems to be pretty good. Their non-discount prices are high, but they offer weekly sales, a bargain bin, have some sort of club card where you can save 10% off even the weekly sale items.

Plus, they offer free shipping to Canada on orders over $150, which seems a bit much, but when you consider the inflated prices of anime to begin with (which is why I only ever buy the stuff on clearance or in sets, since there's no way I'd pay $30 a disc for a measly 4 half-hour episodes, repeat until the series is complete) and the fact that you could put the bundle you saved from their regular Canadian shipping of $7 for the first item and $2 for each following into buying even more stuff, I'd say it works out.

I stupidly chose to pass up buying a bunch of DVDs which were much cheaper at the RightStuff, even factoring in shipping costs and customs/taxes, in order to get them at CNL's Anime Clearance Sale instead, under the impression that I was Supporting Local Business While Earning Valuable Customer Reward Points.

But C & L's notion of customer loyalty goes only one way, and it's not in the direction of the actual paying customer.

So, yeah. Lots of places to buy which are infinitely better than shopping at the CNL, which you should avoid.

Practically the only advantage that I see is that if you really need to inspect your DVDs in person before purchasing and know exactly what you're getting into and buy the right item at the right time and are sure you'll never have any problems whatsoever with it and don't mind being treated like a dried-up cash cow if you don't buy often enough for their tastes, then yeah, you can still shop at the CNL.

But I really wouldn't advise it.

Frustration and Participation, redux

First, let's get the participation part out of the way.

I've been slowly contributing to Wikipedia, mostly correcting a few typos here and there, nothing major.

I think I might have more of a niche on the Wiki Commons. There's a bunch of flags which are fairly simple in design, easy enough for me to convert from PNG to SVG by hand, and a pleasant enough way to get reacquainted with basic geometry while doing something useful.

So yeah, I'm enjoying being a productive member of a virtual society.

Now for the frustration:

Well, I went to the C & L Internet Club on Saturday to finally get an explanation for why they arbitrarily cancelled the DVD I'd earned with my Rewards Points. And it was an arbitrary cancellation.

Apparently, they have a rule that if you don't buy something from them every 180 days, you forfeit the Rewards Points you've earned with every purchase as a loyal CNL customer. Since you have to login to go beyond the front page of their website even for basic information, and therefore nothing's indexed by Google, if this is a recently made up rule, they have perfect deniability.

Even if you're on the mailing list, they never bother to inform you of things that might actually affect you as a customer and not make them money. C & L is happy to send you weekly sales notifications exhorting you to buy, buy, buy, but not bother to add even a brief notice at the bottom of said notification telling you that they're going to expire their Rewards Points program in January and replace it with a new one, tough luck if you get screwed.

No, I had to go to the C & L website to find that out.

The thing is, if they'd bothered to notify me of this in any way, I wouldn't be quite as upset. I'd still be upset, yeah, but I'd have accepted it.

Instead, what they did was keep a broken system which kept telling me every time I made a purchase that I now had this many total points to spend, which was happy to accept this many total points as valid towards redemption in the checkout, and process this many total points towards my redeemed DVD.

It took the actual human being processing my order to go into my records, have a look at my account and decide that:

"Hmm… despite substantial recent and past purchases and a long term and uneventful customer history, you didn't make the four hour round-trip transit ride to our warehouse in the middle of nowhere and buy a piddling $7 clearance item within our stupid 180 day limit, though you did drop $XX on us the day before the limit and a further $XX just two days after, and bought $XXX worth of stuff that year alone. No Rewards Points redemption for you, you technically unloyal customer."

Frankly, that's an incredibly petty thing to do, deliberately going in and checking to cancel manually and claiming that all the information they kept presenting you is actually false, when they can't be bothered to fix their own system for over two damn years to get it to show the correct amounts to their customers, instead choosing to take advantage of the customer's trust in order to lead people to believe that "Hey, if I just buy this, this, and this, I'll have enough extra points to get that!".

I mean, it's three goddamned days! And I bought another, non-free thing to ship at the same time, which I rather regret now, since their shipping for a single DVD is Not Cheap.

I'm not sure they don't do it on purpose, since their checkout system seems designed to mislead. Practically every place where you have to enter shipping/options info and press a "confirm" button on the same page will take you to the next page where you can actually, y'know, confirm that the shipping and options you've chosen are correct.

Not the C & L. No, their "confirm" button is really a "place order" button and will process your credit card directly.

God help you if you got something wrong, because your only hope is that their cancellation request form will go straight through to someone who'll cancel your order for you before the shipping department makes good on its policy of shipping all in-stock product on orders received before noon the same day they're placed.

Occasionally I wonder how many non-walk-in customers they actually have.

Between their deceptive checkout process, their "no returns accepted on products except those which we have decided are defective" policy[1], and rather uncompetitive pricing [2], I'm hoping that their kind of business practices are a turn-off to most people.

Because one really shouldn't patronize places that mistake customer lock-in for loyalty, and who really only want to reward you with the shaft.

I now regret recommending them over the years. I used to promote them as a worthwhile local business through which you could get some pretty good stuff if you were willing to put up with a few annoyances.

But now it's not just the annoyances one has to put up with, but their double dealing, double standards of incompetence.

A mistake is only ever acknowledged if it works out in their favour and at your expense.

None of the information you get from your printed receipts or your account information on their website can be trusted or relied upon, because they'll just change things for the hell of it.

Frankly, their business practices are on a par with those of the late DVDSoon.

God only knows how many more of their customers they've pulled the disappearing points trick on.

I used to buy most of my non-French DVDs through them, but no more.

I just hope that none of the people I sent their way got screwed too badly by these lying weasel people.

[1] Although it may be possible to return unopened product, provided you're willing to pay the $9 restocking fee that was quoted to me the one time I asked in case of having bought a duplicate season of LFN, naturally, right after my purchase had been rung up.
[2]Unless you're a walk-in customer during their rare decently discounted Customer Appreciation sales, which is usually about a 2-3 hour span in the morning or evening in which they'll graciously grant you around 14% off, on the better days, for having spent your time and money getting to their warehouse during what most people consider work or leisure hours.

Frustration and Participation

First the bad:

Went to the C & L Internet Club over the weekend. That was a waste of time, as there were no managers in. Sent in my case via their web contact form on Monday. Still no reply.

Similarly, no reply from Mediasonic regarding their SmartDrive $10 rebates. Asking around the NCIX forums. May have to contact their customer support, as the rebate promotion was offered in exclusive conjunction with NCIX purchases.

Also, the Visa thing. Gearing up to mail the envelope this weekend. Hopefully I get my money back.

Now, imagine my best Professor Farnsworth voice: Good news, everyone!

As a paranoid/protective reaction to the imposter "alexanderthedrake", have dusted off my old en/fr Wikipedia accounts.

Today was unusually productive. I scanned and uploaded a cover image for The Shaw Alphabet Edition of Androcles and the Lion, added Barbara Hambly's latest historical novel to her bibliography, and added a brief piece on George Bernard Shaw to the Simple English Wikipedia.

Not bad, considering that I've only just figured out how to use my login for more than stalking my favourite article.

I look forward to contributing more.

CNL screws up again

So, the C & L Internet Club, through which I've gotten a lot of DVDs, is cancelling their customer rewards program.

I had until the end of the month to pick out an item covered by my existing rewards points, and have it shipped to me.

In addition, they have a "Deal by the Day", which is basically the day's deeply discounted DVD.

They charge $7 for shipping up to 5 DVDs at once, so I thought I might as well wait for a nice DBTD to turn up and spread out the shipping cost.

CNL, however, does not allow one to apply one's points simply by picking out the item in the shopping basket which is supposed to be redeemed.

No. They make you put in a separate order, check a box to say that you'd like it to ship with your regular order, and also check a box when placing the regular order to say that you've placed a rewards order to be shipped with said regular order.

I did all that. Did they ship me my free DVD?

Nope.

Checking my account on their website, my paid-for-with-redeemed-rewards-points item was invoiced and cancelled a full hour before they invoiced and shipped my now overpriced "Deal By the Day".

And it's not due to them running out of stock, or my filling in the boxes incorrectly.

The DVD which I want is still on the shelf, according to their database.

And I've got copies of the order confirmations, showing that the relevant bits were ticked correctly.

I never received a cancellation notice.

And when I try to checkout again, my points are gone.

I'm going to have to email them.

I hate it when people require you to trust them, but can't even be bothered to try not to screw it up.

Incidentally, if you're shopping through their website, the "confirm" button on the first page of the checkout does not allow you to confirm that your information and options are correct before proceeding to give them your money, but instead, processes your credit card directly.

I found this out the hard way.

You have been warned.