Admitting Defeat

I will call them HardFart rather than use their real name for now. 

HardFart should not be in the mail order business.

Fart Radar
Free Ap that detects a fart and provides a chemical breakdown analysis too.

Recently I replied to a nonsensical customer service email. I had done business online with this well known company and there was a huge problem with the simple order. No it was not Amazon, it was another huge company that most of America seems to love to pieces and shops at in person, because of their perception that the prices are cheap (mostly they aren't, I've done tons of comparisons in my online and in-person store research.)

The more I tried to explain, the more canned nonsensical replies I received from HardFart. Numerous phone calls and ridiculous computer prompts, loud blaring music on hold threatening to break my speaker and eventually after days, weeks, months, I forget exactly how long (but my hair turned gray while working on this.) Finally I get a LIVE person who can understand my English and I was able to more or less understand theirs. FINALLY this problem was resolved. (They weren't the first live person I spoke to, but this one eventually fixed it.)

I was buying a phone card that worked with my internet company which stopped taking my credit card after all these years of accepting it just fine. Internet company says it's a bank problem. Bank says it's the internet company's problem. We been going back and forth now for over a year. My credit card works for every where else but for some reason no one is willing to delve into, why it no longer works with my internet provider. They won't accept my debit card or a credit card and they can't tell me why none of this is going through. The banks tell me it's not their problem either, it's the internet company and the internet company says it's the bank's problem. 

So I turned to HardFart to buy a top up card which allows me to use this with the internet company to pay for my account. Theoretically, I buy the topup card online and then get the info by email and I load it into my account with the internet company and binga-banga-boom, my internet magically comes back to life. It's cheap internet, if I switch companies I will have to pay more than triple. 

So this is why I am not saying which lousy internet company I am using. I travel year round more or less, and America is NOT designed for a gypsy lifestyle on an efficient budget. So finding an internet company that might work on the go for a fair price is very tricky and hard to find. Plenty of them out there if you have very deep pockets. I have shallow pockets. Actually, I have no pockets cause I wear bike shorts and leggings and they don't come with pockets. 

Harley dog carries my stuff around cause he has paw-kets. 

Next month I made same exact same purchase. (Harley made a typing error, sorry, guess I better finish typing this myself *sigh*)

This particular top-up card happened to be cheaper than anywhere else and well I am watching my pennies, so I foolishly sought the same great price. 

Had the exact same problem. 

Went through the exact same nightmares to get it fixed. Took about a week too. Many times they suggested by phone or email that I drive to their store which was over 30 miles from my current location. How did a transaction that used to take me 40 seconds from start to finish turn into a week long nightmare?

Why is HardFart in the mail order business if they want you to drive to their store to fix their problems? 

I don't have a car cause I don't like driving. I know that is FUNNY cause I live in a motorhome and obviously I drive it around. But I prefer to park it in a beautiful place and live there a week or a month and not drive around. Next time I need to move, I do my errands along the way, like snag groceries. I also get mailorder or UPS deliveries to some of the campgrounds. This saves me time, gas and hassle. More or less. 

Actually when I was shopping for a motorhome, I was driving a beatup old car to look for a motorhome. After hashing out my budget, I decided I couldn't afford to have both a car and a motorhome so I chose the motorhome and sold the old car. That is shortcut version of that story...

The way the medical world was devastating me financially, I feared I was going to  end up living in a cardboard box under a bridge if I didn't hurry up and die. 

Well, I didn't die, but I stopped all medical treatments and sought alternatives. The docs said I would die for sure if I did that too. Well, guess what, here I am still smiling and laughing! Tee hee hee...

On a funny note... 

One day someone asked me why I didn't have a car. I just said the first thing off the top of my silly head, which was "I don't like living in a car, motorhome is roomier."

Well, I certainly got a big long stare and that person never spoke to me again. C'est la vie!

America was built on the fact that everyone should have cars. From what I've seen of numerous heavy traffic jams, it seems everyone is in their car at once too! Hello? Is anyone at work or at home or is everyone in their car cause I been typing at this traffic light for the past 10 minutes.... I think I am getting within a half mile of it too!

Well, I am an idiot and believed the customer service rep or whatever they call themselves at HardFart these days that the problem was fixed. It wouldn't happen again. They said so. 

So third month (I am an idiot, a true bona fide idiot!) I make exact same purchase online from HardFart and guess what.

Problem not fixed, but they have my money and I want my goods and we go back and forth with the same ridiculous emails and phone calls and so on. 

At one point I gave up. 

I replied to their email:

"Game over. You win! I admit defeat. I promise, I will never ever spend another penny with you. The sheer torture is more than I can handle. I get it. You don't want my business. Fine. You win!"

A few days later I received another canned reply from HardFart wanting me to complete a customer satisfaction survey but there is nowhere on the survey to check off "I think of you as fondly as I think of cow poop."

So I gave up. HardFart wins. Ding ding! Round over. HardFart knocked me senseless and won. 

I took this picture.
The briefcase is a nice touch.
You know how email and phone customer service only use first names now,
well they travel to work anonymously too...

Now for my internet company... no idea what I am going to do next. Lately I've had free Wifi at the parks I have been to, but I am about to travel to campgrounds and parks that don't provide that service. The free Wifi I have had is always problematic because the system is typically overloaded. So mostly I do my internet stuff at weird hours so I can get through. 

But now I will travel in places where I might like to use my internet again. I rely on internet to manage my money, use my computer phone,  post to my blog and maintain my webpages. Well I did... most of my webpages were viciously hacked and trashed awhile back and I haven't been able to fix much of that nightmare either. The end result was my royalties from my book sales and my little commissions from Amazon and a few others plummeted to rock bottom. I guess those webpages were helping me along somewhat, but no more. Gone, poof.  One of my checks last month was 30 cents. Well, actually it was an auto-deposit. 30 cents. I kid you not. I have the email explaining the 30 cents, I have the deposit. It used to be anywhere from $25 to $100 before the webpages died. I've tried to fix them all, I had backups and such, but there are still problems and it's been hacked and attacked repeatedly.

So I've decided to ADMIT DEFEAT.

I can and will learn to live off less and less and maybe I will just forget about phones, internet, webpages and technology. 

They can't take my brain away and I am pretty crafty at doing more with less.

Well, I ldo ose my mind sometimes, but I always find it again. (Doesn't get far in the shape it's in.)

Retro Vintage Tin Sign