UCAN Not Endorsing the Power Net Global (PNG) Option in 2008; PNG Has Changed

ucansue — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 10:56:30 -0700

Power Net Global (PNG) has changed. UCAN is no longer including the option of using Power Net Global (PNG). In 2002, UCAN did a consumer guide and a newsletter showing PNG as a great option for long distance phone service because not only did UCAN members get installation fees waived, but there were NO monthly fees for customers using this service. The company now charges minimum monthly usage fees and added a .99 cent monthly fee. To top things off, PNG recently started rounding up each call to the nearest minute instead of the six-second increcements it use to use. The bottom line is that there are better deals out there for consumers!

So, now PNG has instituted the following charges to consumers using its service: 1) .99 cent monthly fee; 2) Minimum Monthly Usage Fee; and 3) Each call rounded up to the nearest minute even though the web site of the company still advertises billing in 6-second increments.

Another problem with PNG is that customers who sign up, get bills & pay them electronically, had no notice of the rounding up to the nearest minute change that allegedly changed from 6-second billing increments prior to April 2008.

Whenever you are choosing phone service, go to on-line comparisons that present the facts as they are and follow up your comparison by calling a potential phone company with the comparisons in front of you to make sure you have all the facts about every statement made. When you call a company, repeat what you have been told after asking the CS rep for his/her ID #. It also wouldn't hurt to ask the rep if what you were promised could be sent to you in a confirmation email or fax.

FedEx Doesn’t Deliver

ktmitchell — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 10:48:09 -0700

UCAN community member ktmitchell writes the following: "In our modern global economy, the old cliché “time is money” has become an understatement. For the small business owners, when goods are lost, money is lost. Wages that could have been earned using those goods disappear as well. Consumers rely on shipping companies to complete business transactions by moving goods as quickly as the deals were made. Just as customers are confident that their shipments will arrive on time, they believe their packages will arrive undamaged.

When it comes to FedEx Ground Shipping, that confidence could be misplaced faith. I learned that the hard way when I shipped my turntables from my apartment in New York City to my mother’s home in California in the spring of 2007. Although I packed the turntables in a padlocked professional, padded case, the package arrived opened and damaged with expensive equipment missing.

FedEx admitted the turntables were damaged under their care, but refused to pay the total amount of replacement costs. On more than one occasion they cited their user agreement as reason to deny my claim. FedEx’s user agreement includes a clause that allows FedEx to change their policy at any time without notice, which they did and repeatedly.

After running into brick walls when dealing with FedEx, I decided to do some digging to see if other people were having similar problems. What I uncovered was shocking.

On numerous consumer watchdog complaint websites, average Americans continuously vent their ire against what they claim to be FedEx’s decline in quality services. On consumeraffairs.org, the complaint list is so extensive; it is subdivided by the type of complaint. In the simplest scenarios, packages were not delivered on time or they were delivered to the wrong address, typically to a neighbor. The worst, and most frequent, situations were when people like me had shipped properly packaged items, only to have them irreparably destroyed.

In most instances FedEx refused to compensate these customers, or give them a refund of their shipping cost. This was true even if customers paid the full price of insurance before shipping their item. If settlements were offered, it only covered a fraction of the monetary damage. Again, people stated Fed Ex cited their user policy as the reason to refuse most claims. Small claims courts uphold FedEx’s refusal of liability.

Also on the Consumer Affairs site were comments posted by employees at www.consumeraffairs.org. Apparently, FedEx employees are just as angry with the company as customers are.

FedEx delivery drivers are independent contractors, not full employees. This means the majority of have no insurance, no sick days, no overtime pay, no vacations and no motivation to handle packages carefully, or even deliver them to the right address. Independent contractor status makes employees difficult to track if packages “go missing.” On the Consumer Affairs site, Jack of Texas claims "the prevalence of damaged packages is due to FedEx using conveyer belts to load packages directly onto trucks". Imagine your well padded but delicate Christmas gift sliding down that belt into an unpadded truck— and some professor's 50 pound shipment of books tumbling behind it. Jack goes on to say that "the package handlers are only part time workers who perform “8-hour job in a 4-5 hour span,” receive no benefits, and don’t care if they throw packages".

If what Jack reports is true, FedEx’s very infrastructure must change in order to prevent serious damage to packages. For instance, packages could be marked fragile, then separated from heavier items. There was a time when the shipping companies did that, remember? That was back in the when companies weren’t afraid to pay employees a living wage with benefits, back when people kept one job until they retired and companies were integral with communities and back when companies took pride in their integrity; not their profit margin.

Even more frightening, the US postal service has agreed to pay 6.3 billion to have access to FedEx’s air network. The Association for Postal Commerce claims since this deal was finalized in 2001, the time it takes to deliver Priority Mail has increased from 2.15 to 2.69 days.

Furthermore, the alliance between FedEx and the US Postal Service was a sweetheart deal. There was no bidding process to allow other shipping contractors to compete for this contract. It is not surprising FedEx procured this deal with minimal effort when considering the corporation’s contributions to a long list of elected officials that includes John Mc Cain of Arizona, Charles Rangel of New York and Stephen Ira Cohen of Tennessee. www.opensecrets.com claims FedEx offers the use of private jets to politicians when trying to curry favor.

Ultimately, sweet deals for politicians leave a sour taste in their constituents’ mouths. When Federal law bows to corporate contracts, the government has ceased to work for its citizens. Vendors on sites like EBay and Amazon stand to lose a substantial portion of their business if they cannot rely on Fed Ex to protect their packages during shipping. Not only can self-employed people lose money if they lose their items, they lose time chasing down compensation and wages from soured business deals. Now that FedEx has part of it’s operations under the jurisdiction of the Postal Service, it is up to the Postmaster and Inspector General to oversee this corporation’s day-to-day operations in order to insure quality service."

National Dealers Warranty Auto Coverage Deceptive Letters

ucansue — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 14:54:28 -0700

National Dealers Warranty FINAL NOTICE letters are sent to unsuspecting consumers with their Customer ID #s to make people believe they already have a 5-year, 100,000 mile extended warranty on their cars. Victims are led to believe that they are getting an employee discount price if they renew within 48 hours. The letter goes on to state there's no credit check required and 0.0% financing is guaranteed for any warranty activated immediately. The letter also states that claims are paid directly to the repair shops and therefore customers won't have to worry about reimbursements. Whoever is behind this company, has purchased leads with full names and addresses. The San Diego letter copy UCAN received is signed by a John Walters--someone no one will ever find. UCAN found a lot of Internet site complaints about this company's deceptive practices and found that the Better Business Bureau (BBB) had nothing kind to report about the company. Another name for the company is United Warranty Wholesalers.

For example, http://stlouis.bbb.org/WWWRoot/Report.aspx?site=142&bbb=0734&firm=310030296 depicts the BBB's view of the company's reputation. In addition, this BBB report states: "on March 6, 2008, the Missouri Attorney General filed suit in St. Charles County Circuit Court against National Dealer Warranties for sending consumers postcards and letters informing them that they had limited time to purchase renewed, extended warranties for their vehicles. The Attorney General claimed the company neglected to inform consumers that it was not affiliated with the dealer or manufacturer of the vehicle, or that it was offering to sell motor vehicle extended service contracts instead of warranties. The suit is pending."

Write back to us at www.ucan.org and let us know if you've been victimized by this scam.

Why chopping down trees to make room for SDG&E electric lines is a form of pornography

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 16:10:03 -0700

SDG&E's lust for removing trees is pornographic.

Guest Commentary by Jeanne Gahagan.

(Jeanne Gahagan is a San Diego resident and SDG&E victim)

SDGE is addicted to the promiscuous wanton destruction of palm trees that pose no interference whatsoever with overhead power lines - or anything else for that matter - other than perhaps a corporate syndrome of male inadequacy.

Men suffering from such a psychosis may consume Viagra and then find a complicit sex worker to draw off some of their accretions. SD&GE wields its corporate penis by threatening property owners with lawsuits if they complain about SDGE whacking off (trees) for no discernable reason other than SDGE, like a 13 year old pubescent teen in the privacy of his room, can do it with impunity.

At the risk of frustrating the reader with an early withdrawal from the tease of sex, this is about corporate environmental malfeasance. SDGE owns easements along sidwalks in Mission Hills that allow it to remove things, such as trees, that interfere with
power lines. SDGE apparently believes that their easement also allows them to remove trees that are remote from the nearest power line and needs no further reason for removal apart from some weird sort of fetish in felling something long, hard, and upright. In fact, SDGE is actively continuing such removal right now. By "remove" I mean "whack off at the base", not "dig up for replanting", something that is easily and frequently done in the case of this particular victim tree, the palm.

Calling the removal of trees with a root system too shallow to annoy gophers and a top too small to stretch to the nearest overhead power line "stupid" is an unneccessary offense against stupidity. It is a waste of effort, resulting in no discernable reduction in
the arboreal risk to SDGE's power lines. It is a waste of money. It is a waste of trees. You know, those big things that soak up
CO2. So where are the global warming obsessives when you need them? In darkened theaters, wearing rubber gloves and drooling over the latest globaloney peep show from Al Gore.

For those truly sick enough to require pictures to get off, I have some. If you have a stump fetish like SDGE, you're going to love
these. Those of us with normal environmental urges, however, will want to puke at these photos.

As a Supreme Court justice once said, pornography cannot be defined, but you know it when you see it. Have a gander at some
corporate porn.

Locksmith Scams.....how do you make sure that your home and office are secure?

michael — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 11:41:09 -0700

Forget about computer worms.....how do you make sure that your home and office are safe?

When you hire that company to come to your house or business to install or change locks what protection do you have that your new lock won't used by the locksmith in some nefarious way. Or, for that matter, that the installation will be done correctly. Believe it or not, there are some unsavory locksmith scams being reported on the Net and by the Better Business Bureau. Check out the following links before you hire that locksmith!

http://locksmithscams.com/

http://www.sandiegolockandsafe.com/locksmithscams.html#newsstories

Policies not drought friendly

Sandy Young — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 10:48:46 -0700

Homeowner associations and city codes all over California enforce the watering of lawns even during drought conditions and a water emergency declared by the governor of the State.

A Sacramento couple found themselves caught up in red tape and code when they decided not to water their lawn letting it die instead. Landscaping plans were in the works, but the neighborhood watchdogs reported them before those plans were put into motion. Facing a fine that added up to half their monthly morgage the Sacramento couple was lucky to get public outrage and support after a story appeared in The Sacramento Bee.

The happy ending is that no fine will be meted out and members of the city council admit that city codes may need revising.

Like many Californians this couple's issues stem around agreements with landlords, cities, and HOAs that insist on the watering of grounds. The orderly maintenance of property is one of the factors that helps to keep property values from declining.

Perhaps more than the city of Sacramento can take a lesson from what the couple in the Bee's article lived through. Many contracts and codes need to be revised. Our current drought situation demands it.

Native plants and xeriscaping open many options to beautiful yards that can be maintained with much less water usage than traditional lawns require.

Marty Eberhardt, executive director of the Water Conservation Garden at Cuyamaca College is quoted in a March article at the VoiceofSanDiego.org saying, "It also requires behavorial change, a change of appreciation of a certain kind of landscaping. There are different concepts of paradise, and there's a vision of paradise that fits our weather patterns and soil types."

Paving paradise with lawns or cement has been a decades old vision of loveliness in San Diego County. The time has come to change our vision of paradise.

Click here to read the Sacramento Bee article.

Click here to read the Sacamento Bee follow-up article.

BLM lifts moratorium on solar energy applications

Sandy Young — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 17:52:54 -0700

Today the Bureau of Land Management announced the lifting of its moratorium on solar energy applications on federal land.

"We are happy to see that BLM will continue to process solar applications. With consumers facing rapidly increasing energy costs, the United States cannot afford to delay solar projects any longer." Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) President Rhone Resch said in today's statement. Click here to read his more from SEIA.

The Bureau of Land Management issued a press release saying:

"We heard the concerns expressed during the scoping period about waiting to consider new applications," said BLM Director James Caswell, "and we are taking action. By continuing to accept and process new applications for solar energy projects, we will aggressively help meet growing interest in renewable energy sources, while ensuring environmental protections." Click here to read more from BLM.

High gas prices equate to higher public support for oil exploration, Pew survey finds

Sandy Young — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 10:40:24 -0700

The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, an independent opinion research group has released a nationwide study finding that "amid record gas prices, public support for greater energy exploration is spiking . . . and an increasing proportion (of people taking the survey) also says that developing new sources of energy - rather than protecing the environment - is the more important national priority.

The survey's found that an increasing number of support for energy exploration came from groups that previously had "viewed this as a less important priority."

Click here to read the entire survey.

Iraq's no-bid contracts delayed

Sandy Young — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 10:13:30 -0700

Yesterday, the widely anticipated announcement of the winners to Iraq's no-bid contracts was delayed. Today's New York Times reports that Iraq's oil minister, Hussain al-Shahristani made the announcement at a news conference in Baghdad. Click here to read the entire article.

Expectation was that Iraq would award the contracts to a handful of western oil companies. Instead Iraq invited foreign companies to bid for contracts to develop key oil production fields.

The Financial Times in London reports that:

Iraq's oil minister, specified conditions that illustrate the extreme political sensitivity of allowing western oil companies into Iraq, where many people believe the US-led invasion of 2003 was designed to seize control of the country's resources. Click here to read the entire article.

Warrantless wiretap votes equal dollars from Telecom PAC

Sandy Young — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 14:19:33 -0700

Telecom political action groups gave twice as much money to Democrats who switched from opposing to supporting legal amnesty to Telecoms that aided the government's warrantless wiretapping program.

Last week Wired reported that Maplight.org had analyzed campaign donations and found that 94 of 220 Democrats who had previously voted against Telecom amnesty had switched their vote to support a bill that expands the government's ability to conduct wiretaps inside American Telecom facilities.

Media General News Service reported that AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and others sought immunity from prosecution for cooperation with the government's anti-terrorism wiretapping program. Click here to read the entire article.

The center for independent media, The Washington Independent, weighed in with their article, "FISA vote tied to telecom donation." Much is summed up with a quote from Mary Boyle, a spokeswoman with Common Cause: "We certainly know that contributions go a long way to gaining access and influence," she said. "The appearance is that money buys votes." Click here to read the entire aritcle.