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Taken To The Cleaners By Abe’s Detailing

I read a nice newspaper story a while ago about Abe’s Detailing in Norfolk, NE. When I wanted to have Jen’s minivan detailed as a present, I thought I’d give Abe’s a try and made an appointment for the $45.99 “express detail”. When we picked it up later, the van looked nice, but they wanted to charge us for the $159.99 “presidential detail” that they performed instead.

I told the employee that I’d ordered the cheaper package. He said I must have talked to his brother and that his brother wrote it down wrong, and still wanted me to pay the full price for the wrong job.

I will never darken the doorsteps of Abe’s Detailing in Norfolk again. If you choose to do so, I highly recommend you get a written estimate in advance.

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Scam Calls From Card Services

I just got a phone call from a “private caller” (that is, with no caller ID information) and heard a recording from “Card Services”, who claimed that my credit card’s interest rate was about to go up and to press 9 if i wanted to lower it to 6.9%. Being bored, I pressed it.

Caller: Hi, would you like us to lower your interest rates?
Me: Who are you with?
Caller: Well, would you be interested?
Me: Who are you with?
Caller: We are Card Services.
Me: So, you’re not affiliated with my bank?
Caller: slams the phone down in my ear

I guess they weren’t.

So, if you also get a call from Card Services, remember that it’s 99.9% likely that they’re scammers and that it’s morally OK to mess with them. If you want to have fun and waste their time and otherwise abuse them, reply here to tell us what happened so we can all enjoy it.

Update on July 30, 2009:

By request of a letter from the Rubinis’ attorney, I have removed their home addresses from comments. Please do not re-post such information. Thanks.

Update on August 11, 2009:

The Rubinis issued this statement via their lawyer:

Clear Financial Solutions does not engage in or perform any telemarketing
activities. Any complaints or allegations to the contrary are false and
without merit.

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My Ecco Shoes Are Junk

I bought a nice looking pair of Ecco shoes a couple years ago. Actually, they were probably the nicest shoes I’ve bought before or since. I don’t have a reason to wear dress shoes often, but when I did, they looked nice and I was proud to have them.

About a year ago I noticed that the soles were starting to come apart. I wrote to Ecco to ask for advice, got a short reply along the lines of “we received your message and will get back to you soon”, then nothing. As of about a month ago, they finished literally rotting off – the soles were disintegrating in big, soft rubbery chunks – and my mother-in-law did me a favor by having them re-soled. I wrote again to Ecco to tell them what happened but this time I haven’t gotten a reply of any kind.

I will never buy their shoes again. They look great but were completely destroyed and unusable after wearing them perhaps 10 times to church, job interviews, and other extremely low-abuse situations. What’s worse is that they couldn’t be bothered to respond to customer concerns (although I admit that my second message to them wasn’t quite as polite and deferential as the first). I guess they just don’t really care about quality or customer satisfaction.

There is now a gallery of pictures of rotten Ecco shoes that have been sent in by readers.