On Saturday 21 September 2002 03:07, you wrote:
> Just a note, here, about Batteries Plus on US 19 in Clearwater. First, I
> took in a battery for an APC BackUPS 400 to be replaced. The battery the
> guy sold me had smaller crimp terminals than the one I brought in. The
> guy mumbled something about having to stock the one or the other kind,
> and I could just crimp the terminals and make this one work.
>
> Crimp the terminals on the inside of my UPS?! So the next time I get a
> battery with the _proper_ crimp terminals, they won't work? Arggh.
Sorry for their half-arsed service.
>
> The battery fits and apparently works. Time will tell. But the excuses
> annoyed me.
>
> <rant>
>
> But here's the best part. I wrote the guy a check, and he gave me one of
> these slips that said, "You agree for us to destroy your check and debit
> your account...." Argghh! If I'd wanted the guy to debit my account, I
> would have given him my debit card. It's not a question of having the
> money in my account; that's not the issue. I want that check to come
> back to me cancelled. I want that check number to show up on my bank
> statement, not some debit number listed on another part of the
> statement, where I have to remember what that $30 was for. If you're not
> going to accept personal checks, post a sign out front of your shop that
> says so. I'm forewarned, and I'll go elsewhere. Or give you a credit
> card.
This is evidently a new policy with Bat. Plus. I phoned the store after
reading your post and was told that recently came down from their corporate
headquarters in Wisconsin. I told the clerk that I had been buying batteries
from them for eight years with cheques and endorsed them on a email list.
I told him that if the policy did not change back to what it originally was,
I would not endorse them again or do business with them. He apologized and
said that there was nothing he could do about it.
>
> There are likely folks who disagree with me, who do a lot of online
> banking and such. Call me a luddite if you like, but I work with
> computers, and I don't trust them with access to my bank account, I
> don't care whose computers they are. I don't give people my social
> security number, either. You get a check from me, and that check says
> you can pull X amount out of my account, over my signature. No more, no
> less. I don't give people my checking account number and then say, "Hit
> my account for X, and oh by the way, I trust you." I have no idea what
> kind of network these folks are connected to, what safeguards they have
> in place or anything.
Any "safeguards" are shakey at best and are a function of the choice of
application and sys admin who maintains it.
>
> Plus, not many people realize that you have certain fraud and abuse
> protections as a consumer when you use a credit card. This isn't true
> with debit cards, and I doubt it's true with one of these "check
> substitute" services. I work with a merchant service in my business (the
> folks that clear credit card transactions with your customers). Every
> few months, these guys hit my account double. Happens with all the
> merchant services I've used. They usually correct the problem the next
> day. But these guys do this for a living, and _they_ make what could be
> costly mistakes. And I'm gonna trust some switcheroo service I've never
> even heard of before?
You definitely should not trust them and I would take my business elsewhere.
>
> Pet Supermarket pulled this crap on me a while back, and told me this
> was the "wave of the future". Right. If so, then I'll start shopping
> exclusively with credit cards, where I have some protections. I wrote a
> scathing letter to their home office. Batteries Plus will get the same.
> Not that it will do any good. It probably is the wave of the future.
You can change that by refusing to cooperate with "the wave".
Smitty
>
> Anyway, I gotta get back to my butter churn. After that, the horse needs
> shoeing.
>
> Oh yeah, and I install software in /usr/local. Grrr.
>
> </rant>
>
> Paul
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