Category Archives: Rants

Sallie Mae Confused?

So I logged into SallieMae.com today to make the final payment on one of my student loans (yay!) but I’m in a kind of weird position now. According to the billing summary and the “Make a payment” page, I should pay $239.34. But when I go to actually make that payment, I get this error:

The following errors were encountered:
1. The payment amount for a billing group cannot exceed the 5 day payoff amount of $238.83

What do I do now? Guess I have to call them. It won’t let me pay the amount I supposedly owe, and I can only imagine the mess if I underpaid by 51 cents. Ugh.

Upping the Ante

Since when did they up the ante? While most Americans are simply struggling to rent a place paycheck to paycheck, and can’t even think about buying anything, in their article Buying the American Dream, Forbes has now declared that the “American Dream” involves:

a nice, but not opulent, life–private schools for the kids, a large house in an upscale neighborhood, a weekend retreat, a pricey night out once a week, a couple of very nice cars

And it costs, too, to live their version of the American Dream out here in California, you’d have to be making nearly $370,000 per year—after taxes. By “large house in an upscale neighborhood” they mean a $3M house. By “weekend retreat” they mean another $950k for a house at Lake Tahoe. By “nice cars” they mean a BMW 325i and a Lexus RX 330. Who the hell dreamt up this version of the American Dream? When did it go from “a small house, maybe a couple of acres of land” to “a rich playboy’s life”? Oh wait, maybe this is only the dream of Forbes editors.

Thanks to Jeremy Zawodny for providing the link.

Grenoble Hotel Fiasco

I mentioned the snafu with our hotel in Grenoble in my last post, but I thought I’d expand on things. First, for some background:

Yahoo! has a new internal travel system, in order to reduce the volume of people booking with the travel agents at the travel desk. I figured I’d give it a try for this trip. Man, did it suck. It’s outsourced to KDS International, and internally re-branded as “Yahoo! U-Book”. It takes hours to do the simplest of things. I booked a single hotel from my trip with it before giving up and using Expedia, Orbitz, and HRS. I kept my sanity.

The hotel that I booked on U-Book was for Grenoble, France. We arrived into Paris on Saturday, and took the SNCF TGV train to Grenoble on Sunday afternoon. When we arrived at the Grenoble train station, I checked the map, but couldn’t find the address of the hotel on it. I asked the person at the information desk, and after some scratching his head, all he could initially tell me was: “far, very far”. Not good. I asked if I could take the tram or bus there; “No, only taxi, very far” was his response.

The hotel was in Saint Rambert d’Albon, which is really far from Grenoble. He knew that initially from the postal code—the hotel’s postal code is 26140, while central Grenoble is 38000. He was willing to figure out how I could get there, but I told him, no, if it’s really that far, I need a different hotel. He pointed me to the IBIS Grenoble Gare hotel, right down the road. The guy at the front desk of the hotel spoke excellent English and helped me cancel the other hotel without penalty and rebook there.

I got back in the office today, so I checked the U-Book system to make sure that I’m not crazy, and that it really isn’t my fault. I was right. Here’s a screen shot of the U-Book’s map of hotels, with my mouse over where it thinks the hotel I booked is:

You can see Kelkoo on there, which is the Yahoo! office I was headed to. Nice and close, right?

And now, where it really is, courtesy of Mappy. The hotel is on the left, Grenoble on the right, and the driving directions between. Click to get a bigger version. It’s 138km to drive this route:

I reported the problem to KDS today, by phone, so hopefully they’ll fix it.

REI Saratoga Incompetent?

I bought my bike from REI Saratoga about 5 months ago in May, 2005. Within the first two weeks, the left pedal fell off the crank arm, having apparently not been tightened properly. I took it back and they replaced the crank arms and pedals under warranty (since they had been rounded off a bit as well).

A few months later, I had three broken spokes in the back wheel due to mis-tensioning. I brought the bike back to REI again, and they fixed it under warranty again. When I got it back, they had put the back tire on backwards, and didn’t inflate the tires properly. I brought it in at 75psi each, and they inflated to 45psi. The tires are stamped and rated at 65-85psi.

This morning, as I was riding into work, three more spokes in the rear broke. LAME. I’m not riding off road, I’m riding on the road, not hitting potholes, not abusing the bike at all.

I am not taking the bike back to REI for any more repairs. I’ll be visiting a real bike shop to get these spokes repaired, and get a general tune-up. If something actually broke while I was riding in traffic, I’d be screwed. I’m not comfortable putting my life in REI’s hands anymore.

SNCF: Internationalization Gone Wrong

I’ve been working on booking some train tickets on SNCF for Adrienne and my trip this week. I’ve managed to get one booked: Paris to Grenoble. I’ve been working on booking the second: Grenoble to Munich via Zurich. In the process of working with the site, I noticed some internationalization problems.

There are a few “Confirm, Next” buttons that say “to be translated”, and apparently the delivery method for my tickets are “to be translated” as well. (I’m actually picking them up at the station.)

By far, the worst internationalization problem, though, is a far more subtle one. I’m having some problems booking the tickets because Citibank initially declined the transactions for possible fraud. I was trying to call SNCF and either book them over the phone, or figure out why they won’t sell them to me.

I found the “Conditions of use SNCF” page on their site, which mentions several times that one can call 08 92 35 35 35 and for only 0.35 EUR per minute they will be happy to help me. Expensive, but great! I’ll call them!

I faithfully dialed the number into my phone: 011 33 8 92 35 35 35. I got a French menu system—but the web page telling me to call this number said nothing about not having any English options there. OK, I can handle this. I listened very carefully and selected the option for “International Trips”, and then for “Other Lines”. I was connected to an operator, who greeted me in French. I asked “parlez vous anglais?” to which she replies “non, monsieur”.

Hmm. I can handle French menus, but I don’t think I can handle asking her why my credit card is being denied in French. I asked if she could transfer me to someone who speaks English. She tried to give me the number: zairo … eight … and I guess she gave up and hung up on me. Doh.

Part of internationalization is making sure that the information you are translating is relevant, not just directly translating everything.