Big Business...Arrrrrr!

I have two rants and raves that must get off my chest. The first is something I've wanted to post on for a month. Jon has pictures of the event and was going to post on his site, so I was going to defer this one to him, but, alas, he is too busy to post it right now so I"m calling it! These are long folks, so settle up to your screen with a nice drink, relax, and let's get a reading..

BLOCKBUSTER: We were at Blockbuster on Saturday night about one month ago. We found it quite odd that all the new releases that took up shelves and shelves worth of space had no "Guaranteed to be here...or it's free" signs around them. If anything should be guaranteed, it's a movie that Blockbuster has purchased 50+ copies of. However, older (read: not as popular) movies still in the new release section did have these signs. Jon suggested perhaps Blockbuster policy was to take down these guaranteed signs if they ever ran out of that movie. Thus, they wouldn't really have to honor their promotion if the sign was no where to be seen. I quickly scoffed at the idea thinking, "No, that's even too low for a huge monopoly like Blockbuster."
Well...we were still searching and noticed the signs were still in place for Mr. and Mrs. Smith and there were no copies left. "See," I told Jon, "there's no way that's policy." We went up to the counter to get our free movie, and the employee was stunned that there were no movies left. He turned to his parter and said, "Did you forget to take down the sign by Mr. and Mrs. Smith?" His partner looked at him sheepishly and said, "I'll check it out." He quickly left the counter area and went to the back of the store. Suspicious? YOU BET! We got our free movie, but I"m willing to bet the next person who wanted it was simply told "Too bad, so sad for you..it's sold out. No guarantees it will be here. No free movie for you, sucker."
This is Crap with a capital C!

Our mortgage companies: So why won't I spill the beans on their name? We owe them LOTS of money and I'd prefer not to trash their name on a public forum. (But if you want to know, I"ll tell you!). We called them today because our payment is always due on the first of the month. That means they would like us to pay over our large sum of money within the next 72 hours if it is to be on time. Yet, we haven't received ANYTHING from our mortgage company all month. We called them up to find out the problem and someone picked up the phone and said we had to be transferred to a different department...but this department was closed! Jon tried about three different numbers to reach a person with absolutely no luck. Then he finally called back the first number and they were able to tell us the payment coupon was sent out...on January 27th. Jon said, "Wait a second. You want our money by the first, but you didn't even mail the coupon (what you use to mail the money in with payment information on it) until five days before you want it back in your hot little hands? And you are mailing this from New York, NEW YORK????? Needless to say, we were pulling our hair out.

To top it off, I was on the phone with our other mortgage company because they hadn't sent us our coupon for this month either. (Yes, for a payment due at the beginning of the month). When I tried to update our address information, they told me only Jon could change or update this! What? Isn't my name on the loan as well. Yes? Too bad, sucker! Unless you can transform your voice to sound like a man's, no updating for you. So, I handed the phone to Jon and the change went through. However, they didn't verify that Jon was who he was. He could have been my brother, dad, random man on the street who I paid to say "Yes" since this was the only question they asked him!
STUPID POLICY!

All I have to say is...ARRRRR!