Sears.com Follow Up
I wrote last week about how I ordered a TV from Sears.com, then I never got an e-mail or anything, no charges on my credit card etc, and no response to e-mails.
Well on Friday, the exact same TV went on sale again. So I went to buy it. Seconds before I clicked “purchase” I thought “Hmmm I better check my credit card just in case”. And sure enough, that very morning they had billed me for the TV I had bought.
Still not received any order confirmation or tracking information, and I can’t find anything under my account. So absolutely no clue when it will arrive, if it will even arrive.
Seriously it’s 2009 – how can big companies like Sears fuck things up like this.
FM2010 Season 1 Summary
Well I’m back to being addicted to Football Manager, the 2010 version in this case. Of course not long after starting a game I hope to be long-term, I find out that it’s got the same horrible bugs as Football Manager 2008, where the regens suck and it makes long-term games unplayable. Sigh. Hopefully it will be fixed in a patch.
Anyway I know a lot of FM fans read this blog, so thought I would start writing season summaries:
End of Season 1:
I started as an unemployed Graeme Souness to start the game, with leagues from the USA, England, France, Germany, Italy, Holland, Scotland and Spain running. I ended up getting a job with Hibs in the Scottish Premier League. They were 2nd bottom and doing very badly, including a 6-0 HOME defeat against St Johnstone.
We had a decent team, but were broke. I took over on January 1st 2010, and my first game was on January 2nd against rivals Hearts. I went with a very defensive formation with a flat back four, 2 DMCs, 1 ball winning midfielder, 2 wide midfielders and 1 striker. We managed to win 1-0 in a huge result.
We continued to do well in January, although in front of goal we seemed to be weak, missing a lot of easy chances. With no funds, I sold Kevin McBride, Colin Nish and Patrick Cregg, bringing in my only signing of the season, Leigh Griffiths from Dundee. Griffiths is a 19 year old striker with 16 in finishing, 15 in Acc/Pace, 12 in composure and a few other decent attributes. He forced his way into the first team immediately with a double against Motherwell when I dropped Derek “I skipped training” Riordan, and proceeded to score a 90th minute equalizer against Aberdeen in the next game. He would go on to score 8 goals in 14 games.
Despite some solid performances, we were unable to get in the top 6, although it was always a lofty goal. We did manage to pip Hearts on the last day of the season to go above them, which I was rather proud of. Final league table:
Summer signings I have made are Jamie Ness and Nacho Novo from Rangers, and Jay Emmanuel-Thomas from Arsenal.
My current team:
That is minus Joao Pereira, a right back we had on loan, who ended up being the pick of the players for best 11.
For next season, the board have given me a nice gift. With expectations of just mid-table, they’ve given me £1.3m to spend, and added £10k a week onto wages.
Looking at my team, if I stick with that formation I’m solid for DMCs, for AMCs, for strikers, for CDs and for LBs. I COULD do with a better keeper although Stack did a solid job last year, and I 100% need an RB. Although I notice Kenny Miller would be interested in coming to us, so don’t be surprised if I blow the whole budget on him.
Finally I got the youth team through – and I got a pretty decent regen in 6’3″ striker Scott Moffat:
Hopefully he will be leading the line within the next few years.
My Latest Website
I wasn’t really planning on launching any new sites for the rest of the year, however this was one that was in the planning stages for awhile. I’ve been putting in the work slowly over the last few weeks, as the concept of the site is really fun, and different from my usual websites.
As of today it is now live and launched, so it’s time to open it up to the world.
The site is called Dans Casino Blog and I’ll link you all to it in a minute. The premise of it is very simple – on Sundays, I sign up at a new online casino, and deposit $100. Monday through Friday I play at that casino and blog about it, while trying to clear the signup bonus. I either profit or go bust – either way, i write about it over those 5 days. Then at the end of the week I also do a review of the casino.
So yeah – hopefully a fun site to read. Go read now and subscribe to the daily blog newsletter: Dans Casino Blog. ANd if you have Twitter, Stumble Upon, Digg etc accounts I’d love a link!
Detective Hamrick makes a return
I hate ebay. I mean, I really fucking hate it. They’ve made improvements in their time, but there’s still so many problems, so many scummy sellers out there. Ones who pray on the innocent, the people that see an item at “$5.50” and assume shipping is going to be regular shipping – not $26.50 to ship an item two cities over.
So it’s nice when I get a chance to get some revenge on these fuckers.
Janise ordered an item back in August from a seller – some kids webkinz toy or something. Dude lives in Oklahoma. He never sent the item, then gave bullshit excuse after bullshit excuse – his mother was in the hospital, his mother died etc etc. What was worse was he finally sent the item, but it got returned – and rather than you know – send it again – he’s decided to ignore e-mails for the last couple of months now. He basically managed to bullshit Janise long enough so that he was able to get by the Paypal 45 day dispute time, and the ebay one. Dude now thinks he’s got off scot-free.
Fuck that.
The item is only worth $30, but man it’s a matter of principle. And really – it’s not too hard. This person, who signed up behind what is basically an anonymous e-mail address and kept their details all private, is private no longer. I have their name, their relatives names, all their phone numbers, their addresses – I even know where they work.
Time to go to work!
Sears.com Is Awesome
I’ve been looking for a new 32″ LCD TV for the bedroom, and saw a deal on Sears website for just $400 CDN. Sweet deal, so I went ahead and ordered it. I didn’t get an order confirmation number, but was told I would get an e-mail with all my order information. Well of course I didn’t, and I go into my account and there’s no way to view order history or anything like that.
So I went ahead and e-mailed them. No response. Sent a few e-mails now, still nothing. No charges on my credit card yet, so I have absolutely no fucking idea if I have a 32″ TV on its way or not. I could probably just call them – but that really defeats the whole purpose of ordering online.
It really bugs me when you see online businesses run so crappy. Best Buy and Future Shop I believe are still the same way – when you go to buy something you can’t just log into your old account – you have to log in, then provide an old order number, or you have to open up a whole new fucking account.
This is why Amazon are still the fucking top online retailer – because they know what they are doing. Online ordering isn’t an afterthought for them – it’s their whole business. That’s the problem with a lot of these retailers – the online stuff still isn’t priority, when in reality it is 2009 and it really fucking should be. It really shouldn’t be that hard to respond to an e-mail, provide an account history etc yet so many of them half-ass it that it just breaks any trust you have with the store.
These places really need to get their acts together.