02-08-2023, 07:38 AM
I feel like we need a sub-thread called "The Parent Trap"...
So my mom fell last fall and was in a care facility for six weeks. While she was away, I took the opportunity to rip out the carpet in her bedroom that was in the house when we moved in in the early '70's. It was badly stained and worn, and smelly from decades of dogs. I (a contractor) put in some bamboo flooring I got for a really decent price from HD Supply. Since we were ripping out the floor, I decided to repaint the room too. So the whole room got a low budget makeover, but came out really nice. To paint, I had to take down her shades. Ever since then, these 20-year old shades haven't been working smoothly. Pull the string and they come off the mounts. I tried to fix them several times, but they really need to be replaced.
My mom saw that Costco had some 3rd party blond installer so my mom called to get a quote. A guy came out in the evening (late) at the end of Jan to measure the two shades. I called the next day to see how it went and my mom told me the whole saga of his visit, but ended with "he quoted ~$2500(!!)" apparently, she filled out some form electronically and he tried to run her credit card, but had problems.
I've been trying to find out the details of the quote, but she didn't have a hard copy.
I had good experience with a guy in Santa Cruz around 10 years ago, so I pinged him to see if he could give a competitive quote. He said yes and that he'd call my mom to schedule.
Days go by..my mom says no one ever called.
I come over to her house on mom day and after work, I spend an hour figuring out that her phone/voicemail has been fucked ever since AT&T switched her land line to UVerse. If her calls aren't answered, they go to an AT&T voicemail system (aka "The Dead Voicemail Box"). I discovered that intermittently her physical answering machine gets set to do not answer mode. When this happens, it just rings and stops. She had no idea people were leaving her messages. It took me forever, but I finally figured out how to get to the web interface for this voicemail system. There were 157 unheard messages going back to 2015.
I disabled the "feature" (fuck off AT&T). And then listened to a bunch of messages, but there were only a few from this year. I think the box was full. There were some messages from friends of hers that have since passed (years ago), so I saved those for her.
BTW: this AT&T voicemail interface sucks ass. It feels like it was designed to run on a Nokia flip phone. It's super slow and clunky and not Mac friendly. (Oh, you want to listen to this message? You'll have to install QuickTime - listen fuckers, QuickTime has been included in the OS for years. Fix your fucking software)
Well, back to throwing shade -
So, today after work, I find out that my mom's wallet was stolen while she was at the store. She got an email this afternoon from AmEx that someone was trying to use her card to make a $700+ purchase. She said it wasn't her (clicked the big "NO" button in the email). I spent most of the evening making a list of what to do next: call banks, get a new drivers license, etc.
Late this evening, I was going thru her email and I found a message from the blind company containing the contract. $2800 for 2 blinds!
The legalese says you have 3 days to cancel. 5 days if you are over 65...we're several days past that, so it looks like she has some fancy shades coming by late April....
I've been prepping for a trip tomorrow and didn't need any of this distraction. Heck, I'm still trying to follow up on an appeal we made to a Social Security letter last October. They have a great phone system there. You call into the phone tree...finally get into a queue and then, after periodic checks that you want to continue to hold, it hangs up on you after 30 min.
It's 6:30am. I think I slept from 1-2:30am.
Fun fun fun
--tg
So my mom fell last fall and was in a care facility for six weeks. While she was away, I took the opportunity to rip out the carpet in her bedroom that was in the house when we moved in in the early '70's. It was badly stained and worn, and smelly from decades of dogs. I (a contractor) put in some bamboo flooring I got for a really decent price from HD Supply. Since we were ripping out the floor, I decided to repaint the room too. So the whole room got a low budget makeover, but came out really nice. To paint, I had to take down her shades. Ever since then, these 20-year old shades haven't been working smoothly. Pull the string and they come off the mounts. I tried to fix them several times, but they really need to be replaced.
My mom saw that Costco had some 3rd party blond installer so my mom called to get a quote. A guy came out in the evening (late) at the end of Jan to measure the two shades. I called the next day to see how it went and my mom told me the whole saga of his visit, but ended with "he quoted ~$2500(!!)" apparently, she filled out some form electronically and he tried to run her credit card, but had problems.
I've been trying to find out the details of the quote, but she didn't have a hard copy.
I had good experience with a guy in Santa Cruz around 10 years ago, so I pinged him to see if he could give a competitive quote. He said yes and that he'd call my mom to schedule.
Days go by..my mom says no one ever called.
I come over to her house on mom day and after work, I spend an hour figuring out that her phone/voicemail has been fucked ever since AT&T switched her land line to UVerse. If her calls aren't answered, they go to an AT&T voicemail system (aka "The Dead Voicemail Box"). I discovered that intermittently her physical answering machine gets set to do not answer mode. When this happens, it just rings and stops. She had no idea people were leaving her messages. It took me forever, but I finally figured out how to get to the web interface for this voicemail system. There were 157 unheard messages going back to 2015.
I disabled the "feature" (fuck off AT&T). And then listened to a bunch of messages, but there were only a few from this year. I think the box was full. There were some messages from friends of hers that have since passed (years ago), so I saved those for her.
BTW: this AT&T voicemail interface sucks ass. It feels like it was designed to run on a Nokia flip phone. It's super slow and clunky and not Mac friendly. (Oh, you want to listen to this message? You'll have to install QuickTime - listen fuckers, QuickTime has been included in the OS for years. Fix your fucking software)
Well, back to throwing shade -
So, today after work, I find out that my mom's wallet was stolen while she was at the store. She got an email this afternoon from AmEx that someone was trying to use her card to make a $700+ purchase. She said it wasn't her (clicked the big "NO" button in the email). I spent most of the evening making a list of what to do next: call banks, get a new drivers license, etc.
Late this evening, I was going thru her email and I found a message from the blind company containing the contract. $2800 for 2 blinds!
The legalese says you have 3 days to cancel. 5 days if you are over 65...we're several days past that, so it looks like she has some fancy shades coming by late April....
I've been prepping for a trip tomorrow and didn't need any of this distraction. Heck, I'm still trying to follow up on an appeal we made to a Social Security letter last October. They have a great phone system there. You call into the phone tree...finally get into a queue and then, after periodic checks that you want to continue to hold, it hangs up on you after 30 min.
It's 6:30am. I think I slept from 1-2:30am.
Fun fun fun
--tg