Drift Reality

This letter describes an extremely negative experience a friend had with USA Locksmith:

On Wednesday February 14, 2007 I locked myself out of my apartment in Boston, MA. After being locked out, I borrowed a friend’s phone and called the USA Locksmith Boston office to help me with my situation. When asked how much it would cost, the representative told me they were unable to provide me with a total estimate, but did state that there would be a minimum fee of $39.95, and that an additional fee for labor would be assessed. I was then told that a representative would be dispatched shortly.

About 40 minutes later, the representative arrived at my apartment. After a brief inspection, the locksmith quoted me a price of $145.00, which would be assessed on top of the $39.95 base fee. As a single female with no personal contacts in the direct area, and with the work day almost completed, I felt compelled to agree to the fee. The locksmith promptly placed some sort of key into the keyhole on the door and tapped on it about ten times or so. After a few moments, he turned the key and opened the door.

Shortly thereafter, the locksmith insisted that I pay him the full amount in cash. As a single female student living alone, I do not make it a practice of carrying very much cash with me at any given time. I asked if I could pay with a credit card or a check and was promptly told that I could only pay with cash. The locksmith asked to see my license. Upon turning my license over, the locksmith told me that he would hold onto it until I paid him the full amount he was owed in cash. I desperately searched for an ATM in the direct vicinity, withdrew the cash and gave it to him.

I am writing this letter of complaint for the following three reasons:

1. I feel that the refusal on the part of USA Locksmith to provide a cost estimate is a violation of my rights as a consumer. Additionally, the practice of providing a base fee of $39.95 and then an additional fee of $145.00 upon ‘inspection’, to a desperate consumer, is an unethical practice. Particularly when the total time require to open the lock was only a few minutes.
2. Forcing a consumer to pay $185.00 in cash seems to be an unfair business practice. Particularly because later, when I called USA Locksmith, I was told that it was their policy to allow customers to pay with a credit card.
3. Finally, The locksmith had absolutely no right to confiscate my drivers license and hold it hostage until I paid him $185 in cash. This was an act of intimidation, as well as illegal. When considering the fact that I am a relatively small single female (5’4), it is clear that this was his way of intimidating me into paying him in cash.
   I have suffered loss of money as well as psychological harm as a result of the acts of USA Locksmith and the contractor they dispatched to my residence. I fully intend to file a report with the Better Business Bureau, the Federal Trade Commission, as well as the Boston Attorney’s General Office; as well as pursue legal action.

I would hope that others might learn from this experience and avoid doing business with USA Locksmith in the future.

Don’t ever eat at Thai Basil Restaurant. The service at this restaurant is definitely the worst I’ve ever experienced at any restaurant in Boston and if you order the chicken, you may get salmonella poisoning.

The other night, I was getting some takeout sushi from Shino Express on Newbury Street (which is a great place by the way) when I passed Thai Basil, and made a mental note to try it out at some point in the future. A few days later, I was back on Newbury Street for a late dinner and decided to try the place out.

After being seated, I ordered dumplings and wonton soup as starters and was actually moderately pleased with the product. Shortly thereafter, my platter of pepper chicken arrived and I was a bit disgusted to find that the chicken was undercooked. My companion had ordered the pad thai, which I would describe as ‘edible.’

We arrived a bit late (around 9:30 PM) and had decided to order a bottle of wine with the dinner. After munching on the semi-raw chicken for a bit, I decided to push it away from myself and focus on the wine and conversation. Around 10:15 PM, I noticed that the restaurant had begun to clear out as the staff had begun to clean the restaurant with little regard to the patrons who were remaining.

At 10:20, our waitress came over and asked us in an abrupt manner if we were ready to leave yet. “No, not really,” I responded and she left, seeming a bit miffed.

By 10:30, my companion and I were the only ones left in the restaurant and it had become clear that we were no longer welcome. All the chairs had been picked up and a man had begun sweeping the floors around us. Furthermore, they had turned on the stark overhead lights. My glass of wine was still half-full and according to the restaurant, closing time was 10:30, so my companion and I continued to relax and converse while we finished our wine.

At 10:35, a man from the back of the restaurant came to the front and in a few moments, all the lights in the restaurant had been turned completely off and my companion and I were seated in darkness. After a few moments, the woman working at the front turned the lights back on and giggled, along with a few of the staff who had already changed into their street clothes, as the man returned back to the kitchen.

At that point, my companion and I decided it was time to leave (even though we had not finished our wine). We stood up and walked out of the restaurant. I thanked the woman at the front desk as we left, to my companion’s surprise.

The reason I felt calm was because by that point, I had already decided I would return home and tell the world about how crap the service and the food at Thai Basil is, so there was no reason to push the issue any further.

Do yourself a favor, never eat at this piece of crap restaurant.

It was on a saturday evening that my companion and I decided to head out to Cambridge to observe the phenomenon that is the world’s greatest young minds immersed in revelrie. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions as to why I decided to leave both my glasses and contact lenses at home as we headed out the door.

We arrived in the center of Cambridge and I was pleased to find it a vibrant place, despite the slight haze of mist that surrounded the city. We chose a street at random and began walking until we came upon a Chinese food restaurant. Both of us were starving so after a quick scan of the menu, we headed in and sat down only to find ourselves slightly put off by the flourescent lighting and the less-than-cordial customer service being administered by the Chinese wait staff.

Without much deliberation, we gathered our things and I muttered some excuse to the hostess as we headed out back into the Cambridge night. Before long, we both realized that Cambridge wasn’t really the hotbed of culinary delights one might imagine. Actually, apart from the Chinese restaurant and Au Bon Pain (which is ubiquitous in the Boston area for some reason), it didn’t really seem like there was anywhere to eat at all in the city.

After consulting with some friendly Cambridgians, we finally settled on Fire and Ice, an ‘all you can eat’ grill house, where I like to think I managed to beat the house.

Contentedly full, we headed back to my companion’s residence in Bay Village and promptly fell asleep.

About two hours into our slumber, we were awakened by a commotion outside that we both assumed to be the residual sounds of the clubs that were nearby. Unfortunately, the sounds persisted for quite some time and my half-conscious mind slowly began to wonder if something was amiss. This creeping awareness leapt forward when I heard a young woman’s shrieks shortly followed by a cacaphony of sirens. I leapt to my feet and pulled on some shorts and a t-shirt and headed for the front door.

As I gingerly opened the door, a flood of sirens, digitized walkie-talkie voices, and distressed screams flooded into the apartment. I looked down at the front steps and saw a young man lying on a stretcher with an oxygen mask affixed to his face. Blood soaked through bandaging that had been wrapped around his mid-section, and a young asian girl stood by, frantically crying as a small cadre of uniformed men and women milled around the scene. To my immediate left, an older couple had come out of the front entrance to the door adjacent to me and were standing, watching the scene in utter shock.

Immediately, my companion began crying as I stood and watched the scene in amazement. I had actually never come so close to being in the immediecy of an event like this, and it was a strange and disorienting experience. It reminded me of the few times I had met someone initially by talking with them over the phone or by e-mail at length, before actually meeting with them. As if I somehow had a mediated experience of this type of an event in the past. As I looked on, they carted the young man into the ambulance and the older couple and the young woman began to frenetically discuss what they should do. Eventually, the young woman got into the ambulance with the man who had been shot and the older couple (who I later found out were the younger woman’s parents) made plans to accompany the ambulance by taxi. As the energy of the event began to settle down, we sat on the front stoop for a while longer, still shocked by what had just transpired in front of our eyes. Slowly, we made our way back inside where we began trying to figure out what had just happened.