Drift Reality

Update (9/29) - So a few hours after this post initially went up I was contacted by someone from the Intelius PR department, expressing concern with my experience and an interest in having a conversation about it.  We talked today and our conversation went a long way towards changing my perspective of Intelius (for the better).  We talked through the product issues as well as the customer support issues.  I feel less upset about the product issues - these are always a work-in-progress, especially for a fast growing, young company like Intelius.  I have a feeling they will get the product issues resolved.  However, the customer support issues are still a source of concern.  All that being said, the professional manner in which the PR department at Intelius addressed the situation was the perspective changer for me.

Let me start by saying that Intelius has some of the worst customer service I have ever experienced and I find their general approach to be confusing and unethical .  Here is why:

My family owns a couple of properties in the DC area and I was helping them do a background check on some prospective tenants so I gave Intelius a shot.  I had the tenant’s social security numbers and Intelius allows you to confirm whether or not they have any access to public records for the individual.

I ran my first search and it came up positive.  I was told that I would receive a list of information including "Home and Value Details," in the background report.

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So I went ahead and paid the $49.95 and received the full report.  In the section of the report pertaining to the property, I was surprised to see some pretty basic information including ‘neighbors’ and general ‘area data.’  One thing I didn’t get was ‘value details.’  For that, I was prompted to buy a ‘Complete Property Report.’

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Clicking on ‘Get a Complete Property Report,’ I was presented with a screen where I was told for an additional $13.46 I would be able to procure, "Property Details."

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Sound familiar?  Well, that’s because if you look at the original screen, I was told I would receive ‘Home & Value Details’ with the report.  Now, I was being told I needed to pay an extra fee to get ‘Property Details.’

Wait…it get’s better.

So going back to the original report, I was told that the individual did not have a record in the state where the search was run - but that there 1 criminal record for that person in a national search, that yes you guessed it, I had to pay an additional $26.96 to get.

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Of course, it is scary to think that you might be renting property to someone with a criminal record so I went ahead and paid the $26.96 to see what the record was all about and…wait for it….

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THE NATIONWIDE CRIMINAL CHECK SHOWED RESULTS FOR A DIFFERENT PERSON!!!!!

Yes, ladies and gentleman, on the report I ran for person X I was told by Intelius that the person had a criminal record.  When I paid Intelius to see that record I was then given information for a different person.

Now, all this being said - I would have been content if they had refunded my money after I explained the situation to them but I was rudely told by a very argumentative customer service representative named Jennifer (working at 11AM ET on 9/26/08) that Intelius simply didn’t do refunds.

I asked her to transfer me to her manager Jackie (also working at 11AM ET on 9/26/08) who repeated over and over that they had a disclaimer that apparently stated they were not responsible for any of the data provided through their service and reiterated that they don’t do refunds.

I responded, "That doesn’t give you guys the right to mislead customers into paying for information you don’t have," to which she basically repeated that their disclaimer explained that they were not responsible for any of the information provided through their service.

At any rate, Intelius is guilty of bait and switch in my opinion for claiming to offer "Home & Value Details," and then attempting to upsell the actual details.  Worse, their dubious criminal records check made me think that a prospective tenant had a criminal record when in fact the person with the criminal record was an unrelated individual.

Finally, their customer service showed zero respect or empathy and simply repeated "we don’t do refunds" like a mantra and didn’t even seem to understand (nor care) about the problems I was having.

Do yourself a favor and avoid Intelius. I think at this point, you should simply be very clear on what you are purchasing before you purchase.  Intelius does have a good collection of data but the different products are a little confusing.  Know that they will try to upsell quite a bit throughout the UX so make sure to pay close attention to every little detail throughout the process.

Let me preface this by saying I have never really been inside Josephine’s. It might be a good place - but unfortunately I wouldn’t really know.

Last night I decided to check out this new club down at the intersection of K and Vermont, accompanied by two beautiful women: my sister and my girlfriend.

I walked up to the door after valeting my sister’s car and was confronted by a smallish fellow.

“So we are here as part of a friend’s group,” I mentioned.

After mulling over his list he looked up and with an inflated sense of self-importance responded, “Oh, she already came with several of her friends. There are too many of you and we are already at maximum capacity.”

As my companion began texting wildly in an effort to contact one of the club’s managers I asked, “Can I talk with your manager, please?” I asked.

“Well, the owner is over there,” he responded, pointing to some big guy with a goatee who took the clipboard and responded in a matter-of-fact tone, “If you’re not on the list you’re not getting in.”

At that point I simply shook my head in amazement and decided it was time to go.

Now, it is not necessarily the fact that I didn’t get in which made me so irritated, it was the false sense of importance that the people working the door at Josephine’s had, which bothered me.

I love the DC nightlife but exclusivity should be something that is attained over time - not something imposed from the outset.

Sure, there are places with lines that may be difficult to get in - but normally that is because a brand has been built up over time and has a core of loyal patrons who keep coming back.

It just seemed sort of strange that a club had suddenly popped up on Vermont and become ‘exclusive.’

At any rate, we decided to head up to the Ritz-Carlton in Georgetown and sat on the couches by the fire place while enjoying a glass of wine and laughed about the experience.

I just wrote an amazingly well-conceived article on the whole Chris Crocker thing (he is this idiot who made a video watched by millions of people on YouTube) that was witty, intelligent, and extremely apropos. The message I wanted to convey was that all this technology was not actually making us lazier and dumber; we were already lazy and dumb to begin with - the technology was actually creating a platform for us to be less lazy and dumb.

Then I hit ‘Publish’ and it somehow disappeared into thin air.  Then I decided it was easier to simply assure you that I had written a good essay and go watch TV instead of retype my essay.

So perhaps technology is in fact making us dumber and lazier.

God, you win this round.

Back in the day when I was at Georgetown, there was a place called Champs.  Champs was a filthy establishment where Georgetown jocks would mingle with drunken freshmen girls, and beer was the drink of choice.  I hated Champs with a passion and was relatively apathetic when it finally went out of business and was replaced by Blue Gin, which in many ways seems the antithesis of Champs.

Switching gears for a moment, I want to talk about Shabeh Jomeh.  Shabeh Jomeh refers to the beginning of the weekend for Persians and traditionally is a night for socializing.  In the US, there are numerous Shabeh Jomeh events where Persians meet up at bars, have drinks, look for spouses, etc.

So I’m on a mailing list for Shabeh Jomeh in DC and normally disregard the e-mails (to this date I have yet to actually attend one).  I received one this morning that did pique my curiosity a bit.

According to the e-mail, the Shabeh Jomeh coordinator met with the Blue Gin promoter to discuss terms of the Shabeh Jomeh events moving forward.  As the story goes, the Blue Gin promoter stated, “As you know, Georgetown is a predominantly white neighborhood.  Blue Gin hired me because they want to cater to that predominantly white crowd and they know that I can bring them that crowd. . .D.C. is different than New York.  In New York everyone hangs out together, but D.C. is segregated.  Latinos hang out with Latinos, blacks hang out with blacks, and whites hang out with whites.”

The end result of the conversation being, that the Shabeh Jomeh crowd could hold events at Blue Gin but they would be restricted to the second floor because they wouldn’t “blend” with the predominantly white crowd that normally frequented the establishment.

The incident is currently under legal investigation, and the attorneys recommended an ‘opinion poll’ be distributed.  Err…I think they mean a ‘push poll,’ but that’s okay, I don’t mind the push polling because otherwise I wouldn’t have found out about the racism at Blue Gin.

Anyway, Blue Gin sucked to begin with.  It almost sucked as bad as Smith Point.   Now, I can guarantee with 100% assurance that I will never return there and I have good reason to dissuade others from going there.

In 1986, a young boy went to see a film about sacrifice, growth, and redemption that captivated his imagination and stirred his spirit.  That movie was The Transformers and it scored a 10/10 on the bad-ass scale.

In 2007, a 29-year old young(I think) man went to see a movie with the same name and left feeling dirty and used by the Michael Bay piece of crap that he had just spent the past two hours watching.

It will never cease to amaze me how Hollywood continues to destroy the relics of my childhood by overly contriving and commodifying stories that I used to love.  First, they gave the Dark Phoenix saga a golden shower; then they castrated Venom; and now this - they have turned the Transformers into a CGI-ed up version of the Village People.

Oh, it wasn’t that bad Jiyan.  With a budget of around $200 million, surely there must be some redeeming elements in the film?

Sure - there was some redeeming elements in the film:

The one thing I enjoyed about Transformers

Of course, I shouldn’t be surprised that the one redeeming quality of Transformers would be the fact that it sold sex considering that Michael Bay got his start directing Playboy video centerfolds, which in fact is the only Michael Bay film I would be willing to watch in the future given the fact that he pimped the Transformers like Terrence Howard pimped Taryn Manning in Hustle & Flow.

Instead of listing out the 100 things I found disgusting about Transformers, I’m going to provide 5 suggestions for how they could have made this film bearable.  Spielberg you senile S.O.B, I hope you are listening:

1. Include characters in the movie - Guess what idiots?  People like characters.  There were no characters in this movie.  There was a crap load of boring stereotypes and some CGI robots that I couldn’t care less about.  I literally vomited in my mouth during Bernie Mac’s cameo and during Anthony Anderson’s introductory scenes (both of whom have talent), when they were both essentially asked to use their blackness to bring some flavor to the film; I almost spat out my $10 aquafina when they had the audacity to play a tragic composition when Bumblebee was trapped by the police (guess what a$%holes, you only play a tragic composition when something tragic happens); and I almost walked out during the ‘is man worth saving’ dialogue between Optimus Prime and Megatron as they rolled around like two extras from ‘Rent’ in the ”climax” to the film.  I’m not even joking when I say this movie had no characters and would have been less of a joke had there not been one word uttered in it, which brings me to my second point:  
2. Hire a screenwriter who didn’t learn to read and write from Hooked on Phonics - Immediately after the film ended I ran to the bathroom and began beating my head against the sink in an effort to forget all of the movie dialogue that had entered into my short-term memory because I realized that my IQ would drop 50 points if I committed any of the dialogue to long-term memory.  In all honesty, the dialogue from the film made me feel embarassed.  They literally tried to inject some message about humanity into the film.  Obviously, this film was not intended to be An Inconvenient Truth so why even try? 
3. Include a plot in the movie - I know it is hard to impose a narrative structure onto a two-hour long car commercial but they honestly could have tried.  There was no sense of narrative coherence in the movie, no pacing, and no plot.  It was literally a bunch of people and robots running around and speaking incoherently to one another for two hours.  Next time, try to put some semblance of a plot together - maybe even think about copying a plot from the original Transfomers series?
4. Don’t give me an epileptic seizure - I couldn’t understand what was happening in any of the battle scenes.  They wasted millions of dollars on CGI when they could have hired a bunch of Korean kids to animate the film for $10,000 bucks because no one had any idea what was happening at any point when the robots were on-screen.  The final scene was so confusing to watch that there was a kid crying in the audience.  I’m lying - that kid was me.
5. Hire a real director next time - It is one thing to hire Bay to direct The Rock or Bad Boys - stories that no one really cares about and will be gone from our culture in a few years.  It is another to hand the reigns of a brand like The Transformers over to Bay.  Next time hire someone who actually understands the cultural significance of the Transformers and cares enough to actually put some effort in.

Allright - I’m getting bored with trashing the film.  Do yourself a favor and save $10 bucks by skipping this movie and just renting the original.

The other day I received the following letter in the mail:

The letter was accompanied by a very life-like check for $3,850 made out to me.  My first thought was “sweet, my luck is finally changing.  I have 4 grand  in my pocket and a half-a-million dollars on the way.  Brazil, here we come…”

I then realized how stupid I was (it took at least 2 seconds) and looked more carefully at the letter.  I saw that they were prompting me to call a phone number with a United Kingdom area code to talk to “Greg Johnson,” despite the fact that the alleged company behind the award, Autohaus on Edens Inc., was apparently headquartered in Northbrook, IL (as indicated in the header of the letter). 

I decided to scan this one in and share it with the public.  Greg Johnson, wherever you are, why don’t you go f%#k yourself.

By the way, some people may be turned off by all the expletives in this blog.  I only have one thing to say - if the president and vice-president of our country can cuss on television for all the world to see, then I can cuss on my blog.

I never knew what it was like to get kicked in the balls by someone with the leg strength of a professional soccer player until I decided to go into the DMV about a month ago to register my car in DC.

First off let me warn all those who are considering this act to PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DON’T REGISTER YOUR CAR IN DC.

Basically, if you buy your car out of state and then register your car in DC, there is something they call ‘Title Excise Tax.’  I call this ’sodomy with a nine-iron.’  I was charged $796.25 to register my car in DC.

Breath that in for one second.

You have to pay an absolutely ridiculous amount of money to the DC government just so you can have the luxury of driving your car on their torn-up roads, get a constant barrage of parking tickets, and have to deal with absolute neanderthals each and every time you need to interact with anyone who works at the DMV. 

Basically, there are some clever ways around the DC excise tax (PDF) that I urge you to familiarize yourself with before you even think about registering your car in DC, although I would recommend you to think about simply keeping the car registered wherever you got it and paying for a parking garage because it will honestly be cheaper. 

I am generally a pretty easygoing guy and I don’t hold a lot of hate in my heart.  I get upset with people sometimes but I always let them know and I try to get over it.  If I find that someone is bringing more negativity into my life than positivity, then I basically remove them from my life because I don’t like a lot of drama.

That being said, if there is one group I honestly can say I hate and wish would fall off the face of the earth: it is everyone affiliated with the DMV in Washington, DC.  From the meter bitches who constantly leave tickets on my car; to the cops who are basically 10 IQ points away from wearing a helmet to work; to the people who work at the DMV offices who were recruited out of the Ninth Circle of Hell. 

I wish someone would come in a big black truck and take all of them away to a special camp somewhere, where they would be routinely flogged and have lye poured into their eyes on a daily basis.

Why do they suck so bad?

1. If volume of parking tickets was an indicator of the safety of a city, then DC would be the Garden of Eden.  Unfortunately, it is not.  While all sorts of crimes are going on in other parts of DC, I have gotten two parking tickets in residential neighborhoods, each for $50, for not having a front license plate on my Landrover Freelander.  I am planning to dispute both.  Basically, I have heard that the DMV peons show up to court on an infrequent basis so you have a good shot at getting out of your ticket if you just show up.  I’m going to spend the next several days figuring out how to get out of these tickets and then share my knowledge with the world, and search-engine optimize it so that anyone in DC who ever Googles “get out of parking ticket” will find my page and automatically know how to get out of paying their fine to the DMV.  Cops - why don’t you go stop a crime or something instead of waddling your fat ass through suburban DC looking for cars to ticket.  It makes me think that there is some sort of raffle for most parking tickets given out with first prize being a lifetime supply of hot dogs and slurpies from 7-11.
2. DC Excise Tax is a euphemism for rape - I have had to go through the car registration process these past few monthsand was forced to pay about $800 in DC Excise Tax, which I am going to blog about in a separate post because I want to make sure that my words on that are search engine optimized as well. 
3. The final straw was this AM, when I was driving by a cop who had already pulled two people over for no reason in particular, and as I pulled by, asked me to stop.  The idiot then looked at me and said “You need to stop before the crosswalk!!!” I proceeded to look down at the street and see that my car was literally one foot into the crosswalk.  I just stared at him with disdain and hatred and he let me go because he had to ticket the other two cars he had already pulled over.  I wish pestilence upon him.

I was having dinner in downtown Bethesda yesterday and found a parking space on Bethesda Row, right across from the restaurant.  Unfortunately the meter would only take enough change for 60 minutes so I figured that because I was across the street I would be able to easily feed the meter after an hour or so, or that at least I would see the parking demon if he/she came to ticket me.  I was being optimistic: I sat down and became engaged in my meal and by the time I looked down at my watch, 1 hour and fifteen minutes had passed.  I popped up to go feed the meter and suddenly found myself face-to-face with the parking demon, who was making his way through Bethesda Row.  I rushed to my car only to find that it was too late, I had gotten slammed with a ticket for $35.  I thought about trying to say something to the parking demon but those guys are thick as mules so figured I’d just take this one on the chin and blog about it later. 

I also thought of a new tactic for dealing with these vultures: one weekend, I’m going to drive down to Bethesda with a bag full of change.  I’m going to track one of the parking demons down and then follow them as they make their rounds.  I will proceed to preemptively feed every meter where there is a car that is about to get ticketed.  After each car I save (and ticket that is avoided) I’m going to stare down the parking lot attendant and make the ’slit throat’ gesture. 

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.