Bye Bye Netflix & Clones

NETFLIX - I quit due to increasing prices, and too many defective DVDs. Today I receive in my USPS junk mail, an insert from Blockbuster inviting to join with a free month. They offer"Unlimited exchanges for free in-store movie rentals". Too bad every store I know of in Houston, TX has closed. Then buried in the fine print of their Terms of Service, they freely admit to doing what Neflix got sued over:

Blockbuster reserves the right to determine product allocation among members in its sole discretion.

Amazon gets worse

A week later, still no refund. Only action taken by Amazon is to lock me out of my Amazon account. Good. I'll use buy.com from now on.

Amazon arrogance.

Good luck returning defective merchandize to Amazon. They keep their 800 Customer Service number a secret (its 800-201-7575 ). Then despite the web site saying it takes 3 days after receipt fo a return to process a refund (in itself too long), on the phone they say 4 weeks.
Guess I will not be doing any shopping there if I can avoid it any more.

ATT arrogance remains

Two recent examples.

1. The Federal Government as of the end of June 2006 no longer collects USF fees on dsl lines from phone companies. AT&T kept charging for it anyway until August 15, and never gave their CSRs the correct information to relay to customers.

2. As part of the conditions to allow SBC to buy AT&T, it was deemed that it should start to sell "naked" dsl, i.e. dsl without the requirement of a "POTS" phone line for voice. Current pricing is $44.95 for the dsl service that sells for $12.95 with a voice line.

Not exactly what the FCC had in mind?