So Google announced support for kind of a partial ActiveSync for Windows mobile phones. Excited to have free access to a contact and calendar backup and sync service, I set ou to try it out. The Google Sync does not support email push, but in most cases I am more concerned about haveing a good and reliable backup for my calendar and contacts than having email show up on my mobile device the second it is received on the server side.
Well, the experiemtnwas a total failure for me. I don't know why, but when I had my Tilt set up to sync with a Zimbra server (which pushed email in addition to syncing contacts and calendar, btw) - the impact on battery life was something I could live with. With Google Sync, it drained my phone battery in just 5 short hours.
So naturally, I decided to back out of of Google Sync and unpair my mobile phone from the Google ActiveSync service. My Contact list is now blank, I have lost all Calendar entries, and online, when I click on Contacts in my Gmail account I get a "403 Forbidden" error. Same goes for when I am trying to access my online Calendar. This has all been full of FAIL so far.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Funny letter from Barclays Bank
When I relocated to the Northeast I was confronted by the reality of having only US Airways as a carrier that can get me out into the world from the two airports closest to me. So I got a US Airways Dividend Miles card from Barclays (which at the time was the only game in town if one wanted to accumulate some miles on a US Airways frequent flyer account). However, pretty much all the paper and email communications I was receiving from Barclays were a little off, in a sludgy sleaziness kind of way. Something was off, the guys hired by Barclays to write those things suffered from serious brain damage caused by too much corporate speak.
That, coupled with the very poor functionality of Barclays' card member web site and a couple of customer no-service calls, made me seriously reluctant to continue using this card. So when US Airways introduced a new Dividend Miles card from Bank of America I jumped on it and never looked back at the card from Barclays. Today I received in the mail the ultimate proof that Barclays ranks at the top sleazy bank I ever had to deal with. See if you can spot the corporate speak:
"In a recent review of your account, we noticed that you have not used your US Airways Dividend Miles Mastercard account for a long period of time. To help you better manage your credit accounts, we have closed your account. Thank you for allowing us the opportunity to serve you."
In this day and age it seems that most customers put a value on honest communication from their financial institutions, as they have grown weary of the corporate double speak. Somehow somebody forgot to tell the brass at Barclays about that. There are many reasons to close an inactive credit card account, but "to help you better manage your credit accounts" ain't one of those reasons by a long shot.
A bank in trouble, whose management might have a little brain left, might consider asking questions like "hey, why aren't you using your card? We'd like to collect the transactions fees, how can we make that card more appealing?". Alas, Barclays remained true to their first impression they gave me. Good riddance!
That, coupled with the very poor functionality of Barclays' card member web site and a couple of customer no-service calls, made me seriously reluctant to continue using this card. So when US Airways introduced a new Dividend Miles card from Bank of America I jumped on it and never looked back at the card from Barclays. Today I received in the mail the ultimate proof that Barclays ranks at the top sleazy bank I ever had to deal with. See if you can spot the corporate speak:
"In a recent review of your account, we noticed that you have not used your US Airways Dividend Miles Mastercard account for a long period of time. To help you better manage your credit accounts, we have closed your account. Thank you for allowing us the opportunity to serve you."
In this day and age it seems that most customers put a value on honest communication from their financial institutions, as they have grown weary of the corporate double speak. Somehow somebody forgot to tell the brass at Barclays about that. There are many reasons to close an inactive credit card account, but "to help you better manage your credit accounts" ain't one of those reasons by a long shot.
A bank in trouble, whose management might have a little brain left, might consider asking questions like "hey, why aren't you using your card? We'd like to collect the transactions fees, how can we make that card more appealing?". Alas, Barclays remained true to their first impression they gave me. Good riddance!
Monday, October 20, 2008
First Post!
Today was my last day at rPath, which prompted my need to open up this work-independent blog to supplement/take over the stuff I have been posting on rPath's corporate blogging engine.
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