y.st./source/pages/en/weblog/2017/04-April/03.xhtml

<?php
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$xhtml = array(
	'title' => "The $a[DSL] $a[ISP] has their support representatives trained as con artists.",
	'body' => <<<END
<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./weblog/2017/04/03.png" alt="Piles of flint in Minetest" class="weblog-header-image" width="800" height="600" />
<section id="general">
	<h2>General news</h2>
	<p>
		I reached out to a representative at the $a[DSL] company to ask about the \$75 $a[USD] deposit.
		Specifically, if I cancel before the year they plan to hold the deposit ends, do I get it back?
		I tried to keep a log of the conversation, but a bug ate the log on me.
		In any case, the representative kept pushing for me to sign up for their service, saying my questions could be answered <strong>*afterwards*</strong>.
		That dolt!
		The whole point of the questions was to decide <strong>*if*</strong> I even wanted their service!
		Additionally, I don&apos;t yet have the power cord or telephone cord I need to set up the modem.
		They said they&apos;d have me complete an order, then my service would start in a few days, supposedly giving me time to get the cords I need.
		First of all, I don&apos;t have all the time in the world.
		I might not get to looking for the cords right away.
		Second, I shop second-hand.
		It could be a while before a second-hand store I happen to drop by just happens to have the power cord I need.
		The telephone cord probably won&apos;t be hard to find, but the power cord might be.
		Third, it&apos;s incredibly shady to try to get me to sign up before giving me even basic information!
		I never did get an answer about the deposit.
		According to the representative, no deposit would be needed, so they wouldn&apos;t answer further questions about it.
		My best guess is that they either ran a credit check on me based on my address (their website claims they can do that) without my consent or that ordering through a representative instead of through the website overrides the deposit requirement.
		I&apos;m guessing the former.
		I&apos;ll get back to the implications on that later.
		They also told me my bill would be about double what the listed price would be because of taxes and fees that they deceptively don&apos;t include, even as estimates, anywhere near the listed price.
		That was after they first tried to get me to lock myself into a yearlong contract at an even higher price.
		The thing is though, I only asked about the deposit.
		I never once asked them to sign me up.
		Not only did they they try repeatedly to bully me into registering before having my questions answered, they tried to get me to set a service start date, as mentioned above.
		I kept telling them I&apos;d set a date after I&apos;d made my decision and acquired the equipment, but they&apos;d have none of that.
		They insisted I could cancel or reschedule any time before the scheduled start date with no penalties, and at one point, even had the gall to ask why I refused to simply reschedule if needed instead of waiting until I was ready to schedule anything at all.
		The only reason they want people to schedule right away though is to rip them off.
		They&apos;re counting on you forgetting to reschedule or cancel.
		In some cases, they&apos;ll rip people off by getting them to pay for a few extra days of service.
		Other times, they&apos;ll get a whole month out of people that would&apos;ve not sighed up at all.
		All that extra money from ripping off individual customers adds up, too.
		At one point, I said I needed time to research if I could even make my setup function without a static $a[IP] address, as this $a[ISP] uses dynamic $a[IP] addressing, so the representative told me they could give me a static $a[IP] address too.
		They failed to mention there&apos;s a fee associated with that though, and only told me about the fee because I asked.
		They wouldn&apos;t give me a price on it though, and just continued to try to get me to sign up, saying I could get help from another representative after my order was complete, and that representative would be able to answer my pricing questions.
		I had to explain repeatedly that I needed to learn the prices, then take the time to decide whether to choose that $a[ISP], then find and acquire the cords I need, <strong>*then*</strong> place my order, in that order.
		I had to explain several times that they only reason the $a[ISP] would even <strong>*suggest*</strong> I sign up before giving me time to think and <strong>*especially*</strong> before giving me basic pricing information was to rip me off.
		They kept insisting it wasn&apos;t to rip me off and all I&apos;d have to do is reschedule or cancel, but obviously that was just a lie they&apos;re trained to tell.
		That requires having to watch the calendar and remember to act, which is exactly what they&apos;re counting on people not doing.
		They were trying to back me into a corner and make me feel guilty for not playing their deceptive game, but all it was doing was ticking me off.
	</p>
	<p>
		Eventually, the representative outright refused to give me the pricing on the static $a[IP] address, directing me to another representative.
		It was this redirect that seemed to have eaten my chat log with the first representative.
		The second representative wouldn&apos;t answer questions either, but they were forthcoming with their supposed inability to answer almost immediately.
		They didn&apos;t try to get me to sign up for anything or lead me in circled like the first representative did.
		I might try pestering the $a[ISP] again for answers, this time watching out for the log-eater bug.
		I probably won&apos;t get any decent answers, but I&apos;ll have a nice example of their manipulative tactics to expose.
		I might mention a the beginning that the chat might be logged for quality control purposes though, in an effort at disclosure, so maybe they&apos;ll actually be upfront with me this time.
	</p>
	
	<p>
		As I said before, I think the $a[DSL] company representative ran a credit check on me without my consent.
		That&apos;s pretty shady.
		But here&apos;s the thing: they only had my name and address.
		They didn&apos;t have the name the government knows me as, nor did they have my Social Security number.
		As far as I know, their credit check wouldn&apos;t have hit the identity profile associated with my actual credit report.
		Does this mean any name given, known or unknown to the credit bureaus, will return a credit report of some type?
		Do unknown names return clean credit reports?
		Or perhaps, the new credit card I signed up for came to my aid.
		The bank representative warned me that Alex Yst&apos;s credit could be affected by the account based on a name-only reporting to the credit bureaus.
		Has this already happened so soon, and the report validated the existence of Alex Yst to the $a[DSL] $a[ISP] without any negative marks showing up because nothing bad&apos;s happened credit-wise yet?
		Though there&apos;s also the slim possibility that they tapped into some other Alex Yst&apos;s credit report, though the address on that shouldn&apos;t match (the $a[ISP] claimed they used the name and address for credit reports) and the name &quot;Yst&quot; isn&apos;t overly common.
		Of these possibilities, I think the most likely is that my new credit card is helping me establish my identity as Alex Yst.
	</p>
	<p>
		I worked on my Minetest mod while dealing with the $a[ISP]&apos;s representative.
		I wouldn&apos;t&apos;ve let them jerk me around and waste my time if I wasn&apos;t able to use that time to get something else done.
		The main thing I did was add a pile of flint node to the game.
		I needed a way to crop images and merge them.
		I got the cropping thing down, but there doesn&apos;t seem to be a way to merge them without a direct overlay.
		That is to say, I can&apos;t put one cropped image on the bottom left and another on the top right.
		The <code>[combine:</code> modifier combines things as I want, but the cropping is hacky and incompatible with it due to the order of operations the engine uses.
		I tried grouping with parentheses, but the colons take precedence for some reason.
		I managed to get the node looking how I want it to, but only because the cropping was to eliminate empty space.
		Instead, I cropped differently, adding as much empty space as I removed, and that empty space when overlaid on the other layers just stayed out of the way.
	</p>
	<p>
		A strange customer at work today asked if we sell weed.
		We&apos;re a pizza shop!
		Why would we sell marijuana?
		The only drug we sell is the caffeine in most of our soda.
	</p>
	<p>
		I received conformation from the post office that my change of address forms have been accepted and my mail will now be forwarded.
		Strangely though, they said they&apos;re only forwarding for me individually (as requested) from my old Springfield address, but made no such statement about my old Coos Bay address.
		Are they doing a full surname forward from that address for some reason?
	</p>
	<p>
		My <a href="/a/canary.txt">canary</a> still sings the tune of freedom and transparency.
	</p>
</section>
END
);