Semi Truths A highly irregular weblog dedicated to Truth, Justice, and American Cheese…!

April 18, 2007

How to Please an (ex) Customer

Filed under: Charlottesville,Virginia — semi @ 6:41 pm

Yesterday, I received a call from Don Gibson, Director of Sales for nTelos. He had read my blog entry detailing my odd episode with an nTelos retail manager that ultimately drove me to the competition. I had a very pleasant and informative chat with Don and I think we both concluded with a better understanding of each other.

First, Don apologized on behalf of nTelos. Then he made it clear that he was calling just to discuss my experience, not to win me back as an nTelos customer. Then he apologized several more times, to the point where I found it a little awkward. For the record, the only reason I blogged about the incident in the first place was just to start a conversation about the implementation of senseless and annoying business policies, so receiving this call was quite a pleasant surprise.

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April 15, 2007

How To Lose a Customer

Filed under: Charlottesville,Virginia — semi @ 2:13 pm

I was an nTelos customer since before there even was an nTelos, back when they were still CFS. They were my first cell phone provider before cell phones were common. They’ve never had the greatest service, but they have been reliable enough in my area, and they give a 10% discount to UVA employees, so I stuck around. This weekend, however, nTelos lost me as a customer, and all due to a policy that strikes me as irredeemably stupid.

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March 9, 2007

“Blue Towns in Red States”

Filed under: Charlottesville — semi @ 3:14 pm

Michael Bérubé (a suspiciously French-sounding name) is a professor of English at rural Penn State and a New York transplant. In an article titled Blue Towns in Red States, he writes convincingly of how the presence of “liberal” Universities in mainly rural areas brings a stable work climate to regions that might otherwise experience financial volatility. He also marvels amusingly at the cultural disparity when “professors of cultural studies pass pucks to weekend hunters, and theorists of the modernist avant-garde offend their devout Christian neighbors by mentioning Harry Potter.” Although Charlottesville is not mentioned specifically in the article, the phenomenon he describes sounds an awful lot like our little burg.

August 25, 2006

Impeachment “Black Out” Day on September 1

Filed under: Charlottesville,Politics — semi @ 11:00 pm

Last month, I attended an Impeachment Teach-in sponsored by my favorite local activist group, the CCPJ. To be honest, I was just there to lend technical support. I really thought that discussions of impeachment were a waste of time because there is no way Bush or Cheney or any of the rest of them could be impeached.

I was wrong. I was seriously wrong.

After listening to the presentation that evening, and watching a video, I am now convinced the impeachment is the only thing we can do, and that we have a moral obligation to do it. You can read my reasons here, but I want to tell you now what you can do to help.

On September 1 (that’s a mere week from today) and for 24 hours, we want thousands of websites and blogs to replace their front pages with a single banner that reads Impeach. You can see a sample at Impeachnet.net.

The inspiration for this idea came from the actions of The Freeway Blogger, the great outlaw artist who has posted over 2500 freeway signs protesting the war. Our hope is to bring this word back into the public lexicon, grab the attention of the media, and get everyone talking about the one tool guaranteed by the Founders to restore our Constitutional Democracy.

If you run a website or blog, then on September 1 2006, replace your home page with the single word Impeach in bold Times New Roman white text on a black background. Feel free to help yourself to the code here (getting a single word to display in the center of a page in all browsers is a little trickier than you might think). Back up your existing home page first (often index.html) and display this new one for 24 hours, from noon September 1 to noon September 2. If you use the provided code, the “period” is a link which you can customize to allow visitors to enter the rest of your web page.

If you don’t have your own webpage or blog but still think that this is a good idea, then please send this information to your favorite sites and convince them to participate (click here for a sample message). Additionally, please feel free to leave a comment on the blog. Just as important as replacing your home page for one day is letting your website visitors know why, so please publicize this both beforehand and afterward. Also, contact the site and let them know that you plan to participate and we will include a link to your site in the blogroll.

This is more important, and more possible, then you may now realize. Go. Make history.

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