slimster.net

I was at a shower for my sister-in-law this weekend and the topic of conversation turned to my relationship, how I met my wife, etc. Everyone got a good laugh when my wife explained all of the “background checking” she did before we actually went on a date. We started talking about Googling other people and where people rank for themselves, etc. I have an actor/stuntman who ranks higher than myself and I also just noticed another person who shares my name in the top 10. Thankfully, I am not him.

But I couldn’t help but notice the charge. Apparently the man,

filed false and illegal documents to the County Clerk’s office. The taxes did not include his purchase of a brand new boat and truck. Due to this, he failed to pay a total of $2,615.95 of sales tax that was to be paid to the state of Tennessee at the time of the purchases.

So he’s gonna spend a couple of years in jail possibly. Certainly everyone should pay their taxes and tax evaders should be brought inline. But I’m curious why certain people seem exempt from the same crime. For instance, I came across this article that explains how a top contractor for the Defense department has avoided paying ‘hundreds of millions’ of dollars in taxes since 2002. Apparently, setting up an office in the Caymen islands and not paying taxes saves money for the Defense department, and that’s ok.

Meanwhile, John P, my co-top-10 Googlee, is gonna spend some time behind bars. And I’m going to be sure and pay my taxes. The offshore companies in the Caymen islands? Looks like they will continue to employ Americans, get government contracts and somehow help the Defense department by having a higher profit margin. We might as well be paying Exxon to charge us higher gas prices.

A couple of weeks ago, I had some fraudulent charges to my credit card so I had to get a new card issued. In the meantime, my XM radio auto-renewal failed because my old credit card no longer worked. They politely sent me an email and I went to update my information. That’s when the trouble began.

After spinning around their site (they require different logins for different activities), I simply could not get to the portion of their site that allows me to update my credit card information. Apparently they have a bug in their system and they are trying to fix it. Fine. So I called customer service….and waited….and waited….

After about 10 minutes, I hung up. I got tired of hearing the happy message telling me that I could not be helped because they were so busy helping new customers.

So this is how I got immediate help – and this works for just about any corporate organization. I went to their corporate website here. I found their corporate phone number and when I was prompted for someone’s extension, I just dialed a random, 4-digit extension. This technique will land you at the desk of someone important 9 times out of 10. This was one of those 9 times.

Within seconds I was placed in the hands of Joan (who even gave me her last name). Joan was so kind and helpful, it was amazing. She even gave me her personal phone number should I have trouble again.

So the next time you’re sitting on hold waiting for an outsourced phone operator to finally get to your call, go look up the corporate number and get an executive on the line. Works every time!