John Cole is celebrating with an airing of grievances. I do believe I’ll join in the fun. Note: The following three grievances are tedious, mundane, and — frankly — pretty whiny.

But if you too are sick and damned tired of getting dicked around by petty bureaucrats, lost in the maze of deliberately confusing telephone menus, and feel helpless in finding an appropriate target upon whom to unleash your rage….well, read on.

My grievances:

Comcast Cable.

I hate you, Comcast. You have a government-granted regional monopoly on cable TV where I live. And so, barring satelite TV, my only option is to absorb your ridiculously inflated prices, or go without my Sopranos, my Rome, and my Stella.

Last summer, you screwed up your service to my house. I had no Fox and no NBC. Further, all of my channels under 20 were spotty, sometimes fuzzy, and sometimes with no picture at all. I called you three times. I expended two half-vacation days waiting for your maintenance man to come fix my system. He didn’t show. After several months and several more calls, he finally showed up, confirmed I had a problem, and restored my full service. All told, I had no Fox or NBC, and spotty reception on 20 other channels for close to six months. I couldn’t watch the World Series, the Simpsons, or Arrested Development. I missed some football I’d like to have seen.

So surely, I thought, you, Comcast, wouldn’t charge me the full subscription amount for that time. And I was right. You generously offered me a discount for my disrupted. Fifteen dollars. For the entire six months. That’s all that you, Comcast, behemoth cable monopoly, said you could afford to give me.

Pissed, I called to cancel my cable. When I did, a pleasant lady asked if there was anything she could do to keep me from canceling. I explained my situation, which she agreed was poor service, and she promised that if I held off on canceling, she’d check to see if she could get me a better reduction. She promised to call me back in three days. After a week, she hadn’t called back. So I called again to cancel my cable. Another pleasant lady said exactly the same thing the first lady said after I explained the situation, only this lady profusely apologized for the first lady’s failure to call me back within the promised three days. She added that the first lady was very unprofessional and, upon my giving her the first lady’s name, promised the first lady would be reprimanded. She promised to get back to me by the close of business on the day I called with a more satifactory answer to my complaint. A week later, she still hadn’t called back. So I called again, and this time disregarded the third pleasant lady’s assurances that if only I’d hold off for another day, she’d look into the situation and promptly get back to me. I paid my bill in full, and cancelled my cable. I’m moving soon, Comcast. I’ll be looking into DirectTV.

The Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles.

A few years ago, my girlfriend’s roommate gave her a junker, an essentially inoperable car. They went to the DMV, and switched the car from his name to hers. She fixed the car up, and sold it at a profit. But she didn’t drive it, given the “inoperable” part. The car was registered and titled in the state of Virginia. Given that my girlfriend was still a resident of New York at the time, she assumed her New York car insurance covered the crappy Virginia car, especially since the car was essentially garaged. She was mistaken. The state of Virginia informed that not only did her New York insurance not cover the car, she should have known that it didn’t, and therefore, she was guilty of owning a registered, uninsured vehicle in the state of Virginia. Fair enough. It was an honest oversight. Not hard for a resident of Virginia to do, given that in order to own a car in Virginia, one must have a driver’s license, have titled and reigstered the car in Virginia, have updated plate stickers, have annually updated safety inspections for which one must have a current decal applied to the windshield, have annually updated emissions inspections for which one must have a current decal applied to the windshield , and pay the annual personal property tax, for which one must, also, have a current decal applied to the windshield. But yes, she did make a mistake.

The penalty? She was fined $500. And even though she no longer owned a car of any kind, she was also forced to buy “non-driver, non-carowner” car insurance if she wanted Virginia residence, a fraud if ever I’ve heard of one.

She was also slapped with a “high-risk driver” classification, the same classification they give to convicted drunk drivers. This makes getting insurace when one does want to buy a car not only expensive, but also difficult, as only a few insurers even offer coverage to driver’s with the classification. She has a perfect driving record, by the way. No accidents. No tickets. Apparently, being confused by Virginia’s byzantine car-owning regulations somehow makes one a highway threat, even if — as in this case — the infraction involves an inoperable vehicle.

Of course, at the time she wasn’t aware of just how prohibitive that high-risk label would be. Fast forward. Last August, we bought a car together. I traded mine in. We got a new one. Or rather, a new used one. Comes time to register the car in Virginia. Virginia says the car needs to be insured. No problem, I say. She has Geico. I have State Farm. No, says Virginia. Both are names are on the title, so we have to have the same insurance company. Since I’ve been with State Farm since I started driving, I get a deep discount on my premiums. So I call. Turns out, State Farm won’t insure anyone with the high-risk classification. My only options are to drop State Farm and my discounts and sign up for her high-risk Geico insurance, sell the car, or refinance the loan. Of course, interest rates had gone up considerably in the intervening months. So I dropped State Farm and my 14 years of good-driver discounts. But not after about a month of hassle, paperwork, arguing with the DMV, and general bureaucratic hell. It took a good two weeks just to figure out what the DMV had done to her.

All the while, between State Farm, Geico, and my state senator and state delegate (whose office I had called to complain), no less than six people make some sort of comment about what a holy hell it is to deal with the Virginia DMV (I’ve already had my own experiences with them). One said, “Wow, you really must have pissed someone off over there.” Everyone recognized that while the DMV can by law slap someone with the high-risk label for such a minor violation, it’s (1) a stupid law, and (2) not generally enforced in situations like ours. When an aid to my state senator made some passing remark about how the DMV sometimes thinks its mission is to make life hell for Virginia carowners, and then laughed, I replied, “I don’t really think it’s all that funny. Isn’t it the state legislature’s job to oversee the DMV? Instead of laughing about how the agency makes life a living hell for residents of Virginia, shouldn’t you be doing something about it? Isn’t that your job?” She stopped laughing, and said the senator would “look into it.”

In any case, once I had registered the car, I next had to go to Alexandria City Hall to get a personal property tax decal for the windshield. There too, the woman in the revenue office made a comment about what a serpentine bureaucratic nighmare the DMV has become, and how many people she’d seen get ensnarled in its grip. I will say, however, that the City Hall woman was very helpful. I believe she may have even bent the rules a bit to help me out. Bless her.

In any case, our car was finally registered with the state of Virginia on December 2. The decals for my license plates came on the evening of December 8. Given that there was a snow and ice storm that night, I didn’t get the chance to apply them to my license plate. The next day, I parked very briefly in front of a meter in D.C. to run into the bank. Well, I thought my stay at the bank would be brief. Turns out there was a long line. Behind me, a woman was chatting with a D.C. cop. She said she was worried because she was illegally parked. The cop said something to the effect of, “you’d better go move it, they’re ticketing.” She replied, “well it is a federal government car. I work for the EPA.” The cop chuckled and said, “Oh, you’re fine then. They won’t ticket you.” I rolled my eyes.

When I got back to my car, I noticed a ticket on my windshield. It was for $100. My infraction? “Failure to display current liscence plate decals.”

Bally’s Total Fitness.

I’ll start by saying this one has a happy ending. But for me to tell the story, you’ll have to forgive another indulgence into my personal affairs. My girlfriend was looking to join a gym. I knew that Bally’s frequently ran promotions where you get a discount on your own membership if you refer someone. So I took her in. The guy at Bally’s said that if she signed up for an extended membership, I’d get a year’s worth of free dues for refering her. We both specifically remember this assurance, because it’s really the only reason she signed up. I asked for the assurance in writing. The guy said, “don’t worry about, the computer takes care of everthing.” Sucker!

A few months pass. And, as you might have guessed by now, I notice that Bally’s is continuing to deduct my dues from my bank account. I call to complain. I’m told that Bally’s would never run such a promotion, and that I must have mistakenly heard the sales rep. I ask to talk to a supervisor. Same thing.

I started poking around on the Internet, and found a few complaint sites where former Bally’s customers and employees have said that what happened to me has happened to hundreds of people. That, basically, Bally’s makes false promises to lure new members. Not only that, but the company has also been accused of changing contracts after the fact without ever informing customers know, and has continued billing customers for months, sometimes years after contracts have expired. In fact, Bally’s actually sued to get one of these consumer complaint sites — called Ballyssucks.com — shut down.

At this point, I sent an email to the regional vice president of the company. I explained my situation, and that I didn’t want anything I didn’t deserve, only that I wanted the promise that was made to me when I refered a new member. I also made mention of the research I’d done, and that I’d be writing various better business organizations and watchdog agencies should the matter not be resolved satisfactorally.

And here’s the happy ending — I got a reply from the VP letting me know that they’d honor the one year of free dues.

Just to be sure, I’ll be checking my bank statement.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 24th, 2005 at 9:20 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.