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// Philipp J. Stolka
// mobile +49-176-45045638
// fixnet +49-921-1676644

The Days of the Small Feats

These days, one by one, I'm working on some issues which have been around for some time, and one by one, I tick them off before I leave for my next holiday. Um... my next business trip.

Among those are e.g.:

• I called the City Environmental Bureau and finally complained about the deafening and mind-numbing noise emanating from the factory right across the street. It turned out I'm not the first to complain; when the guy heard "HA5" he already knew about the 'hissing noise'... and there's some kind of procedure going on targeted at installing a exhaust air silencer on their roof.


• I wrote a registered mail to Talkline, complaining harshly about their business practises and refusing to pay once again.


• I employed the Customer Protection Agency to have a look into that stuff.


• I'm getting all kinds of vaccinations and examinations.


• The laundry's being done.


• ...

It's the small achievements, sure.

18:0 in 4min

n.t.

Soldering

Today, from around 11:02 to 11:21 a.m., I successfully managed to dig out some long-presumed-lost abilities: I can still do some minor soldering work.

After giving up to create a good-looking knot in the extremely long cable of the hands-free stereo set of my Nokia phone, the decision fell to shorten them. I cut them, then used my teeth, some tongs as weight, and an oversized soldering iron to do some intricate trial-and-error.

Well, it still works. It's still stereo, MW can hear me, and the cable between microphone and ear buds is about 1m shorter. The botlab work desk has some more dark spots on the surface now.

Talkline's "August Invoice" Stunt

As we speak, events pertaining to the contractual relationship between Mr PJS and the Talkline company unfurl.

Talkline's newest stunt can be described as follows. The August invoice was NOT ONLY too high - because of data transfer charges billed explicitly, but in complete neglect or ignorance of the fact that PJS has a long-standing contractual guarantee that they fall under the terms of a 500MB flatrate, and as such are not to be billed - BUT was debited from PJS's bank account TWICE.

Swift action on the side of PJS was taken yesterday, resulting in a long talk with Talkline's telephone hotline (charged at 0,12 EUR/min), ending with a personal guarantee of hotline employee Mr (...) to the effect that Mr PJS shall cancel one of the two debits and will not be billed for revocation charges.

Today's events can be summarized such that Mr PJS's bank account shows one (1) PJS-originated "Transfer Cancellation" with the invoice amount added to his account, and one (1) Talkline-originated cancellation with the invoice amount added to his account.
Thus, currently nothing has been paid effectively for the August invoice, while it can be strongly suspected that the September invoice will carry a 12 EUR fee for revocation charges.

...

I strongly suspect Talkline is a bunch of half-brained morons monkeying around with their computers, pressing some buttons at random, and sometimes creating some random action.

Betreff: AW: Talkline Info Service

Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren,

leider ist die mir von Ihnen zugesandte Tarifinformation vollkommen nutzlos.

In meinem Telefonat mit der 01805-3838-Hotline (14.09.2006, Hr. [...]) habe ich ausdrücklich um die Zusendung von Tarifinformationen zum Thema "Datenübertragung/Internet" zum Tarif "O2 Genion" gebeten. Ich habe ausdrücklich NICHT um die Zusendung derartiger Tarifinformationen zu den Tarifen von T-Mobile, E-Plus und Vodafone gebeten. Dennoch wurde mir diese bereits zum wiederholten Male - jeweils nach Telefonaten mit der Hotline - zugesandt.

Ich bitte hiermit nochmals und wiederum AUSDRÜCKLICH um die Zusendung von Tarifinformationen wie o.a., zu dem von mir gebuchten Tarif. Bitte senden Sie mir NICHT nochmals die Broschüre "talkline_services_und_preise_pk.pdf", und senden Sie mir NICHT nochmals das Faltblatt "Festnetzgünstig telefonieren".

Ich bin enttäuscht von der bisherigen Kommunikation, aber inzwischen in keinster Weise mehr überrascht. Meine Vermutung geht dahin, dass diese Informationen zum neu eingeführten Tarif "O2 Genion" im Unternehmen Talkline noch gar nicht vorliegen, und meine monatlichen Rechnungen eher zufällig erstellt werden, da keine Informationen zu den Einzelverbindungen "HZ Internet PC" und "internet mm" verfügbar sind.

Vielen Dank.
Philipp Stolka



>Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren,
>mit dieser E-Mail erhalten Sie von uns die angeforderten Informationen.
>Mit freundlichen Grüßen,
>Ihr Customer Service Team
>
>PS:
>Zu Hause festnetzgünstig mit dem Handy telefonieren?
>Mit den neuen Talkline Mobil&Zuhause-Optionen ab gerade einmal 4,95 € mtl.
>telefonieren Sie für nur 4 Ct/Min.
>ins dt. Festnetz - sogar bis zu 2 km* um ihre angegebene Anschrift.
>Überzeugen Sie sich selbst: www.talkline.de/mytalkline

Mmmmmmm...mondial

Mondial in BT, right across from the train station.
Indulging myself, sure. And I won't leave here until I know where to go.

Great idea, huh.