Verizon overcharges Text happy family & Jiffy Lube hates the environment. Martellus the Blogger

A Cheyenne Teen sends 10,000 text messages in one month and leaves family with a $4,756.25. bill from Verizon (Denver Post)

"Dena Christoffersen, 13, had apparently been sending most of these messages at school. That's more than 300 texts within an eight-hour period every...Hours after the enormous bill arrived, Gregg Christoffersen took a hammer to his daughter's phone. "

According to Nokia the average size of a text message is 10Kb. meaning that she sent around 100,000kb which equals to 97.6562 MB of information being sent. Most peoples phones have more than a 100MB worth of storage space as well as most people have a free USB drive given to them with more than 100mb, yet Verizon thinks that much data to be transferred is worth almost $5000. That is outrages at those prices a 30GB hard drive would cost $1,572,000 dollars. I hope that Verizon adjust this bill to the true cost of sending data over their network, this cant be legal to charge that much, but of course it is. Phone companies don't need no rules.

Austin Jiffy Lubes pump oil into the city sewers and get hit with a $300,000 fine. (Austin American-Statesman)

"The water mixed with used motor oil that leaked from faulty drums stored in the pits, creating a toxic bath that sometimes was more than a foot high, Gray said. Instead of paying to dispose of the toxic soup, employees pumped it into a sink, and it went down the drain and into the city sewer system, Gray said...As part of the plea agreement, the corporation took out an advertisement in the American-Statesman on Thursday apologizing for the act. Patty Robertson, chief of the district attorney's office white-collar crime unit, said prosecutors asked for the apology to deter others."Heartland Automotive Services, Inc. is very respectful of our environment and regrets any damage that may have arisen from the ill-advised actions of a few of our employees," said a statement in the ad by Mark Rowberry. Robertson said Rowberry is Heartland's Austin-based regional manager. "

A Dallas Newspaper is having Dallas Cowboy tight end Martellus Bennett blog. Its a pretty crazy blog on the Dallas Morning News website, but is definitively entertaining. (Deadspin.com)
his first two entries consist of leaving your date at the theater and chicks who fart.

Yes American Airlines Still Sucks

American Airlines inconveniencing customers, nooooooooooooo.
American Airlines has done it again, done what you ask what else. Stranded customers in places around the country, and blamed it on someone else than themselves.

"AMR Corp.'s American Airlines will scrub 900 more flights today, adding to 1,550 already canceled this week, as it continues another round of inspections and groundings that stranded 171,000 passengers.

American said it had ``no choice'' in parking almost half its fleet of Boeing Co. MD-80 jets, after the planes again failed to meet a U.S. safety order. The move came in response to spot checks by the Federal Aviation Administration that found the world's largest carrier" (Bloomberg, April 10)

171,000 passengers and all they can say is, we had NO CHOICE. So it is the National Transportation Safety Board and the FAA's fault for finally trying to protect the consumers from a potentially dangerous situation.

"Falling short of FAA requirement for the earlier wiring adjustments meant that American didn't have the option of parking some jets on a rolling basis while flying others, Chief Executive Officer Gerard Arpey said. Fort Worth, Texas-based American checked all the MD-80s in March in response to the FAA order, resulting in groundings and hundreds of scrapped flights.

``A very high percentage'' of American's 300-plane MD-80 fleet wasn't in compliance as the jets were rechecked"(Bloomberg, April 10)

So if it was up to American Airlines, they would have continued flights without wiring adjustments that are deemed necessary for safety. It's not our fault consumers, you cant have it both ways. "You can either be delayed and receive horrible service on in compliant planes, or we can fix them and you will be delayed and never have to receive our horrible service" Ill take the never flying on American Airlines, and not worrying about their service. Maybe they will go the way of ATA.

I have a valid idea instead of crying about not having a choice to inconvenience customers, how about you do regular maintenance on your planes. You shouldn't need the governing body to remind you by grounding your fleet, to maintain the planes. The amount of money the federal government has given AA seems to make them feel invincible as a company, since they know they can't go out of business. The government wont let AA file bankruptcy again to forgo paying for the millions in loans they owe to the government. Shouldn't the fact our tax money continues to support this airline make their rules and compliance more stringent? Shouldn't all citizens get discount tickets since they all technically paid for part of the company?



You can use your cell phones on planes.... In the Europe

"European regulators have dropped the ban on in-flight cellphone calls, but passengers' ability to chat will depend on which airline they fly. European Union regulators on Monday loosened the rules on cellphone service, a satellite-based technology that can be turned on by a captain at about 10,000 feet. It also can be turned off at any time. The ban remains in place in the United States, so U.S. airlines aren't affected. Air France last week became the first international airline to offer mobile service as part of a six-month test to gauge customer response. Other carriers, however, are shying away from the feature, saying that passengers don't want chatter and ring tones invading their space."(USA TODAY, April 10)

Sounds like some cool technology, I just didn't think about the negatives. That would be horrible on a cross country flight, if this technology was available for use in the United States. They amount of conversations you would have no choice but to listen to, unless you had some good earplugs. That's is a bad dream, that you would be paying for. But honestly I think it would be cool at least once to call someone from 20,000 feet up, to say I almost home.