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Nine years ago, I signed up for a checking account at Citizens Bank in Flint, MI. Since then, I have been a happy customer… until now. If you are looking for a bank to do business with DO NOT CHOOSE Citizens Bank. The trouble isn’t worth it, and there are MUCH better banks out there.

Here is what happened to me:

Monday morning I had 200 dollars in my checking account.

On Tuesday I used my Visa check card 3 times:
- Once in the morning for a 4 dollar purchase at a coffee shop
- Once later in the afternoon for gas.. a 21 dollar purchase
- Once for lunch: 10 dollars
- Once in the evening at Meijer for 180 dollars (groceries, clothes, etc).

Ok, at this point you can see that I went into the red. I spent more money than I had in my checking account. Well, because I had “overdraft protection” with Citizens, all 3 charges were approved. Now, there is obviously going to be a fee associated with me spending more than I have in my checking account. But how much do you think it is? 10 dollars? 30 dollars? Not even close.

On Wednesday of that week, I was charged 7 fees totaling 231 dollars.

How can this be? Well, according to the customer service representative I spoke with, Citizens bank charges 33 dollars for both pre-authorizations AND the actual charge on the account! That’s right, they charge 2×33 for each charge made on the card for EVERY charge the day you went over. Pre-authorizations are “holds” that are put on your account at places like gas stations or restaurants, where they want to make sure the card isn’t going to be declined before the services are provided. They do not show up on my online account or my monthly statement.

I would have expected ONE fee, my last charge that day, that put me over, not 7 of them. I asked the customer service rep what would have happened had I used my card 20 times that day for small purchased. You guessed it. I would have been charged 40 fees for 33 dollars totaling $1320. Scary to think about. I’ve used my card 15 times in one day before.

Anyway, I wrote them an email stating that I would like all of my money back that they took for these outrageous charges, or else I will be closing my personal AND business account with them. I got an email response about 5 minutes later with instructions on how to close my account. This just proves to me that after 9 years, they really don’t value ANY customers.

In my email I also asked how I am supposed to be aware of data that I have no access to. I have no idea how much the gas station pre-auths my check card for, same with restaurants. Do you know how much your card is preauthorized for? Have you ever even heard of a pre-auth? Since they don’t show this information ANYwhere, I feel that it is unfair that I am penalized for not knowing it. Their only response was that I should “just estimate twice as much as what you spend will be on your card”. The rep actually said that. Great. Now in order to spend 100 dollars on my check card, I need 200 dollars in it because the pre-auth doesn’t clear for 3 days. SCAM.

After some internet research I saw that in this last quarter’s prospectus they mentioned to their investors that they have modified the fee structure and have made if more difficult for “customers to get fees reversed”. Wonderful.

Beware of Citizens Bank. They lost this long-time customer because of one outrageous incident, and I hope they lose many more.

Judge Norene Redmond sentenced Carmen Granata of Eastpointe, MI to 30 days in jail because someone made a phone call from her porch. Thank goodness the police aren’t out dealing with real crimes in Detroit!

Check out Carmen Granata’s story. This was also featured in the Detroit Freepress, among other places.

Man, I’m glad I don’t have neighbors like hers. People that call the cops for that kind of thing make me sick.

Here are four Newsweek front pages from around the work this week:

Stupid sells in America.

I have visited Graydon’s Crossing in Grand Rapids, MI twice now, but I will never be back.

A short backstory: I moved to Grand Rapids this last week, and I now live within a mile of Plainfield Ave. Tonight, my roommate and I were looking to spend some money (payday!), drink some liquor, and watch the Tiger’s game. Well, that did NOT happen at Graydon’s Crossing tonight.

Since it was a PERFECT night out, we were looking for somewhere to sit outside to have a few drinks before moving inside for the game. We walked in to Graydons, and the sign said “Please wait to be seated”. I waited for about 20 seconds for someone to show up at their post, but nobody did, so I went looking for a seat myself.

Graydons has two levels. The first level on the outside was already full, so we doubled back and went by the hostess station again. No hostess there yet, so we took a gander upstairs. Plenty of room! We started moving towards a two-person table out on the deck but were intercepted by a young woman.

her: “Are you guys meeting anyone up here?”
us: “no… just here to drink”
her: “well, are you going to eat an entree?”
us: “umm….. what?”
her: “well, you have to order an entree to sit outside up here”

Now… there are some things you, the reader, should understand about this situation:

1. We were sober, and well-dressed.
2. There were PLENTY of open tables upstairs.
3. It was almost 9pm. I don’t think too many people are coming for dinner at Graydon’s Crossing after 9.

Needless to say we both walked back down the stairs and left the establishment, never to be back again.

Overall, I’m glad this happened, because I found an AWESOME bar just down the road. We walked about a block north and found Sazerac’s. Great food, a wide selection of beer, and an awesome bartender/owner. We watched our game there and had a great time. So take my advice: skip the English Pub and head over to the cozy pub with a New Orleans-style flair.

Summary: BOOOOOoooooo! Graydon’s Crossing turned away probably 100 dollars of business tongiht. The place has potential if they would stop turning away customers.

I love my T-Mobile MDA Cell phone, but one thing I don’t love is the network’s inability to connect to ANY of Google’s networks.

The first site I tried when I turned on my T-Mobile data plan was www.google.com. Time out.

I tried about 10 times over the next few days and then finally called support, just thinking that my data service wasn’t activated yet.
Well, the Tmobile tech asked me to go to cnn.com, which I did, and it worked fine. I tried Google again, and when it timed out, the tech on the phone said that “connecting to Google over our network has been a known issue”.

Great. So, no google search, no Gmail, no google Maps.. nothing. Iwas hoping this issue would have resolved itself by now, but it hasn’t. Nearly 2 months later and I am still unable to connect to google.

I can’t connect to google even when I tether. It still just times out. The only way I’m able to access google is when the wi-fi is in use.

Please fix your problems, T-Mobile.

I have been unable to access my main gmail account all day. I get a server error message.

It seems that I’m not the only one having problems with gmail today. Just another sign that I shouldn’t be using Gmail for critical data storage or communication.

UPDATE:
Someone in the google groups reported getting this back from Google after reporting their account was locked out:

“Thank you for your report. We apologize for any confusion or
inconvenience. For your security, we may temporarily disable access to
your account if our system detects abnormal usage. Abnormal usage
includes, but is not limited to:

- Receiving, deleting, or popping out large amounts of mail (via POP)
in a
short period of time
- Sending a large number of undeliverable messages (messages that
bounce
back)
- Using third party file-sharing or storing software, or software that
automatically logs in to your account and that is not supported by
Gmail
- Multiple instances of your Gmail account opened
- Browser-related issues. Please note that if you find your browser
continually reloading while attempting to access your inbox, it is
likely
a browser issue.

UPDATE #2: Within 5 minutes of me submitting a ticket, the problem has been fixed and I can log in.

The Diet Code: Revolutionary Weight Loss Secrets from Da Vinci and the Golden Ratio

Come on, what the fuck is this shit? America, you suck. This obsession has gone far enough. I can’t imagine the retardedness that is spewed from the pages of this book.

Luckily, on the back of the Mona Lisa it says “Eat less you stupid cow”

Drink this wine, for it is my blood, and low in carbs!

If you’re not a heavy reader, you can just get this stupid fucking magazine:

Ok, so I work at a movie theater, and in the lobby they have 2 70″ flatscreens mounted doing non-stop commercials. The computer in the back updates the cycle of commercials every week or so. So, maybe its just the fact that I see these commercials every day that I work and cannot escape them, but I can’t fucking stand those commercials for ‘a drug free America’, the anti-pot ones. The latest one, with 2 girls sittin in a living room, and one of them looks all deflated and the other complains that they never do anything anymore. In another recent one, a kid has his hand stuck in his mouth and cant get it out. You know the ones.
I wish someone would do a campaign FOR pot, or maybe, comparing alcohol to pot. Maybe one that starts out with a skinny child who has no hair talking about how he went through chemo. Then at the end he says that the only way he was able to eat was pot (documented cases where pot dimishes and/or removes nausia, chemo being one of the prime uses for this). Atleast tell people that it has SOME medical uses…
I’m not looking for something that says its perfectly fine to smoke or anything, but damn. I know too many people who think that marijuana has no good uses and should be totally illegal. Even more people think that weed is worse than alcohol, when the fact is that no one has ever overdosed on weed, and its not physically addicting.
Fucking goverment propaganda!

See this guy, yeah that’s about what I think of you when I am traveling by air. Yes I think a majority, if not all, of my fellow travelers are complete retards. Yeah I said it, retards, not special, not someone with a varying exceptionality, just plain and simple retards.

If it’s not from their jumping up and down tantrums and fits they throw whenever there is a delay, it’s from just the odd behavior they exhibit. I mean for Christ’s sake, what other form of public transportation do you know of that requires everyone to wear a seatbelt? Yep, you guessed it, the short bus! Let us take a moment to review these retards in all of their glory.

The pissed off retard. These ones are my favorites. The plane is delayed by a few minutes or perhaps an hour. Well by golly these retards are instantly up in arms! They jump up from their seats and rush the poor sap who is manning the ticket counter. Foaming at the mouth they demand immediate compensation for their tragic loss of 45 minutes or so of good ole’ masturbation time. Some of them don’t even bother to get up, the sit lodged in their comfortable airport chair complaining loudly about how this always happens and its all just part of a plot carried out by the airlines to slowly kill us all from boredom. Well I have two simple answers for these retards. First, if you travel by air you need to expect delays, it’s the nature of the system. You need to plan accordingly. If you are going on a cruise arrive at your departure port a day ahead of time, this allows for plenty of time in case of a delay. Also take something to keep yourself entertained. An IPOD, a PSP or Game boy, a book, a travel chess set, a mobile phone, and a laptop with wireless access to do work or play games. Yeah that’s right sales-monkey retard; you can work right from the airport, make calls on your mobile, and work on your laptop via the wireless internet offered in almost every airport. For you retards yelling about how this happens all the time, the same rules apply, plan for it. If you plan ahead a delay can be taken in stride, and always remember this credo “If you are important enough, people will wait.”

The lost retard. These ones are fun to watch as well. These are the people who stayed at home until 30 something, or still live in their mom’s basement. Well little Billy decides he wants to meet up with that girl he has been chatting online with for a couple of years. He is ready to take his ‘relationship’ to the next level, so he books himself on a flight to fabulous Grand Forks, North Dakota. First thing you notice these people doing is staring aimlessly at all the signs with the big arrows. Next they ask everyone where gate 7 is, because those giant arrows just are too confusing. Once on the plane they can’t figure out the seatbelt, and require help from the flight staff. If they have a connecting flight it gets even better, perhaps a story for another time.

All in all, take you time, enjoy yourself and watch the madness unfold.

You know what pisses me off? When people mess up the words its and it’s.

You know what really pisses me off? When this mistake is made on something that a lot of people see. Restaurant menus, posters, websites, billboards… what is going on America? It’s not that hard!

Here is a grammar lesson for those of you still messing it up:

It’s is a contraction for it is or it has.

Its is a possessive pronoun meaning, more or less, of it or belonging to it.

There is no such word as its’, dummy.

Still not sure? Go get help. You’re retarded. Or test it:
If you can replace it[’]s in your sentence with it is or it has, then your word is it’s; otherwise, your word is its.

Examples:

It’s been my pleasure to educate your dumb ass. Contraction: it has

It’s fucking annoying when people mess up contractions! Contraction: it is

The retard howled when it got its arm slammed in the door. Possessive pronoun: its arm = the retard’s arm