Amazon Local Register falls so short it's sad.

I spend quite a bit of money annually at Amazon, for virtually everything.  In general, their service is world class.  I heard they were offering discounted fees over square, so I gave it a try. 

At every turn, there's been SO much I've had to forgive.

- The app is HORRIBLE. (ugly, slow, unintuitive)
- Mutes phone when you quit the app. (No reason - just to annoy you)

- The reader is goofball - longer than it needs to be and unreliable.
- The service can ONLY be managed from the phone - you can't get anything via the web.
- They don't email the merchant after each transaction, only the consumer.  There's no way to have it email the merchant.
- You can't sign up for the service with an existing Amazon account - you have to sign up with a NEW account. Ridiculous!

And the worst thing of all - A 14-DAY HOLD on manually entered transactions.  For me, that's a DEAL KILLER.

Sorry, Amazon.  I'll pay a little more and get VASTLY SUPERIOR service from Square.

4/13/2015 - UPDATE: It's more than six months since I've posted this and the app is STILL hideous, and the service still is WAY BEHIND Square.  Sorry, Amazon.  I love your retail operation, but the card processing service is a failure.

AT&T Vistual Voicemail suddenly not working on iPhone 5S w/ iOS 7

Yesterday I received a few client calls, but I noticed that the phone wasn't showing voicemails for these calls.  I assumed that the clients had decided not to leave messages, but I called them anyway.

Of course, the clients had left messages.  My phone simply didn't tell me.  So, after dealing with those calls, I called the voicemail service manually and sure enough, there were three client voicemails.

Over the past 24 hours, I've spent about 2 1/2 hours so far on the phone with AT&T's tech support to try to resolve this issue.  They've reset it several times on their side, I've had to re-establish voicemail service on my side (including a BOATLOAD of re-recorded outgoing messages) and now it simply ISN'T working - at all.  Callers don't hear a message, and when I call in I get an error.

One of the tech support reps suggested I should erase my phone.  I told her that would NOT resolve the issue, particularly since I'm getting errors when I call the service.

UPDATE: It's now working, and they gave me a $25 credit for the inconvenience. :)
 

Blocked Caller ID

I know when Caller ID first came out, many people freaked out and voiced privacy concerns. But the truth is, if you're the caller, why would you want to mask your number unless you're up to no good?

I don't know why people still have their number blocked. It's stupid. Some people aren't even aware that their number is blocked.

UNBLOCK YOUR NUMBER PERMANENTLY. The people you're calling will appreciate it.