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. :)
 

Waterfree urinals still suck…

From a Carl’s Jr. on Topanga Canyon

Moron Pro-Mubarak protestor molotov cocktail FAIL

CES 2011 - AT&T Failed

AT&T had ZERO presence at the 2011 CES.

Verizon had a GINORMOUS booth, with lots of devices to touch and play with. 
Sprint had at least two, also with gadgets, including one outdoors with a DJ, 10 PlayStation 3's and freebies.

Also, my iPhone 4 had constant problems with data around the LV Convention Center during the show.  Likely a problem with network congestion.  Even if they didn't want to do a booth, they could have rolled up at least one of those mobile cell stations.

So me (and likely others) were using their iPhones, and getting poor data performance from AT&T.  We're being courted by Verizon & Sprint, who have some admittedly nice phones.  And where is AT&T?  Nowhere.

AT&T - you failed.  You should have had a booth at CES, and you should have done something to improve network performance around what is probably the biggest technology trade show in the United States, if not the world.

Couldn't have said it better myself...

And yes, that is bird poop all over it...


-- Post From My iPhone