Splash of Style...Macs, Photography, Design, and other Passions

Facebook Privacy

I set out today to possibly write a new blog tutorial on facebook privacy, but luckily I found a great article that explains everything that I would have liked to have written.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5h_z2h1O3Pe-WJOziU2ShT4GbdEAgD9CL9KQG1

Zynga & Facebook Mafia Wars – Requires 3rd party cookies

I tried launching Mafia Wars the other day, and was surprised to find this message instead:

Facebook Mafia Wars now requires 3rd party cookies to run correctly! Wow!

After googling a little, I found that a lot of players are angry and are not going to play until things change back. Well, I don’t think that Zynga cares. They have way plenty of other users that are more than happy to play the game no matter how badly their security is hindered! Zynga is just out to make money and they couldn’t care less about their users.

Check out this article over on mindspray.com, which includes a video from Techcrunch of the Zynga CEO bragging about how many skummy things he has done to make $ from users. Dirtbag!

Here is the full article over at techCrunch.com

So, I am refusing to play Mafia Wars or any other game that requires my security settings to be changed. I also use the Firefox extensions “AdBlock” and “NoScript” for even more protection.

As of now, it looks like only Mafia Wars has this particular restriction, but I am sure more games are on the way to be changed.

Here is a list of all Zynga games:

• Blackjack
• Cafe World
• Dragon Wars
• Farmville
• Fashion Wars
• Fishville
• Mafia Wars
• Mafia Wars on iPhone (which I promptly deleted from my phone)
• Path Words
• Pirates
• Roller Coaster Kingdom
• Scramble
• Scramble 2
• Special Forces
• Street Racing
• Street Racing (iphone)
• Sudoku
• Live Poker
• Zynga Poker
• Vampires
• Vampires (iPhone)
• Word Twist
• Yoville

More games listed on their wikipedia page.

Keep an eye out, if you are playing any of these games. Don’t trust Zynga!

Paypal & Bill Me Later Scam Nightmare

OMG, today is the last straw! I am sooo sooo angry and upset with Bill Me Later. And I am most upset with myself for not listening to my instincts.

My advice to EVERYONE, if you receive a pre-approved email from Paypal offering you a credit for $25 or more to use Bill Me Later, RUN AWAY! Don’t fall for it. It’s a complete scam!

It’s been a constant battle to deal with them from the beginning, even before I made my purchase. They are poorly trained (and informed) and now they are refusing to apply the credit! Thankfully, I only spent $26, so it was a cheap lesson to learn.

Let’s start at the beginning! I received TWO official emails from Paypal at the beginning of October:

Do you like choices? We thought so. That’s why you’ve got a brand new choice from PayPal. Shop now – and pay for your purchases later. It’s called Bill Me Later®.

Just check out with PayPal as usual when you shop online. Choose our Bill Me Later option, and you can pay when it’s right for you: now – or later.*

Even better, you’re pre-approved. Shop by 10/31/09 and get up to $25 off your first purchase and no payments for 90 days.
Sound good? Start shopping at one of our participating stores – just a few of the thousands that accept PayPal.
Get up to 25 dollars off and no payments for 90 days
Want to know more? Check it out!

Sounds great, right? My DH needed to purchase something on Ebay. Two separate merchants, I purchased with my Paypal account, and there was absolutely no option to choose “Bill Me Later”

I called Paypal a couple of times, no one knows anything about the promotion (and I assure you, it was an official email, they were just ill-informed) so they pass the buck over to Bill Me Later, who were equally idiotic.

Bill Me Later customer service told me that perhaps the Ebay merchants weren’t included in the 1000’s of merchants (even though it clearly stated on the FAQ that Ebay was included). No one was able to offer any insight to the details of this promotion.

I put the email aside, and really didn’t want to deal with it. I should have listened to that “little voice” and just walked away from the deal. Eh, it was only $25 credit (others were receiving $100 credits – my God, thank you that I didn’t receive one of those, as I would now be paying for $100 of merchandise)

But my inner greed took over and I sat down on October 28 (three days before the Oct 31st deadline) to find something to buy for around $25. I finally decided to purchase two books from Walmart.

So, my cart was filled, and I clicked the “check out with Paypal” button. I signed into my Paypal account (the same account that the email was sent to). I tried to change my Payment Options, and as with Ebay earlier, there was absolutely NO OPTION to change the payment to Bill Me Later. See my screenshot below:

I was livid, so I phoned Bill Me Later again. The customer service rep told me that I should using the Paypal link, but to use the normal check out process and choose “Bill Me Later” as the payment. So, that is what I did, and it appeared to work. EXCEPT, I then received a “Welcome to Bill Me Later” email with the email address that I used for Walmart, NOT the email address that the original offer was sent to.

Oh crap! I called Bill Me Later, and they assured me that they would send a request through to their Account Resolution department and I would have an answer in 5-7 business days.

So, today I receive an email from Bill Me Later (using a Do Not Reply email – grrrr)

Dear Debbie xxxx,

We have received your inquiry about your Bill Me Later® account. Unfortunately, we were not able to apply the promotional credit you requested. The promotional credit with Wal-Mart was not being offered. If however you can provide proof of the offer we will be able to research this further.

Sincerely,
Melissa
Bill Me Later Inc. ®
Customer Care
Financial Services for Bill Me Later® are provided by CIT Bank, Salt Lake City, Utah.

Okay, first off, no telephone number? No last name? No return email address? Talk about wonderful customer service.

Secondly, who said anything about a promotional credit with Wal-Mart? The promotion was offered through Paypal and Bill Me Later! One more moronic statement to add to the pile.

So, of course, at this point I am beyond angry. Beyond being reasonable!

I phoned Bill Me Later. Spoke to “Scott” who listened to my ranting, and ended up giving me his “fake” email address (that bounced) swahba@billmelater.com telling me to forward the email I received to him. As I said, the email ended up being fake, so of course, that made me even angrier! grrrr. I phoned them again, and the new person forwarded my call to Matt who was in the “Account Resolution” department.

At this point, all three people at Bill Me Later kept mentioning the “promotional credit with Wal-Mart”! And it set me off every time! Why do you think this is a promotion from Wal-Mart??? It was an email from Paypal and Bill Me Later!!!! I was screaming I was so upset! (note, yeah, I know you can get more flies with honey, but I was beyond angry, and there was no calming me down!)

So, Matt told me to forward him the original email, which I did. He phoned me in a few minutes and told me that because I didn’t go through Paypal’s checkout, I was out of luck (I am paraphrasing of course)

What??? What? WHAAAATTTT? I screamed bloody murder. That is what I tried to do (at least three times with Ebay and Walmart) and there is no option for Bill Me Later when checking out with Paypal. Matt calmly “assured” me (yeah, oh I love that word, assured) that there certainly was an option.

Show me where then! To this day, no one can tell me! Know why? Because it’s impossible, because it’s a total scam! You will receive the promotional email, you will try to make a purchase, and you will end up being stuck with the charges yourself because they won’t give you the credit. Thankfully, in my case, it was only $25, but others might not be so lucky.

I am thinking I might return one of the books to Walmart anyway. So, it won’t be too bad.

Oh Gawd, I really really really hate Bill Me Later!!!

ETA: It appears I am not the only one that didn’t see any option for Bill Me Later when using Paypal for checkout.
http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/finance/958748/

And the internet is riddled with Bill Me Later complaints dating back years ago. It appears they have a reputation for their lack of customer service skills and sweeping problems under the rug.
http://www.google.com/search?q=bill+me+later+scam
http://www.google.com/search?q=bill+me+later+fraud
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1017-960380.html

This complaint from 2005 sounds so similar to my situation. They pass it to the “Accounts Resolution” department, and then after their investigation, they deny that there was a promo for Walmart, Amazon or whichever store you used for the purchase! Wow. They are still doing the same thing four years later!

I really want to close out the account, as I don’t want to give them the satisfaction of having me as a customer, but I am afraid it will hinder my credit. I have excellent credit, and from what I have read, by opening the account, they did a “hard pull” on my credit account, which reduces my credit score a few points for 6 months or so. If I close the account, I have a feeling it might also affect my score. Something to check out!

UPDATE: Just received an email from Matt (in reply to my email with an attached screenshot of my Paypal screen with no payment option for Bill Me Later)

Again I apologize for the frustration that this issue has caused, and I want to assure you that we are committed to providing you the best service that we can. There has been some confusion during the release of this new offer through PayPal, and many of our agents including myself have not been giving the right information.

The heart of this issue seems to be this, though Walmart may be a Paypal merchant they are not offering Bill Me Later through PayPal at this time. This is likely because Walmart is one of our regular Bill Me Later merchants. In the future it is likely that Walmart will be available with Bill Me Later through the PayPal wallet but it is currently not offered.

Also addressing your issues using Bill Me Later through the PayPal wallet on eBay, likely the merchant you attempted to use was also not offered. Unfortunately there is no list of merchants that offer this payment method, because of the large number of merchants on eBay all desiring different methods it would be virtually impossible to list them all. So in the future if you desire to use Bill Me Later through the PayPal wallet and receive your $25 merchant reward if you do not see the option at your point of purchase you will know that it is not offered. Then you will be able to back out of your order if you so desire.

Again Ms. xxx, I apologize for the inconvenience that this has caused and appreciate your patience with this issue.

This makes this promotion look more fraudulent by the minute. How could they possibly offer this promotion and not know who was participating? And I think his excuse is a bullsh*t answer anyway.

What’s happening is NO merchants are set up to use Bill Me Later through Paypal. That’s what I think! Why wouldn’t they all be set up? If a merchant like Walmart is set up to receive both Paypal and Bill Me Later, how difficult would it be to merge the two? And furthermore, how could they possibly roll out this promotion when even the merchants listed in the actual email weren’t in participation? I checked back in October, and at least one of the three wasn’t set up! Sorry, but that is misleading!

Scam scam scam. Stay away from Paypal and Bill Me Later or you’ll be sorry!

This One Made Me Laugh

I know, I get all sorts of spammy email crap from every advertising and search engine web site, but this one gave me such a giggle.

Dear Webmaster,

My name is Liz, and my company Topspot Promotions represents online gaming sites in various domains. We are looking at reputable sites to place our clients’ ads. Please let me know if you are interested.

For further details please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Sincerely,
Liz Jenkins
Advertising Consultant
Business Development Department
liz.jenkins @ topspot-promotions dot net (removed link to their actual web site)
Topspot Promotions

If you do not respond to this email you will not receive any additional emails from TopSpot Promotions. To permanently delete yourself from our list, simply reply to this with a blank email and you will not receive any communication from us in the future.

Okay first off, they are looking for “reputable” sites to place their online gaming ads. What? They don’t want to advertise gaming on a non-reputable site? Gee, they are picky aren’t they? On the other hand, once an online gaming ad goes up, wave bye bye to the good reputation. Catch 22.

And then the last paragraph. If I don’t respond I won’t receive anymore emails from them, but just in case, it’s better to reply with a blank email and they will know to delete me from their list. I love it!

Amazon Call Me!

I was having a little problem with my Amazon purchase this morning, and I wanted to contact them about it. I clicked the “contact us” link at the bottom of the page.

A new windows opens, and your account name & password can be entered. (not required)

I figured I would just email them, since it wasn’t a big problem. But when I saw the contact options I was intrigued.

I clicked on the “Phone” tab and found a feature that calls you instead of you calling them! I had to try it! (I am pretty sure this feature isn’t necessarily new, but it’s been a long time since I had any issues with Amazon, so I am behind the times!)

After typing in my account password again, it opens another new window where you need to type your phone number. The default is to call you right away, but there is an option to choose a 5, 10, or 15 minute delay.

Once you submit your phone number info, your phone will ring immediately! Pick it up, and an automated voice tells you to hang on, etc…I figured it might be a bit of a wait, but nope! I was talking to Jennifer within a minute and she helped me with my problem. I don’t think I was on the phone for longer than 5 minutes from start to finish.

Why would you want to use this feature instead of just calling them yourself? Well, probably because your account info is immediately known by the customer service associate and it saves a lot of time! Plus it’s soo freakin’ cool!

Twitter Web Interface Lost Its Style

OMG, I thought I was in the Twilight Zone!

I am not sure how I did it, but today when looking at Twitter from the Firefox web interface, the pages were totally un-styled and plain.

I checked Safari, everything looked normal. I tried searching on Twitter for some weird issue and no one else seemed to have a problem. aaack!

I tried logging out, and even the login page was un-styled. And then like a beacon of light, I saw it! A little button under the login text boxes “Standard”

I clicked it! My Twitter page was back to normal again. Dur, I was in the Mobile view version! Silly me!

I think I clicked on someone’s link or something and it must have sent me to the Mobile version of Twitter. Well, at least now I know what to do next time!

Testing Web Design in Different Browsers

Every web designer knows how important it is to test test test their new web design in multiple browsers. Windows doesn’t make it easy to test in multiple versions of Internet Explorer, although it is possible through various means.

What I decided to go the virtual route. I have VMWare Fusion installed on my Mac, with Windows XP and Windows 7 virtual machines, running IE 6 and IE8 respectively.

So in order to run IE7, I copied the XP/IE6 virtual machine onto an external hard drive (due to lack of space on my laptop) keeping IE6 running, while upgrading to IE7 on the original XP machine.

Works great!

For more info on how I moved my VMWare Fusion virtual machine, check out my article explaining how I accomplished it. Note: When you launch the “copied” virtual machine, it will ask if it was moved or copied, in this instance I chose “copied”

Go Daddy Domain Coupon Discounts

One of my domains is up for renewal next month, and when I got an email from godaddy.com with a discount code for 25% off, I figured I would renew now.

I added renewals for four domain names to my shopping cart; the 25% was supposed to be applied automatically, but there was a big discrepancy for pricing on the items. Strangely, the base price for each domain renewal was the same ($10.69) but two were discounted to $9.02 and two were $10.02 (including the ICANN fee of 20 cents) – and neither price reflected the correct 25% off! see my screen shot below:

The web site stated the expected wait time was only 2 minutes, so, I decided to contact Go Daddy by phone. I spoke to a very nice person (didn’t remember his name) and he asked me to forward the email with the discount code so he could check it out. He took a few minutes to research the problem, and even though he didn’t have an answer to why it messed up, he applied one of the discount codes from my previous order that gave me 30% off each renewal. Even better! Yay!

Each domain renewal was discounted $3 for $7.69 each (including ICANN fee)

So, after I hung up, I decided to add one more domain renewal to the shopping cart; might as well, since 30% was the lowest I have seen it. But alas, when I added the fifth domain, the prices got messed up again. Darn!

I didn’t want to phone them again, so google to the rescue. I searched for “go daddy 30% off coupon” and found what appeared to be an expired code for April, 2009. What the heck, I tried it anyway, and it worked! Yay, all 5 domain renewals were discounted 30% and I was happy.

By the way, the discount code is “CHH3″ – looks like you can use it all the time.

I still don’t know what was up with the first discount and why it showed two different prices like that, but I am glad it did; I might not have even realized that the 25% wasn’t correctly applied had it not been for the wacky price error. So, I am thankful for that!

PS. SplashofStyle.com has been renewed until Oct 10, 2010!

Duplicate Twitter Account With Same User Name

I had a very bizarre situation with my account on Twitter tonight.

It looks like once the letter case of a user name has been changed, there is a window of opportunity for another account to be created with the original name and letter case.

Here are the details:

Originally, my Twitter user name was “debbiet” with all small letters. I thought it might be better to rename my account to “debbieT”, so I edited the user name setting.

I am paranoid and I wasn’t aware if Twitter was case sensitive or not; I needed to confirm that no one else could sign up with the account “debbiet”.

For kicks, I logged out, and signed up for a new account. To my surprise, it showed that “debbiet” was indeed available. Yikes! I panicked and finished signing up using a different email account.

I logged out of the new account, and then tried logging in with my username “debbieT” and I was shocked to see my profile was blank and was reverting to the new “debbiet” account I just opened. There were no tweets, followers, or follows. It was totally blank!

I checked Twhirl and it displayed my account as usual, with my followers, follows, and tweets.

So, I logged out, and tried searching on Twitter for debbiet, and the result displayed my original account, but when I clicked on the account link, it reverted to the blank “debbiet” profile.

I tried googling, and no one else seemed to have this problem.

I was in a panic. I was afraid if I tried fixing it, I would permanently damage my real account and lose everything.

Thankfully, I realized I could log in using my email address instead. That worked, I could see my original home page and my follows/followers, but as soon as I clicked on my profile link, it reverted to my empty “debbiet” account.

Crap!

I tried posting a help message to Twitter, but I got a canned reply with a link to “missing tweets” – no use at all.

Then light dawned, and I thought, what if I changed the second account “debbiet” to a different user name. Yes! That worked! My “debbieT” account was back to normal. Phew!

What a nightmare!

Of course, this situation probably will never happen in real life. But even though it is highly unlikely for someone to rename their user name at the exact same time as a new user signing up, it does pose a risk. With millions of Twitter users, and more coming every day, I suppose nothing is impossible, especially with popular user names.

Before publishing this post, I decided to try to duplicate the problem using one of my other Twitter accounts “splashofstyle” (all lower case). Screen shots included below.

Original account, with all lower case:

I renamed my user name to “SplashOfStyle” using upper case letters.

I immediately logged out, and tried to sign up with the same name “splashofstyle” using a different email address. The user name showed “ok” (available), so I completed the sign up.

I logged out of the 2nd account, and back into the 1st account, and lo and behold, my home page and profile pages seemed to be just fine. Hmm, curious.

So, I logged out, and back into the 2nd account (duplicate), and the problem hit the 2nd account this time, not my original 1st account. The 2nd account’s home page was okay, but the profile page reverted to my 1st account with my original tweets and follows.

After a few attempts logging in and out, now my 1st account was messed up with reverting to the 2nd account’s profile page.

Again, this will situation probably not happen in real life, but it might be something for Twitter to look into and possibly fix.

Carbonite for Mac

Yay, I have been waiting for this. Carbonite is now fully supported for Mac users. $50 per year buys you unlimited storage.

I was always so intrigued by Carbonite after hearing Leo Laporte’s commercials on his Tech Guy radio show and podcast.

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