JustinBaum's dashboard

JustinBaum reported a problem in Orbitz on September 25, 2008 00:59:

Money stuck in limbo and no ticket confirmation

Last month trying to purchase a complicated and rather expensive trip to Europe I got caught in one of those "You need to call your bank" VS. "You need to call orbitz" death matches. Two times in a row and about a week apart each, I tried to purchase something on orbitz and the transaction would fail on their end... but oh man did it go through on my banks end. Essentially the money was stuck in a pending transaction that my bank could not cancel. Orbitz saw no record of it on their end and claimed they couldnt do anything about it. Finally after speaking to 3 different people I was able to get a manager to call my bank and she quickly sorted the situation out. Why this took an orbitz manager, multiple days and multiple hours of my time is beyond me. Serious bug in their system.

JustinBaum reported a problem in CheapTickets on September 25, 2008 00:49:

Fix your international customer service

I made an international reservation on cheaptickets.com. One of the airlines canceled or rescheduled one of the flights for my trip. I had to repeatedly call customer service for various reasons. Cheap tickets could not tell me ANYTHING about the itinerary change, nor could they get ahold of the airlines. After hours of being on hold the customer service agent offered me a full refund for the tickets. I told her I would call back after investigating other options.

Sure enough when I call back a few hours later the new agent will not give me any guarantee that I can get a refund and leaves me on hold for 40 min only to tell me the airlines cancelation department is closed for the day. Great. Should have known.

The best part about calling them over and over is that every time I get an agent I tell them I need to speak with the international department, they refuse to transfer me until I give them all my information and they look up my trip record..... but guess what the international department asks for after I am transfered? ALL THE SAME INFORMATION again. I did this 6 times today and want to jump out the window.

babsnotbarb started following the question "Solid state or Parallel ATA in the Air?" in Apple.

kimberlie.a replied on August 30, 2008 16:10 to the problem "Twinkle app isn't updating my Twitter feed." in Tapulous:

ever since twinkle went down last night, i havent been able to look at my private messages from people. Nearby and home pages work fine, but private messages wont even load :(

WauloK replied on August 30, 2008 10:50 to the problem "Twinkle app isn't updating my Twitter feed." in Tapulous:

I posted a ton of twinkles tonight including photos and none are on my Twitter account anywhere. I followed a couple of people as well. I can see my usual Twitter people posting in Twinkle and others posting Nearby.

Artisonian replied on August 28, 2008 13:40 to the problem "Twinkle app isn't updating my Twitter feed." in Tapulous:

I've been having this problem for a while. I don't get direct messages from Twitter, and my status updates don't post to Twitter. I want to talk to my friends, not just my location's feed.

The TBG replied on August 27, 2008 03:50 to the problem "Twinkle app isn't updating my Twitter feed." in Tapulous:

I'm having the same issue

JustinBaum started following the problem "Twinkle app isn't updating my Twitter feed." in Tapulous.

Justin Maxwell marked one of JustinBaum's replies in Mint as useful. JustinBaum replied to the question "My bank accounts have absurdly long names, can I rename them?".

Deepesh started following the problem "Feedly destroyed my google reader feeds&tags" in Feedly.

NextInstinct replied on July 15, 2008 02:45 to the problem "Feedly destroyed my google reader feeds&tags" in Feedly:

None the less, I am refreshed at Edwin's Transparency! How many large, staid firms just hide and on't give a damn?!

Bravo for being front and center Edwin!

Becca replied on July 11, 2008 17:10 to the problem "Whats up with returns from your web store?" in Steve Madden:

steve madden's web store breaks my heart. I love their shoes so much, but I'm really done ordering from them online. I returned a pair of boots according to all their instructions, but never received a refund or credit. I went through the online chat with a customer service representative but still to no avail. I just don't have the energy to go down the rabbit hole with them anymore. LAME + SAD!

Becca started following the problem "Whats up with returns from your web store?" in Steve Madden.

JustinBaum marked one of Edwin Khodabakchian's replies in Feedly as useful. Edwin Khodabakchian replied to the problem "Feedly destroyed my google reader feeds&tags".

JustinBaum replied on June 23, 2008 00:32 to the problem "Feedly destroyed my google reader feeds&tags" in Feedly:

Very cool Edwin. Sounds like all the bases are properly covered now.

Edwin Khodabakchian replied on June 22, 2008 02:30 to the problem "Feedly destroyed my google reader feeds&tags" in Feedly:

One last thing. To be on the extra cautious side of thing, when you install feedly for the first time, the welcome wizard will to a local back up of your Google Reader OPML file so that if despite all the UI changes, some people end up being angry, they can simply rollback to the state their Google Reader database was before trying feedly. The name of the back up is feedly.backup.opml and it is create in your firefox profile root directory.

raynerape started following the problem "Feedly destroyed my google reader feeds&tags" in Feedly.

Edwin Khodabakchian replied on June 21, 2008 09:11 to the problem "Feedly destroyed my google reader feeds&tags" in Feedly:

Justin: we mind your recommendation feed. Here is the output:
http://update.feeddo.com/justin.html

Please let me know if there is anything else we can do.
Best,
Edwin

Edwin Khodabakchian replied on June 21, 2008 07:09 to the problem "Feedly destroyed my google reader feeds&tags" in Feedly:

Here is the log of the changes that were made to feedly 1.0b3.1 to try to better explain the integration between feedly and google reader and avoid that anyone else has to go through the pain Justin had to go through.

If you are a google reader and you install feedly. The first run page has changed to show:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/65995199...

Then when you click on the feedly star, login and access feedly for the first time, the welcome wizard will show this and ask for explicit confirmation that feedly can access google reader:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/65995199...

As you select the things that you want to import, the welcome wizard has been update to remind you again that if you decided to import things (you really do not have to), that does things will be also added to the google reader database:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/65995199...

Finally, we also add Justin Baum suggestions to have on unsubscription of a feed a modal confirmation dialog which reminds the user that the action will impact the google reader database:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/65995199...

With all these changes in place, we are going to re-open the download. We are going to in parallel reach out to a few of the people we angered and make sure that these changes are in line with what they would have expected to see at first.

Justin: given that we implemented your design, I assume that you are OK with this. We are going to now focus on writing a script to mine your recommendation feed and see what feed references can be mined. Where would you like the list of feed title and feed urls to be sent.

Thanks for your help trying to address this issue.

If you already have feedly, to get the update, please go to firefox>tools>add-ons find updates upgrade to 1.0b3

Edwin Khodabakchian replied on June 21, 2008 03:05 to the problem "Feedly destroyed my google reader feeds&tags" in Feedly:

Thanks Justin. We will try to make it as close to your screenshot as we can.

JustAnotherCustomer. Sorry to disappoint! This issue has definitely spoiled the fun of what would have been otherwise a good beta 1. We are trying to learn as much as we can from it. Sorry!