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Enjoy…

*Rant Alert!

Last week, owing to several issues that I had been having with AT&T, I finally decided to bid adieu to their UVerse TV service. I had been with Time Warner for a long long time and I just loved their service. Then, AT&T came out with an enticing offer (rebates etc!); so I bit the bullet and ordered their UVerse service. I had heard really good reviews from my friends about their revolutionary new TV service which let you record four programmes at the same time among many other things (help us with laundry, dishes etc.). Even though I never had to record four shows at the same time, my biggest frustration came from their HD broadcast. It looked worse than SD. Time Warner’s HD was hands-down a thousand times better than ATT HD. HD was not the only thing that made me pull the plug on ATT though.

My second biggest gripe with ATT was their customer service. Even though they have hundreds of corporate stores across the country and a handful in Austin too, there is no help available whatsoever from any of their stores. The stores are only to signup new customers and from there on, you are pretty much on your own. It takes a good 20-30 mins to get through their 800 number and their ‘offices’ are open only during regular business hours. In other words, you cannot call their 800 number after 6 o clock? What is this, the 70s? When we signed up for the service at one of their stores, the sales guy had told us he would get us a rebate of $300. That was too good an offer to refuse, so we signed up. Three months went by and there was no sign of any rebate. After trying a zillion times to get through to their customer service, I finally received my rebates, for $150. And that, after almost about five months. Their excuse was they did not have my apt # in their database! I wonder how those bills would arrive month after month, promptly, at the right apt #? Hmm! Time Warner, on the other hand, has a local access number and worst case scenario, you can just go to their local office and get your grievance addressed.

Even after ending my relationship with Uverse, my problems did not stop. This happened when I had to return their equipment. They have an ‘arrangement’ with UPS where in you need to find a UPS store and drop in all the equipment there. I had no issues with that. It’s no different than go to a local ATT store right? In fact, the UPS guy was quite nice to us. However, what frustrated me was that ATT did NOT require me to return any cables or the remote control. The UPS guy outright refused to ship the cables and remote back to ATT. According to ATT, the cables and the remote control are ‘yours to keep’. I’m sure ATT is trying to reduce UPS costs but do they really think it costs them less to manufacture another remote than to just ship it back? So, essentially, every AT&T customer in America ends up with a few hundred feet of telephone cable and a remote control for a cable box for good! After this ‘incident’(for the lack of a better word), I do not think we will be doing any new business with AT&T. I have wireless service with them but I have to stick with it just because I love my iPhone too much. I’m just waiting for my contract to get over at this point.

The Time Warner service got installed last week and I’m really glad to see some good quality HD broadcast now. Not to mention, TW is charging me $80 a month against $110 that ATT used to charge us. Total savings for the next 6 months that I plan to keep TW, 6X$30 = $180.

Update 4/13/2009

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!
As of 5pm today, we have reached our target of One Thousand US Dollars as part of the 100 Thousand Campaign.

Thanks to all the generous contributors who came forward to make this mission a grand success.

Previously.

This is a letter from our LSP co-ordinator for the Bay Area, Mr. Prasad Gattu that I received this morning to mark the launch of the 100-thousand campaign for the Lok Satta Pary. If each one of us can raise a $1000, within two weeks, we can easily gather a whopping $100,000. A 100 grand can easily propel many an LSP candidates to the forefront overnight. This is a very important and achievable target we can set for ourselves. Friends, please take this opportunity to bring about the change we had always been looking for. This is the time to believe and support this noble endeavor. As of this writing, I have managed to collect $450. Please donate and help me reach our goal of $100000 before the elections begin.

Jai Hind

How can you help? Check this link.

Read on…

“Democracy is based upon the conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people.”
- Harry Emerson Fosdick

Friends,
95 years ago, in the UC Berkeley, California, in the Ghadar paper, there was a call to free India from the British rule. This call was made by the students and the Indians residing in USA and Canada as part of the Indian Independence movement.

We’re inspired by the sacrifice of the Ghadar movement, but only in a peaceful, democratic, non-violent way, with respect to the law of the land where ever we’re. The Ghadar’s call was against the autocratic, oppressive, and colonial British rule, where as the 2nd Freedom movement launched by Lok Satta is against the current morass of corruption, nepotism, feudalism, criminal and dynastic politics of the inept politicians of India.

Today, we’re in the final stages of 2009 election campaign in India, and we are the foot volunteers of this 2nd Freedom movement. The party needs resources to bring awareness and to succeed and it is still not too late for us to do one  final push for funds for this season. I propose to call this campaign The 100-Thousand Campaign, as that being our minimal goal with the final goal being 1000-Thousand (a million).

This is how I propose:

• There’re 100+ active volunteer/supporters in this group.
• We each raise $1000+ through our friends, supporters, and concerned Indians
• People can directly send money to India or chapters can pool up and send it to the party. Non-Indian citizens can donate to ‘People For Lok Satta’
• We inspire/encourage and ask 10+ – 100s of our friends to raise $1000 from their contacts.
• Request people to send donations as early as possible before election campaign ends.  We can stop our funds drive around mid May or end of April.
• Every week or 15 days, all chapters and volunteers can send the cumulative amount which they were able to raise, starting Jan. 1st, 2009.
• Kalyan from bay area has agreed to coordinate and track the numbers.  Chapter coordinators are requested to track their chapter numbers and send the figures to Kalyan, others who’re interested can help Kalyan in keeping track.
• At the end of every week or 15 days, Kalyan will send us the status.
• We continue/start our efforts with this as the goal and can discuss more on the proposal in this Saturday’s conference call.

An encouraging beginning: I’ve been informed that a person from US who for selfless reasons does not wants to disclose his name has come forward y’day to donate $10K to the Lok Satta party.

“Democracy is the only system that persists in asking the powers that be whether they are the powers that ought to be.”
- Sydney J Harris

Thanks.

This morning, I received an email from the Obama transition team that they are taking up questions from the public again. The url is http://change.gov/openforquestions . I have posted my question about the increase in non-military aid to Pakistan. Since there aren’t enough people concerned about this issue, an easy search for ‘Mumbai’ should lead you to the question. Please vote and help this question stay on top. We need to reach out to the Obama administration and make sure our concerns are heard.

Again the link is http://change.gov/openforquestions , search for Mumbai, and vote for the question posted by ‘Taxpayer, Austin, TX’.

This is where Obama’s foreign policy talks about increasing aid to Pakistan.
http://change.gov/agenda/foreign_policy_agenda