Randomness: the 18th sequel

[kristof65]

SMDH.

Trying to help a distributor clean up a bunch of open returns they owe us.  

They just grabbed a bunch of parts they had laying around, guessed at which site they came from, then shoved them in a box and left it to me to figure out which ones belong to which open Return Material Authorizations (RMAs). 

This cleared up several of them, but among the parts they returned were a set of circuit boards labeled as being boards for an automatic teller for Site X.  Turns out that the boards were a set of Self Serve boards for site Y.   But worse than that, the boards were NEW parts I had sent down to them for site Y about 8 months ago AND for which they had already returned the bad parts.  So basically, they owe these boards to their customer at site Y. 

As if that weren't bad enough, I discovered that someone in the Calgary office had been creating duplicate RMAs for several items shipped from there instead of using the RMA I opened when I created the part order - one of those is my fault because I forget to indicate the RMA number in the order, but there is no excuse for the others. 

And Calgary wonders why I procrastinate at checking in my RMAs....

[Green Eyed Monsty]

2 hours ago, Chaoswolf said:

If people are eating children in this area, why do I need to  leash my dog? It'll have a better chance to escape or defend itself if it's off the leash. 

Also, why am I cleaning up after cannibals?

Soo many questions.  So few answers.

GEM

[Green Eyed Monsty]

Back To The Future, the Smart Car Edition

 

 

GEM

[Green Eyed Monsty]

 "I don't understand why I have this vice-like headache."

 

 

GEM

[Sylverthorne]

50 minutes ago, Green Eyed Monsty said:

Back To The Future, the Smart Car Edition

 

 

GEM

... I almost want a SMRT car now... 

[Green Eyed Monsty]

2 minutes ago, Sylverthorne said:

... I almost want a SMRT car now... 

If you lived in our area you might not.

As I type this the wind is rattling things and making a racket.  This on top of the intermittent snow flurries.

I can just envision a SMRT Car being blown completely off the highway in this weather.

I've seen a couple of them tooling around Carson City during more amenable weather but don't see them out and about when we are having normal Nevada Winter Weather.  4WD vehicles are extremely popular in our area, making Subaru one of the most seen nameplates outside of pickups.

[haldir]

1 hour ago, Green Eyed Monsty said:

Back To The Future, the Smart Car Edition

 

 

GEM

 

Please DON'T give Hollywood any ideas of a reboot!!!!

 

 

Well crap, crappity, crap...UPS decided they needed to come early today. They attempted delivery while I was asleep, so they showed up between 1030 am & 130 pm. My wife came home early from work around 2 & she said the note was on the screen door. Which means tomorrow, I won't be sleeping before the game tomorrow night.

[haldir]

6 hours ago, TGP said:

Take a look at today’s Question of the Day. 
 

Way ahead of you. 

 

Yah I posted that after I answered the QotD. I tend to try & find the missing days of Feb meme. You just encouraged that.

 

5 hours ago, kristof65 said:

I gotta echo that WT$%#^%? 

Did she say what the reason for the policy was? 

I've never run into that, and I used to book overnight stays at hotels near our home all the time for my wife and I's birthdays and anniversary back when we lived in Denver and had nearby family for childcare. 

The only thing close I've ever run into was when my wife worked for Embassy Suites, they wouldn't let employees book rooms at hotels within 100 miles of the hotel they worked at at the employee rate, which was insanely cheap. 

 

I didn't, tbh, I wanted to just leave the place. It's funny, at the hotel across the street, I counted how many people wouldn't be staying at the S8 due to the license plates. (Idaho plates have their county code on the plate). Almost all of them. I hope that S8 realize how much business they are losing with that policy. I can understand the employee policy, most likely similar to why some places don't allow employees to participate in a contest or something.

 

25 minutes ago, Green Eyed Monsty said:

 "I don't understand why I have this vice-like headache."

 

 

GEM

 

That is almost as bad as this:

 

[Sylverthorne]

23 minutes ago, Green Eyed Monsty said:

If you lived in our area you might not.

As I type this the wind is rattling things and making a racket.  This on top of the intermittent snow flurries.

I can just envision a SMRT Car being blown completely off the highway in this weather.

I've seen a couple of them tooling around Carson City during more amenable weather but don't see them out and about when we are having normal Nevada Winter Weather.  4WD vehicles are extremely popular in our area, making Subaru one of the most seen nameplates outside of pickups.

 

Oh, outside of random models, I have zero interest in owning one; they're adorbs, but we live out in the middle of nowhere, and a SMRT car wouldn't last a month out here...

.. a SMRTcar frame would make a hilarious Mad Max vehicle, though.

[Green Eyed Monsty]

24 minutes ago, haldir said:

 

Yah I posted that after I answered the QotD. I tend to try & find the missing days of Feb meme. You just encouraged that.

 

 

I didn't, tbh, I wanted to just leave the place. It's funny, at the hotel across the street, I counted how many people wouldn't be staying at the S8 due to the license plates. (Idaho plates have their county code on the plate). Almost all of them. I hope that S8 realize how much business they are losing with that policy. I can understand the employee policy, most likely similar to why some places don't allow employees to participate in a contest or something.

 

 

That is almost as bad as this:

 

This is unsettling to the point of creepy.

GEM

[kristof65]

I don't know if I've ever told this story here, but it's probably safe to do so now, as the site was torn down and replaced by a rental car agency a few years ago. 

 

We'll call the site Dave's CW, because it was built by Dave using money from his father, Sam (not their real names).  For the first 7-8 years, the site appears to be doing well.  No complaints from Dave, he was a good guy to work with, and kept the site up to date. 

So Dave's was built in the early 2000s, back before I held the contract position I hold now, when I was working for the US master distributor of the same equipment.  It was built by a brand new distributor that had been formed by three employees from three other distributors coming together to make their own new company.  One of these employees was a salesman that we felt was kind of sketchy, but the install and support guys were known to us, and so we took them on as a distributor.   Mr Sketchy comes into the story later. 

Anyway, not sure what happened between Dave and his dad, but around the 8 year mark, Dave moves to a completely different state, and Sam starts running the wash. Or rather, Sam hires someone to manage the wash.  About 2 years after Sam takes over the wash, it is discovered that someone has figured out how to scam the site for free washes and everyone at the local high school knows about the exploit.  In part, the exploit was because Sam didn't do the recommended updates.  Sam raises a huge freaking stink about it, and so we decide to not only give the upgrade for his system that stops the exploit, we go ahead and do an upgrade from dial up to internet credit card clearing, which will further eliminate the chance that someone can find another exploit. 

We were able to do some forensic troubleshooting, and identifying the problem was first exploited about 6 months before, and grew exponentially worse - so the losses went something like $50 the first month, $100 the next month, $200 the next month, etc.  All in all, the losses to the site were a couple grand, and we knocked that off the price of the internet upgrade. 

That wasn't good enough for Sam. 

The first thing he took issue was that we calculated it based on cost per wash.  For example, a $6 wash might only cost the site $4 in chemicals, water, electricity, overhead, etc.  Despite trying to explain that he didn't really lose any income from those washes, because it's unlikely the high school students would have paid for them in the first place, he threw a fit.  Fine, we adjusted it the value of the washes. 

Still wasn't good enough for Sam. 

He decided that the losses were the same every month and had been going on for years, and not only should that completely cover the cost of the upgrade, we owed him additional money.  We put our foot down, and said no, we're calculating on the forensic analysis that show it was going on for about six months.  Knowing full well he was incapable of providing evidence otherwise, we told him that what we had credited was all we were going to credit unless he could provide evidence the fraud had been going on longer than we had calculated. 

I have to give him credit - he tried. 

He went back to the original conversations he and Dave had had with the distributor when the site was built.  Remember that sketchy salesman?   Turns out that Mr Sketchy had done a "site traffic report" that had estimated that the traffic going by the site would generate revenue of about 2-3x what the site had actually done while Dave was running it.  So Sam decided that this exploit was responsible for the failure of the site to live up to the revenue estimates Mr Sketchy had done for them.  He now demanded what was a hefty six digit figure from us. 

We laughed in his face. We were threatened with lawyers. We said go ahead and sue.  That part actually concerned me, because by this time I was a contractor, and if he decided to, he could sue me separately. And in fact, it would be easier for him to sue me separately, as Sam & I are in the US, while the manufacturer is in Canada. The company said "don't worry about it, get a lawyer on retainer and expense us." 

Turns out I didn't have to. 

After the initial letter from Sam's lawyer was received, idiot Sam copied me on an email to his lawyer. Apparently he was trying to forward some emails to his lawyer, some of which were mine, and inadvertently copied me.  Among the emails he was forwarding was one from his son where Dave had pointed out that they had long known Mr Sketchy's site analysis was overblown and that he should reference the amended one done by the distributor service department.  Sam told the lawyer that he felt they should use the report with the highest dollar amount on it. 

Never heard another peep out of him after that got forwarded to the manufacturer's lawyer.  
 

[Inarah]

1 hour ago, Green Eyed Monsty said:

 "I don't understand why I have this vice-like headache."

 

 

GEM

 

 

That would certainly explain today's headache. 

 

 

[Green Eyed Monsty]

41 minutes ago, kristof65 said:

I don't know if I've ever told this story here, but it's probably safe to do so now, as the site was torn down and replaced by a rental car agency a few years ago. 

 

We'll call the site Dave's CW, because it was built by Dave using money from his father, Sam (not their real names).  For the first 7-8 years, the site appears to be doing well.  No complaints from Dave, he was a good guy to work with, and kept the site up to date. 

So Dave's was built in the early 2000s, back before I held the contract position I hold now, when I was working for the US master distributor of the same equipment.  It was built by a brand new distributor that had been formed by three employees from three other distributors coming together to make their own new company.  One of these employees was a salesman that we felt was kind of sketchy, but the install and support guys were known to us, and so we took them on as a distributor.   Mr Sketchy comes into the story later. 

Anyway, not sure what happened between Dave and his dad, but around the 8 year mark, Dave moves to a completely different state, and Sam starts running the wash. Or rather, Sam hires someone to manage the wash.  About 2 years after Sam takes over the wash, it is discovered that someone has figured out how to scam the site for free washes and everyone at the local high school knows about the exploit.  In part, the exploit was because Sam didn't do the recommended updates.  Sam raises a huge freaking stink about it, and so we decide to not only give the upgrade for his system that stops the exploit, we go ahead and do an upgrade from dial up to internet credit card clearing, which will further eliminate the chance that someone can find another exploit. 

We were able to do some forensic troubleshooting, and identifying the problem was first exploited about 6 months before, and grew exponentially worse - so the losses went something like $50 the first month, $100 the next month, $200 the next month, etc.  All in all, the losses to the site were a couple grand, and we knocked that off the price of the internet upgrade. 

That wasn't good enough for Sam. 

The first thing he took issue was that we calculated it based on cost per wash.  For example, a $6 wash might only cost the site $4 in chemicals, water, electricity, overhead, etc.  Despite trying to explain that he didn't really lose any income from those washes, because it's unlikely the high school students would have paid for them in the first place, he threw a fit.  Fine, we adjusted it the value of the washes. 

Still wasn't good enough for Sam. 

He decided that the losses were the same every month and had been going on for years, and not only should that completely cover the cost of the upgrade, we owed him additional money.  We put our foot down, and said no, we're calculating on the forensic analysis that show it was going on for about six months.  Knowing full well he was incapable of providing evidence otherwise, we told him that what we had credited was all we were going to credit unless he could provide evidence the fraud had been going on longer than we had calculated. 

I have to give him credit - he tried. 

He went back to the original conversations he and Dave had had with the distributor when the site was built.  Remember that sketchy salesman?   Turns out that Mr Sketchy had done a "site traffic report" that had estimated that the traffic going by the site would generate revenue of about 2-3x what the site had actually done while Dave was running it.  So Sam decided that this exploit was responsible for the failure of the site to live up to the revenue estimates Mr Sketchy had done for them.  He now demanded what was a hefty six digit figure from us. 

We laughed in his face. We were threatened with lawyers. We said go ahead and sue.  That part actually concerned me, because by this time I was a contractor, and if he decided to, he could sue me separately. And in fact, it would be easier for him to sue me separately, as Sam & I are in the US, while the manufacturer is in Canada. The company said "don't worry about it, get a lawyer on retainer and expense us." 

Turns out I didn't have to. 

After the initial letter from Sam's lawyer was received, idiot Sam copied me on an email to his lawyer. Apparently he was trying to forward some emails to his lawyer, some of which were mine, and inadvertently copied me.  Among the emails he was forwarding was one from his son where Dave had pointed out that they had long known Mr Sketchy's site analysis was overblown and that he should reference the amended one done by the distributor service department.  Sam told the lawyer that he felt they should use the report with the highest dollar amount on it. 

Never heard another peep out of him after that got forwarded to the manufacturer's lawyer.  
 

Classic story of a stupid person trying to be clever.

I wonder how much the scam lawyer soaked him for before the lawsuit blew up completely by "Sam" not understanding how e-mail works?

As for the "sketchy salesman", that is a line of work that seems to have a high attractive value for those pre-disposed to behave in a sketchy manner.

GEM

[Marvin]

1 hour ago, haldir said:

 

Yah I posted that after I answered the QotD. I tend to try & find the missing days of Feb meme. You just encouraged that.

 

 

I didn't, tbh, I wanted to just leave the place. It's funny, at the hotel across the street, I counted how many people wouldn't be staying at the S8 due to the license plates. (Idaho plates have their county code on the plate). Almost all of them. I hope that S8 realize how much business they are losing with that policy. I can understand the employee policy, most likely similar to why some places don't allow employees to participate in a contest or something.

 

 

That is almost as bad as this:

 

I dunno, Cobra Commander looking pretty cute lately. 🤔

[Corsair]