why god hates me

Amanda just had a frightening experience with the woman at the Proactiv kiosk in her hometown of Hattiesburg, Mississippi: “[Mall security] told me to come over and get away from her because she would not stop yelling, and refusing to do anything until I was out of her sight.”

Today my boyfriend and I went to our mall in Hattiesburg, MS. It is a very small city and only has one mall so it is the one by default we are forced to go to.

My boyfriend about three weeks ago purchased Proactiv Solutions. First of all, when we went three weeks ago we were forced to purchase the more expensive, larger version due to the fact that they were out of the thirty day trial kit.

He was very hopeful that it would work, he decided to try Proactiv because of me and results I have seen with friends and family who have also used Proactiv.

We went today to return the package, a process that Proactiv claims is easy! After we arrived to take back the product the woman at the kiosk started to verbally HARASS us! Upon giving her the box she opened it took one look inside and said that it did not work because it was being used improperly, when it had been used in only the ways it was specifically outlined in the product guide to use. She also stated my boyfriend had used too much of the “Repairing Lotion.” This would make sense if she could have seen through the bottle or actually picked it up and felt how much was in it, but she did no such thing. The woman went on to say that if we were going to use it again, to use it properly. And to that my response was, “we are not going to be using Proactiv again.” Well, that is when I asked her to give us back our money, and that is when she started going off, asking me who I was and why it was any business and why I was even there!

This made me angry, and I told her that we just wanted the money back, and we did not want to here how we were supposed to use the product.

She felt harassed by us so she called security on me. Then when I asked to get the receipt back, she refused to give it back, and then upon me asking for a number to call to complain she covered up all of the numbers and refused to talk to me telling me that she couldn’t receive anything until security got there. All of this in the middle of the only mall in a small town. So I waited for security, and upon coming over and listening to her yell at him, he told me to come over and get away from her because she would not stop yelling, and refusing to do anything until I was out of her sight.

I was forced to leave the mall all because Proactiv REFUSED to allow us to return the product easily without being harassed. What has happened to customer service? what happened to the customer is always right? Does a guarantee only function as a guarantee after you withstand the harassment?

The customer is not always right, because sometimes the customer is a complete jackass. But it sounds like in this case, you were dealing with a crazy person who doesn’t believe in taking any sass-back from kids these days, or who figures if she acts psychotic enough she’ll scare away customers who try to return products.

However, Proactiv makes it very clear on their website that you can return the product within 60 days, no matter how much you use or how well you feel it worked. Their “guarantee” page simply states,

If you’re not totally satisfied with the results, simply return the bottles within 60 days, even if they’re empty, for a complete refund of the purchase price (less shipping & handling).

There’s no fine print on the page, and none we could find elsewhere on the site, and no mention of having to show proof of purchase in the form of a receipt. There’s also no mention of kiosk sales falling under a different return policy, so it seems pretty clear that Proactiv has to take your return.

At this point, we suggest you escalate the problem beyond the Krazy Kiosk Lady and contact Proactiv directly to negotiate a return. You should also—regardless of whether you succeed in returning the product—write a clear, polite letter to the company describing how badly you were treated by this woman, and how she refused your return and basically got you kicked out of the mall. The need to know that their kiosk employee is badly representing the company. The main thing at this point is to be polite, but persistent, and make it clear to Proactiv that you expect them to honor their no-risk return guarantee.

Oh, and let your boyfriend do this if he’s the one who paid for it.

Proactiv Solution
P.O. Box 11448
Des Moines, IA 50336-1448
Phone: 1 (800) 876-9717
Fax: 1 (515) 284-6745

Meredith has been on hold with RCN’s tech support line for over seven hours now. She’s put down the phone and keeps doing other things, but whenever she goes back to see if they’ve finally disconnected her, she hears their “please hold” message and music. Apparently RCN doesn’t think you need tech support over the weekend.

Meredith writes:

I live in Washington, DC, and my boyfriend (with whom I live) has had an RCN subscription in his name for over a year now, without incident. We upgraded our cable service with RCN about a month ago, to include the digital package. Part of the package included a DVR and an HD converter box (so that we can view HD channels). After a month, we finally got our schedules straightened enough to try and set up a time for a technician to come and install it. As RCN’s main number gives no option for “making an installation appointment,” at 2:20 PM, I called RCN’s tech support instead, in hopes of finding a human being to speak to. Upon calling, I entered my account code and was put on hold.

After over an hour on hold, I decided to simply put down the phone and walk away, leaving it on and connected. My reasoning went thus: If somebody picks up and I’m not there to respond, they’ll simply hang up the phone. This will cut off the call, and when I return to check, it should register the length of the call—and thus, the amount of time I’ve spent on hold.

Well, I put the phone down without disconnecting it. I took a nap, watched television, and even went out to a party. As I write this, it is 8:35, and I am still on hold, with the same music and announcements that were playing when I called six hours ago. That is six hours, without a single human answering the phone lines.

I have filed a complaint with the DC Office of Cable Television, which was forwarded to RCN. I’m leaving my phone on indefinitely until somebody picks up, and will let you know the total hold time when it’s done. I plan on using my boyfriend’s phone in the interim to make any necessary calls.

I’m not 100% positive of the legal ramifications of this—but I recently read that a New York state judge declared this practice, when used to deter customers from canceling their service, to be illegal on a number of counts. Any thoughts/advice?

Since you weren’t calling to cancel, we don’t know if it’s illegal, but it’s certainly among the worst customer service RCN could provide. We’d love to hear from RCN about this—why hasn’t someone picked up at this point? Why hasn’t the message changed to tell the customer to call back at another time? Why, if there’s no tech support over the weekend, don’t you tell your customers that in the hold message? Why do you even have this phone number if you’re just using it to waste your customers’ time?

(Photo: Getty)

It may not be mature, but making your ex jealous is just so gratifying. Especially when they cheated on you with some ugly tramp and tore out your heart, stomped on it, threw it in a blender and chugged it.

Ok, so I’m a little bitter. And nothing goes better with bitter than a little revenge. In the form of torture. That involves a tight black dress or a very public makeout sesh with a very good looking stranger.

We received an email this week from a reader who was just dumped by her douchbag (ex) boyfriend. So, in order to help her move on to bigger and better dudes we asked our writers to tell us their favorite methods for making their exes green with envy. Read on for the best tips and tricks that will bring anyone down.

Megan - Brown University: I’m definitely of the don’t get mad, get even, school of thought (not sure I should be proud of that…). Anyway, for Halloween one year, I went to a party at his place dressed to kill in a little black dress and sky-high heels (as a trophy wife, naturally), where I ignored him and danced with his roommate. It worked, my ex noticed…he squeaked (which may have been an attempt at speech), turned and ran, leaving me with the roommate and the ensuing awkwardness…

Julia - UC Berkeley: I took risque pictures (yes, there were clothes involved) with my best friend’s brother, then put them a place that I knew my ex would find them. I’m pretty sure he cried. (more…)

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We know that Halloween is a great excuse for girls to dress likes whores without being judged by their peers, but isn’t this going a bit too far? I mean, come on; the other dogs are gonna sniff her ass even if she wasn’t wearing a super short skirt.

Unless, of course, there is some freakish fetish behind all this. Somehow we think we will be seeing this again… on Dateline.

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So, while I don’t watch Gossip Girl (Gasp! Shock! The Horror! I know, I know I am totally missing out on LIFE), I do love the GG fashions. Nothing screams “this is so real” like a 16 year old prancing around in the latest Balenciaga dresses or Alexander McQueen blazers.

I know when I was 17, I spruced up my Kipling backpack by wearing a strand of Chanel Pearls… and by Chanel Pearls I obviously mean the totally real ones that I bought in China Town.

Don’t get me wrong; I do admire their fashion forwardness, but I totally resent that it’s not reality. However, this look on Ms. Blake Lively is totally attainable and totally cute.

Perhaps I should start watching?

Leather is huge this fall (along with purple, yellow, scarves, and everything else I’ve blogged about in this series) and it’s a great way to dress down a sexy black dress while also staying warm in all those super long bar lines.

So I bring you: Celebrity Chic on the Cheap: Gossip Girl’s ‘Too Legit to Quit’ Style. (more…)

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Have the last 7 days made anyone else crave a bubble bath and a good book? How about a Valium?

Anyway, the world kind of imploded this week. Cheerleaders were bashed for being cheerleaders, we had flashbacks to 7th grade when our sworn enemy put a dead fish in our locker, that awkward hook-up just became the top dining hall gossip, and we seriously forgot how to actually care.

To make matters worse, we found out that men cheat on us a lot, and John McCain almost didn’t make it to tonight’s debate.

A week like this makes us want to manufacture our own boyfriend, go shopping at American Apparel, find a much younger guy to toy with, eat some candy bar brownies, and eff Jeremy Piven.

At least we learned how to survive that 8 AM class. If nothing else, we’ll be early for the end of the world.

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An Internet programmer (or…whoever) in the McCain camp seems to be pretty sure of a few things.  The small ad appeared this morning, and while we’re too tired right now to make any snarky jokes, we will admit that nothing says I AM AWESOME like an American flag background.

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(In our first ever weekly installment of G.W.W.E [Guys We Want to Eff], we decided to tackle the possibly oily but strangely hot Jeremy Piven.

If you have an expensive cable package, you love him as Ari on Entourage, and if you’ve only got basic, you love him from the small to medium roles he’s played in tons of various movies that were not always good. Now, on with the GWWEeeing…)

Two Sundays ago, the Emmy’s were on. I don’t watch the Emmy’s because they’re boring and everyone is always thanking God — who probably doesn’t give a crap about your little gold statue when there are wars and famines going on all over the globe — but I happened to switch over to it during a commercial break from TLC’s Incredible Medical Mysteries (best show ever. TiVo it NOW).

The part of the snooze-fest I ended up catching was Jeremy Piven’s heartfelt acceptance speech for his 3rd Emmy for Entourage. And something just…happened. I was inexplicably drawn to his chiseled boyish middle-agedness. My insides got all hot and tingly. There was a need to see what he was rocking underneath that tux.

Maybe it was his fantabulous hair plugs. Or wig. Maybe it was his new cut bod. Maybe he went to a voodoo lady and found a potion to make girls almost 20 years his junior want to eff him. Whatever he did. It worked. I want to eff all 43 years of him. (more…)

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…At least that’s what happened to Angela Stokes. Once nearly 300 pounds, the girl stopped eating anything that was cooked and lost almost half of her body fat. CNN reports:

She stopped eating meat, animal products and processed foods and instead switched to a diet that consisted of uncooked and unprocessed vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds.

“To me, the thing with raw food is that it just makes sense. It’s simple and natural, eating food straight from the earth. There’s no rocket science, no mystery,” said Stokes. “Once you understand the simple principal that no other animal in the wild eats cooked or processed foods. That’s it.”

She makes a very good point - especially considering all the hormones and crap that goes into everything we eat. We should all hop on this raw food bandwagon! We can all be healthy! We can all lose weight.

It can’t be that hard, right? I mean, we would never have to cook again!

Wait, what? Cheddar and Sour Cream chips aren’t raw? Ramen isn’t raw? BEER ISN’T RAW?!

Jesus H. Christ; that Allison chick is crazy. What the hell did she eat? HOW DID SHE SURVIVE?  I really don’t know anyone who can do this - most definitely not anyone in college.

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Everywhere you go people are talking politics.

Who ya gonna vote for?
What is his stance on foreign policy?
Will there be a debate?
Is he qualified?
Can we survive 4 more years with Repubs running this country?
Can the Dems handle this crisis?!

It is time to stop with the party bickering and focus on bringing the government and this country back together. It is time to unify. And nothing unifies people more than good looking men.

So, since you’re gonna be exposed to all these government dudes anyways (they are deciding our financial future as we speak, and are all over the news), you might as well look at the hotties.

(Editor’s Note: We attempted to find some seriously good looking guys in Congress, but that proved difficult. Seriously…most of them are so old.  We’re bringing you the best of the bunch. You know, guys we wouldn’t drool over on a normal day…but they have power! And they wear suits!)

These dudes make me want to move to Capital Hill. Some even may make me consider switching parties not totally hating the other party. Click on each picture to get the full story. (more…)

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