Who is NAC SKI?

So the NAC SKI people try really hard to hide their contact information. There’s no phone number on the site or their Yelp page Why? Who knows.

Update 2012-02-17: NAC SKI has now updated their Yelp page with contact information:
2635 N 1st St
Ste 242
San Jose, CA 95131
(408) 922-0182

 

They even hide their information in the whois database:

Registrant:
Domains by Proxy, Inc.
DomainsByProxy.com
15111 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353
Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
United States

Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: NACSKI.COM
Created on: 10-Dec-03
Expires on: 10-Dec-10
Last Updated on: 28-Aug-08

But nacski.org shows the contact information:

Charlie Ma
NAC SKI, LLC
1376 Tanaka Drive
San Jose CA 95131
+1 408-802-7889
[email protected]

This is the same information listed in the California Secretary of State‘s business entity detail page:

Entity Name: NAC SKI, LLC
Entity Number: 200407010124
Date Filed: 03/10/2004
Status: ACTIVE
Jurisdiction: CALIFORNIA
Entity Address: 1376 TANAKA DR
Entity City, State, Zip: SAN JOSE CA 95131
Agent for Service of Process: CHARLIE MA
Agent Address: 1376 TANAKA DR
Agent City, State, Zip: SAN JOSE CA 95131

Chase is ruining Amazon’s good name

A couple years ago, I switched my Wells Fargo MasterCard to an Amazon Rewards Visa card. Unfortunately, Amazon’s Visa card is managed by Chase, who has no idea how to run a business, build a web site or provide customer service.

The complaints piled up in my mind, but it wasn’t until I returned from my overseas trip that I was aggravated enough to write them down.

Here’s the letter I sent to Jeff Bezos:

Hi Jeff,

I have been a customer of Amazon’s for a decade. I’ve been very satisfied with the products I’ve ordered from Amazon and the customer service I’ve received. I’ve purchased products directly from Amazon, from other vendors who use Amazon’s web interface and from storefront merchants.

Three years ago, I re-evaluated all of my banking relationships. When picking a no-fee rewards card, I considered two options: Amazon and REI. I chose Amazon.

I’ve been quite disappointed with Chase. My problems with them fall in to four categories, the last of which was disturbing enough to prompt me to write.

  1. The process for redeeming rewards certificates is broken. Here’s how it works:
    1. I spend enough money to earn an Amazon gift certificate
    2. They mail me a paper gift certificate
    3. I enter this information in to the Amazon web site
    4. I recycle the gift certificate.

    Paper? Really? What a waste. At a minimum, they could email me the gift certificate code. Ideally, you’d just credit my account directly.

    Recently, Chase replaced my Visa card with a Visa Signature card. They claimed they had improved the rewards program. I haven’t figured out what they’ve improved, but it’s not the important part (getting the Amazon gift certificate).

  2. Chase’s purchase protection and extended warranty services are poor.
    1. The damage protection covers a very limited number of sources of damage, (AmEx covers damage, regardless of its cause.)
    2. The process for filing a claim is slow and involves lots of paper forms and mailing this. (AmEx lets you do this online or by fax.)

  3. Last year, I went to New Zealand and Australia. Before I left, I called my credit card companies to inform them I would be out of the country.

    AmEx:

    • Told me it wasn’t necessary to call, and I would have been fine.
    • Charges 2.7% on transactions

    Chase:

    • Told me it was essential to call
    • Charges 3% on transactions
    • Tried to upsell me on some bullshit identity theft protection service, and tried to make me feel guilty/scared when I declined

  4. Chase provides exceptionally limited transaction information.

    Before the statement arrives, you see:

    • Transaction Date
    • Posting Date
    • Amount, in USD
    • Transaction Number
    • Company name

    At the end of the month, you finally see:

    • Foreign currency amount and exchange rate

    With AmEx, you immediately see:

    • Date
    • Amount, in USD
    • Transaction Number
    • Company name
    • Company address
    • Company phone number
    • Company DBA name
    • Company category
    • Foreign currency amount

    Having the company DBA name and address were exceptionally valuable in allowing me to verify the transactions on my trip. In the case of Chase, I had to go over my schedule and make overseas phone calls to figure out who, for example, AUSTCORP NO 605 PTY, was.

Overall, Chase provides a subpar customer experience that isn’t in line with Amazon’s. It’s both frustrating your customers and sullying your good name.

I urge you to drop Chase for a more capable, friendly bank for your Amazon Visa card.

Paul

Aperture batch export AppleScript

While in Australia and New Zealand, I shot a ton of photos.

Normally, my photos sit on a hard drive and no one sees them. I wanted to make sure that didn’t happen this time.

First, I grouped the photos in to folders in the Finder. Then, I created a new project in Aperture and imported all of the folders as albums. Then, I went through each folder and rated the photos. If a photo was 4 or 5 stars, I deemed it good enough for flickr.

I wrote the following AppleScript to find the albums, iterate through them, and export JPEGs of all the photos I had starred.

property basePath : “harddrive:Users:me:some_photos:”

with timeout of 600 seconds
  tell application “Aperture”
    set myProject to get project “some_project”
    set myAlbums to every album of myProject whose name starts with “NZ”
    set albumCount to count items in myAlbums
    –set myAlbums to items 16 through albumCount of myAlbums
   
    repeat with currentAlbum in myAlbums
      set folderName to name of currentAlbum & ” selects”
     
      set imageList to (every image version in currentAlbum whose main rating is greater than 3)
     
      try
        tell application “Finder” to make new folder at basePath with properties {name:folderName}
      end try
     
      export imageList to basePath & folderName using export setting “JPEG – 50% of Original Size”
    end repeat
  end tell
end timeout

Privacy by Design

The latest CDT Policy Post discusses the importance Privacy by Design. They extensively reference Anne Cavoukian (Ontario’s kickass Privacy Commissioner and author of Who Knows).

The seven principles of Privacy by Design are:

  • Proactive, not Reactive; Preventative, not Remedial
  • Privacy as the Default
  • Privacy Embedded into Design
  • Full Functionality – Positive-Sum, not Zero-Sum
  • End-to-End Lifecycle Protection
  • Visibility and Transparency
  • Respect for User Privacy

Any system you build should take these in to account.

Good help is hard to find (or: Nancy Pelosi annexes Canada)

I wrote Nancy Pelosi, letting her know that electronic voting machines are problematic and voter-verified paper ballots are essential.

She wrote me back:
Pelosi letter

Like her colleague Diane Feinstein, she is having trouble finding competent correspondence staff.

Note the key paragraph here:

Senator Bill Nelson (D-NB) introduced the companion Senate bill, S. 1431, on July 9th, which was referred to the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration.

NB is New Brunswick, Canada. Last time I checked, Canada was a sovereign country. Bill Nelson is the senator from Florida.

Diane Feinstein sending constituents bad info

As part of a letter-writing campaign, I recently asked Senator Diane Feinstein to support health care (health insurance?) reform.

The form letter I got back is simply wrong. She wrote “However, neither the Senate nor the House has adopted a single, comprehensive bill for consideration.”

The House passed “a single comprehensive bill” (HR 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act) on Saturday, November 7, 2009 at 11:15 PM eastern time — over a week before this letter was sent.

Here’s Feinstein’s reply in full:

From: [email protected]
Subject: U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein responding to your message
Date: November 16, 2009 8:37:42 AM PST

Dear Mr. Schreiber:

I received your letter regarding healthcare reform, and I appreciate hearing your concerns about citizenship verification.

At this time, there is still no single healthcare reform proposal or plan. The Senate Finance Committee and Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions have each passed separate bills on healthcare reform. There are also three bills that have been approved by separate committees in the House of Representatives. However, neither the Senate nor the House has adopted a single, comprehensive bill for consideration.

Both the Congress and President Obama have been explicit that health care reform should not expand coverage to undocumented immigrants. As such, all of the healthcare reform bills currently contain provisions to prohibit the undocumented from accessing the proposed subsidized or public benefits-which is consistent with current laws that do not allow undocumented immigrants to access federal healthcare programs such as Medicaid or the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.

Like you, I believe that- whatever the final bill- the verification measures in these bills should not have an adverse impact on U.S. citizens or legal immigrants in this country. It is my hope the Senate bills can be merged to achieve the goal of expanded, affordable coverage for Americans, and I will certainly be mindful of the points you raised in your letter as this process continues.

If you are interested in accessing additional information on my views on healthcare reform, I encourage you to visit the “In the Spotlight” link on the front page of my website at http://feinstein.senate.gov/. I hope you will continue to keep me informed of your opinions, and I invite you to contact my Washington, D.C. office at (202) 224-3841 if you have any questions.

Sincerely yours,
Dianne Feinstein
United States Senator

Further information about my position on issues of concern to California and the Nation are available at my website http://feinstein.senate.gov/public/. You can also receive electronic e-mail updates by subscribing to my e-mail list at http://feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=ENewsletterSignup.Signup.

Sixty-five more reasons to call congress

Reposted from my daily kos diary:

A while ago, I wrote about Stories of Health, our project to document how America’s broken health care system affects us all.

On the eve of Congress’ historic health care vote, I have some more stories to share.

Since that time, we’ve continued to travel. We spent a week in Los Angeles, where we heard from folks like Nina, whose parents had to sell their house to pay their health care bills.

Thanks to the Angela and Nancy at Health Access, we had the good fortune to meet Carla and Susan, two amazing doctors at LA County hospital. If you heard what Carla told us after the camera was turned off, you’d have been as inspired as I was to know there are such amazing doctors out there. It’s incredible what they get done with such limited resources. Carla’s a primary care physician, not a specialist, and the wait to see her is three months.

Three months.

On the way back, we stopped in Bakersfield, where we met the amazing Matthew Cruise. Matthew’s a Vietnam war veteran who went on to start a microfinance NGO, Pull Up from Poverty.

Despite having insurance, Matthew’s wife is going to go to India to have her hip replacement surgery performed. Why? Because the trip to India and the cost of surgery is still cheaper than their 20% patient responsibility.

We have had the good fortune to work with Meghan Newell, a fantastic video editor who put these together:

If you need another reason to call congress here are 65 more.

Call for Grace, who lost her husband.

Tell your sister to call for Liz’s sister, who doesn’t know how she’ll pay her emergency room bills.

Have your cousin call for Steven, whose premiums have increased 107% in 30 months.

Have your best friend for Margriet, who can’t read this diary entry because she can’t afford her Glaucoma medication.

Have your Mom call for for Toni, so her children won’t go without health insurance.

Just call.