A Baby Story.

]]> http://steveandmccall.com/steve/hes-here/feed/ 5 http://steveandmccall.com/steve/wells-fargos-inconvenient-services/ http://steveandmccall.com/steve/wells-fargos-inconvenient-services/#comments Thu, 25 Jun 2009 13:42:58 +0000 skivy http://steveandmccall.com/steve/?p=185

As Wells Fargo has moved into the 21st Century so have their banking options. Being a former employee of the Banking giant I am no stranger to the many wondrous products and services the love to offer. Even while on the phone with Customer Services you can expect to receive pitches. But they do have some products and services that have made my banking experience tolerable enough (barely) to pay a $35 overdraft fee even when I have a couple thousand in another account (or $10 overdraft fee if you have a credit card attached as Overdraft Protection). And so I shall list:

The offer Online Banking at their convenient Main Website. I hate going in so this has been great for me.

The offer free Online Bill Pay for students (or at least they did when I opened my account).

The offer recurring transfers between accounts for routine transactions. A great way to save money.

A new product that they launched not too long ago was their lightweight mobile website. www.wf.com.

These are the regulars.

Stick with me, I’m trying to be positive before I lay into them …and here we go.

Recently I noticed that you can have the Wells send you an email or a text message triggered by account states. Meaning that if I drop below $100 dollars in my checking account, I can get a message notifying me and I can be more careful with my money. (Did you know that all Wells Fargo locations are financed with Fees they collect from their customers? At least that is what I was told in Orientation five years ago.)

No problem, right? A great way to stay on top of your money, or at least that is what I thought until I set up the very scenario mentioned above (along with a couple of others). I receive the alerts, which is what the service is designed to do, HOWEVER I RECEIVE THEM AT 3 AM.

The first one I assumed was a fluke so I thought nothing of it. However, I have been receiving them for 6 months now and every one of them is in between 3:00 and 4:00 in the morning.

“Now Stephe, why don’t you just turn them off?” Well, I sleep through them now, because I’m used to them. But my wife doesn’t.

“Six months later?!” I can hear you say. Well, my wife is patient (or afraid of me).

So I got on the website like a good customer and tried to find out how to change the time… no dice. Nothing on the subject. So I called Customer Support, and after offering me a new product they transfered me to the Online Baking department. After a wait and another product offer I was transfered to the Mobile Banking department. After a verbal disclosure that he was going to offer me more products and services I was told that the notification time could not be changed.

I repeated back to the rep, “So what I hear you telling me, and please correct me if I’m wrong but, if I’m going to receive the messages I have to do so at 3 to 4am?” He stammered for a bit and then recited something about “the time our servers switch over…” So I said that what I was hearing him say was “Yes, only between 3 and 4.” He didn’t rebut so I thanked him for his time and ended the conversation.

On that note, I’ve been thinking about starting a cellphone company that only provides services from 1 am to 5 am. Or an airline that only flies on Friday the 13ths and September 11ths.

My point is: I recognize this is an optional service that I am opting into, however it is unusable by the population at large. I cannot imagine someone interested in this unless they work the swing shift or they are avid ravers.

Advise: Wells Fargo if you would like to make a service to attract the younger, tech savvy customers to bank with you I recommend making it usable.

P.S.- Oh, and if I wanted to open another CD or get a Visa Debit Card for another of my accounts I’LL TELL YOU. Thanks.

Thanks for pointing this my way Dean.

http://theworldinpolaroid.blogspot.com/

(sorry WP broke my links)

Recently I have found the need to take more control of the Dock in OS X. There are basic functions of the Dock that can be changed by System Preferences built into OS X, but there are tons of options that aren’t available by a built in Graphical User Interface (ie. the pretty window).

While there are some awesome third party apps like Onyx and TinkerTool that give you access to these preferences the downside is you have to install an app. While I have both of these installed on my personal machine I do not want them installed on my Labs in the schools I work for. Yet, I need some of the power they offer to keep my Labs uniform and running.

So to do this I have been trying to learn how to manipulate these preferences though the command line.

The function that kids always seem to find and mess with is the size of the dock. Even with Parental Controls enabled (which I have had quite a bad time with anyway) there is no way to lock this functionality down in System Preferences. So I present to you the ability to do it through Terminal, and in so doing through Apple Remote Desktop as well.

Too little for me to see!!!

And if you are going to push this out, to lets say, a lab of computers you may want to make all of the uniform first. If not, skip this step.

Resize dock to uniform level:

       defaults write com.apple.Dock tilesize -integer 32

Ok now the meat and potatoes.

Lock down ability to scale dock:

       defaults write com.apple.Dock size-immutable -bool true

       killall Dock

Unlock ability to scale dock:

       defaults delete com.apple.Dock size-immutable

       killall Dock

Much better.

This is tested and works in OS X 10.5.6.

**Thank you TinkerTool, Daniel, and Justin.

**Update 2/27/09: Here is the command to lock the contents of the Dock as well.

Lock Dock Contents:

        defaults write com.apple.Dock contents-immutable -bool true

        killall Dock

Unlock Dock Contents:

        defaults delete com.apple.Dock contents-immutable 

        killall Dock

From an admirer to the Crew. Thank You.