Dave Lieber’s new & expanded Watchdog Nation

Dave Lieber’s Watchdog Nation: Bite Back When Businesses and Scammers do you Wrong
Yankee Cowboy Publications, Keller, Texas, 2010, second edition (revised & expanded)

$20, and worth every penny.

ISBN-10: 0970853025

ISBN-13: 978-0970853028

I’ve been meaning to write this book review for a while, and kept putting it off. Partly because I was busy using the book myself. Since I started following these tips of Lieber’s closely I have changed my phone company, my electric company, and my Internet service. In those few acts alone I’ve paid for the book several times over. But the thing that set me to writing finally was a story a friend told me last week that made me want to kick something. Like a crooked roofing contractor.

My friend has been living in straightened circumstances for a number of years, getting by, but putting off a lot of things that needed doing. Finally, he could no longer put off having his flat-roofed Frank Lloyd Wright-style bungalow re-roofed. I had a real good one to recommend, who has done work for me a couple of times, and came to me via a contractor friend who has also worked for me a couple of times. My neighbors have also used and liked him. Word of mouth and satisfied customers is a good way to find a roofer. But my friend was trying to cut corners so he took the lowball bid from a guy who knew someone he knew. . . not a great introduction.

That job was slow, it was sloppy, and when torrential rains during the job got the house wet, everything turned musty and damp, and tar dripped down spots the inside walls. They didn’t finish promptly, they actually didn’t finish it. The rocks that need to be taken onto the roof are still in the side yard. The roofer had no insurance to pay for the damage to the house.

The worst (you mean, that’s not bad enough?) was discovered last week. The roofers (the only people allowed in this otherwise locked yard with very tall fences and gates) stole several expensive items. The theft was disguised by simply leaving behind the boxes and cases. A new pool pump, a good circular saw, the only evidence of their original habitation there are their empty boxes. Had my friend followed my recommendation, he would have had the job done for about the same quote as this fly-by-night roofer. And he wouldn’t have been out the hardware around the house or all of the time and expense of repairing the house now.

I’m sorry I didn’t write this review earlier, because I would have sent a copy of it to my friend and said “Do what Dave suggests – look at the local reviews, check with the BBB (Better Business Bureau), get personal recommendations from people you trust.” The bid price isn’t a bargain if the job isn’t done right, isn’t done at all, or is done so wrong as to cause more damage than a simply leaking roof will do.

I’ve sent copies of pages of this book to people. My brother received the pages (114-15) to do with complaining to the post office. It turns out that you CAN complain, you don’t have to take the desk clerk’s shrugged “that’s tough, you only paid for Priority, it wasn’t insured,” when you complain about something that went wrong that was under their control. (It seems the Artesia, CA, post office has a special drop-kick-and-thrash machine for both envelopes and packages, and special delay of weeks on delivering Priority mail.)

There was a woman at Lowe’s hardware in Fort Worth, TX, who was buying fans, and mentioned, “I have to set up an electric company in this new house. I suppose I’m stuck with TXU.” The clerk and I simultaneously said “NO!” but I was the one who was able to tell her how to do a good search to make a choice – “Go to Dave Lieber’s Watchdog Nation (http://www.watchdognation.com/) web site and look for his articles about how to choose an electric company.”

Dave Lieber is the consumer advocate columnist with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and he solves this kind of problem and shares the whys and wherefores with his readers for a living. This guy is good. He’s smart, he’s efficient, and I bet when he phones and has someone by the short hairs because of their company’s poor customer service, he’s a bit of a pain in the ass (though I do believe him when he says he tries really hard to be super polite, because he records his calls and if he needs to use them as evidence, he doesn’t want to sound like the bully in the conversation). And that old honey versus vinegar thing. I wish I had his discipline – I’ve had to hang up on some of these folks, telling them “I’m so angry at you I can’t be polite any more. Goodbye.” At least I learned from Dave to stop before I became rude, not slog forward and accomplish little.

Early in the book Lieber notes that 15 minutes a day to solve some of these problems may be the way to pace yourself, to not feel overwhelmed if you have several issues to solve. That’s a good strategy. And keep a separate folder and page of notes for each business and each call. Take names, real names, if possible.

I’ve glossed over a few of the tricks that Dave Lieber discusses in this little gem of a book. You’ll have to read it to find his descriptions of how to make these techniques work. His chapters are each no longer than a typical newspaper column, so you can read through this book a short chapter at a time, or read through it cover to cover in one sitting.

I still have work to do – my local Fort Worth cable company has the most obtuse billing system and the most inefficient customer service clerks I’ve ever encountered. Just try to get a credit to show up on your bill. They apply it to the “taxes and other charges” but it never seems to actually make the balance drop. So I’m still working on that. And on that, my best contact method is another one of Dave’s recommendations (and at least they’re pleasant to talk to, if their efforts still go for naught) is to type my frustration regarding this company into a line of my Twitter feed. Use the pound sign (hashmark) # with no space before the company name to make it easier for them to find your remarks. They’ll usually figure out who you are and actually call pretty quickly. I’ve heard from them within 30 minutes. Who knew?

One of the other really important things Dave comments on is to say “thank you” when it due. I’ve used tweets and written blog entries where appropriate to do just that. So this book review is also a blog entry and a “thank you” to Dave Lieber for a job really well done. I’m happy with the choices I’ve made, but I don’t feel obligated to stay with these companies forever and ever, if they do me wrong. That’s a good lesson!

Now, go ask a bunch of questions!

Kay Bailey Hutchison holds Bogus “town hall meeting” conference call

The phone rang while I was in the middle of fixing dinner, and offered a town hall style phone meeting. I’ve heard these before, our Congresswoman Kay Granger holds them occasionally. I pushed “O” to get into the queue to ask Hutchison a question, and then was treated to 30 minutes of Republican party propaganda and scare tactics, with softball questions lobbed her way by party members with down-home local accents, posting concerned questions about the end of Health Care As We Know It. Heaven forbid that women have the choice or coverage for abortion services, or that a public option be considered. And that precious “doctor/patient relationship” – you know, the one that your insurance company dictates with an iron fist – that was at risk.

It didn’t take long to figure out Democrats weren’t going to get to talk on this call. While at first I figured they must have dialed my phone by accident, after listening to the production values of the “meeting,” I am more convinced that it was a devious plan to try to make me listen to their political nonsense and be swayed by it. The only thing missing at the end was “This political ad was paid for by the elect Hutchinson for Governor campaign.”

What production values? The same ones that come into play on talk radio programs. I am familiar with those on KERA-FM, public radio. If I’m waiting to speak, I’m listening to the conversation seven seconds old. That delay is so if someone totally inappropriate comes on, they can zap it before it ever gets onto the air. Each of Kay’s “callers” was confused as to whether they were being spoken to because, it seems, they were listening to the delayed conversation, and the voice breaking in 7 seconds before the previous call ended was confusing.

But this could be a tactic also, to make it sound real. Because I’m convinced it wasn’t. I think it was a staged program in which Democrats were called but not allowed to talk. It is my hunch that the Hutchison campaign hoped to run their party line past the listening Democrats, trying to scare them with the “don’t let government take over health care” claims, and the suggestion that Canada and the United Kingdom have terrible health care. They don’t–it is actually quite good. And if you think those countries have “rationing,” just look at what American insurance companies are doing. They’re practicing medicine without a license, and they’re rationing, based upon what they will or won’t pay for.

What was I going to ask? I wanted to tell her to listen to this constituent–I want her to vote for this health care reform plan, not drag her feet to prevent progress. And I wanted to suggest she sit down in a one-on-one conversation with Dennis Kucinich and really learn what the issues are.

So I think she needs to come clean. Mrs. Hutchison, that wasn’t REALLY a town hall meeting, was it? That was a prolonged political trick to try to scare rational people into thinking Republicans have been shut out of the process (you walked away from it of your own free will, M’am) and that the reforms being proposed will end life as we know it.

Yes, I hope indeed that it does. And when 30 million additional people in America finally get health coverage, and the rest of us get fair coverage, and small businesses suddenly can compete on a more level playing field because in one way or another everyone will have health insurance, I think we’ll see a lot of other things improve for everyone. Too bad you chose not to be a part of it, Kay.

Goodbye, Cargill: I’ll never buy hamburger again

. . . confidential grinding logs and other Cargill records show that the hamburgers were made from a mix of slaughterhouse trimmings and a mash-like product derived from scraps that were ground together at a plant in Wisconsin. The ingredients came from slaughterhouses in Nebraska, Texas and Uruguay, and from a South Dakota company that processes fatty trimmings and treats them with ammonia to kill bacteria.

Enough is enough.

The opening quote is a portion of an article in the October 3, 2009, New York Times called “Woman’s Shattered Life Shows Ground Beef Inspection Flaws,” by Michael Moss, that is every bit as sickening to this modern reader as The Jungle was to readers in 1906.

The packing houses today are as corrupt in their parsing out of scraps and smattering of tests as they were when Upton Sinclair wrote his socialist manifesto. We hear about meat recalls regularly, but was I alone in assuming the government and commercial entities cared about eliminating unsafe meat? That they were doing their best to protect consumers, to prevent this from happening again? Apparently I’m in a large majority of consumers who missed which shell the ball was under when trying to shop at the Three Card Monte meat counter. This story has sent me hastening to my kitchen to dig out the Kitchenaid food grinder attachment. I have one and I know how to use it, and now it’s time to do more than grind carrots for salad. I’ll be making my own ground beef.

My friend Dean Crabtree, a smart man who is often ahead of the curve in food preparation and preservation (he’s my canning guru), this afternoon talked me through a crash course in choosing a cut of beef roast to use and how much fat to retain to grind my own burgers. And my mother, who read widely and would send me clippings regularly, years ago sent a snippet about handling meat: wash or spray it with vinegar and you’ll kill the bad stuff, including E. coli.

At this rate, in my rapid conversion as an eater of healthier meat, I’ll probably end up making my own sausage also.

I thought I was being careful and eating healthily. I cook meat to the right temperature, I handle it safely, I wash surfaces and my hands and the handles and crevices on knives. As far as cuts of meat, I have let more fat creep into my diet for sound reason—we need it to digest our food and for flavor. But this—I didn’t intend to let the scraps on the floor and out of the evisceration troughs onto my plate, topped with a slurry of E. coli gravy. To read about the offal that is going into our meat, and how poorly it is handled, is sickening.

Never one to leave an obvious detail hanging, I looked around for information about vinegar. From Nurse’s Notebook http://www.nursesnotebook.com, I found the following:

Researchers have looked at how vinegar might help protect us from foodborne illness. A Japanese study cited by many local extension services showed that vinegar inhibited the growth of the nasty E.coli 0157:H7 bacteria. Salt and heat enhanced the antibacterial action and sugar decreased it.[5] Marinating your meat with a vinegar and sea salt marinade is not only tasty, but can help protect you from E. coli infection.

Visit the page for the rest of the article and the footnote links.