Monday, December 29, 2014

Flip Key, Trip Adviser Slow Paying Clients

Horrible Customer Service, Slow Pay Of Rentals
Flip Key is an online property rental service for people who own vacation homes.  Owners can list their property through Flip Key.  People interested in leasing a resort property can then book.  What makes the entire process appealing is Flip Key's association with the large hotel booking company, Trip Adviser.

For some unknown reason, Flip Key is now slow paying homeowners even after taking full payment from the guest.  The homeowner is then left with a choice, evict the guest who has already paid, or sit tight and see if Flip Key will eventually remit the money.

Of course, you can't call Flip Key personally to bitch about their poor payment service.  Instead, users are forced to refer to a help page where the following question is posed by Flip Key, with the attached answer:

"I still haven't received my payment. When will I get paid?
Over the past month, FlipKey has been working on merging systems to take greater advantage of TripAdvisor's world-class vacation rental expertise. These changes have temporarily impacted the automatic disbursement of funds, and some payments are not arriving to you when you normally expect them. We are aware of this issue and are working to resolve it as quickly as possible.

In the meantime, in order to make sure that we are sending the correct amounts to the right people, we are taking some extra time to make sure that things go smoothly. We are working to get your money sent to you as close to its expected arrival date as possible. However, this short delay might continue for the next few weeks.

We appreciate your patience as we address the issue."




Really, it must be the owner's fault for choosing Flip Key in the first place.  If they had read everything there was to know about Flip Key, they would have found Flip Key's own notice about slow payment.

Usually. slow payment spells one thing: financial trouble.  We don't know if Flip Key and Trip Adviser are having financial rough times, but they sure act like it.

Use Flip Key at your own risk.

Friday, December 26, 2014

"The Interview" A Riot, But Was America Honeypotted?

Sony Pictures "The Interview" is an absolute, though perhaps, risque, riot.  The movie tells the story of a television talk show host who has an opportunity to boost his ratings by interviewing the reclusive leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Un.

To every one's surprise, Kim Jon Un appears as an insecure but very personable human being unlike the god-like and unforgiving supreme being the talk show host and his producer have been led to believe they will meet.  Soon after arrival in North Korea, the audience is given the hope there might be a future left for humanity after all, if the two cultures could only understand one another.

The comedy team of Seth Rogen and James Franco pack in the laughs as they poke fun at more than just the "Supreme Leader" of an isolated nation with it's finger on the button which if pushed will result in mutual assured destruction through nuclear holocaust.  The comedy team takes square aim at gays, Jews, women, minorities, the CIA and human sexuality, all with equal abandon.

The film pens a term "honey potting" as a certain sucking up of the fairer sex to get what they want from an often naive male class.  The term is confused with "honey combing" and "honey dicking" for gay males who fall for the same basic tactic.

However, one must wonder, if perhaps it was the American public who got honey-potted.  The cyber attack against Sony Pictures brought defenders out of the woodwork including President Barack Obama and theater goers singing "God Bless America."  Even the F.B.I. got into the act, previewing the movie so they could learn how to manage cyber-criminals.  The movie has been a sellout everywhere it played and the home revenues are not yet tallied.  But no one has pinned the cyber attack which led Sony Pictures to initially cancel the airing of the film on North Korean hackers.  If it turns out the "cyber attack" on Sony Pictures was accomplished as an in-house event for publicity, it will go down as one of the most successful publicity stunts in the history of film.

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The film opened on Christmas day in over 300 theaters, with an in-home release via Google Play, YouTube Movies, Microsoft Xbox Video, with a possible deal with Netflix in the works.

Just in case Kim Jon Un is as crazy as they say, this is a movie all patriotic Americans should see.  If North Korea retaliates against such a scandalous portrayal of their God-like leader, at least a lot of people will have had a laugh at a truly sad situation, a basic lack of understanding between people who poop and pee just like everyone everywhere.  Sometimes the best diplomacy is accomplished through laughter and seeing each other as stuck on one planet where no one is perfect.

Friday, December 19, 2014

Dick Cheney Does Not Care We Tortured Innocent People

Most people would have a problem the U.S. has been involved in torture.  Dick Cheney not only has no problem with torture, he is fine with torturing innocent people.

In Nazi Germany, they didn't care much about their methods because they were sure to win the war.  We know what happened at Nuremberg to many of those Nazi perpetrators after they lost the war.  They were hanged until dead.



Dick Cheney thinks Americans are safer by using tactics that violate human and civil rights.  War crimes are not war crimes when we have an undeclared war.  America is in the right to protect her "homeland", a name penned during the Bush administration which sounds a lot like the "fatherland" of dictatorial regimes of years gone by.

The people who committed the torture should be treated with impunity according to the pro-torture camp.  They don't see how the methods used outside of the country, and even within the country, considering a military base is considered "American territory" while it is under the control of the U.S. military, affect the way Americans will be treated when captured.  Cheney and his supporters have thrown the principles of the Geneva Convention out the window and placed our people at risk of retaliatory treatment.

The way we treat citizens of other nations affects the way America is viewed by other nations.  It is fine for the most powerful country in the world to violate notions of human decency and fair treatment, but countries of lesser power cannot do the same?  On what moral ground can we complain about torture perpetrated upon U.S. citizens when the most powerful people in America support torture?

We have been on a path in which America, as a world leader, sets the pace for how "detainees", prisoners of war, should be treated.  Our own soldiers will no doubt face similar abuses.  When they do, you can be sure Dick Cheney will be first in line to call foul.