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06/06/06 and Marketing Opportunities

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Even though friends gave me a hard time about my not pronouncing ’66’ correctly, ‘6’ has always been a lucky number for me. It started when I went to a pizza place with a group from school. My order number was ’66.’ During yesterday’s speech therapy, I said ‘6’ a few times and the therapist … Read more

Summer Jobs

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I wrote a letter in response to the question posed by The Dallas Morning News Collin County Edition: What did you learn from your first summer job, and was it worth it? During summer, are today’s teens better off getting a job or going to summer school? The long version of my response: I learned … Read more

One Part for Another and Rhetorical Figures

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Don’t remember studying anthimeria in school. Its origin is Greek meaning “one part for another.” “Google” is a popular anthimeria for searching. People say, “Google that.” Of course, using a company name as a generic name or verb is dangerous for the company. Here’s a good read on the topic. Better to verb nouns with … Read more

How Do You Pronounce That?

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Steve Blow, a columnist with The Dallas Morning News, covered frequently most pronounced words and followed up with reader input. I take this stuff seriously and appreciate anyone who corrects me. Since I often don’t hear the exact pronunciation of words and learn most words by reading, I’ve gotten in habit of saying some words … Read more

IRS Electronic Payment Pains

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I’ve gotten so much mail from EFTPS (Electronic Federal Tax Payment System — it must be an unwritten rule that everything government-named must be abbreviated — I worked in the federal government once upon a time), the IRS‘ (Internal Revenue Service) online payment service. Part of it is my fault and part of it is a usability problem.
Just now, I was trying to confirm the URL of the Web site and had the letters next to the keyboard. Either my vision has drastically changed in the few weeks since my last vision check up or the IRS has forgotten to add that bit of info to its letters.
The thick envelope also came with brochures and I’m guess Web address is there, but I already had copies and threw them away. Shouldn’t it be on the letterhead somewhere? The phone number shows up plenty.
When I first signed up for EFTPS, I used a different bank account than the one I need to use now. Following instructions on the Web site, I attempted to change the bank account number. The action prompted the system to send me a packet of information. I checked the site again later to see if it took the new bank account (as it said it would), no change.

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Communication Company Customer Service

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David Strom needs to switch phone service and he looks at Adelphia and Verizon. Do a search for any telecommunications company and you’ll see plenty of complaints about all of them. That’s because their systems are complex.
I’ve worked at two telecommunications companies for ten years and it gave me perspective into why customer service is often not a smooth process. Both of these companies have been around since the early 1900s. Because of this, they had legacy systems that could only do so much.
So they took the legacy systems further than they were ever supposed to go and added other systems to work with the legacy systems. With multiple systems connecting to each other (teleco to teleco, too), it’s no surprise data gets messed up along the way.

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