Look, Chase, I want my credit card statement to come by mail

UPDATE: I tweeted a link to this article -- posted a link on X, if you must -- and was contacted by Chase soon thereafter. The upshot is that, supposedly, next month I will get a paper statement, as requested. We shall see.

Chase really wants me to "go paperless." I don't want to. I have repeatedly declined the bank's invitation to increase its already obscene profits just that much more by allowing Chase to avoid mailing me credit card statements.

But Chase is no longer taking "no" for an answer.

I had a bill due yesterday. I paid it on line, as I usually do. Chase asked me to go paperless, as it usually does. I declined, as I always do. Or I thought I did. Take a look:

(This image, and the ones that follow, have been edited to remove any trace of my actual account number. Click on any image to enlarge or clarify.)

My thought process was this: I don't want paperless statements; therefore, by not checking the items, I should escape paperless status one more time.

Chase thought differently. This is from the email it sent me announcing my 'successful enrollment' in paperless communications:

That did not get me upset. Perhaps the webpage is ambiguously worded. Possibly I misunderstood. Besides, there should be a simple solution: Go back on the Chase website and click that which had been previously unclicked... and this I promptly did:

Problem solved, right?

Wrong!

Chase promptly sent me another email telling me I had somehow again 'successfully enrolled' in paperless communications.

Heads they win, tails I lose.

Now I am upset. Since these are the only two options, one of them should result in Chase mailing me statements on paper as I want.

But Chase thinks differently.

Chase's interpretation of its own webpage reminds me of this exchange from the 2007 animated feature Shrek the Third where Prince Charming tries to pin down Pinocchio as to Shrek's whereabouts:

Prince Charming: You! You can't lie! So tell me puppet... where... is... Shrek?
Pinocchio: Uh. Hmm, well, uh, I don't know where he's not.
Prince Charming: You're telling me you don't know where Shrek is?
Pinocchio: It wouldn't be inaccurate to assume that I couldn't exactly not say that it is or isn't almost partially incorrect.
Prince Charming: So you do know where he is!
Pinocchio: On the contrary. I'm possibly more or less not definitely rejecting the idea that in no way with any amount of uncertainty that I undeniably...
Prince Charming: Stop it!
Pinocchio: ... do or do not know where he shouldn't probably be, if that indeed wasn't where he isn't. Even if he wasn't at where I knew he was...

[Pigs and Gingerbread Man begin singing]

Pinocchio: That'd mean I'd really have to know where he wasn't.

It's all quite amusing in the movie. But it's aggravating as all get-out when Chase tries this in real life. I want my statements by mail, Chase. Please.

Day 4 of no home Internet: AT&T still hasn't found the squirrel; I'm not sure they're really looking

I published my sad tale of home Internet loss on Monday evening. I'd figured out/remembered how to turn a cell phone into a hot spot by then. Thus, I had two hot spots -- the one under my collar and the aforementioned phone -- and a means by which to inflict my admittedly First World problem back upon the Internet itself.

I fancy myself a writer these days. Writers write. (At least, we're supposed to.) And, as Mark Twain may or may not have said, "Write what you know." (Maybe it was Hemingway who said it. Whatever. This sort of direction puts a person like me at a competitive disadvantage, given how little I know about anything. But I knew about not having Internet. So I wrote about that.) The trick, of course, is to frame one's complaints in a way that proves instructive or at least amusing for others. When successful, this raises the output from mere whiny journaling to something more. Not much more, perhaps (after all, it is still whining), but that is for the reader to decide. Either way, I found the exercise therapeutic.

Yesterday morning, still pleased with my effort, I Tweeted out a link to the post. (I still say "Tweet" when referring to a posting on X. If I were to write 'I X'd something out' it would be, in my view, ambiguous. Had I crossed something out, rendering it illegible, or had I launched it into the wider world on the social media platform now known as X?)

The X-post elicited a response from AT&T. A person who is probably not known as Emma to her actual friends and family left a comment which read, in pertinent part, "I completely understand how important it is to count on reliable connections and I truly apologize for the inconvenience this has caused to you. I'll definitely look into this. Could you please help me with the zip code?"

I provided it. Soon thereafter, Emma left another reply, "Thank you for sharing the zip code. As I have checked with the shared zip code there is no service interruption from our end." Welcome to Corporate America, where the customer is always wrong. But I was prepared for this; I had (you may recall) figured out how to sign onto the AT&T website and check for outages that way. I published a photo of my laptop screen, similar to the one above. Identical, really, except the one above is from this morning. I also published another screenshot, this one showing the area of outage. It's small. No more than a block or two in any direction. (Which is why I assume that a squirrel caused it, as opposed to the North Koreans or some piratical band of Eastern Europeans.)

Anyway, confronted with the evidence of her own website, "Emma" was forced to concede, "As per the picture it looks like there's an outage at your location. I'll definitely get this checked for you. Could you please meet us in a DM so that we can take this further."

Now I have to admit, despite Doomscrolling far more than I should on X, I have never used the DM feature to any great extent. My first mistake was thinking I was to find a way to DM "Emma." But that's not how it works. Eventually, I figured out that I had to DM AT&T itself. "Emma" was there waiting... but not for long. I also didn't know how or where to look for DM responses, so I didn't see her responses until after she completed her shift.

"Emma" was replaced by "Juan."

Hello, Jack. I understand that you are experiencing issues with the Internet service due an outage. We're really sorry to know about the situation you're experiencing. You can be sure our specialized tech team is working hard to get everything up and running as soon as possible.

I sparred with Juan for awhile yesterday afternoon and evening. He sent me back to the website which I've visited a hundred times in the last few days. Shockingly, it still showed an outage. It still does. Juan later insisted, "I've carefully reviewed and checked the area, we have our engineers working right now to bring the internet back on and repair all the lines damaged." He thanked me for my non-existent patience. Both Juan and Ella were unfailingly polite.

But you know what? It doesn't matter. My Internet is still out. It's a relatively nice day today here in Chicago; I could, and did, take a good long walk through the neighborhood this morning, looking for any specialized AT&T engineers. I didn't find any. And my Internet is still out.

On the other hand, I also didn't find a dead squirrel. Maybe finding the bloated, decaying rodent corpse is more difficult than one would think... but, then, I lack any sophisticated squirrel detection equiptment: I am not a specialized AT&T engineer.

Day 2 of no home Internet is about to become Day 3 and desperation is beginning to set in

I'm not Andy Rooney, but I'm feeling cantankerous and curmudgeonly these days and, like the late Mr. Rooney, I'm not afraid to tell you about it.

I don't know for certain when our home Internet went down. It may have been out Sunday morning before my wife and I went to Mass; it was certainly gone afterward.

I don't overreact. I know the drill. First unplug the router, then restart it.

Nope.

Then unplug the Internet modem. Restart that.

Nope.

Only then did I try to find a telephone number where I could report my situation and, perhaps, find out whether my issue was a failure of my equipment or whether I was caught up in a larger problem. I found a number fairly quickly.

The AI that answered my call told me, in an annonyingly cheery voice, that it needed to run a few tests to check the problem. These tests took a bit of time. "Thank you for your patience," the cheery AI said. Goes to show you how bad AI is at reading us meatsacks: I had no patience at all. And that was at the beginning of this odyssey.

When the tests were concluded, the AI agreed that there was an outage in our area. But, the AI enthused, AT&T is aware of the problem and they are working to fix it. The AI estimated that repairs would be complete by 2:14 p.m.

But the Bears game started at noon! We cut the cable cord some years back; streaming was cheaper (well, it used to be). On the other hand, recent Bears games had all come down to 4th quarter; perhaps it would be alright.

The oddly specific estimated time for restoration of service came... and went... and the angry red lights were still flashing on the Internet modem. I called again. The AI was still cheery, but it may have been drinking. After again running a few tests ("thank you for your patience") and confirming that there was still an outage in my area, the AI offered a new estimated restoration time of "dollar sign-brackets." The Bears managed to win without my watching.

I called a couple more times yesterday, but the AI, perhaps embarrassed by its estimated restoration time of "dollar sign-brackets," refused to give any more estimated restoration times. After running its lengthy tests, while thanking me -- again -- for my patience, the AI did add -- in its insistently upbeat way -- that it understood how frustrating this was, but I didn't believe that any more than you do.

The Internet was still down this morning. So I called again. After running a few more tests (how many are there?), and thanking me for my patience, and conceding that there was, indeed, still an outage in my area, the AI braved a new restoration time: 4:50 p.m.

I understand that it's cold outside. But wouldn't you think that a ginormous corporation like AT&T could dispatch a technian to look for the remains of whatever squirrel that bit through the wire that brought down our local Internet service? Given how much it charges for its services, AT&T presumably could even furnish its technician with a heated truck.

If AT&T did have someone driving around the neighborhood looking for a squirrel carcass, he or she was not successful in his search, because 4:50 came and went this afternoon and the Internet was not restored.

I figured out how to sign on to the AT&T website today; this way, I don't have to listen to the AI anymore. But, since the 4:50 p.m. restoration time slipped by, the website has stopped guessing restoration times. At least it didn't tell me that my service would be restored by dollar sign-bracket.

And, without the distraction of TV, I had a chance to catch up on my reading a little. I read my AT&T bill for one. It seems AT&T is going to increase my bill by $5 starting next month. Who'd have guessed that?

Thank you for your patience.

Too big to fail, and too big, even, to pay attention...

We live in a marvelous age. From my computer, or even my phone, I can order almost anything, from almost anywhere, and have it on my doorstep in a moment. If I order from Amazon, and I'm willing to wait a couple of extra moments, Amazon will give me a digital credit besides.

Amazon has my credit card; I have my desires. I get stuff without having to leave the house; Amazon gets money.

Most of the time, it is a satisfactory relationship. Not healthy, necessarily, but satisfactory.

The picture above shows a Ninja Foodi Programmable 10-in-1 5-Quart Pressure Cooker and Air Fryer.

Amazon thinks I ordered one of these on August 21 of this year and directed that it be shipped to Vancouver, Washington, a place where I know no one and where I've never been.

I found what appeared to be an Amazon email in my inbox on the morning of August 22 advising me of this "purchase" and, of course, I completely lost my mind.

Mind you, as a sophisticated netizen, who knew damn good and well that I had not ordered this item, I did not click on any of the inviting links in said email. I fired up my computer, opened Amazon, and went to my recent orders page. And, of course, the order was not there. How could it be? I hadn't ordered it.

I found a "report a scam" address somewhere on the Amazon homepage and forwarded said email, advising of my suspicions that this must be some sort of phishing expedition.

Pretty good for an old guy, right?

But I am not just a good netizen, I am a cautious consumer. I went next to the webpage of the ginormous bank which issued the credit card I had linked to the Amazon account.

Ruh roh! Ginormous Bank showed a charge had been made for this item ($124.95, if you're comparison shopping).

Now we'd entered a different realm: Someone was trying to live in an even more marvelous age than thee or me. This person had found a way to order almost anything, from almost anywhere, and charge it to someone else's credit card. I had been hacked.

But I knew what to do. After fighting my way through not-at-all-helpful phone-menu Hell, I eventually got hold of a human at Ginormous Bank, advised of the fraudulent charge, and canceled the compromised card.

Meanwhile, later that same day, Amazon sent me an email proudly announcing that it had failed to cancel the fraudulent order but instead had shipped it.

In fairness, my initial email to Amazon (written before I knew that a charge had been made to my credit card) did not say outright that this order was fraudulent. When I forwarded that first email, advising that the order appeared to have been placed, I wrote, "This looked legitimate -- as well as fraudulent. I checked my account online to verify that no such product was ordered, but this is a definite phishing attempt."

So -- again -- good netizen and good customer that I am -- and within a few hours of receiving same -- I dutifully forwarded the shipping email to the Amazon "report a scam" address with a more carefully worded email, the pertinent portions of which are as follows:

I have received another email on this fraudulent transaction. I am forwarding this email herewith.

I reported this fraudulent transaction by email this morning.

I did not see this order show up on my Amazon Orders page. It is not there yet. However, the credit card that I have linked to Amazon was charged $124.95 in connection with this fraudulent purchase.

I have reached out to the card holder, disputed the transaction, and the card will be reissued.

I will change my Amazon password immediately.

Is there any other action I should take?

Thank you in advance for your anticipated prompt response.

Perhaps my communication skills are slipping... but I believe the above and foregoing was surely adquate to convey the fact that the order in question was fraudulent. This email was sent on the afternoon of August 22. Amazon said it planned to deliver the item in question -- to Vancouver, Washington -- on August 28. In other words, they had more than enough time to take the darned thing off the truck.

If they wanted to. If anyone was actually paying attention.

Amazon did not respond to this email specifically.

But that very night, in the wee small hours of the morning, Amazon sent me another email 'confirming' my order of a plant stand that I wanted sent to Barre, Vermont.

Another place I've never been.

And, of course, I had not ordered any plant stand. I fired off another email to Amazon "report a scam."

I must confess: Some ALL CAPS were involved....

But things seemed to settle down after that: Ginormous Bank issued me a new card. I linked said new card to my Amazon account and resumed ordering such gimcracks and gewgaws as I required. All seemed well with the world....

... Until last night. Why does Amazon send these things at night? (I fear I may know the answer: Our future AI-overlords have no need of sleep....)

Anyway, this latest email says, in essence, golly, your credit card issuer reversed the charge for this item... but we'd like our money anyway.

I've spent the morning trying to find a telephone number to call to complain. I did find a way to ask for Amazon to call me -- and someone did call -- and I related the facts as set forth here. Perhaps a bit more loudly. It didn't help that the "customer service" screens had no option for me to report (again) a fraudulent transaction. It also did not help that the call dropped twice. The poor lady who had to deal with me called back the first time; I guess she'd had enough after the second drop. I don't suppose, really, that I blame her.

Thereafter, after re-reading the latest Amazon email, I composed a terse, but rational, response (copying "report a scam" just in case they've never been introduced).

So far, I've received a generic reply to my response, mostly telling me to do all the things I did in August... when I first reported the situation. The interrupted phone call yielded this email:

I haven't responded, of course, because I don't know if the problem is resolved yet or not. Time will tell.

I am not entirely optimistic....

Why fix things that aren't broken? Aren't there actual broken things that need fixing?

Answer the second question first, please.

And, obviously, there can be only one answer to that one.

But, no, this morning, after being forced to reboot my fast-failing computer for the fourth time in two days (not counting the couple of times it's decided to reboot itself) and finally signing onto Blogger, your Internet home for this page and Page One of FWIW, I got the chilling message (reproduced above) in the upper left hand corner of my screen.

Things that actually work don't need improvement... such as the sign-in page for this site... and they especially don't need allegedly cosmetic 'look and feel' fixes.

Like how they "fixed" Quicken. Here was a perfectly good checkbook program, that worked well on its own, tied in with TurboTax, tied in with banks -- but, oh no, it needed improvement from a program that one updated every few years... to a subscription-only app, with an annual fee.

Gee... who did that help? Me? Consumers generally?

Now, instead of starting on command, Quicken begins its duties by looking for 'updates' -- and almost always finding them -- what is there to update so often? -- asking permission to download the updates found (you really don't have a choice) -- and then, after downloading said updates -- more often than not -- going back to sleep.

When I restart it -- again -- I can almost hear Quicken say, what? you wanted me to do something? I think it's mocking me.

They "fixed" Adobe similarly. I would have liked an update to my legal copy of Adobe Acrobat 9.0... but I was not going to agree to an open-ended subscription. Although version 9.0 was no longer sufficient to open new cases when the "new and improved" Illinois Courts website launched, I could still use Reader for that. For my own appellate work, and for occasional discovery responses, Adobe 9.0 carried me through right up until when I shut down my practice...

...at least up until the point where Odyssey introduced "enhancements" that made it impossible for me to use WordPerfect to print a brief to .pdf in a single step.

I figured a way around that, too. It was clunky and inelegant, but it got the documents filed. But it was anything other than an "enhancement."

I know I sound like an old guy that complains about every change in my routine.

And there is an element of truth in this, I admit.

If I didn't so admit, my kids would tell you all about how I fulminated at my first smartphone, calling it all sorts of names, as I tried to make the screen not blank out or change every time I touched the darned thing, the most polite of which may have been "Spawn of Satan"... but it is not true that I tried to buy a smartphone with a rotary dial. The kids exaggerate.

Some, anyways.

But I eventually reached a modus vivendi with my phone... and, now, one or more phones, successors to that original fiend, are my inseparatble companions. I can learn. And grow. And adapt.

I can even embrace change, sometimes, when I can find some advantage or benefit in it.

But I don't hold out much hope for Google's planned improvements here. And I know there are plenty of real problems that Google could address first... but won't.

Talk about timely! CBA Bar Show anticipates holiday headline

The printed circuitry on the faces of Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed is reproduced on all the promotional materials for the Chicago Bar Association's 100th Annual Bar Show, "It's AI Wonderful Life." It's the cover story on this month's issue of the CBA Record, for example.

This year's production will be staged January 12 and 13 at the Studebaker Theater in the Fine Arts Building, 410 S. Michigan Ave. Tickets are available at this link.

The Bar Show, formerly known as "Christmas Spirits," has always taken aim at the highlights (or lowlights) of the news of the year -- but, this year, with their cybernetic Jimmy Stewart, they appear to have actually predicted the news.

Or haven't you heard?

Although Jimmy Stewart died a quarter of a century ago, in 1997, he is being resurrected, sort of, by the sleep and meditation app Calm. According to CNN, Calm has employed "Generative AI" to imitate Stewart's distinctive drawl reading a new story, "It's a Wonderful Sleep Story." It's all being done with the consent and permission of Stewart's heirs.

Both CNN and USA Today quote Stewart's daughter, Kelly Stewart Harcourt: "It's amazing what technology can do and wonderful to see Dad’s legacy live on this holiday season in new ways, like helping people find restful sleep and sweet dreams."

Here, of course, where the surviving family is on board, this innovation seems reasonable... if maybe a little creepy. But... what if there is no surviving family? What if there is no estate managing the 'talent's' afterlife affairs? Does a voice ever slip into the public domain? This seems like an appropriate use for Jimmy Stewart's voice... again, the family thinks so... but could the voice of a dead actor... or politician... or religious leader... or tyrant... be employed for less innocent, even evil, purposes?

Technology is amoral. And not at all concerned about it, either.

Just because we can do something... like find new ways to exploit the images and voices of dead celebrities... does that mean we should?

I suspect lawyers and lawmakers will be grappling with these issues long after "It's AI Wonderful Life" is forgotten entirely. But (doing my best Jimmy Stewart imitation now), doggone it, the CBA got there first. Isn't that amazing?

All PDFs are not created equal... at least not for e-filing

You might have read, or been told, somewhere along the line that PDFs are the universal file format. Everyone has at least Adobe Reader (to the point where we giggle smuggly at websites that offer users a chance to download the "Free Adobe Reader" program -- can we still say program instead of app?) and every device can open a .pdf file.

When e-filing started to menace the legal world, more than a decade ago, the concept was that all documents would have to be converted to PDFs. And even before that: I kinda, sorta recall turning in a 3.5" floppy disk with a brief I filed in the 7th Circuit back in 2003. I had to have help doing that from the good folks at Kinko's. I remember the employee in the clerk's office figuratively patting me on the head. "At least you tried," he said.

It wasn't too long after that when I went out and bought Adobe Acrobat. And at some point, relatively early on, I figured out that WordPerfect would print a file to PDF. Between Adobe and WordPerfect I eventually got pretty good at creating and efiling my documents (not that there weren't hiccups on the way). And there was one time that I scanned a lengthy Memorandum Opinion and Order into a .pdf file never noticing that, while trying to scan the two sided-pages, I somehow got them all jumbled. I used the Record copy in preparing my brief... but included the .pdf I had on hand in the Appendix, never noticing the problem... until I started printing out the court's paper copies. Kinko's again. Now FedEx Kinko's, but you know what I mean.

But, for the most part, I've struggled along, lurching awkwardly into the 21st Century.

Not too long ago, the Illinois Courts website started putting up Appellate and Supreme Court opinions and orders in .pdf files that my venerable copy of Acrobat would no longer open. That's not right -- "universal" standards should surely be backward compatible -- but Adobe Reader provided a free and easy workaround, so I didn't complain. Much. Where anyone could hear me, anyway. I probably should upgrade my copy of Adobe -- but when was the last time you saw Adobe Acrobat on the shelf in the store? (Noooooo... everything is a subscription download these days... but I'll spare you that rant, for now.)

The latest problem began just a few months ago. I needed to file a motion in an appeal in which I'd already appeared -- just a half dozen or so pages including the motion, supporting affidavit, proposed order, and proof of service -- nothing I hadn't done, without incident, dozens of times before. And the "envelope" was rejected -- not by the Clerk, mind you, but by Odyssey. Today, they called it a "submission failure." I didn't save all the emails from my initial encounters with this phenomenon, but I believe the terminology then was similar, if not identical.

Experienced and stubborn fellow that I am, I probably re-submitted my envelope a dozen or so times, always getting the same result, albeit at a steadily increasing pulse rate.

Eventually, I printed out my papers, handscanned each page into a new .pdf file, and submitted that. This, finally, went through.

But what had changed? I went looking for answers online. This is what the Odyssey site is saying today (click to enlarge):

"Enhancements"? That's an Orwellian use of a word; in the real world, an "enhancement" means something got better, not worse. WordPerfect may no longer be the leading word processing program; obviously, thanks to the monopolistic oppression of Microsoft, it hasn't been the industry leader for many years. But it is an infinitely superior program, IMO, to Word. (Indeed, Word has one---and only one---actual advantage over WordPerfect, namely, the Track Changes feature.) For an attorney, the chief advantage of WordPerfect is its flexible formatting: WordPerfect lets you set up a page or paragraph the way you want; Word lets you format any way that Mr. Gates wants -- and he evidently has a limited imagination. And woe betide you if you try and change or modify the least little aspect. I get it... people can get used to anything. They conform. They think they're doing things "right." But they are only doing things the Microsoft way.

Here's the link to the "Online Help Article" referred to in the screengrab above. Among the "common reasons" for submission failure is use of "PDF Producers other than Adobe Acrobat or Microsoft Word." Some "universal" standard, eh?

With a brief due date looming, I'd begun dreading another filing attempt. But reading the article gave me hope. This passage in particular suggested a way out: "When your document fails submission, you will need to recreate the file before resubmitting. The most common method of doing so is to print the document and scan it back into your computer."

I wasn't going to hand scan each page of a brief... but I could create a new PDF by 'printing' my unacceptable WordPerfect-generated copy of my brief to a new PDF. And I could do that with and from Adobe Acrobat -- supposedly one of the last remaining acceptable PDF-creators in Odyssey-land.

That's what I thought. But, of course, this morning... "Submission Failed."

A call to the Odyssey help line got me over the finish line. And for anyone else who uses a real word processor, you, too, may find this helpful.

The problem was that I had printed my brief from Adobe Acrobat to Adobe PDF. Despite the plain language of the Odyssey help article, this was ineffective.

Microsoft gets its oar in no matter what: There's a print option in Acrobat for "Microsoft Print to PDF." That's what I used... and that's what worked. It took a file that was a cozy 4.6 MB in size as originally created (and only 1.5 MB when reprinted to Adobe PDF) and huffed and puffed it into an elephantine 16.5 MB. But that was still within the Odyssey file size limits... and the filing went through.

And, as near as I can tell, the reprinting via "Microsoft Print to PDF" didn't screw anything up. Of course, my required paper copies are being run off at FedEx Kinko's this evening... so I guess I'll find out for sure tomorrow. But, in the meantime, there's an apparent workaround for this latest "enhancement."

O brave new world, that has such enhancements in it....