There are a lot of things I wanted to cover today, unfortunately I wasn’t able to finish this post prior to class this afternoon, so bear with me … there’s a lot here.

Those of you who are local I’m sure have been following the story of the busload of Marines that overturned Sunday. They were from E Co., Anti-Terrorism Battalion, 4th Marine Division, returning from a weekend training exercise. I read this morning about Lance Cpl. David Miles, the Marine that passed away Monday afternoon from his injuries. However, even in death he still served others.

“According to his mom, he was very adamant about (donating) his organs … so the mom is very adamant about carrying out his wishes of harvesting as many of his organs as possible.”

Courtesy of The Birmingham News.

No doubt about it in my mind, he’s a hero. Courtesy of Villainous Company, here’s another tale of heroism: America’s Female Warriors Show Bravery, Loyalty. Greta highlighted a brave soldier’s father that she has met through Soldiers’ Angels: Robert Stokely, a fellow SA member and father of Mike Stokely who proudly gave his all for his country in Iraq.

Honestly the grace and bravery that our finest men and women exhibit every day never cease to amaze me. Too bad the liberal media doesn’t show them more often!

On Cookie’s site earlier today, I read a story about a couple of vets experiencing problems with Verizon:

Verizon Cancels Returning Marines’ Cellphones, Gives Their Number Away, Charges Them $500

Two Marines, a husband and wife, found Verizon had an unpleasant welcome-home gift waiting for them when they got back from serving in Iraq: canceled cellphones, a $500bill, and their phone numbers were given to other people. Under the Service Members Civil Relief Act, when a soldier goes off to war, they’re able to send their deployment letters to their service companies and get their service put on hold. Apparently in the case of Haley Katz and her husband, that letter wasn’t good enough. When they complained and reached a manager, the manager told them ” it was their fault they owed the money”, and then hung up on them. Read their letter as published in Stars and Stripes, inside…

At 3:30 a.m (Iraq time), [recently], my husband and I called Verizon Wireless to reactivate our phones, as we are returning home [from Iraq] soon and wanted to catch the company during its business hours. Upon speaking with a customer service representative, it became apparent that Verizon not only suspended our contracts, it disconnected our phones and gave our numbers away to other customers.

What is truly amazing is that the company took the letters our commanding officers signed regarding our deployment dates, and deemed the letters not worthy of suspending our contracts. It continued to charge us for those months without notifying us and when we did not pay, it disconnected the lines.

Long story short, when we called to reactivate our phones they told us our numbers no longer existed and that we owed them nearly $500!

When we asked to speak to a manager, we were told nothing could be done. When we did actually speak to a manager we were told it was our fault that we owed the money. The manager then proceeded to say “We’re sorry but nothing can be done for you. Goodbye.”

We were hung up on … in Iraq … at 3:30 in the morning. Real professional.

We spoke to another manager who was courteous enough to recredit our accounts and cut all remaining ties with their service. We are no longer with Verizon Wireless.

For all of the soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen out there, make sure you are checking up on the status of your accounts. Apparently, a letter from your command stating you are deploying is not enough these days. And aside from seeing service members off at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point (N.C.), I am not sure what else they are looking for.

Marine 2nd Lt. Haley Katz
Camp Fallujah, Iraq

I’ve heard horror stories about Verizon and their crappy customer service for years, but this takes the cake!

And speaking of human depravity, there’s the Berkley protesters. We’ve all heard of this one, right? Today, Rachel Lucas gave plenty examples of and commented on the ‘fine minds’ (and I say that lightly!) objecting to our nation’s finest.

Somebody please put these morons out of our misery!

Moving on to cooler (and more intriguing) things … a Starbucks employee donates a kidney to her customer. In today’s Mental Floss blog postings, a UAB study is mentioned where researchers are studying the use of scorpion venom in cancer medication. (YAY us!) Also, one of my fave sci-fi blogs, IO9, tells me that there is a remake coming for one of my favorite ‘B’ movies, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! And last but not least, a funny bit courtesy of A Bama Blog: How to tell that you’ve ticked off an engineer.

I think that just about covers it.

Oh … before I forget … anyone going to OmegaCon this weekend?

That’s the question Twitter asks me, as do a few other social networking sites/services … what are you doing?

My last Twitter (prior to this post) pretty much summed up my day:

I hate hate HATE hsbc auto, I swear this company employs the most moronic imbeciles on the face of this planet.

Over the past 3 months, I have tried to get my name and contact information corrected on my account with HSBC. They have had our email addresses and phone numbers wrong ever since we bought Jim’s car. I put off correcting that information because I knew I’d have to get my name changed after the wedding.

November: I called and requested the procedure for getting my name and other account information corrected. I was told to mail in a copy of our marriage license and an outline of what I wanted changed, and sign and date it, and a confirmation letter would be sent to me when the account is updated. So I did. A month later, nothing updated in my account, no letter from HSBC. So I called, and was told that they must not have received my letter. So I sent another with another copy of our marriage license, even included a screenshot and highlighted the information that I wanted changed. I waited another month, heard nothing, account still not updated.

I called in just after the new year. I was told that “something was received” but there were no changes to the account and the CSR couldn’t tell what had been sent in. I explained my frustration, and was transfered to the clerical department. I was then asked to fax in a copy of the letter that I had already sent in TWICE and wait another week to check back on my account.

So a week ago, I faxed it in. I checked my account this morning and my name was finally changed, but NOTHING else had been touched. At this point, I was beyond aggravated. I called HSBC Customer Service. I explained why I was calling and quickly summed up my previous efforts to get my account updated. The first person I spoke with was not helpful in any way. She told me that my account had previously been updated, I asked why the updates were not reflected in my account online. She said she didn’t know. I also asked why I didn’t receive a confirmation letter stating that my account had been updated. She told me that they don’t do that. When I asked to speak to a supervisor next, she wanted to know why I wanted to speak to her supervisor.

Why the hell do you think?

I told her that I had a grievance and wanted to speak with someone who could help me. It wasn’t my intention to complain about her, but that didn’t stop her from putting me on hold and transferring me back to their AUTOMATED MENU SYSTEM. I was furious. I called back, and got her again. When I told her that I was still waiting to speak with a supervisor, she hung up on me.

At this point, I was livid. It was bad enough I had to keep calling back, and each time I had to hunt through their automated menu system to find an option that would get me through to a real person — they removed their “speak to a customer service agent” option some time ago. I have not spoken to a CSR that actually SPOKE ENGLISH in over a year. On top of that, that pinhead was not only being non-helpful in the worst way, she was PISSING ME OFF!

I called back again and finally got through to a CSR. I explained who I was and why I was calling and that I needed to speak with a supervisor. I finally get through to a supervisor and of course his English is broken. I explained why I was calling and the trouble I had been having trying to get my account updated. I think I frustrated him as much as I was frustrated by the previous CSR because I had a hard time understanding him and kept having to ask him to repeat himself.

In the end, he agreed to get a letter out to me confirming the account updates. I’ll tell you this much, I will not ever again use them as a financing institution. I get letters all the time from them for things like auto insurance promos, offers for home insurance quotes, and so on. They won’t get any more of my business — as soon as we’re able, I’ll be re-financing with someone else.