Scam Alert: Repair Saver...

I'm sure that you, like me, have received deceptive marketing mail before.  There's one that we get repeatedly – several times a year – that is a great example of the genre.

The cover of the mailed piece looked like this (with my name and address blacked out):

The warning, with its notice of a $2,000 fine and 5 years imprisonment, sounds really scary, doesn't it?  I can just see some nice little old lady reacting to that in exactly the way these marketers want her to: to open it up and find out what she has to do in order to avoid being thrown in the hoosegow.  While that warning is accurate, it's got nothing to do with this letter – it's the penalty associated with interfering with any first class mail.  It's there only to impress you with how vital it is for you to react.  In sales terms, they're building a sense of urgency.

When I saw that warning on the outside, I knew it was going to be some kind of sales pitch on the inside:

Now, if you read this carefully enough, it's obvious that they're trying to sell you something.  In this case, it's an extended warranty.  I have no idea if their insurance product is any good, though I do know that in general extended warranties – especially for cars – are a really bad deal for the consumer, and rife with fraud.  For all I know, this company is selling a perfectly good product.  But they're sure doing it deceptively, starting with the outside of the piece.

Inside, the first thing you see is that they know about the car you have.  We do, in fact, own a 2010 Toyota Tundra.  How this company knows that, I have no idea.  But it makes the marketing piece look more legitimate, doesn't it?  Nice deception.

Then you get the all-uppercase, scary looking notice that your factory warranty has expired, and you will now be responsible for repairs.  Well, of course I will be – if, in fact, our factory warranty has expired.  It has not expired, though, and we still have considerable coverage left on it – for precisely those things this extended warranty covers.  Very, very deceptive – it sure looks like they're trying to get me to buy a warranty for something already covered by my Toyota warranty!

I called the 800 number and got a pleasant fellow named Corey.  He verified that the company name was “Repair Saver” Then I went online to try to find out about the company, and discovered ... nothing.  Almost certainly that means the company is not actually Repair Saver, but instead another company doing business under that name – another deception, and this time it's one that is notorious in the extended warranty industry.  By operating under many names, and changing them frequently, these companies insulate themselves from careful consumers trying to find out about them.  Most especially, they don't want you to find out about all the unhappy customers they have.  It sure looks to me like Repair Saver is one of those.

I really hate this sort of deceptive marketing.  I make it a point to never do business with a company using such tactics.  They've lost my trust as a consumer without me ever buying one of their products...

Lyons Fire: the Final Final Update...

Debbie and I were able to drive up to the edge of the Lyons Fire burned area, right at four corners (where Lyons Valley Road meets Skyline Truck Trail and Honey Springs Road).  We drove a little ways up Honey Springs Road to get a view of the burned area.

There were quite a few fire crew members still on scene, both down by the roads and up in the burn.  A spotter plane circled overhead the entire time we were there (photo at right), and a tanker was working the fire as we approached.  CHP has Lyons Valley Road to the east of Four Corners closed off (presumably it's also closed at the intersection with Japatul Valley Road).

The burned area that we could see is shown below.  In the left-hand photo, north is about at the left edge; in the right-hand photo, east is about at the right edge.  The fire burned right to the top of the ridge at right, and quite possibly beyond that – we simply couldn't see from where we stood, and we couldn't go down Lyons Valley Road to see directly, as it was closed.






Here's a very rough map (below) I drew by hand to show the burn boundaries.  I can't tell for 100% sure, but it appears to me that the fire crews managed to protect all the homes on the north side of Lyons Valley Road.  I don't believe there were any structures in the burn areas uphill from those homes along Lyons Valley Road.

Links of the Day...

The Doom report.  Morningstar recently released a research report detailing the (mostly sorry) condition of the 50 state-run pension plans.  The total of unfunded liabilities was over $1.2 trillion in 2011.  The good news is that some of these state pension plans are in great shape (the bluish states).  The bad news is that most of them are not (the orange states).  I'm surprised by some of these states (New York, Montana, Alaska).  The report is full of great (though depressing) information...

Clear thinking alert!  Bruce Schneier is the best source for calm, clear analysis of security issues that I know of.  His blog is consistently interesting and informative (and on my daily read list), as evidenced by this recent post on the NSA's huge security problem, and on one blood price we're paying for the TSA's security theater...

What the hell is happening to my country?  A co-founder of the Sooner Tea Party (Oklahoma) is going to be tried on charges of blackmail and computer crimes – for sending an email demanding that his state representative do his job...

Low solar irradiance continues...  The NOAA has updated its solar cycle data, and it shows that the unexpectedly low number of sunspots in this cycle continues.  The red line is the NOAA's official prediction, which they've been revising downwards regularly.  Reminder: solar irradiance (brightness) decreases as the number and size of sunspots declines – the opposite of what you might think.  If those scientists who believe global temperatures are quite sensitive to solar irradiance are right, then we're in for a cooler period for at least the next 20 years.  The warmists think this is a lot of hooey...

Let me get this straight...  Kerry says something stupid that the State Department quickly backpedals from, then Putin says “What a great idea!”, Obama says “Yeah, baby!”, and Assad says “Sure, we'll give away all our chemical weapons!”  If someone wrote a novel with that plot, I'd call it implausible.  As I will the idea that Assad will actually give away his weapons, acquired with much expense and effort.  I think he's playing precisely the same game Sadaam did: let the foreigners in, delaying any military action against him, and then evading and hiding like crazy.  Bet you anything that Obama claims victory...

They don't understand business.  In fact, they detest business.  Obama thought he could pay for part of Obamacare simply by taxing the crap out of medical companies.  Now we're all paying the price: those companies, faced with hundreds of millions of dollars in new tax obligations, are laying off employees, abandoning promising research, and relocating to other countries.  The Obamanoids say this is “unexpected” – I call bullshit on that...

Ok, that's weird!  Does the photo of a lotus seed (at right) make you uncomfortable?  If so, you may have trypophobia, which may just be the strangest phobia I've ever heard of...

Stomp the stupid!  How should you respond to a petition asking you to do something technically stupid?  If you're Linus Torvalds, you do it like this:

Where do I start a petition to raise the IQ and kernel knowledge of people? Guys, go read drivers/char/random.c. Then, learn about cryptography. Finally, come back here and admit to the world that you were wrong. Short answer: we actually know what we are doing. You don't. Long answer: we use rdrand as _one_ of many inputs into the random pool, and we use it as a way to _improve_ that random pool. So even if rdrand were to be back-doored by the NSA, our use of rdrand actually improves the quality of the random numbers you get from /dev/random. Really short answer: you're ignorant.

The first computer bug.  Found 66 years ago by Grace Hopper, whom I've written about before...

Where can I buy some of these?  Gut bacteria that let you eat and be skinny...

Bomb Obamacare.  Instead of Syria.  So says Sarah Palin, whose PAC recently released the “death panel” ad at right...

Lyons Fire: Final Update...

The fire now has an official name: the “Lyons Fire”, and it's listed on the CDF incident site.  As of 7 pm last night, they're calling it 250 acres and 10% contained.  This morning's HPWREN view from Los Pinos looks better than that report sounds: there isn't the slightest trace of smoke visible:

We saw CDF aircraft flying over the fire site several times yesterday afternoon and evening, and we heard them early this morning as well.  My somewhat educated guess is that they're doing both visual inspections and infrared inspections, looking for hot spots that need attention.

The speed and efficacy of the firefighter's response was very comforting to us.  When you're living in the midst of tens of thousands of cubic meters of highly flammable fuel, as we and our neighbors are, it's really good to know that competent firefighters have got your back...

Early this morning we were awakened by a completely unexpected sound: rainfall.  We didn't get much – just 3mm, or just over 1/10th inch – but it was very welcome nonetheless.  This morning when we got up, we were completely fogged in – that's normal for March or April, but definitely not for September!  It brought a very welcome coolness and dampness, and though it's not enough water to reduce the fuel flammability for very long, it must have been very welcome to the fire crews (assuming they got the same)...