Usually I post comments about companies and their poor customer service. To change up the karma on this blog, I figured I’d try to post more positive things.

With that in mind, I currently recommend Silicon Valley Auto Body for auto repairs.

As readers may recall, earlier this year I got into a fender bender. A month later, it was repaired. (Before and after pics.)

Silicon Valley Auto Body did a great job – especially with the paint job. You really can’t tell this car has been repaired as the paint match was absolutely amazing. The car drives great. Since they are with AAA Direct Repair Network, there were no insurance hassles.

Now, the negatives: they promised to call me twice a week to let me know the status of the repair, but in reality they didn’t call once. They took a long time to repair my car (they claim parts came in late – I could see that, but some of their “what we’re doing next” statements sort of slip slided.)

As an aside, while I was there I saw a brand new 2007 Mini. Apparently BMW of Mountain View sends them cars to repairs. I won’t go into more details – but suffice to say, next time I buy a new car, I’ll be sure to ask “Has this new car been repainted? Has this new car been repaired? Has this new car gone through any body work?”

Silicon Valley Auto Body can be found here:

Silicon Valley Auto Body
327 E. Weddell Drive
Sunnyvale, CA 94089
408-747-0500

There’s only one thing that regularly cracks me up – The Onion.

And now, it looks like they’re going to start producing web videos under the guise of ONN: Onion News Network.

Here’s a promo:

The other day I had some downtime, so I decided to customize the Quick Access Toolbar in Outlook 2007 to improve my efficiency:

Sweet! Now I can flag an email as low importance, flag as high importance, check names in the To/CC fields, switch between plain text and HTML, left justify, center justify, show the BCC field, change the font name/size/color/highlight, and even delete the mail.

How convenient!

Even better, I found out that these customizations are stored on your hard drive as .QAT files! You can find them here:

C:\Users\[your user account]\local settings\Microsoft\Office

Sweet! I went and customized Word, PowerPoint, and Excel as well, copied their QAT files to a FolderShared folder, and then copied the customizations to all my machines.

I feel more productive already.

I love gadgets that reduce the complexity and overhead of my life. I don’t need any more “scenarios enabled” – except the scenario of “reduce the amount of maintenance in my life.”

It’s one reason why I’m glad my car uses synthetic motor oil, even though it costs dramatically more. Fewer trips for service!

Here’s something I’m a big fan of right now: Lithium AA batteries!

Now, there’s nothing new about lithium batteries – they’ve always been around for cameras. But they were always super pricey and… well… that funny size for cameras.

Now Energizer is selling lithium batteries in the AA (and AAA) format. They’re still pretty pricey at nearly $2 per battery, but the longevity and shelf life is awesome. You can find them at Target, Walmart, etc. Here are some of the places I use them:

• the Microsoft Wireless Mouse that I keep in my backpack all the time. There’s nothing worse than pulling out the mouse, and finding that its battery is dead. And now, this model of mouse has awesome power management so it lasts even longer. Double sweet!
• my travel electric toothbrush.
• my travel oral irrigator. (I’m somewhat paranoid of having cavities…)
• my awesomely bright flashlight.

Another positive of these batteries is that they’re lighter than regular AA batteries. Sure it’s not significant, but every bit adds up when you’re traveling!

I saw this video today, and this quote from Jim Cramer at around 5:08 simply blew my mind:

“What’s important when you’re in a hedge fund mode, is to not do anything remotely truthful. Because the truth is so against your view that it’s important to create a new truth.”

My jaw literally dropped. It gets even… better?… after that.

At the risk of becoming a clone of ThisIsBroken, here’s another fun e-mail I got today. This one is from Citibank’s ThankYou network – a point reward system for using their financial products.

So let me get this straight… it’s the middle of March, and you’re sending me my points balance as of February 1st?

Dear Intuit,

I’m sorry to keep posting these comments about your customer service – but it’s really quite strange. And you make it hard to contact you!

For example, I appreciate that you want my feedback. That’s great! But when you say this (see parts I underlined in red)…

Then I generally don’t expect to see this when I scroll to the bottom:

(No, it’s not clickable.)

I guess the only thing you want me to do is remove myself from getting asked for feedback anymore.

2007-03-14 Update:

Bob Meighan of TurboTax followed up with me on this, and after some research it turns out that this did not render due to a change in Microsoft Outlook 2007. It looks like if I had read this in Yahoo Mail or GMail or Hotmail, this would have apparently correctly as a web form.

Unfortunately, further compounding my problems is that the web interface I use for personal e-mail (http://fastmail.fm) rendered the form incorrectly:

Pretty ironic that my 2 main e-mail clients rendered this incorrectly. I need to spend more time moving my personal mail story over to Hotmail. In any case, mystery solved for now.

Last week I blogged about a possible TurboTax 2005/2006 bug:

Possible ESPP-related bug in TurboTax 2006 (and 2005) — decheung.com
Short version: If you have a stock transaction that results in $0.00 capital gains/losses, TurboTax may not document this on your Schedule D. However, the IRS will match your Schedule D against your 1099-B and this may raise warning flags.

Since then I’ve found that at least one other coworker has run into this problem. I emailed Intuit support and I got a very prompt answer. Unfortunately, it wasn’t very useful. Here’s what went down.

I said:

 TurboTax 2005 and 2006 fails to document Employee Stock Purchase Plan transaction on the Schedule D if there are no Capital Gains. The IRS requires this because they match the Schedule D entries to the 1099-B’s.

As a result, coworkers and I have been notified by the IRS that we did not report these transactions (true) and that we owe a lot of money (not true).

I’ve blogged about it here:

http://www.decheung.com/2007/03/possible-espp-related-bug-in-turbotax-2006-and-2005.html

And they replied:

Hi Dennis! My name is Christine and it is my pleasure to assist you today.

I understand that you are having a problem regarding Employee Stock Purchase Plan transaction. I do apologize for any inconvenience this might have caused you but I will be more willing to help you resolve this concern.

From the information that I have gathered, you are using TurboTax Desktop Deluxe. I would like to provide you information that might help resolve this concern.

Entering ESPP Sales

The gain or loss on the sale of your ESPP shares may be treated as ordinary income instead of capital gain or loss if:

- You bought the stock shares at a discount from the market price, or

- You owned the stock for one year or less, or

- You began buying the stock less than two years before you sold it.

If your shares are treated as ordinary income, look on your Form W-2. It should include an amount called “ESPP Disqualifying Disposition” or “ESPP Qualifying Disposition” or something similar.

Add this amount from your W-2 to the cost of the shares to figure the total cost basis to enter for the sale.

If you don’t see an ESPP-related entry on your Form W-2, contact your ESPP administrator, who will give you the information you need.

Thank you for allowing me to assist you today. Within the next 24 hours, you will receive a brief question survey about your support experience. Please respond with feedback so that I may continue to provide great assistance to everyone. Thank You.

For further inquiries, please do not hesitate to email us back or you may contact us at 1-888-777-3303 and be able to talk to one of our friendly representatives from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM Monday through Sundays for further assistance. Thank you for choosing TurboTax! Have a Great Day!

Respectfully,

Christine Mae G

Intuit Tax Products Customer Service & Support
“Revolutionizing how people manage their financial lives”

Pretty good reply – for a totally different (and likely frequently asked) question. Do you see anything about Schedule D in that reply? I don’t.

But here’s the part that really kills me:

For further inquiries, please do not hesitate to email us back

That’s nice. Except that at the very top of the e-mail, it says this:

**Please do not reply to this message: This e-mail message was sent from a notification-only address that cannot accept incoming e-mail.

So should I reply or not?

I opted to reply using the website’s web form. Let’s see what happens next.