The Verizon Saga Continues

A while back, I wrote about problems that I was having with Verizon. There have been several over the last year or so. The most recent one was that Verizon had allowed a 3rd party vendor to have their services put on my telephone bill without our knowledge or approval. This is what was listed on my telephone bill:



Billing on behalf of Residential Email
Miscellaneous Charges and Credits for (telephone number)
Date
Description
Dec 08
RESDNT1EMAIL MO FEE


This fee was $14.95 plus .75 or $15.70 a month


At the time that I called Verizon about this additional fee that I had been charged, I originally thought that it had just started to be applied to my bill. Upon further investigation, this "mystery" charge had been applied to my telephone bill since 12/22/08. After making a telephone call to Verizon, they passed me on to another company. Of course I had a tough time understanding her, which seems to be par for the course. According to the person I spoke to, she told me that I had signed up for something on the web by going to a web site called searchcactus.com I tried that web address while on the phone with this person and my Trend micro Internet Security blocked the site from me because it was a "bad" site...considered "dangerous" by my anti virus software. I told this person about the web site and having never gone there or signed up for anything. After the dust settled, she told me that she would be refunding me a total of $125.60, which would cover all of these so called "enhanced services" that had been added onto my telephone account since 12/08. I have learned my lesson well...always review every bill that you get very carefully because you don't know who might have attached themselves onto it. You might be paying for things that you never signed up for nor wanted.

Alaska Vacation 2009 Sunday 5/17/09 Homeward Bound

Unfortunately this day arrived way to soon. It was time for our cruise to end. We got up around 7AM. We had left a room service request on the outside door handle the night before and our food arrived at our cabin around 8:30AM We were supposed to meet Karan, our concierge, in the Stardust Theater at 9:30 for our priority disembarkation. It took us a little bit to get off the ship. Long lines waiting to go through customs. When we finally did hit the streets, we decided to hang out in Seattle for a bit. Our flight home wasn't scheduled to leave until 10:15PM, so we had all day and most of the evening until we even started on our way home. Our flight would take us to Newark and then onto Norfolk, where we would arrive home at 9:45AM the following morning. We hung out at Pikes Place Market, where it was extremely crowded again. It was fairly early on a Sunday morning and there were loads of people. They were having some type of cheese festival going on. Just long tables and booth after booth of cheese tasting. And the last thing that I wanted to do after eating heavily on a cruise, was to eat lots of cheese and get all bound up. So in a sign of goodwill towards my internal workings, I stayed away from the cheese lines. After an hour or so of walking around, we decided to take a cab to the airport. We ended up just camping out in a quiet area reading a book and catching some sleep. We spent an easy 10 hours at the airport before boarding our flight home. Needless to say it was a long day. It was the end of a really great vacation and now we had to get back to reality. We really loved our old reality, as temporary as it was. The memories of our cruise will linger on ...something that we can revisit as the days drift by and turn into months and then into years. The best thing about the cruise...the absolutely fantastic and beautiful scenery. Time to start over and set our sights on a new adventure. For all of the cruise photos and videos, a lot of which didn't make it on this blog, please feel free to click on my "Webshot" link that is on the upper right hand column of this blog.

Alaska Vacation 2009 Saturday 5/16/09 Victoria, BC

Well today is the last day of our cruise. We left Ketchikan yesterday afternoon at 1:30. We will arrive in Victoria at 6PM. Because of the late port of call, Veronica and I slept in a little later. We got up around 8AM, had breakfast and then came back to the room to pack up our luggage. They have something called the Bags Program. You pay $19.95 a person, leave your suitcases in the hallway by 2AM the following morning. They then take your luggage to the airport and proper airlines. Your luggage meets you at your final destination. Because our flight wasn't until 10:15PM tomorrow night, we were going to walk around Seattle and we could not do that dragging all of our luggage around. It was the first real rainy day that we had on the whole cruise. Just a very dreary day...kind of like letting you know that your cruise was almost over with and it was back to reality time. After packing our luggage up, we decided to hit the casino one last time. I had one of those coupons like Veronica had, where you use your coupon as a first card ace when playing blackjack. Well I used the first card ace coupon and my second card was a 3. Things weren't looking that great for me. I had only bet $20 on the hand. I then got another 3 and stood pat with my hand of 17. As it turned out, the dealer busted and I won...doubled my money. I then hit my favorite slot machine. the one that was good for me on an earlier casino visit. This particular slot machine was once again hot for me. I kept hitting bonuses, additional spins and of course additional winnings. By the time everything was said and done, Between Blackjack and our slot playing, we won $365. We then grabbed something quick to eat and headed back to our cabin for a nap. At 2:45PM we headed for the Stardust Theater for a Crew Talent Show. The show was ok but the final performance was funnier than heck and starred Simon, the ships cruise director. Everyone loves Simon and he is very well know in the NCL cruising world. Her is from "down Under" and is a laugh riot....I can still hear him saying, in his "down Under" accent "and have a smaaaashing day". The video of this particular performance is down below. Veronica and I went to a Japanese Teppanyaki( restaurant. The food and preparation was really good. We enjoyed it a lot and was some of the best food we had on the ship. We arrived in Victoria at the scheduled time. I first thought that the Victoria BC port of call was kind of like a waste...like they threw in an extra port just to fill up the cruising week. I felt that way because we were only in Victoria from 6PM until midnight and because it was a nigh time stop, that there wouldn't be much open during those hours. Boy was I wrong. Victoria is a beautiful city and the nightlife is something else. The city was buzzing with activity...plenty of street performers everywhere. Veronica and I walked all over the place. It was a really nice end to a great cruise. Because we were pooped out...you know how us old folks can get, we ended up taking a cab back to the ship. There were 2 other ships making Victoria their port of call...the Holland America Westerdam and the Princess Star. We had seen both ships in some of the other ports of call that we had so their itineraries were almost the same as ours was. We ended up going to bed around 11PM but found that we were so used to listening to the ships wake, that the silence of not having the ship moving and being docked in port, was actually a loud silence. Without the white noise, it took me longer to fall asleep. Maybe it was because it was our last night on the ship. Tomorrow we head home...crap...reality awaits. I don't want to leave. They will have to drag me kicking and screaming off of this ship. I am not leaving without a fight. Did someone say stowaway..I am so there. I almost forgot to mention...on our cruise we seemed to have a problem with assorted emergency alarms in our cabin. There was an emergency switch on both sides of our headboard plus a main emergency switch near the cabin door. The position of the emergency switch on Veronica's side of the bed was in a poor place. Veronica moved her pillow against the switch 3 or 4 times throughout the course of the cruise and we had people calling our room to make sure that we were ok. A couple of times they called and the switch had not been pushed at all. Must have been a faulty switch or something. Then one time I was in the shower and the next thing I know, a knock on the door and I could hear someone talking to Veronica. Veronica comes into the bathroom and tells me that because the bathroom door was ajar just a little bit, the steam from the shower set off the fire alarm. I am sure that they were happy when we got off the ship...no more false alarms to worry about and deal with.

More towel art left by our room steward

Some of the really nice homes in Victoria. There were nice older homes and then some modern architecture. Almost all of the homes had really beautiful gardens. You could really tell that the homeowners to a lot of pride in their residences.


A more modern style home
A duck family laying in the grass

City gardens

This area is right on the harbor and they had all kinds of vendors with handmade items all around this walkway
This is a parliamentary building in Victoria. Some of the architecture throughout the city was really interesting
Here is part of Victoria Harbor

A water taxi in the harbor


This is the Empress Hotel. The oldest hotel in Victoria. The hotel had moss all over it


These 2 trees were in front of the Empress Hotel. The kind of reminded me of dinosaurs...maybe protecting the entrance...what an imagination huh?

Oh, I almost forgot to mention..I opened a restaurant in Victoria while we were there

Here is the Princess Star dock in Victoria


Here is the Holland America Westerdam

Mime1.wmv'>Street Performer- A Mime Part #1

Mime2.wmv'>Street Performer- A Mime Part #2

Mime3.wmv'>Street Performer- A Mime Part #3

This is the ships wake and the sound of it. It lulled us to sleep every night. We kept the balcony sliding door open just so we could hear it

MOV00591.MPG'>Ships Wake

This is a portion of the Crews Talent Show. It is really funny. This is the part of the show that Simon participated in. He is the one in the middle. Due to the size and length of the original video, I had to divide it up into 2 sections

Special1.wmv'>Crews Talent Show With Simon Part#1

Special2.wmv'>Crews Talent Show With Simon Part#2