Here is a look at the interaction (or lack thereof) that I had with the Morris County Clerk’s office. First, the information that they posted on their website:

EMAIL APPLICATIONS TO ASMITH@CO.MORRIS.NJ.US OR FAX APPLICATIONS WITH EMAIL ADDRESS TO 973-285-5233

BALLOTS WILL BE SENT TO YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS

RETURN BALLOT TO BALLOTSUBMISSION@CO.MORRIS.NJ.US OR FAX TO 973-984-8412

FOR MORE INFORMATION ON HURRICAN SANDY DISPLACEMENT VOTER njelection.org

APPLICATIONS MUST BE SUBMITTED NO LATER THAN 5PM NOV.6TH 2012.(EMIAL/FAX)
THE VOTERS MUST TRANSMIT THE SIGNED WAIVER OF SECRECY ALONG WITH THE VOTED BALLOT BY FAX OR EMAIL FOR RECEIPT BY BOARD OF ELECTION NO LATER THAN NOV.9,2012 AT 8P.M.

Okay. Easy enough, right? According to the information above, all I have to do is send a copy of the application (which was readily available on the county website) after I filled it out. Which I did as you’ll see below. This is the e-mail I sent to the Morris County Clerk’s office at 7:57pm on Monday, November 5th:

Subject: Application for E-Mail Voting – Borough of Mount Arlington

Good evening,

Attached to this message please find my application to vote in tomorrow’s election via e-mail. You may reach me at this e-mail address or on my cell phone if you have any questions. I look forward to receiving my ballot via e-mail and voting in tomorrow’s election.

Best regards,
Joe

I sat there and I waited – patiently – for a response from the County Clerk. Frankly, I just wanted my ballot sent to me via e-mail – I didn’t need any discussion! I figured that the ballot would be sent my way at some point the following morning. Well, the next morning came and went and I kept on waiting. It was 12:00pm on Election Day – I heard nothing from them. It was 1:00pm on Election Day – I heard nothing. And then, right before 2:00pm (it was 1:52pm to be exact), I couldn’t take it any more. I sent the following e-mail to the County Clerk’s office:

Hello,

I e-mailed my application to vote by e-mail ballot last night at approximately 8:00pm. I have not heard back from anyone at the clerk’s office, so I am going to my polling place in Mount Arlington instead. As such, I withdraw my application to vote by e-mail for this election.

This system is obviously not ready for use by the public. You should not have made it available for this election, regardless of the demands coming from Trenton.

Good luck,
Joe

A few minutes after I sent this message I got in my car, drove to Mount Arlington, voted (in less than 3 minutes), and then went to my family’s place to hang out for a bit. And in case you were wondering whether or not the Morris County Clerk ever got in touch with me to explain what was going on… no, they didn’t get in touch with me. On Twitter, they noted that they received thousands of requests for these e-mail ballots. By the utter lack of communication that I received from them, I would imagine that they didn’t really have that many people confirming the applications that were received and then sending out those specific ballots. I stick by my comment in my second e-mail: this process was not ready for prime time and should not have been made available to the public as a viable voting option.

Think about this – if every person’s vote counts, then those “thousands” of people who request an e-mail ballot probably don’t have their votes counted yet. And they certainly didn’t have their votes counted last night. In fact, the MorrisElectionResults.org website shows that zero of those ballots have been as of 11:23pm last night.

In other words, if you voted by e-mail ballot, absentee ballot, or provisional ballot and you’re a Morris County voter… then your vote didn’t count this year. Oh sure, eventually your vote will be counted and added to the totals, but at that point the concessions have been made and the majority of the elections are over and no longer waiting for your vote to count. Imagine if those thousands of e-mail ballots, absentee ballots, and provisional ballots all voted for the same candidates in one of the countywide, statewide, or national elections. Those accumulated votes might not have been enough to sway an election, but it might be enough to suggest that a victory which was reported (for example) as 65% for one candidate and 35% for the other candidate was actually 55% for one candidate and 45% for the other. That change in total votes is a big, big deal and directly impacts the post-election discussion!

And here’s the thing – I like the Morris County Clerk’s office. I think that they’re probably the most efficient clerk’s office in the state (I deal with several of county clerk offices and the team in Morris County is really among the best, if not the best in the state). But I don’t like that they made the e-mail option available for yesterday’s election. I know that it was somewhat pushed on them by Trenton, but it wasn’t ready for wide use by the public and that gives an otherwise great clerk’s office an unfortunate, temporary black eye.

The Mayonnaise Jar and the Two Beers

When things in your life seem almost too much to handle, when 24 hours in a day are not enough, remember the mayonnaise jar and the two beers.

A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, he wordlessly picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls. He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.

The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.

The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with an unanimous ‘yes.’

The professor then produced two beers from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed.

‘Now,’ said the professor as the laughter subsided, ‘I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things—your family, your children, your health, your friends and your favorite passions—and if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full. The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house and your car. The sand is everything else—the small stuff. ‘If you put the sand into the jar first,’ he continued, ‘there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls.

The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff you will never have room for the things that are important to you. ‘Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Spend time with your children. Spend time with your parents. Visit with grandparents. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your spouse out to dinner. Play another 18. There will always be time to clean the house and fix the disposal. Take care of the golf balls first—the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand.’

One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the beer represented. The professor smiled and said, ‘I’m glad you asked.’

The beer just shows you that no matter how full your life may seem, there’s always room for a couple of beers with a friend.’

That’s a pretty good message, I think – especially as we begin the holiday season. Enjoy!

Every tenth entry that is uploaded to the blog initiates an e-mail broadcast. So if you’re just stopping by here for the first time or if you come by the blog once or twice per month, you’ll want to sign-up for this free service so you can stay up to date on what’s going on at JerseySmarts.com!

I wanted to stop by again because, with NJ so close to NYC, I thought that you and your readers would be interested in having their :15 seconds of fame right in the heart of Times Square.

STRIDE® fans, regardless of where they are, can text a message or e-mail a picture for a chance to have it broadcasted in Times Square. Users can then go online to pick up a photo of their live message to keep as a memento of their fame.

All you have to do is text @STRIDE + your message to 87884* or submit a photo at MTVTimesSquare.com .

Then either stop by the MTV billboard in Times Square and/or check out MTVTimesSquare.com to see your big moment and share it with others.

If any of you reading this decide that you want to jump into this promotion, please come back and tell us how the process was and whether others should join in. Thanks!

In the mean time, check out New Jersey Carpet Cleaning for the best carpet cleaning in the Garden State!

E-mail inboxes are a pain in the ass. Sometimes I get into the office in the morning I don’t even open up my inbox for the first hour or two because you can get so bogged down in answering e-mails. The negative aspect of this, though, is that you get backed up with your messages like I was for the last few months. However, I spent a great deal of time before leaving for vacation just sitting behind the computer and answering all of the messages that were building up – from the mundane to the important.

The worst part about letting the messages build up, though, is that sometimes you have an important message that gets lost in the mix – I hate when that happens. Anyway, since this entry is rambling at this point I’ll wrap it up. I just wanted to say that I was glad to get my inbox cleared out. It’s like having a huge weight lifted off of my shoulders so I suggest that if you get a chance, you try to spend some time cleaning out your inboxes, too!

My promotional rate for the bundled Comcast services that I am subscribed to (cable, internet, and phone) was expiring at the end of June. On a separate, unrelated call (one of the cable boxes in the house went down), Comcast advised me to contact them to get a new promotional rate for the coming year. I thought that was nice of them to give me a head’s up, so I made the call.

I must have called two or three weeks ago and they verified that my promotional rate was expiring and that I was eligible for a new promotional rate that would actually lower my total bill by $15 each month. That’s not bad! However, this made my the synapses in my mind start to go off because we’ve all dealt with this problem: you change your service in the middle of the month and the service provider winds up double and sometimes triple charging you which launches your next bill into the stratosphere. Nobody wants to deal with that for two reasons. First, it’s extremely annoying and everyone hates getting annoyed. Second, when you contact the actual service provider, 99% of the time you’re stuck on the phone with a person who has a script and is required to stick to it. Talk about doing anything but providing service!

Yet, to Comcast’s great credit, the woman on the phone must have anticipated this problem and suggested that she was going to make the changes effective for the next billing cycle. SWEET! There goes that headache and now all was in place for the next bill to come in. Or so I thought…

The woman on the phone told me the new monthly charge (something like $157 per month) and I thank her for her time. It really was a pleasant ohone call and a pleasant process. Until I received my next bill.

Ugh…

Not only are none of the changes that the woman talked to me about reflected on the bill (as they should have been), but the total monthly bill is $210. TWO HUNDRED AND TEN DOLLARS?! That’s $38 MORE than what I was originally paying!

I took a look at the bill and nothing that I talked to the woman about was reflected. Not a thing. Do you know how frustrating that is for a consumer? I spent half an hour of my time on the phone with that woman and NOTHING that we talked about was processed. Come on! I mean what? Is my time worth nothing?!

At this point, I did what any consumer would do – I picked up the phone and made a call to 1-800-COMCAST. This was a useless move. After 10 minutes of not getting anybody on the phone, playing the “Press X for…” game, and listening to crappy music while I was on hold, I hung up and went to Comcast.com to use their live chat. Now, to prove that I can say “good job” when it is well-deserved, let me say that Comcast.com’s live chat is excellent.

After signing on, a very nice live chat woman named Siena Rose answered my request in a matter of seconds. She was extremely pleasant and, if you want, you can read our entire conversation by clicking here. The end of this part of the story is that I had to call the local office in order to get the changes made on my account that I was told were made weeks ago. If you click on the transcript of the discussion above, you’ll note that as pleasant as Siena Rose was on the live chat, I did get very offended when she went to an obvious “copy and paste” tactic at the end of the chat. In short, she suggested that I can now consider my issue resolved when it was clearly not resolved. I didn’t like that. Read the transcript – you’ll see.

Oh joy, I get to call the local office. More of my time spent on something that should have been done weeks ago.

The next day rolls around and I call the local office. After playing the ridiculous “Press # for…” game and sitting on hold for 12 minutes, I hang up. Great, now I have to call the NEXT day. In other words, I have to take time out of MY WORK DAY to tell the local office that they made a mistake and that they need to fix it. At this point, I’m beginning to get enraged because I know exactly what’s going to happen – I’m going to request a new bill be generated erasing the false $210 bill and the local office isn’t going to do it. However, I learned once that you shouldn’t get mad at things before they happen, so I choose to simmer down before I make the call on Monday (during my work day).

Up until this point, I’ve spent almost an hour of my time trying to fix a mistake made and admitted to by Comcast. What do I get for this? If I made a mistake with my payments (which would never happen), Comcast would get a late fee. Where is my equivalent of a late fee for the mistakes that Comcast made and the loss of an hour of my personal time?

Instead of waiting to call the next day – during my work day – I decide to call 1-800-COMCAST to see what they can do. After about a minute on hold, some guy answers and asks me how he can help. I tell him my problem and he says that he can put me through to the local billing department, before I get a chance to say that I’ve been waiting on hold with them for 12 minutes already today – he puts me through. The same familiar, aggravating elevator music pops onto my phone…

Now I want to put my fist through someone’s face, but I’ve decided instead to calm down the rage and wait on hold (again). As I wait on hold, I begin writing this post so I don’t forget any of the absolute ridiculousness of this situation. After another 12 minutes on hold, I give up and realize that I’m going to have to make this phone call the following day from my office. That’s completely unfair, but what choice do I have?

Monday morning rolls around and after waiting on hold for a few minutes, I’m on the line with a customer service representative at Comcast. Here comes another dreadful moment – having to re-explain everything all over again (which I do as pleasantly as possible). The woman on the phone (didn’t catch her name) has no idea what I’m talking about and tells me that the reason why I have the wrong charges reflected on my bill is because I made the changes on June 27th and my billing dates run from the 20th of each month to the following 20th.

Ugh…

I explain to the woman that I called on June 15th to make the changes (she gets more confused) and that my billing period is the actual month itself. In this case, we’re talking about July 2nd through August 1st. This is met with a, “Wuhhh…uhhh…” Super! I tell the woman on the phone that the live chat specialist told me she made extensive notes in my account and that she should take a look at them. The woman on the phone, again, says that this is all confusing.

Great.

She asks if she can put me on hold, to which I say yes. After six minutes on hold, she comes back on and tells me that no changes have been made to my account…newsflash! She also said that she was going to transfer me to an account manager (how do you get the phone number to talk to an account manager directly?). An account manager named Marissa gets on the phone and goes over all of the issues with my account. She immediately sees all of the issues and I’m telling you – within a matter of two minutes she had everything fixed. She put me on hold for a few minutes and when she came back on, she reviewed my bill with me and I left a happy customer.

Before the end of the call, Marissa told me what the new amount was for the bill. I asked her again, “If I pay this amount, there won’t be a notice that I haven’t paid the entire bill or anything, right?” And she said, “No, like I just told you – this is how much you have to pay.” So I reminded her that I was told one thing on June 15th and something completely different on June 27th. She understood, apologized again for the oversight, and commented that I only had to pay the amount that she quoted me. In fact, she gave me her name, service number, and told me her location in case I ever had another problem. I thought that was a nice touch.

Whoever Marissa is in the Comcast organization, she should be given a raise. Every other step in this process was miserable except dealing with her. The most annoying part of the entire process (besides losing a few hours of my time and getting aggravated) was that I had to keep repeating myself and repeating the story.

Now let’s see if what Marissa says holds true when I go to pay my bill. I will be sure to let you all know the outcome!

I logged online to access their e-mail support (because there’s no way that I was going to sit on hold to call someone to ask about the channel). After having to enter every single bit of information that they could possibly ask me outside of my social security number, I submitted the following question to Comcast:

When are we going to get the FOX News Channel in High Definition? All of the satellite companies, FiOS, and Cablevision offer it in this area – when are we getting it on Comcast?

Short, sweet, and to the point – you know? Comcast generally gets back to their customers within 24 hours – this is the response that I received (name changed to protect the helpless):

Dear Joe,

Thank you for contacting Comcast.

I understand you would like further information regarding the addition
of Fox News HD to your Comcast channel lineup.

Our goal is to provide a wide choice of quality cable networks and local
broadcast channels reflecting the diverse programming interests of our
customers. In addition to requests from customers, the following
factors play a part in our decision making process:

· FCC regulations, such as requirements to carry all local broadcast
channels
· Requirement by local broadcasters to carry their affiliated cable
networks
· The number of access channels required by local government
· Customer satisfaction with networks carried in other systems
· Customer satisfaction with similar networks
· Importance of the network to our diverse community
· Level of interest across a percentage of our customer base
· Per-subscriber programming fees charged by the network versus the
value added to the line-up

What this all means is that we take all requests for new networks very
seriously, and that we carefully consider the overall impact of adding
each network. While we cannot honor every request, we do take each
request into consideration in planning future changes to the line-up.

Sincerely,

Bob
Comcast Customer Care Specialist

If you managed to suffer through reading that ridiculously “customer-friendly” response, you’ll notice that it says absolutely nothing. But not to fear – before I received this response (which was sent a few hours after I sent my initial inquiry), I found FOX News HD on channel 277.

Ahem, Comcast already offers the channel, but I still received a form mail response anyway! In other words, the robotic people who prepare these automated responses don’t even know the services that they offer! So I responded to Comcast – again, short and sweet:

Actually, I found the station on channel 277.

That’s all I needed.

I figured that with such a direct response, a human would reply back with something like, “Oh, great. We have to send out those automated responses, but I’m glad that you found what you were looking for. Enjoy!”

No.

Instead, I received this:

We have received your e mail and thank you for using Comcast’s online
email support. One of our Comcast customer support representatives will
get back to you, likely within just a few hours. In the meantime, you
may find our FAQs helpful to resolve your inquiry so we invite you to
visit http://help.comcast.net. Or, for more immediate attention to your
situation, try “Ask Comcast”, a real time chat service, available by
visiting http://www.comcast.net and clicking on the AskComcast link at
the top of the page. We look forward to working with you.

Sincerely, Your Comcast Support Team

Followed by this:

Dear [My Full Name],

Thank you for contacting us regarding your Comcast cable service.
I’m glad that you were able to find the channel that your were looking
for. If you need further assistance, please feel free to respond
directly to this email. We appreciate you taking the time to contact us.

Thank you for choosing Comcast.

Sincerely,

Jimmy R
Comcast Customer Care Specialist

First of all, I didn’t need the automated “we received your e-mail response,” but I appreciate the sentiment. Second, Jimmy R (name changed) shouldn’t be thanking me for choosing Comcast because I live in New Jersey – which means I can’t choose another cable company even if I wanted to! Sure, there’s Verizon FiOS and satellite, but home rule dominates this state.

And third, shouldn’t Jimmy R – a real human – have answered my first question to begin with? Wouldn’t that have saved Comcast from looking inept in terms of what they offer their customers?

Ah, cable companies. Gotta love ’em…at least if you live in New Jersey.

Palisades Car Insurance is starting their search for the nicest drives in New Jersey. We are asking New Jersey-ians to submit their nicest drives in text, photo, or video so that everyone can enjoy the best NJ has to offer. The best part is that everyone submitting a nice drive will be entered to win one of twenty-five $50 gas cards!

Submissions will last until June 22. At the end of June, Palisades will share its top 10 drives (as selected by an expert panel of Palisades Crashbusters ® – people who drive over 300,000 miles a year) on its website.

For submissions please visit Palisades.com/nicedrives and fill out the form.

Why the nicest drives? Well, Palisades is the nice New Jersey car insurance company. So nice, that its service is ranked as one of the highest in the state — better than Allstate, GEICO, State Farm, Progressive, and others. (Source: Palisades was ranked far superior to many national insurance brands – including Progressive, GEICO and State Farm – on how well its policies and practices supported quality and speed of repairs, as well as the overall customer experience according to a recent independent survey of NJ body shops conducted by USA/Direct, Inc.)

There you have it – looks like some of you could have the opportunity to win a free gas card. Not a bad deal for entering some information on a website.

First Pay Check
Here’s a truly heartwarming story about the bond formed between a little 5-year-old girl and some construction workers that will make you believe that we all can make a difference when we give a child the gift of our time and conversation.

Kind of brings a tear to the eye – doesn’t it?

Ha ha ha ha! Hilarious! Made me laugh – hope it brought you a smile, too.

There is a national organization called the Project on Student Debt who is really the leader in this field. They’ve helped advocate for so many beneficial new programs for student loan borrowers, not the least of which is the new public service forgiveness program that will help thousands of high debt graduates. One of the initiatives that they publicly advocate for on their website is the possibility of making student loan interest a federal tax credit as opposed to an income tax deduction; coupled with this is increasing the amount that could be credited from the current $2,500 to up to $4,000.

I recently asked the good folks over at the Project on Student Debt for an update on this initiative and this is their reply:

I’m not aware of any major progress on this. Congress is pretty focused on the budget process right now, which includes a different tax credit (for tuition). We’ll keep our email subscribers updated if anything changes, but right now I’m not aware of a legislative vehicle in the works that could move this forward in the short-term.

First and foremost, if you are interested in getting updates on student loan legislation, I encourage you to sign-up for their e-mail list (which you can do by clicking here). Second, it is a real shame that the federal tax credit for student loan interest has no champion in the Congress right now. This could be a crucial piece of legislation that has the potential to ease some of the burden that many high debt student loan borrowers are faced with due to their education.

If this initiative ever gained steam and passed Congress, it would save many high debt student loan borrowers (*cough* like me *cough*) a great deal of money in the long-term. Personally, I’d like to see the total amount of student loan interest that could be credited increased to a higher dollar amount like $10,000 per year. At that level, almost all student loan borrowers would fall within the program’s guidelines.