my dissatisfaction with active.com continues

(the letter I received from active.com)

Earlier post here. Now:

From: Jeremy Freese [mailto:jfreese@ssc.wisc.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, July 10, 2007 11:05 AM
To: 'activeadvantage@active.com'
Cc: '[username]@madisonfestivals.com'
Subject: membership cancellation

On June 23, I received an e-mail informing me that I was being charged $49.95 for a year membership in Active Advantage, on the claim that I had agreed to this charge if I did not cancel a trial membership in ActiveAdvantage that I supposedly signed up for when I signed up for the Madison Marathon. I have no recollection of having agreed to this charge, find it difficult to believe I would have signed up for it, and have not made any use of your services. On June 23, I responded to your customer website asking to cancel my membership immediately and asking for an immediate refund.

Instead, this weekend, I received a letter from your company dated June 27 (attached) whose first sentence is "Welcome Back to ActiveAdvantage!", suggesting that somehow my communication with your company has indicated a desire to continue with ActiveAdvantage rather than cancel. This is not the case. I would like to have my entire $49.95 refunded. As indicated, I have not used any of the ActiveAdvantage services, nor do I intend to.

I sought recourse to this today by calling the customer service number provided in the letter. After going through several touch-tone menus, I received a recorded message telling me that your system is down.

I am cc'ing an official from the Madison Marathon on this message. I believe the marathon would well serve its participants by reconsidering its relationship with Active.com. If this matter is not quickly resolved, I will be filing a consumer complaint with the state of Wisconsin against both Active.com and Madison Festivals.

Sincerely,

Jeremy Freese

OK, that resulted in a quicker response than I was expecting:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: activeadvantage@active.com
Date: Jul 10, 2007 11:38 AM
Subject: Trial membership canceled
To: [me]

We are sorry to lose you as an ActiveAdvantage member!

Thank you for using activeadvantage.

Sincerely,

Your ActiveAdvantage Team

I'm a little concerned about the 'Trial membership' in the subject line, as the whole reason I was charged is I was moved into regular membership because the 'Trial' I have no recollection of signing up for expired. I'll have to see if the charge is actually refunded on my card.

a portrait of the blogger as a successful half-marathoner and dissatistfied customer

I am so pissed. I got this e-mail today:

90 days ago you made a smart choice by clicking "YES" to accept your ActiveAdvantage trial membership offer when you registered for an event using Active.com.

This is just a quick reminder to let you know that your 90-day trial membership has expired, and you have been extended for a full year [for $50] as stated in the original offer. You are now a part of the fastest growing program for athletes and people with active lifestyles!

We hope that you have had time to review the amazing benefits and values that you receive by being an ActiveAdvantage member, ranging from travel discounts on air, car and hotel to huge savings with big name partners including: Enterprise Rent-a-Car, Wyndham Hotel Group properties, Choice Hotels, Circuit City, Barnes and Noble, Peets Coffee, AMC, Regal/Edwards Theaters, Rewards Network and more! [...]

What I registered for was the Madison Half-Marathon, which Sal and I ran over Memorial Day weekend. There is no freaking way that I would have intentionally signed up for a "trial membership" in an organization that doesn't offer any services that I have any interest in using, so whatever it is I supposedly clicked on must have kept the cost of doing so obscured. According to the site, I received a $5-10 "free gift" for signing up. I have no idea what this is supposed to have been. Anyway, I have sent them an e-mail asking for my money back, as well as a message to the organizers of the Madison marathon expressing my displeasure about their partnering with active.com. So, what's next? Why, write a blog post telling whoever would listen to be careful with any dealings with active.com.

BTW, I guess I never posted that Sal and I successfully completed the half-marathon (Chris did the whole thing, see his post here). Here we are before the race:



We ran at a leisurely pace, and Sal had to endure me being one of the chattiest people on the course. A high point may have been the half mile or so I spent describing the 1960's Australian television show "Skippy, The Bush Kangaroo."

"So, it's like Lassie, only a wild kangaroo. The characters will go 'Skippy, what is it?' and Skippy will make this toothclicky noise and they'll say 'Colin has fallen down a well?!!' But, Skippy will also do things that Lassie can't. Like there's this one scene where it looks like Skippy is cracking open a safe using only his paws. I think that's the mile marker up ahead. So, when they do the far off shots of Skippy, they use a real wild kangaroo, but then when they use the close-in shots of the paw action, it's just this puppet. Then for some mid-range shots, I think they don't even use a kangaroo at all but instead it looks more like a wallaby. Can you imagine if they sometimes switched off Lassie with some closely related dog species? Like one moment she's a collie, the next a coyote. You're not having any problems with chafing, are you?"

sal promised he would sign up too. will he? stay tuned. (if you are within a few hundred miles of madison, you should sign up too.)

(madison) my mad city pseudo-pretend-not-quite-half-marathon

So, the original reason for me being in Madison this weekend was the marathon I was supposed to be running in. I backed out, but Sal stayed in, so I was there at 7:30 at the starting line to see him off. Feel free to play Where's Saldo? with this photo from the start:


(Hint: He's the guy who is looking in the direction of the camera and waving.)

While I would have rather trained and prepared and then run, I was certainly glad that, since I hadn't adequately prepared, I wasn't running, because it was going to be WAY TOO HOT to be running a marathon (like 85+ degrees hot), and, even in better shape, I'm exactly the type who wilts in the heat.

Next time I saw Sal was about 12 miles into the marathon, when the route came by the lakeshore path down the hill from the Social Science Building:



I was wearing my running shoes anyway, since by accident they were the only shoes I packed other than my dress shoes, and I ended up running alongside Sal for awhile in jeans. The guilt of talking to this guy who had 14 miles to go in 85+ degree weather due to something I told him we should do together and then flaked out on was e-freaking-normous. Anyway, through some complicated compatriotic reasoning, I decided that I would get some shorts on and run the rest of the way with Sal. Through some sprinting, quick dressing, and arguably illegal parking, I was back beside Sal before he reached Mile 15:



Among the things in my man purse was my ridiculously large cel phone because this was such an impromptu decision that I had to make a couple calls while running to re-coordinate or re-schedule things, including telling Dorotha et al. that I wouldn't be able to take them to watch the finish (the finish line being conveniently at the site also hosting The World's Largest Brat Fest this weekend). Dorotha still came, though, and even made signs that were intended to underscore the difference in deserved praise for Sal and I:



(You might note something blue on my sign. It's a sticker. Why did I warrant a sticker? The sticker is a blue star with one of the points torn off. Says Dorotha: "I've been wondering what I would ever do with this torn and ugly sticker, and then I got the chance to make a sign for you.")

Most of what I seemed to regard as "Sal support" as we ran seemed to comprise providing incessant commentary, taking water and stuff from volunteers just like a legitimate participant (thanks especially to the guy handing out Fla.Vor.Ice), and shouting to spectators to cheer for Sal, even if this meant sometimes claiming he had various ties to the TV show "American Idol." I was surprised at the number of people in the latter half of the race who had brought cowbells; every single one of these people had guy with a man purse yell at them, "More cowbell! More cowbell for Sal!"

If I had thought of myself as being able to do a half marathon, much less a half marathon carrying a man purse on an unseasonably warm day, I would have entered the half marathon. So, not surprisingly perhaps, the Jeremy tank ran empty about a half mile from the finish and I told Sal (and Julieta, who ran the last 2-3 miles with us in regular--stylish, even--clothes) to go ahead. I was, however, able to regroup. My original plan was to duck out right before the finish since I didn't deserve to finish (since I hadn't, you know, started). But by the point I actually reached it, I had swung around the rationalization that since the half-marathoners used the same finish line, I was willing to take the karma hit for crossing. As you can see, by the time I did finish, I certainly looked like I had been through something quite trying:


(I think all you need to know about how shockingly unphotogenic I am is that this is by no means then unflattering photo of me in existence.)

Of course, Sal and I got some photos together as well. If you want to know why I wasn't doing the whole marathon, you need look no further than the creeping-paunchiness evident here:



Sal now wants us to do the Chicago marathon in the Fall. The idea being I would actually run this one all the way from start to finish, so we could get a photo with both of us wearing medals.

go, dog. go!

Sal talked me into signing up for this marathon in Madison on May 28th. My original plan was to have a special T-shirt made for it, that on the front said "Where's Sal?", perhaps with a photo, and on the back said, "If you can read this, either (a) you're not Sal or (b) the race has just started." Since then, Sal has been reading running books and training religiously, while I have been writing short short fiction and stewing about health policy. So now, I've reverted back to the same official goals I had back for the half marathon I did in November: I would like to finish it without either (a) having to stop or (b) losing control of any of my bodily functions. (And, in case there is any ambiguity, if I fail at [b], I will also immediately and willfully fail at [a].) After using the winter as an excuse for far too long, I've run my standard (6-mile) loop three times this week, and my basic proximate goal between now and then end of March is to get to the point in which running that was about as easy as it was for me this past fall when I was running regularly and feeling asymptotically immortal.

an example of the sort of telephone conversation you have when you have a weblog

"I read your weblog today."
"Oh, yeah?"
"I thought the post about Chronic Dipshit Day was a little negative."
"You think I came across as anti-dipshit?"
"I don't think 'dipshit' is a very productive or constructive word."
"I'm not sure I was trying to be productive or constructive."
"Anyway, you make it sound like you are drowning in dipshits. You're not."
"You're right, you're right, I'm not. I'm probably even on a good streak of dipshit-free days."
"I don't even know what a dipshit is, exactly."
"I don't know... I suppose it's roughly synonymous with something like 'dumbass.' Or 'incorrigible dumbass'. Or, really, 'willfully incorrigible dumbass'."
"Yeah, well, it doesn't seem very consistent with this effort you're supposedly making to be more positive."
"Did you read my post this afternoon?"
"No, what was it?"
"You should read it."
"What's it about?"
"You should just read it."
"Come on, what's it about? Is it about me?"
"No, it's about 'should'."
"Is it about me and how I'm always saying you should do this or do that?"
"It's not about anyone specifically."
"Whatever."
"Anyway, you should read it. You could have probably made a dollar from this conversation alone if you'd read it. I made this proclamation/resolution, and I haven't been doing very well with it so far."
"Like this would be the first time. Remember your posts about the treadmill you bought and were going to use every day?"
"Shut up. Don't even think I'm going to link to that."