Author: peterjang73

Comcast is no stranger to customer complaints, but today the service provider’s practices cost it $2.3 million. That fine will settle an FCC investigation into whether the company was charging its customers for services and equipment that they didn’t authorize. The practice of so-called "negative option billing" charges subscribers for items that they don’t explicitly turn down. The FCC explains that the practice forces customers to spend the time and effort to contact the cable company to dispute the charges and seek a refund.

The FCC says that it received "numerous complaints" from Comcast customers stating that the company was adding charges for services and gear like premium channels, set-top boxes and DVRs they didn’t order. Some customers said they were billed for those items even after they declined them. Others stated they weren’t aware of the charges until they received the unordered equipment in the mail or took a look at their monthly statements. As you might expect, the FCC notes those consumers were "expending significant time and energy" to get the charges removed and request refunds.

In addition to the fine, Comcast will also adopt new policies requiring it to get proper authorization from customers before billing for new services or equipment. More specifically, the company will send out clearly labeled order confirmations separate from bills that explain any new items. Comcast will also allow subscribers to block the addition of anything new to their accounts. The company must also revise how it handles billing disputes and refunds "in a standardized and expedient fashion" and adopt a method that "limits adverse action" (late fees, collections, etc.) while a charge is being investigated.

Comcast says those changes were updates the company had already committed to make and they are either "well underway" or will be implemented "in the near future." The company says that after two years the FCC "found no problematic policy of intentional wrongdoing." Instead, the complaints stemmed from "isolated errors and customer confusion."

Here’s Comcast’s official statement on the matter:

"We have been working very hard on improving the experience of our customers in all respects and are laser-focused on this. We acknowledge that, in the past, our customer service should have been better and our bills clearer, and that customers have at times been unnecessarily frustrated or confused. That’s why we had already put in place many improvements to do better for our customers even before the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau started this investigation almost two years ago. The changes the Bureau asked us to make were in most cases changes we had already committed to make, and many were already well underway or in our work plan to implement in the near future.

We do not agree with the Bureau’s legal theory here, and in our view, after two years, it is telling that it found no problematic policy or intentional wrongdoing, but just isolated errors or customer confusion. We agree those issues should be fixed and are pleased to put this behind us and proceed with these customer service-enhancing changes."

Update: We’ve updated with a statement from Comcast that was sent to Engadget shortly after this post was published.

Source: FCC

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After an initial delay from late 2017 into early 2018, Boeing has acknowledged a second slippage of its schedule for the first commercial crew flights of its Starliner spacecraft. According to a report in Aviation Week, the company now says it will not be ready to begin operational flights until December 2018, a full year after NASA had originally hoped its commercial crew providers would be ready.

The admission by Boeing confirms a report by NASA’s Inspector General, which found significant delays with both the Boeing and SpaceX efforts to develop private spacecraft to ferry US astronauts to and from the International Space Station. The delay also explains why, as Ars has previously reported, that senior managers with the International Space Station program are likely to press ahead with the politically painful decision to purchase Soyuz seats for the calendar year 2019.

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The Galaxy Note 7 is officially dead. Samsung has told multiple outlets (CNBC, the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg) that it is permanently stopping production of the troubled device.

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There is a word in Vietnamese, nhau, that describes the act of getting together, drinking beer or spirits, and eating. To nhau is to partake in an age-old Vietnamese tradition where men gather to primarily socialize and drink, and secondarily eat foods that are mostly small bar bites, often exotic (think goat, snails, duck tongues, chicken tails (aka butts). Now in modern times, women also nhau, although not as frequently—go to any nhau establishment, and you’ll mostly find groups of men.

I’m always one to break tradition, so I personally love to nhau. Maybe it’s still frowned upon by some, but to me, it’s all about the time spent together with friends and family, the conversations you have, supplemented by a round (or many) of drinks and shareable plates. If this is the essence of nhau, then I’ve been doing this since college. I even nhau with my dad.

Now that I’ve explained what the art of nhau is, I’ll tell you where’s the perfect place to do it. Quan Be Man is an open-air seafood restaurant where short tables and tiny chairs still out onto the sidewalk, lager beers are sold by the bottle or bucket, and live seafood is cooked to order. If you don’t speak Vietnamese, gesturing at a live crab or the water spinach (aka morning glory) on someone else’s table is a perfectly acceptable way to order. Of course, each seafood can be prepared in a multitude of ways, so you may end up with the right protein but not the cooking method you’d been hoping for. But it’s okay—it’s good to try new things.

Lena T., my food guide for Danang, took us here for dinner, and we absolutely loved it. If you ask people what they picture the social aspect of Vietnam to be like, many will describe gathering at a coffeeshop by day and a drinking establishment by night, perching on tables and stools low to the ground, foods like noodle soups or fresh seafood ordered and served quickly, the balmy air settling in a damp layer on the brow. It is with this image that made Quan Be Man a delightful Vietnam experience.

Danang is a beach town, so the seafood is supposed to be uber fresh. Thank goodness we had Lena who could see and speak Vietnamese to order for us. We had jumbo head-on prawns, clams, congee, sautéed water spinach, and more. We drank a local Danang beer (one of which had added citrus—“easier for the women to drink,” Lena said) and Tiger beer from Singapore. We had plenty to eat and drink, and when the bill came, I think it was around $60 USD for the four of us.

I always say the best things in life are food, drinks, friends, and experiences. If you come to Danang, or anywhere in Vietnam for that matter, seek out a live seafood restaurant like Quan Be Man. I can’t guarantee they’re all equal, but it’s an experience to be had.

Quan Be Man
13 DuongHoang Sa
Danang, Vietnam
Phone: +84 90 520-7848

The dragon bridge breathes fire and smoke on weekends around 9 PM.

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There are plenty of nerdy things that Google’s search engine can do, and the latest is a peach if you’re a graphic designer. If you type in "RGB to Hex," you’ll be shown a color converter that’ll let you pick a shade and get the RBG and Hex values for both. In addition, you can hit the Show Color Values toggle and get a breakdown of the HSV, HSL and CMYK counts for those shades. Yes, it’s not the most useful feature in the world, but it’ll save you having to open up Photoshop just to get a color value for your web design project.

Via: Android Police

Source: Reddit

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