Answer: When they’re running Vista.
Let me explain.
I was trying to reinstall JetAudio following its unexplained crashing. I uninstalled the original version, fetched the archive off my USB stick and tried to run the setup, but started getting unexpected errors again. Browsing the error code on Google, I found an explanation, and that was that some files in the installshield folder were corrupt. The site recommended I go to \Program Files\Common Files\Installshield and delete the “Professional” folder, then try the installation again.
So I went to \Program Files\Common Files\InstallShield and right click on the Professional folder, and select Delete – and it says “You need permission to do this.”
Now, according to my profile, I’m an administrator, so I shouldn’t need any permission. A while ago, I added two extras to the right click menu – “Take Ownership” and “Run as Administrator”. Both should work. Neither did.
So I googled “you need permission to do this” – and that’s when I found it.
Unless you have User Account Control turned on, you’re not a true administrator. You’re a kind of partial administrator. The answer was to turn UAC back on again, and THEN try to delete it as an administrator. That worked, and JetAudio installed without a problem (other than the UAC confirmation messages).
Microsoft – what ARE you thinking? Bad enough that you give all the pointers of someone being an administrator when they aren’t – but then to require the horrible nagging User Account Control to run in order to properly (as long as you make appropriate responses to the nagging) run things as an Administrator… that’s inexcusable.
Let me make it quite clear – On MY computer, if I tell the operating system to do something, that’s what I expect it to do. If I got it wrong, fine, my bad – but to lie to me and tell me I can do this until I actually want to, and then tell me I can’t… that’s out of order!
Come SP2 for Windows Vista – let’s have proper administrator behaviour, okay?
I’m sitting in companionable silence with my grandmother-in-law, reading the morning paper. The only sounds are the rustling of paper and the occasional exchanged comment about one story or another.
Then she starts going through the morning post, and she sighs.
“I must keep forgetting to pay these,” she comments, aware that she suffers from alzheimers desease. “I’m always getting them.”
‘these’ turn out to be something I’ve not encountered before, from a company I previously considered reputable. The very company, in fact, whos literature I had been reading not five minutes ago.
She gives me the letter and I scan it briefly. It takes only moments to piece together what’s happened. At the top is an official looking bill for over sixty dollars. Below that, another reminder that “You as a valued subscriber have been automatically entered into our $50,000 draw!”. It’s at the bottom that the key to the scam is finally revealed.
“We’re sure your friend is thinking about you and is glad you’re thinking about them enough to send them a subscription” the letter reads. After a few paragraphs, it instructs me to turn over the one page letter and look at the back.
The last paragraph gives the game away. “We’ve taken the liberty of adding your friend to your gift subscription account. If you would like them to receive a free subscription, simply pay the amount on the invoice before December 30th.”
It’s an increasingly common – but entirely legal – scam, the ‘opt in’ scam. You are opted in to paying something, and unless you actively tell the company that you are not interested, then you are deemed to have agreed to pay for that something, even if you didn’t want it or didn’t order it.
“How many of these have you had?” I ask. She produces three straight away. One of them has the name of her granddaughter – my wife – on it. This angers me, since we have never received anything from Readers Digest in the fourteen months since we last moved.
My grandmother-in-law is being billed for a product that we’re not even receiving. In total the company is billing her nearly one hundred dollars a month, and they are trying to increase that in this latest mailing. In an attempt to get the bills paid by a generation that regards debt with high stigma, breaking the huge cost down into several smaller bills is an effective tactic.
I suggest that we simply rip up all but one of the bills, a suggestion greeted with a certain amount of relief and glee. The bill we don’t rip up, I take and write in large letters “FRIEND ACCOUNT NO LONGER REQUIRED OR WANTED” across it, strike out the amount, and place in the pre-paid return envelope. On my way downtown later, I post it.
As I walk away from the postbox, I feel no regret for the abrupt and even rude termination of what I consider a scam. As I told my grandmother-in-law, this season she’s given the best gift of all.
The gift of freedom from a costly scam.
