citizens bank sucks.

my family recently had to purchase a new vehicle after our last one was totaled in a car accident.

we wanted to get the loan through our local credit union, as we're aware that the interest is usually decent due to credit unions being non-profit and all that jazz.

but the dealer we purchased the car through found a better interest rate through citizens bank. normally , when i throw out a name of anyplace, i'll link to them, but this bank seems to have no web presence at all. (unless the name change to charter one is permanent, but they're still mailing out the old citizen's letterhead in an equally moronic move)

strike one.

i received a call last week that our payment was past due, despite having purposefully set the due date to the 26th.

strike two.

we get our money together and call to make a payment, but they only take checks or they can use a check routing number for a one time payment for $12.95.

strike three.



i don't use checks, and i'm getting sick of these companies and corporations trying to save a buck to their bottom line by not paying out the fees necessary to set up credit card and debit card payments online or even simple paperless billing where they keep our numbers on file. (care credit is another notorious company)

so we called back, asked what we owe to date on our as of yet untouched loan, as we will be refinancing through another bank due in whole to their shoddy billing / payment practices. to which the phone rep. stumbles over himself trying to explain that if we refinance the loan this that or the other way, we could save more than the $12.95 a month and make the payments over the phone at our leisure. so, in reality, he told us we are paying too much for our loan, but it could be cheaper and we could pay the same amount. that is weapons grade ignorance.

so i am pleased to say that they just lost a single paying customer to what i can only imagine is a slow growing business (again, i point out that they have no web presence.... mom and pop cookie bakeries have freaking web sites!) and i hope enough people are annoyed with having to write checks in an ever expanding check free market.

citizens bank was built by simpletons.

crashes, beer & graphic design.

it's been a hectic 2 weeks.

6 days after being laid off, an suv tried to force a subaru outback into the trunk of our car.

the outback didn't fit.

all in all, we were car 3 in a 5 car pileup. everyone is safe with minor aches and pain. the car was totaled and we were 3 months or so away from owning it outright.



the day after this debacle, we took a roadtrip to montana for a family reunion slash job hunt. and despite beer being the secondary promise in the blog title, my family was a little more conservative this year (and i don't drink, so i was the perfect man to document)

here is the trip in a musical format:


and, in the ever widening pantheon of online design contests, i was invited to another t-shirt design community the other day. itself has a very similar set up to threadless, in that it's an ongoing competition (new shirts every 2 weeks to threadless' every week), a voting period (60 days to threadless' 7 days), and there are a lot of the threadess alumni (including me) there.

i have two designs up for voting there right now. both can be found here.

i was glad to get to update "aquanet lincoln" who has seen a lot of design competitions, but this is an updated version, now titled "awesome abe."

i also entered "multinational." for the first time in a t-shirt competition.

well, i'm off to litter the town of duluth with my résumé.

sammiches.

recently, torakamikaze of threadless posted a blog in which we were all set off to make sandwich mobiles. the point was to earn points, 1 for every time someone complained about seeing yet another sandwich mobile, 1 for every curse word used to lament the sammich and 2 for every blog about the cars that has a link to your design.

i came in late to the bandwagon (as usual) so mine is still pending.



there's something about being in on an internet joke that just makes me tickle in naughty ways.