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Does PeoplePC ignore cancellation calls on purpose?

One of the main PeoplePC numbers, 1-900-285-8333, results in a “cannot be dialed” message most of the time. Calling 1-866-772-6277 is your best bet when canceling your account. However, I found something interesting when calling to cancel PeoplePC: when I called at certain times during the day to cancel my account, I heard a recorded message that said “PeoplePC is experiencing higher than expected call volumes. You will have to call back at another time when we are not experiencing such high volume of calls. We apologize for any inconvenience.” However, calling for any reason other than canceling connected me to a live person without any issues.

Is this a tactic used by PeoplePC to avoid or ignore cancellation requests by customers? I cannot tell for sure at this moment, and if they were using such a tactic, I am not sure how that would help in the long run.

Five steps to cancel your PeoplePC account

Make sure you backup your PeoplePC emails and settings before canceling. Follow these five steps to cancel your PeoplePC membership:

1. Call 1-866-PPC-MBRS [1-866-772-6277].
2. Press 1 to choose option 1, which means you are an existing customer. Then press 3 to choose option 3, which means you want to cancel your account.
3. If you hear the recorded message that tells you to call back later, try calling back right away and choosing any other option to either get to the technical support or new accounts department. Once you get connected to any person, tell them you want to cancel your account and see if they can help you. Also, try calling 1-900-285-8333 and see if you can get through.
4. Once you get connected to a person who is willing to cancel your account, you will be asked the reason for your cancellation. I said I was moving and got broadband at the new place. The PeoplePC staff told me that I could use PeoplePC service 3 months for free and see if I preferred the cable internet or the dial-up internet. Instead of laughing, I refused such a modest offer.
5. Ask for your cancellation number and write it down. Without this number, there is no proof that you canceled your account.

That is it. You may still be able to log into your PeoplePC account for a while. If you wish, you can go ahead and change your personal information like your billing information to something bogus to make sure your real information is not saved on the servers after cancelation or that you are not charged later on for any reason.

3 things to keep in mind when canceling your account

Remember the following 3 things when you call to cancel your account.

1. Be careful when accepting the “3 more months for free” offer. When the cancellation staff tells you to try PeoplePC for free for 3 more months, you will be charged for the 4th month automatically unless you call to cancel your account, at which time you will be asked to try another 3 months for free. People used to abuse such an offer with AOL by taking advantage of such offers repeatedly until AOL found out that people kept using the service for free for years.
2. Your account will take at least 24 hours to be deleted. It will take about two to three days before your account is actually canceled, and you can try to log into your account after that to verify your cancellation.
3. You will not get any refund. You should also know that PeoplePC does not prorate your billing, so if you paid on the 8th of January for the rest of the month and canceled on January 9th, you will not get any money back for the remaining 29 days that you did not use.

I hope that helps. Good luck! I will be keeping an eye for for any PeoplePC charges in the upcoming months to make sure the cancelation was permanent and thorough.

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Female stereotypes in different professions

Stereotypes are simply traits observed in a few people and then assumed to be associated with a larger population. Thus, stereotypical traits do exist but only in the people who were observed with such traits. Consider this as an example: stereotypes take the fact that a certain woman might love taking care of babies at nurseries to say that all females are better suited for nursery jobs. There are so many things that people stereotype with women, it makes me wonder if we are simply riding the bandwagon of saying we believe both genders to be equal, as saying otherwise would cast us as gender discriminators. If I remember correctly, in my stay of almost a whole decade in Southern California, I did not see any female carpenter, painter, mechanic, plumber, technician or a truck driver. What is the reason for this? I do not know.

We usually stereotype certain professions with females. Secretaries and receptionists are expected to be beautiful women, and so are dental assistants. People working in clothing and shoe departments in retail stores like Macy’s and Nordstrom are usually thought to be females. Jewelry stores are assumed to have female workers, and so are Hallmark stores. It is funny how all fields selling more products to women than men are stereotyped as having female workers, while stores catering to both men and women and stores catering only to men are thought of being run by males, like electronic stores such as Best Buy and Circuit City. Cooking is an interesting activity that plays with stereotypes. Most people assume that all major restaurants have male cooks. Why is that?

Indirect female stereotyping

When you go to an electronic store or a car dealership, most store employees use gender stereotyping when trying to make a sale. The field of politics is no different. We cannot even stop gossiping and getting over-excited negatively over the possibility of someone who can give birth running the country, yet we talk about how we all treat women equally. Similarly, Superman is a hero, but Lois Lane is not. Did either of them do anything to deserve this? As far as I know, no. We are the ones who hailed the male as the hero while forgetting about the female. We get 500 male heroes before we get 1 female heroin who portrays intelligence rather than her body.

Female stereotyping is here to stay?

Women are also treated better in some situations which increases the validity of stereotypes in some cases. Many people immediately assume that the male will take care of the income after child birth, but very few assume that a female will take over the income situation after males go through major surgeries. How many marriages do you know where the husband has no job while the wife works full time? Compare that number to the number of marriages you know where the husband works full time while the wife has no job. Is it not amazing how we preach about treating genders equally while our focus so far has only been on giving both gender equal rights?

All living things in this world can co-exist, though many of us have used the art of stereotyping to feel superior to others. Yes, many people say they “think” females should be treated equally, but do you think all those people actually treat women equally? Who is to blame for female stereotyping? Is it the many men, who love the idea of being in control and love looking at women as being less powerful and only seductive? Or is it the many women who play into the stereotypes and in turn enforce the archaic stereotypical ideas that many men cherish? Are we all to blame, or can anyone be blamed at all?

Solution for female stereotypes : change the actual mentality

It is easier to say and agree to an idea than to actually change our actual viewpoint. We need to change our whole mentality about females and stereotypes, instead of treating the subject as a taboo topic and bragging to everyone how we treat the opposite gender equally.

Please let me know what you think about this. Thank you for reading.

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While driving, I saw and experienced a few things. Nothing was divine or spiritual, so I apologize if you were expecting something similar to those. I saw a few analogies to how to run and do different things while driving, which I will share in the next few week with you. A few things that prompted me to realize those things were truckers getting together to take a rest, cars going up and down a hill and staying in specific lanes most of the time and changing lanes sometimes, and having a car driven by a total stranger drive with me for a while just to pass time. I will explain these things as time passes.

I realized yesterday that waiting for over an hour and 50 minutes for Gaim to download over PeoplePC means I should start looking for ways to optimize the time I spend on different things. Even though I will be moving soon, I ordered Comcast to be installed in my current apartment. They allow for a monthly contract, so it will be easier for me to move to a more permanent house and have the internet service moved along with me. I found out that Comcast is one of the few broadband providers that cap your downloads. That means there is a limit on the number of megabytes you can download in a month. If you reach that limit, you may get suspended from using Comcast for upto a year. I will try to talk about that more later this week.

I am getting a steady flow of gmail invitation requests along with a few other emails that I will respond to soon. If I do not respond to your email within 48 hours, I probably overlooked your e-mail or did not get it. Either way, please use the contact form to contact me and let me know that you sent me an e-mail. I will try to look for it.

Thank you.

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