I spoke with someone via their 800 number, who told me to call a different 800 number, who then said to speak with someone at the actual ticket counter. (What!?) So after those many minutes of my life were destroyed, they told me they “were sorry” and that they could get me out on a flight Saturday morning. “SATURDAY MORNING?! WTF!” I mean, wtf. I NEED to be in Austin. This isn’t the first time they’ve had problems with an airplane — have planes in reserve, even if only at your main hub (IAD) and fly them over. “But sir, we can give you your money back.”

Give me my money back? Are you f’ing kidding me right now? I don’t want my money back, I want to arrive in Austin Texas. Today. “Sorry sir.”

I’m sorry, but that’s not acceptable to me. My forced option was having to go on Southwest.com and drop another $384 on a one-way flight from BUF->AUS, so I could get out of Buffalo that day. Had I known I was going to drop this much additional, I wouldn’t have been such a cheapskate in the first place when I “saved” $250 by booking via United, rather than Southwest.

I let it go and decided I’d deal with it once I got back from the trip — and thus, I wanted United to reimburse me for $384. Through many emails and calls with Indians (no offense, but I want to speak to an American that I can understand), they offered me a $25 gift certificate on future United travel. “WTF?!” Then they eventually boosted it to $35 after more angry emails to them.

Wow, Thanks United. I’m done with you. I will never fly United Airlines again in my life. I have felt shafted and never want to be shafted by them again if this incident were to arise again. I purchased airfare to Belgium a couple days ago — and I paid a little extra as to not fly United Airlines.

The Internet has become a beautiful, beautiful thing. In the past year, Twitter and Facebook Status updates (aka “micro-blogging”) have really come to fruition — and in years to come, there’s only going to be more of it. It’s the new “word of mouth” marketing — only now, when I bitch about a brand, it doesn’t go out to the 1 or 2 people that I’m telling next to me — it goes out to the world; specifically though, it goes out to all of my friends/contacts, whom I have some influence with. In Twitter I have 816 followers, this blog has 1,219 readers, and in Facebook I have 334 friends. Granted, there’s overlap. But if even only 100 people see my message — heck, they may tell their friends about how Steve Poland got the shaft from United Airlines, and they might join my boycott, because they are sick of airlines treating consumers with zero respect. (Heck, I might get this post digg’d the the homepage of digg and have a legion of United Airlines Boycotters).

United Airlines — You Suck, and I hope you are one of the companies that will go belly-up BANKRUPT in the next 5 years, as word-of-mouth on the web starts to hold all companies accountable for their actions and customer service. When I look at your logo, I visualize a middle finger in it and you’re telling me to go screw myself. Well, this writing is my middle finger back to you.

The age of (near) full transparency is here. I say “near”, because we can’t see the shady stuff going on inside companies, but maybe anonymous Twitter accounts will start popping up with insider-employees at companies ratting out their own companies on shady activities.

Related posts:

1. Open Letter to Airlines (United Airlines et al) I’m disgusted. I’ve been disgusted. I can’t believe how low the bar is that your industry works towards. You suck. Every single one of you, except Southwest and JetBlue. You’re never on-time. You don’t care...
2. Steve, where are the ideas? F Twitter!!! All, it’s not that I’ve hit a creative road block — it’s that I’ve been obsessed with Twitter lately. My apologies — don’t remove me from your RSS feed yet, please I’ll get past this....

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I’m now finding out first-hand about the limitations of the iPhone. First off, there’s no MMS support?! I just found this out — I mean, is this for serious!? When a friend sends a photo or video, I get this cheesy text message saying to visit http://www.viewmymessage.com and then it includes the craziest username and password. WHAT?! Oh, it gets better – I CAN’T EVEN CLICK THE LINK. Wait, better yet — I CAN’T EVEN CONNECT TO THE WEBSITE FROM MY IPHONE!!! Honestly, this is the worst user-experience I may have ever seen in my life.

Wow, seriously? Next — It doesn’t record video? Um… WHAT? I’ve had an LG phone for like 3 years that does video.

Next — The earpiece sucks — I can’t hear shit. And apparently, when I speak to people, they hear EVERYTHING that’s within 20 feet of me.

Next — The Internet speed/connection. I don’t know — but it seems to suck. I read comments that the ‘Edge’ network is crap. I’m curious whether Verizon or Sprint’s is better?

I also hear I should prepare for this battery to go to crap.

So does anyone have a recommendation for a phone? Fred Wilson loves his Curve, but then Jay Parkhill tells me he doesn’t like it.

Here’s what I want to do:

• Easily send/receive photos and videos from my phone to any one on any carrier via MMS.
• Take video.
• Take photos.
• Easily get the photos/videos off my phone [via USB or zip file in my online account].
• Easily transfer/restore my contacts.
• Access the web — and thus, webpages.
• Easily record audio — a voice recorder on the phone.
• Easy to hear people when I speak to them. The person I’m speaking too can easily hear me.

I’m also in the market for a data plan so I can hook my laptop up to the Internet. Sprint, Verizon, or should I stick with AT&T?

As for the cell phone, should I be getting a Blackberry?

Thanks for any suggestions/tips — even if it’s too warn me about lack of features on a certain phone.

Related posts:

1. IDEA #81 – iPhone Photo Plus [iPhone SDK application] The iPhone’s camera is pretty “blah”. I’d love to see an app on the iPhone that allows me to do a bit of a “zoom” [even if it is fake and just manipulating what I...
2. No Cell Phone Commissions on Amazon.com, Bleh Looking through my Amazon Associates stats today, I noticed I sold a Sony Ericsson W580i with AT&T Nation 450 Rollover Minutes. The phone itself is only $0.01 with a 2-year contract (new or extension). The...
3. IDEA #26B – Auto Details and Photos to your Cell This relates to IDEA #26A. Same kind of premise — you’re either looking at the newspaper classifieds, or you’re at a dealership when they’re closed and looking at a car. You can simply text a...
4. IDEA #11 – Classifieds by Cell – The Long Tail of Used Goods that has yet to Emerge Currently it can take 5+ minutes to list anything for sale online — I’m proposing a process of less than 1 minute … and tapping into the long tail of items in people’s homes that...
5. IDEA #36 – Social Audio / Video Recommendations Problem: I’m out and want to rent a movie, or buy a movie / CD / book — I’d like recommendations from friends or people with similar tastes as mine. Solution: Dial a phone number...

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Also, why can’t my iPhone’s camera record video? Seems like it could record video — and stream it live like Qik.

Couldn’t it also connect to my Flickr or Facebook photo accounts, so I could browse mini thumbnails and then click on one to view the full size photo — and possibly send that to a friend direct from my iPhone?

Related posts:

1. Why the iPhone SUCKS. Anyone have Cell Phone recommendations? So I bought one of those trendy iPhone’s — and I signed up for a huge plan with AT&T, and I also signed up for their data plan [so I can connect my laptop when...
2. IDEA #55 – Flickr photo editing and printing software Fact: There are tons of (Yahoo-owned) Flickr users. I’ve always been intrigued by affiliate marketing — which basically allows you to promote something, then get paid if someone buys that product/service as a result of...
3. IDEA #40 cont’d – The Functionality Launch “Essentials” This is part 2 of 5 additional posts to the original idea. These were the functional pieces I felt were necessary for launch. The idea got out of hand, so I kept going back and...
4. IDEA #7 – Video Comments Plugin for Blogs Michael Arrington, TechCrunch 1/14/07: “For the blogger crowd, it would be very useful to have a plugin that works directly with the standard comments feature that allows users to leave text, audio, or audio/video comments...
5. IDEA #71 – User-Gen Opinionated Videos, Photos, or Text (Facebook App) Alright, kinda of similar to this previous idea, but not completely. QUESTIONS TO USERS – we want to extract original video (photo/text) content from our users, thus we want to give them “tasks” in a...

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I did some research and found out they were released exclusively on iTunes. I happen to not have iTunes installed at this time, so I did a search to try and find an iTunes song search engine. No luck — I couldn’t find one.

So here’s an idea for the taking — create an iTunes search engine. Sign up as an affiliate of Apple through LinkShare. Then I think to get access to Apple’s 6.5mm song data feed (download data feed spec doc), you have to pay $250 to LinkShare (which gives you access to product feeds from many of their merchants). You’ll then earn 5% of any sales that result from your iTunes search engine.

Note: Don’t use ‘itunes’ in the domain you choose for this (you could use something more generic related to mp3’s or music — because then you could work to get a data feed from Amazon.com’s MP3 library, eMusic, and others like IMEEM, these new ad-supported free download sites, and in the near future we’re going to see other big players opening up DRM-free MP3s for sale — like Yahoo!).

Further Note: 5% of a $0.99 track is only $0.05. You’d have to sell a lot of songs to make any real money from Apple’s affiliate program — however, you could complement your Site with display ads (much like Last.fm and Hype Machine do), as well as sponsored search results (from Google, or Validclick, or Searchfeed, etc).

Good luck!

Related posts:

1. IDEA #77 – Social Search Engine (take on Google) Another idea for NYC Startup Weekend this weekend… The Idea: Social Search Engine [take on Google!] (fb app / browser plugin / toolbar) The Concept: Take-on Google with a social search application. Users do a...
2. IDEA #61 – Music Affiliate JavaScript Blog Include A simple script that anyone could grab and put in the HEAD of their blog/website (or install via a plugin for blogger/wordpress/typepad). Anytime there is an MP3 linked to on the page (and/or a band...
3. IDEA #49 – Buy Music, Help Charities A website setup with passionate music fans that do some writing. Then the entire iTunes catalog is on the site via their affiliate program (which is either via CJ or LinkShare). Everytime someone buys a...
4. IDEA #45 – Social Connections Search Engine David Cohen shared a few ideas with me. There was one in particular I thought was pretty good and thought I’d share with you: Build a site that shows you the social connections of any...
5. IDEA #64 – AuctionAds copycat using Affiliate Product DB or just Amazon.com’s Product DB I’m submitting ideas to the Toronto Startup Weekend that I’ll be attending in 10 days and will post them here as well. I apologize for the post not looking that great, but I still have...

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