Recently, my website has again been slow. I've had to cool my heels waiting for content, and I've noticed that the LiveJournal RSS feed for this 'blog has repeatedly been thwarted by server time-out.

Last night and this morning, for a while, the site was really dragging. And a post that I'd made seemed to evaporate, then reäppear after I'd composed and posted a replacement, then vanish again. My inference is that FourBucks.net at some point was trying to resolve problems, and that the flitting into-and-out-of existence of that post was symptomatic of servers being swapped or of various back-ups over-writing each other.

It would have been better if FourBucks.net had locked things for maintenance, and declared themselves as doing so. Some 'blogger could have written a rather lengthy post and then seen his or her work utterly erased.

Rodrigo Pereira has now changed his eBay alias from geekavailable to rodrafael (Rafael Schneider being one of his associates at GeekAvailable.com), in an attempt to make his tracks less traceable.

This particular dodge is worse than useless for him — I can show that he’s done it with the eBay history of the account names, and it will make it more plain to the Better Business Bureau that he’s trying to conceal what he’s been doing.

Meanwhile, I note that my review was deleted from Kudzu. So I wouldn't recommend using them more generally as a guide to the businesses with which one should deal.

Up-Date: Now I note that the whole company listing has been removed from Kudzu, after I'd posted a new, brief review.

Up-Date 2: Actually, the entry for Geek Available (AKA GeekAvailable) was moved, with my review deleted. So I've posted a new review.

At Kudzu, I wrote a negative review of GeekAvailable.com (AKA Geek Available):^[1]

ThiefAvailable

GeekAvailable estimated a turn-around time of 72 hours, but did not even order a needed part for 48 hours (then lied about when they'd ordered it), and actually ordered a substandard or counterfeit part from an unreliable seller on eBay! After more than a week, they were still making excuses for not doing the job (because the eBay dealer was still waiting on a shipment of junk from China). Then the geek went into hiding, with my computer! Who knows when I'll get it back and what will have happened to it? (I've complained to the Better Business Bureau.)

in response to which Rod Pereira wrote the following:

Dear competitor: we don't order parts on ebay (that's why we have warranty on everything we sell/service and we don't accept installing cheap parts clients order there and ask us to install to make it as cheap as can be yet it means losing the job sometimes) and we can't hide any computers as we have a shop. If you had a computer with us you could just walk in and pick it up. The only computers that are on shop are either waiting for pick up or for authorization on the job. Please make sure you'll be a little more ethical next time. regards, GeekAvailable management.

So I simply tacked-on an addendum to my review, suggesting that people search for bids on eBay by geekavailable,^[2] identifying the number of the lot from which he tried to get a part for my computer, and explaining how I'd been told that the shop would be open until 15:00 but was closed before 14:10.

Then I tried calling his sales number, and Rodrigo Pereira answered, from some noisy venue. He professed amazement at what I'd done, replied with a bald Okay. when I told him that I'd already furnished the Better Business Bureau with proof that he'd ordered the part off eBay, acted outraged at a claim that he was in anyway responsible for his business being closed when I was told that it would be open, angrily told me that I could pick-up my computer on Monday through Friday, and hung-up on me.

So, basically, having been busted, he reäcted in a way that can be classified as some mixture of adolescent and sociopathic.

Up-Date: Having been busted, Rod completely rewrote his reply:

Dear Client: friday you called saying that wouldn't like to wait for the part to get to our shop. We said that we could meet you at the shop just so you can pick your computer back. Check in our business hours and you'll see that we don't open on saturdays. We would be there until around 3 to go through some house cleaning. My associate left the office at 2:30 as you haven't called or showed up by then differently than the other two clients that she mentioned that would stop by to pick up the computer. We could have just told you to come next week but decided to help you having your computer ASAP. it's unfortunate you couldn't make it but she couldn't wait the whole day as it was a favor she was doing for me agreeing to hand your computer back to you on a day she wouldn't even ordinarily be working. Please come to the shop on tuesday and your computer will be waiting for you as it was on saturday. Regards, Rod

I added another addendum, which made it plain that he'd rewritten his reply, that I had been there at 14:10, and that he had stolen many days of my computer from me.

---

^[1] Later, both this review and a positive review were deleted from Kudzu. Then the entry for the business was moved, then the positive review was restored. I can only guess as to what silliness will follow.

^[2] The account alias has since been changed to rodrafael , so the appropriate search would be for bids with that name.

Having been told yester-day that GeekAvailable.com (AKA Geek Available) would close to-day at 15:00, I arrived at their suite at 14:10. No prize for guessing that they were completely closed-up.

Had they told me yester-day that they would not be open to-day (in spite of their having been there the previous Saturday), I could have picked-up my computer in the late after-noon yester-day.

I left an angry message on their answering machine, noting that I'd been told that they'd be open until 15:00, and explaining that, when I got home, I would file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau, that if that didn't produce satisfactory results then I'd take them to court, and that the reason that I was going to the BBB first was because it would actually take more out of the hide of GeekAvailable.com to have an outstanding complaint there.

I have indeed filed the complaint.

David's Coffee Place, transitioning to Babycakes (or perhaps to Babycakes @ David's Coffee Place), now has a notice posted on the entrance door, quoting local health regulations, and declaring that companion animals other than service animals will no longer be permitted in the building or on the patio.

Any reasonable response to this change must turn upon how one feels about the more general change of the business. There is little question that local officials will be more zealous about enforcing such things as the quoted regulations if that general change is made.

And I don't know whether David's Coffee Place as I first knew it could have survived. (Certainly no one has shown the accounting books to me.)

Poking around, I see that GeekAvailable ordered the replacement part for my computer on eBay. The part was ordered on 17 May at 13:26:22 PDT, about 3 minutes before the call from Rod in which he told me that he'd ordered it on Thursday or on Friday but couldn't find a tracking number for it in his e.mail.

And he ordered it from originalpartsglobal. Now, if Rod had used ToolHaus.org, then he might have learned that, while originalpartsglobal listed the unit location as Albuquerque, his merchandise actually ships from China. Not much chance of it having got to San Diego in 72 hours. Really, even without ToolHaus.org, Rod should know better than to rely upon a seller with 63 negatives and 107 neutrals out of 7926 feedback entries in the last year.

I called GeekAvailable.com yet again to-day, after the time at which they had previously indicated that they received parts, and asked them for the status of my computer. I was again told that they were trying to get a tracking number from the supplier of the needed part.

I asked them at what time they would close to-morrow, and was told that they would close at 15:00. I said that I would come to-morrow to pick-up my computer, as this has gone on too long.

I think that it's remarkable that a business would be so amateurish as to utterly alienate a customer to try to avoid replacing an relatively inexpensive part gone astray. GeekAvailable.com has already lost the cost of that part! Now they've additionally lost the profit associated with ordering a new part and installing it for me.

I called GeekAvailable.com at just before 18:00 PDT to query about the status of my computer. I was told that they are trying to get a tracking number from their parts supplier to ascertain what has happened to the part that was ordered to fix my computer, and that they would call me as soon as they had any news.

As the Woman of Interest subsequently noted, it is really poor practice for them to have waited for my query rather than calling me to tell me where things stood. I need to decide on a response to further continuation of this situation.

I've received no phone call to-day from GeekAvailable.com; I'm quite unhappy with how a turn-around time estimated to be 72 hour has thus far run something more than 150 hours.

Meanwhile, Bessie is being further cantankerous, confusing two separate drives, and deleted files from the one when told to remove files from the other.

I called GeekAvailable.com this morning at about 10:00 PDT; I was told that they expected receipt of a part to-day, and to have my note-book computer fixed about half an hour after that; and that they would call me as soon as it was ready.

I surely hope that I'll have it back to-day.