It was a bad week in a lot of ways. Non-deliveries, late deliveries, missing parts, and a lot of increasingly aggravating conversations with Amazon. I spent more time on the telephone with Amazon’s customer service than I have writing posts or taking pictures. I was beginning to feel like that was my new profession — arguing with customer service.
Today, things suddenly looked better. Although the delivery of shampoo and conditioner to my friend didn’t happen, she did call the post office and they said they would straighten it out. Apparently, it didn’t go to their PO Box because it was delivered to the wrong post office, a problem they have had before. So she should get the package tomorrow. And I refinanced a very bad loan with a much better loan that will leave us a bit of money to repair the back door, put a storm door on the front and back — and if we are very lucky, repair (I’d rather replace, but that’s not in the cards) the deck. If we can salvage the steps and the substructure and just put in a new deck and rail. The steps are the most expensive part.
To top it all off, we got an actual apology from Amazon, saying that they are not in the business of making life difficult for customers and gave me a private number to call should I need to discuss anything with anybody. I never expected that — which made this a pretty good day.
We also managed to swing a loan in less than four hours, It replaces a very bad loan i should never have signed and am very grateful to be free of it.
That made me wonder whatever happened to the application I put in for the loan for a new boiler. I hadn’t even gotten a note for the application I sent to them and it had been a week since I sent it.
So I went into National Grid to look for a copy of the sent document. There was no document. No copy. On stuff like this, I always CC myself. I finally managed to dig through my gazillion emails and found … are you ready?
GRAMMARLY HAD SENT IT TO DRAFTS BECAUSE THEY DIDN’T LIKE MY GRAMMAR.
Seriously. Even now, they asked if I really wanted to send a note that had a variety of grammatical errors and vague sentence structures. Did I want to send it? it was a loan application and they hadn’t even sent a note telling me that rather than sending it, they had dumped it into drafts. Is that legal? I’m glad I suddenly realized that I hadn’t heard from National Grid!
How dare they do that! I deleted Grammarly — and you should too. It’s like a worm and gets into every piece of your computer where there is any text, including picture captions.
The amount of harm they could have done me — and I hope have not yet done — is ugly. I was one of the people that years ago Grammarly selected to “test drive” the application when they were planning to charge everyone $12/month, but I could have it for free for three months. I turned them down, said that was much more money than anyone writing a free blog would ever pay and that frankly, I didn’t like a lot of their writing rules either. It was inappropriate for a casual writer or any fiction writer. Or anyone using a local dialect or using words of which Grammarly doesn’t approve.
Until WordPress decided we didn’t need a spell checker anymore — and recommended the free version of Grammarly — I never expected to encounter them again. Lately, they have become very aggressive. They are at the beginning of every YouTube video. and they turn themselves off when they please, on when they feel like it. Undependable at best, but this was way over the top. How dare they?
If you are using Grammarly, be very careful. I have been saying for a while that I’ve been losing emails. Having them vanish and apparently, Grammarly is why. If you are running it, maybe you don’t want to use it after all. If they decide you aren’t using the right wording, important business documents can and possibly already have, disappeared.
So it was a bad week, a good week, a better week — and a really bad application that has (I hope) finally been expelled. It wasn’t easy getting rid of it. I found that it had embedded in every possible part of the computer.
I deleted it from my hard drive, deleted it from Chrome, but it was still in there and I had to expel it from WordPress using their special code. There were versions of it all over my computer, like a worm or trojan virus.
It’s a devious and intrusive — and potentially DANGEROUS application. Be careful.
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Categories: Computers, Marilyn Armstrong, Software, Technology, Windows, WordPress
I really doubt they understand what a writer needs. They are seriously clueless
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I object to having a machine tell me my grammar’s no good. But blocking things is taking it too far. I’m glad I’ve never dallied with that software.
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I thought it was way over the line.
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I’ve seen their adds but didn’t realize what a menace they were….
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I’m still untangling it from my computers. It was less invasive on the mac than on the pc, but it was seriously invasive and it keeps popping up after having removed it from every corner I thought it might exist. Nasty piece of work.
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Good to know Marilyn…
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I tried grammarly years ago and since I write the way I tawk nothing I wrote was acceptable. Also, their rules, as you noted, are suspect! I stopped using it immediately. The fact that it had such control over programs/apps on your computer is just plain scary!
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It could have been a real calamity. And making it go away has been like deleting trojans or worms from your computer — but without tools.
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Their advertisements on TV show Grammarly as such a great thing. Of course they would! The power of advertising….. Marilyn, you’ve not said lately, but how is Bonnie doing?
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She’s old, deaf, almost blind, but surprisingly peppy. I’m hoping she will tell us “when” is the right time. She does a lot of sleeping and still loves those cookies.
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Sweet girl. I wish they would all tell us ‘when’… BTW–I like your new Avatar–very fitting!
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I get tired of headers and avatars, so I change them. Decided my birds look better than me right now.
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Ha! Marilyn, you are funny.
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Yikes it sounds dreadful.
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I never liked their grammar. Very formal, EVEN for office use. I was just trying to get a better spell checker since WordPress decided we don’t need one anymore.
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I have been using Grammarly but have been getting fed up with them because they are always sending me emails saying “oh oh it looks like you are not logged in.” even when it is visibly checking my posts. I really don’t need them to give me a critique of how much I wrote every week and I certainly don’t want to spend $12 a month for the premium version. I often seem to end up getting rid of free software because they keep hassling me to upgrade. I don’t always agree with the way they change phrases but so far I’ve never had them not send an email because the grammar police didn’t like it. However, after seeing “writing-assitant” I think it’s time to say goodbye. Apart from the spelling error is that hyphen really necessary? Amusingly Grammarly has just picked up on that error.
I am glad you were able to sort your loans out and an actual apology from Amazon is pretty good. Have they found out where your package went?
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Not that I know of. If they found it, they’ve already refunded our money, so it’s now between them and the crooks who kept it.
I was genuinely shocked that they would prevent an email from going out because it didn’t meet THER standard of grammar. Each time they make you log in, it puts another version of the application somewhere ELSE in your system. It really is like a worm and It was on EVERY section of my computer — and I have two hard drives, so there’s a lot places for it to lodge. Having removed it from the hard drive, it was still in Chrome and also in Google AND in WordPress and it even had a version in my graphics area.
I actually reported them as dangerous to computers. It IS dangerous.
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The only grammar guide I ever recommended to my students is Strunk & Whites’ “Elements of Style.”It’s short and concise and accurate. It was a mandatory purchase for my writing classes and it only cost $6.
I’m glad you finally got all those other problems ironed out.and that you’ll be able to make those repairs and replacements to your home.
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I won’t be able to do everything, but at least I’ll be able to do some important things that are urgent.
I have at least three or four versions of Strunk & White starting with the one I got in college and through many of the updates.
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Good to know.
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I’m still finding it’s little green tentacles.
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oh dear…
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There are a lot of applications like this. Norton was terrible. Once it got into your computer, you’d never get it out. Mccaffrey ain’t great either. This was almost as bad as Norton.
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I gave up on both those a long, long time ago 😉
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So did I, especially after a coworker pointed out that developers referred to Norton as “Norton Destructor.” It could seriously damage your computer and hard drive in a variety of ways all while telling you how it as working for you. And this is another one. I never liked their very dead grammar, but holding up an email because it doesn’t meet their grammatical ideals? Garry actually looked at me and asked: “Can they DO that?” and I said “Apparently so.”
I sitll don’t see why WP had to remove the spell checker. It worked pretty well and it was flexible. I haven’t found a replacement.
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I agree, a spell checker, one would have thought, is an essential part of any platform where writing is involved. It made no sense when WP removed it.
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They keep giving us less and less for the money we pay them. Despite their explanation that “other people make spell-checkers”, having one in your template makes a difference. They don’t seem to “get it.”
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Along with a gazillion other things we keep mentioning…
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What a scam Grammarly is! The cheek of it! It’s good that you deleted it.
An apology from Amazon would make a good day.
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Even so, they are seriously overextended. They also need to do something about the way they bill. At a minimum, they need two columns: one for completed (all items shipped), open orders — and a third for partial orders sent. I’ve been using Amazon since it was a book store … which was a long time. It’s nearly impossible to find anything in that endless list. This isn’t — or shouldn’t be — a big deal. MOST sites, when you look at your account, it shows your completed versus open orders. If Lands End can do it, so can Amazon.
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In the phone app, which I use, the complete orders are in black and open ones in green. It helps to see what is still coming.
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It certainly make matching up the two parts a lot easier.
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Exactly!
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