Consumer Reports

I’m sure by now you’ve probably heard about the death of Yeardley Love, a player on the women’s lacrosse team at the UVA. It happened a few weeks ago now and since it happened, I’ve read tons of articles and blog posts about why it happened, how it happened, the “evils” of lacrosse culture, and why some men think it’s OK to treat women as objects. I read some truly wonderfully, well-written pieces, but in all the coverage, I felt that one big thing that was missing was the piece on prevention. How do we prevent tragedies like this from happening? We’ve probably all sat through a health class on the subject of domestic abuse and dating violence, but is one, brief class enough to make an impact? According to a CDC survey, at the high school level, one in 10 students reported being hit by a boyfriend or girlfriend on purpose. Take that to the next level and throw in alcohol, drugs, status or plenty of other factors and it’s easy to see how dating violence can escalate. So then what do we need to be doing differently? Is it better in-school education on the topic at a younger age? Is it parents teaching children to respect one another no matter what gender they are, what sports they play, what groups they belong to? Is it instilling confidence in women and giving them the resources they need to walk away? I don’t know what the answer is, but I think it’s something that we as a society need to think more about.

You may remember that a few weeks ago I was having horrible problems with my Internet service so I turned to the Consumer Action Handbook to figure out how to file a complaint. Many of you also commented that after I filed the complaint I should ask my provider to reimburse me for the time I had been without service. I just wanted to take a quick minute to thank you all for that advice. I did request to be reimbursed for service lost, and my provider agreed. I’m waiting to get my next bill to make sure the credit went through. If it does, I’ll be reimbursed for about half the cost of the bill and—for all the trouble they put me through—they also offered to cut my monthly bill in half for the rest of the year. The company was also quick to respond to the complaint letter I sent to the vice president of customer relations. A very nice woman called me and listened to my problem. Since a technician had just been to my house to fix the problem, she told me to call her if we had problems again and she gave me a direct number and her normal work hours. When my service dropped less than an hour after the tech had been there, I called her right back and she immediately called a supervisor and got a technician out to solve the problem. My Internet hasn’t been perfect since then, but it’s been better and I’m happy that I have a person I can contact directly with future problems. So thanks to all of you for your great advice and I encourage you to use the resources at ConsumerAction.gov if you ever need them.