A NY city agency said Friday that it has asked for a review of its policies and whether they were followed when it allowed more than 400 HIV-positive children in foster care to be enrolled in tests of HIV drugs from the late 1980s to 2001.

John Mattingly, commissioner of the Administration for Children's Services, said the inquiry would look into whether the agency acquired the necessary parental or guardian permissions to include the children in the research.

The agency said that about 465 HIV-positive children were enrolled in drug tests between 1988 and 2001, the majority before 1996. The tests were conducted as researchers tried to figure out what kind of drugs would combat HIV and AIDS in children.

What have we learnedin the 33 years since the end of the 40 year Tuskegee Syphilis experiment?  Once again it is the most poor and defenseless put up as lab rats for corporate experimentation.

There are some sites that the fcc recommends for consumer information about Cellular Service


www.cellmania.com www.deadzones.com

www.dealtime.com www.Idwiz.com/cellular

www.getconnected.com www.cnet.com

www.point.com www.wirelessadvisor.com

AARP, the American Association of Retired Persons (www.aarp.org), provides on its Web site a publishedsurvey entitled Understanding Consumer Use of Wireless Telephone Service that discusses various issuesrelated to wireless service and older consumers.

Are you as fed up as I am with getting screwed out of your minutes? Or over billed for cable or whatever? These companies get away with it in part because we have such a limited voice in setting the prices or the quality of service.  If we all do our part, thing might change a little.

• Airline Baggage and Service: Aviation Consumer Protection Division, U.S. Department of Transportation, Room 4107, C-75, Washington, DC 20590; 202-366-2220; Email: airconsumer@ost.dot.gov.
• Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms: Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, Office of Liaison and Public Information, 650 Massachusetts Ave. NW, Room 8290, Washington, DC 20226; Email: atfmail@atfhq.atf.treas.gov.
• Auto Dealers: Federal Trade Commission, CRC-240, Washington, DC 20580; 877-FTC-HELP (382-4357).
• Automobile—Vehicles and Equipment: U.S. Department of Transportation, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Office of Defects Investigation, NSA-10.01, 400 7th St. SW, Washington, DC 20590; 888-DASH-2-DOT (327-4236); 202-366-7882 (fax).
• Banking—Federal Savings & Loan and Federal Savings Banks: Office of Thrift Supervision, 1700 G St. NW, Washington, DC 20552; 800-613-6743; 800-613-6743 (fax); Email: Customer.Assistance@occ.treas.gov.
• Banking—Institutions with National or “NA” in the name: Customer Assistance Group, 1301 McKinney St., Suite 3710, Houston, TX 77010; 713-336-4301; 800-613-6743 (fax); Email: Customer.Assistance@occ.treas.gov.
• Banking—State Chartered Banks: Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Compliance and Consumer Affairs, 550 17th St. NW, Washington, DC 20429; 800-934-3342.
• Banking—All others in the Federal Reserve System: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee: Consumer Complaints Supervision and Regulation Department, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, 104 Marietta St. NW, Atlanta, GA 30303-2713; 404-589-7239. Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania: Online complaint form: www.phil.frb.org/forms/consumercomplaint.htm. All others: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, Division of Consumer and Community Affairs, 20 & C Streets NW, Stop 801, Washington, DC 20551; 202-452-3693.
• Cable Television Complaints: Federal Communications Commission, Cable Services Bureau, Consumer Protection and Competition Division, 445 12th St. SW, Washington, DC 20554; 888-CALL-FCC (225-5322).
• Cell Phones, Pagers, Wireless: Federal Communications Commission, Wireless Telecommunications Bureau, Enforcement and Consumer Information Division, Informal Complaints and Public Inquiry Branch, 1270 Fairfield Rd., Gettysburg, PA 17325; 888-CALL-FCC or 888-TELL-FCC (TTY); 717-338-2694 (fax).
• Consumer Products (except cars, food, drugs, cosmetics, and medicine): 800-638-2772.
• Charities: Federal Trade Commission, CRC-240, Washington, DC 20580; 877-FTC-HELP (382-4357).
• Cosmetics: Complaints Coordinator, Office of Cosmetics and Colors, 200 C St. SW (HFS-106), Washington, DC 20204; 800-270-8869 (automated phone system); 202-205-5098 (fax).
• Companies (including finance, mortgage, credit card, and credit bureau): Federal Trade Commission, CRC-240, Washington, DC 20580; 877-FTC-HELP (382-4357).
• Credit Unions: National Credit Union Administration, Office of Public & Congressional Affairs, 1775 Duke St., Alexandria, VA 22314-3428; 703-518-6330.
• Food (except meat and poultry): Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, Food and Drug Administration, 200 C St. SW, HFS-555, Washington, DC 20204; 301-443-1240 (emergency only).
• Health Clubs and Exercise Equipment: Federal Trade Commission, CRC-240, Washington, DC 20580; 877-FTC-HELP (382-4357).
• Home Improvement: Federal Trade Commission, CRC-240, Washington, DC 20580; 877-FTC-HELP (382-4357).
• Investments: Securities and Exchange Commission, Office of Investor Education and Assistance, 450 5th St. NW, Washington, DC 20549-0213; 202-942-7040; 202-942-9634 (fax).
• Meat and Poultry: Food Safety and Inspection Service, United States Department of Agriculture, Washington, DC 20250-3700; 800-535-4555 (voice), 202-720-3333 (Washington, DC area), 800-256-7072 (TDD/TTY).
• Medicines, Drugs, Medical Devices, Medical Drugs, and Products Sold Online: MedWatch, The FDA Medical Products Reporting Program, Food and Drug Administration, 5600 Fishers La., Rockville, MD 20852-9787; 301-443-1240 (emergency only); 800-FDA-1088 (332-1088) to request a complaint form; 800-FDA-0178 (332-0178) to fax a complaint form.
• Online Service, Auctions, Websites, E-commerce: Federal Trade Commission, CRC-240, Washington, DC 20580; 877-FTC-HELP (382-4357).
• Retail Stores: Federal Trade Commission, CRC-240, Washington, DC 20580; 877-FTC-HELP (382-4357).
• Spam or Junk Email: Federal Trade Commission, CRC-240, Washington, DC 20580; 877-FTC-HELP (382-4357); Forward spam or junk email: uce@ftc.gov.
• Securities and Stocks: Securities and Exchange Commission, Office of Investor Education and Assistance, 450 5th St. NW, Washington, DC 20549-0213; 202-942-7040; 202-942-9634 (fax).
• Telephone Service (Billing, Access, Service, Long Distance): Federal Communications Commission, Consumer Information Bureau, Consumer Complaints—Telephone, Washington, DC 20554; 888-CALL-FCC or 888-TELL-FCC (TTY).
• Vaccines: 800-822-7967 or 301-217-9660.

All this week SprintPCS service has been completely screwed up.  Outbound calls would drop after varying intervals of connection often within the couple of minutes.  Also, I found that there were voice messages for calls that went directly to voicemail. This wasnt just a problem with my phone as I have two roomates who were having the exact same problem yet have 2 different and more recent phones than my own.

So I call Sprint and after about 20 minutes of arguing with the representative, I am offered 60 free minites.

Quick aside, if you are a person likemyself who has basically replaced his land line with a cell phone and has a plan with 2000 daytime minutes and unlimited off peak and evening minutes then free minutes as compensation is no compensation at all. This is no penalty for Sprint either.  There needs to be real compensation in the form of reducing your bill as in the Quality of Service Agreement other copmanies like bandwidth providers offer.  There is no leverage for forcing better service currently other than leaving the company.   We need more consumer advocacy and lobbying of the government and public shaming of companies who like Sprint think they can provide sub standard services with imputinty.

So back to the story at hand.  I get 60 free minutes and tell my roomates to also call and make a compalint to empasis to Sprint that there is an issue.  One of my roommates calls Sprint only to find that according to the operator she spoke with, that  there was NO REPORT of an issue in our area  on file.   Moreover, her more polite approach only got her 5 minutes of additional airtime. 5MINUTES!!!  This doesnt even equal the amount of time she had to waste speaking to these lazy jerks. Or the missed calls she had to then followup on. Or the wasted time in her life spent calling people over and over when calls repeatedly dropped.  Or even the poor reflection on her professional image for having such defective service.

After her call, I decided to call Sprint back to further berrate them for not recording the error in any appreciable way, for making client do the work of monitoring thier network, and for the lack of appreciable compensation. This lead to me being transferred to a supervisor named Ginger, operator number  GROANE01.  This woman, upon hearing my complaints at one point responded with "If you are so unhappy with our service why dont you just leave?" This is a great indicator of their actual respect for thier customers. My response  to her was that the ONLY reason i have service with Sprint is because when working properly thier network is 230kbs.

  But as you will see in other posts to this blog, that is not so frequently the case and if it werent for the idiosyncrasies of my professional life i would probably just drop them and switch to using just my Bluetoth Modem enabled, international capable,T-Mobile phone. The only unfortunate thing is that T-Mobile has a network with only 115kbs.  And for some reason there is a major dropped ball in the form of a bug with Bluetooth Authentication , the Nokia 3650 phone  and important Windows services like Terminal Service and Fax Service.   I will go into this further in a future post to see if any one else out there has the same problem.

So in the end, I am told that they will review my case and make an "appropriate adjustment" but that that would not be in the form of reimbursement on my bill.