Screw you, Shell!

Keith Gable — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 09:11:00 -0600

I wrote in to Shell Customer Care to attempt to find if they have any premium Diesel in Tulsa, since I can’t get biodiesel in the “Oil Capital”. Shell does have premium Diesel - you can get it at several stations in Fort Smith, AR (one I know of for sure is the Massard Rd Shell across from Wal-Mart on Zero St). Premium Diesel costs 8-12 cents more than regular Diesel, but I get a lot more miles per gallon (42-48 vs 34-37).

Since premium Diesel is slightly obscure, it would make sense that their retail location locator doesn’t have an option for it (it doesn’t have E85 either). QuikTrip’s locator doesn’t even have Diesel as a filter option. The difference is that QuikTrip’s support people gave me a list of locations when I wrote in. Here’s what I wrote Shell to attempt to get QuikTrip-like service in determining what (if any) stations offer premium Diesel:

Hello,

I’m trying to see if Shell Premium Diesel is available in or around Tulsa, OK (ZIP 74112). I believe this is branded as V-Power Diesel.

Thanks!

I’m pretty sure that the people they pay to answer questions understand about 6 words in English, and around 30 words in any language, because they replied with this:

Dear KEITH GABLE,

Thank you for taking the time to contact the Shell Customer Care Center.

This is in response to your request for assistance in locating Shell branded retail stations. Locations can be found on our website: www.localshell.com. Please check the diesel box and add the city and state or zip code for the list of Shell station who serves diesel.

If you need to plan a trip, please utilize the route planner option on the left side of the screen at www.localshell.com. With this function you may locate all the Shell stations along your route.

We thank you for your patronage. If you need further assistance please contact our Shell Solutions Center at 1-888-GO-Shell (1-888-467-4355).

Sincerely, Shell Customer Care

Thanks for reading my e-mail, guys! I wrote you guys after spending quite a bit of time searching your site, and already came across that locator. So, I wrote them back and told them that. Then they replied:

Dear KEITH GABLE:

Thank you for your communication.

This is in response to your email regarding your inquiry of the Shell Staion in Tulsa OK that offers Premium Diesel.

Please be advised that due to system limitation our www.localshell.com can only provide you with stations that offers Diesel.

We appreciate the opportunity to serve you in this matter and look forward to providing you with quality Shell branded products and service in the future. If you have need further assistance, please contact Shell Solutions Center at 1-888-GO-SHELL (1-888-467- 4355).

Sincerely, Shell Customer Care

In other words, “if we can’t find it on the same site you can find it on, then we’re not going to ask someone to look it up for you”. Thanks for the fucking effort. I’m sure the station owner likes that you guys aren’t sending business to them as well. Seriously, how do these miserable assholes become customer support specialists? Someone at QuikTrip should either school these guys, or decide to offer premium Diesel. Of course, my real preference would be for CountryMark to open some locations in Oklahoma, but that’s never going to happen :)

SiriusXM Channel Changes

Keith Gable — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 22:45:00 -0600

I’m pretty happy to be a Sirius subscriber. Commercial free music for the win! Anyway, today they pushed a major channel update that incorporated a ton of channels from XM, sans commercials. Among those channels they moved, they replaced almost all of the pop channels 4-9 with XM versions or combined with Sirius versions. Which I like a lot better. The Pulse moved up to 12 (taking over what used to be Super Shuffle?), and they put a real 90’s pop channel there, which is awesome because I didn’t like The Pulse, but I definitely dig 90’s on 9. I’m also pretty happy with the fact there’s a 2000’s pop channel, because people in my car sometimes want to listen to something besides my presets, and that’s fine. Now, it’s stupid they didn’t put it on channel 10 or 20 to fit in the numbering scheme they’ve been using (except that would piss off Bruce Springsteen and/or Octane, but screw them both). And what pisses me off about that is that they replaced Boombox with that channel.

And that’s not the only channel they killed that I liked. They killed BackSpin 43 and BuzzSaw 19 too. I would say BuzzSaw wasn’t dead per se, but Eddie Trunk is annoying - I much prefer Long Paul, Keith Roth, and Kim Mulligan - and my experience with Eddie is just at Rocklahoma. Especially since they replaced BuzzSaw with AC/DC radio until next year. Yeuck - AC/DC rules, but not 24/7. Throw in some other hard bands and you get, well, BuzzSaw! Either way, it looks like we screwed XM out of Boneyard, so I guess I can be happy about that (but we got screwed out of it too - it doesn’t start until next year).

That said, on the other presets I had that changed, I am totally happy with the new changes. bpm can replace Boombox as far as I’m concerned, and they kept the Sirius DJs for Big 80’s (80s on 8).

Update 11/13: Since they’re broadcasting the same feed on both XM and Sirius, the XM “non explicit channels” that made me not buy XM in the first place are fed over to Sirius. I’m fucking pissed. 1-888-539-SIRIUS (7474) is the number to call. Seriously, I’m paying $6/mo, I want my profanity goddamnit.

The Ignition Project: Category Cars

Screw you, Shell!

SiriusXM Channel Changes