"Acute Stickitodemanias"
I believe that was the term coined by Jack Black in "School of Rock." Anyway, the reason for the title is because a woman in the Marin IJ just recently wrote a column about how good Whistlestop Wheels was as a service for transporting the handicapped. Looking back on a long year of trouble with that company, I can definitely say that the system isn't all that perfect, so I decided to write here a little letter and hope that my voice is heard in her upcoming edition. The following is the letter I wrote to her. Get ready, folks. This is gonna be a looooong blog.
Dear Beth Ashley,
My name is “Jaimetud” and I am a frequent rider of Whistlestop Wheels. Every Saturday, I work with a man with cerebral palsy and we use the Whistlestop Wheels system all the time to go places and do stuff. I read your article in the IJ today about how Whistlestop Wheels is a good service for the handicapped and I’m glad to hear that the folks over at Whistlestop are treating you properly. However, I think there are a few things you need to know about Whistlestop.
First off, allow me to explain to you what my situation is. I am a caretaker for a handicapped man in a wheelchair. The severity of his situation is extreme. He goes around in an electric wheelchair because his motor skills are too poor for walking and he has trouble talking to people. I’ve been working for him for over one and a half years now and I still have trouble understanding some of the things that he says. And just this last week, he had a test in Basic Math at College of Marin. I helped him study for it the day before. He’s been studying First Grade math since he was in middle school and he still can’t do basic addition and subtraction problems like 5 minus 2.
We’ve been using the Whistlestop Wheels service for over a year now. When we started, we both realized that they were a good company to be with, but overtime they seem to have grown to be less and less responsible towards his needs. They’ve rescheduled his appointments countless times or even cancelled them altogether with or without our consent. They told us that it was because his house was outside of their usual service route by over 3/4ths of a mile and that according to this, they must put all of his rides on standby, which means that he’s not a priority on their list like everyone else and they have the option of canceling his appointments with them if they so please. Because of this, our usual Saturday appointments have been cancelled and his rides to work on Wednesday have been cancelled. Because of Whistlestop, he has missed work about five weeks in a row now.
Other than that, if they can’t make the rides happen, they’ve rescheduled them to times that are way too inconvenient for us without us knowing. A year ago, we had a trip to go to in the city on a Tuesday during Spring Break. We were going to Stars Agency to apply him for getting a job as a male model for handicaps and they only have open auditions on Tuesdays. Whistlestop decided to come to his house an hour early when I was still at home and was unable to come with him. Knowing that we wouldn’t have another opportunity to do this until summer came due to scheduling conflicts, we instead spent the day taking Golden Gate Transit to Northgate. Another time, we spent the day in San Rafael. I called several days ahead of time to schedule our appointments for the day and I even called up several times in the meantime to make sure that they hadn’t changed it. I even called that morning to make sure. It wasn’t until we had to go home that day that I called them up on my cell phone to find out that they had changed the time for our return ride to an hour earlier than what we had previously scheduled the day before…even though I just called them up that morning to make sure that the schedule we set up was still legit! On top of that, I had to get home so I could get ready for a babysitting job. Fortunately, they were able to get an emergency bus over there to take us home. These are only two of the instances in which such a case has happened to us.
Last week, we decided to pull out the guns. We decided to make sure that his house was really outside 3/4ths of a mile outside the usual service area. The usual service area that they take is around the usual bus routes that Golden Gate Transit takes. There’s a bus stop down the hill from his house that takes one of the usual bus routes. We measured the distance from there to his house and found out that it was only a half a mile away from the bus route. And so we called them up and told them this. They said that they had his location on their computers grouped with another street that’s approximately another mile up the hill from where he lives. They said they’d look into it and get back to us. Two days later, they called back and said that he was indeed within the usual service area, that they had made a mistake and they would stop putting all of his rides on standby and charging him $2.50 instead of $2.00. But the next Saturday, they still put us on standby and charged us $2.50 again. I explained to the bus driver the situation that we had just had and she told us that it usually took a week for such changed to go through.
In short, I know you’ve only been with Whistlestop for a very short time and I think it’s great that their treating you fairly, but I think you’d have a very different opinion with Whistlestop if you’d been with them as long as I have. I’m not saying that you should write an apology in your column for telling people that Whistlestop was a good company, but I would appreciate it if you could shed some other light on the subject by telling them a story that shows the truth behind their company. Do remember, that even though you’re only going to be with Whistlestop for a short period of time, my friend and I have to rely on them and other companies like them permanently for transportation. That is why I feel that our story must be heard.
If you want to tell our story in the Marin IJ, you can. If not, you don’t have to. But if you have any questions, feel free to e-mail me back at Jaimetud@gmail.com or call me on my cell phone at (###) ###-####. Together, we can bring a serious issue to light. Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
“Jaimetud”
E-mail: Jaimetud@gmail.com
Cell Phone: (###) ###-####
Dear Beth Ashley,
My name is “Jaimetud” and I am a frequent rider of Whistlestop Wheels. Every Saturday, I work with a man with cerebral palsy and we use the Whistlestop Wheels system all the time to go places and do stuff. I read your article in the IJ today about how Whistlestop Wheels is a good service for the handicapped and I’m glad to hear that the folks over at Whistlestop are treating you properly. However, I think there are a few things you need to know about Whistlestop.
First off, allow me to explain to you what my situation is. I am a caretaker for a handicapped man in a wheelchair. The severity of his situation is extreme. He goes around in an electric wheelchair because his motor skills are too poor for walking and he has trouble talking to people. I’ve been working for him for over one and a half years now and I still have trouble understanding some of the things that he says. And just this last week, he had a test in Basic Math at College of Marin. I helped him study for it the day before. He’s been studying First Grade math since he was in middle school and he still can’t do basic addition and subtraction problems like 5 minus 2.
We’ve been using the Whistlestop Wheels service for over a year now. When we started, we both realized that they were a good company to be with, but overtime they seem to have grown to be less and less responsible towards his needs. They’ve rescheduled his appointments countless times or even cancelled them altogether with or without our consent. They told us that it was because his house was outside of their usual service route by over 3/4ths of a mile and that according to this, they must put all of his rides on standby, which means that he’s not a priority on their list like everyone else and they have the option of canceling his appointments with them if they so please. Because of this, our usual Saturday appointments have been cancelled and his rides to work on Wednesday have been cancelled. Because of Whistlestop, he has missed work about five weeks in a row now.
Other than that, if they can’t make the rides happen, they’ve rescheduled them to times that are way too inconvenient for us without us knowing. A year ago, we had a trip to go to in the city on a Tuesday during Spring Break. We were going to Stars Agency to apply him for getting a job as a male model for handicaps and they only have open auditions on Tuesdays. Whistlestop decided to come to his house an hour early when I was still at home and was unable to come with him. Knowing that we wouldn’t have another opportunity to do this until summer came due to scheduling conflicts, we instead spent the day taking Golden Gate Transit to Northgate. Another time, we spent the day in San Rafael. I called several days ahead of time to schedule our appointments for the day and I even called up several times in the meantime to make sure that they hadn’t changed it. I even called that morning to make sure. It wasn’t until we had to go home that day that I called them up on my cell phone to find out that they had changed the time for our return ride to an hour earlier than what we had previously scheduled the day before…even though I just called them up that morning to make sure that the schedule we set up was still legit! On top of that, I had to get home so I could get ready for a babysitting job. Fortunately, they were able to get an emergency bus over there to take us home. These are only two of the instances in which such a case has happened to us.
Last week, we decided to pull out the guns. We decided to make sure that his house was really outside 3/4ths of a mile outside the usual service area. The usual service area that they take is around the usual bus routes that Golden Gate Transit takes. There’s a bus stop down the hill from his house that takes one of the usual bus routes. We measured the distance from there to his house and found out that it was only a half a mile away from the bus route. And so we called them up and told them this. They said that they had his location on their computers grouped with another street that’s approximately another mile up the hill from where he lives. They said they’d look into it and get back to us. Two days later, they called back and said that he was indeed within the usual service area, that they had made a mistake and they would stop putting all of his rides on standby and charging him $2.50 instead of $2.00. But the next Saturday, they still put us on standby and charged us $2.50 again. I explained to the bus driver the situation that we had just had and she told us that it usually took a week for such changed to go through.
In short, I know you’ve only been with Whistlestop for a very short time and I think it’s great that their treating you fairly, but I think you’d have a very different opinion with Whistlestop if you’d been with them as long as I have. I’m not saying that you should write an apology in your column for telling people that Whistlestop was a good company, but I would appreciate it if you could shed some other light on the subject by telling them a story that shows the truth behind their company. Do remember, that even though you’re only going to be with Whistlestop for a short period of time, my friend and I have to rely on them and other companies like them permanently for transportation. That is why I feel that our story must be heard.
If you want to tell our story in the Marin IJ, you can. If not, you don’t have to. But if you have any questions, feel free to e-mail me back at Jaimetud@gmail.com or call me on my cell phone at (###) ###-####. Together, we can bring a serious issue to light. Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
“Jaimetud”
E-mail: Jaimetud@gmail.com
Cell Phone: (###) ###-####
posted by Jaimetud at 4:38 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home