Category: Neighborhoods

West Boca Makes News With Romney

West Boca Raton has vaulted into the national news thanks to a Romney fundraiser held at the Leder home in Long Lake Estates. Apparently this $3M mansion (which is really only upper middle class by Boca standards) was not used by Leder for sex parties in the past.
Here’s a satellite shot of the neighborhood, with the house in question (we think this is the one) at lower left:
House where the Romney fundraiser was held
While the news media is making a big deal of all this, from what we can tell speaking to residents this is not important to them. And this is a swing area in a swing state. That, however, does not explain Leder’s swinging parties.
Here’s a brief video report from the always neutral MSNBC:

And to be fair to Mr. Leder, here are a couple video interviews with him and he seems like a pretty competent guy, unfortunately caught in a vicious news cycle:

A Hotwire-Insura Security Problem in Boca Falls:

We reported some time ago on Hotwire Communications problems in Boca Falls.
Now we can add another to the list. But first, we received this notice:

Hotwire representatives will be on site to assist with any chronic technical issues … with Internet and television services … at the Boca Falls clubhouse Thursday 9/20 (tomorrow) from 4-7 pm.

As for the Insura Security, Hotwire included a deal as part of the package. For the first year it’s about $10/month, and goes up after that.
We have two problems. One is a security issue I won’t detail for, well, security reasons. It’s minor, but we still want to get it fixed. The other problem is that our “alarm system monitoring certificate” fails to indicate it covers the fire alarm. Thus we’re not getting the complete break on our insurance that we should.
So I call Hotwire support today to get this addressed. First I call the main customer service number. The call gets answered fairly quickly after a mildly annoying phone-computer system. But the person who answers tells me I need to call a different number, which I then see is mentioned on the alarm certificate.
So I call that number: 855-637-1554. This is for Insura by Hotwire. And we get another computer answering the phone – yet another example of a company using computers because they’re cheaper and less effective than paying someone in India $2/hour.
This computer asks me where I am – Boca Raton – it gets that right. Then it asks for my last name. I say it. This is where it bogs down. It apparently can’t find me in the system. It keeps giving me names of people who are not me. I keep saying no. We go around in circles a few times. I keep hitting Zero on the keypad, but that does nothing. I’m never offered a chance to speak to a person.
So after 5 or 6 tries I give up and call back to Hotwire. Now I wait another few minutes before getting a person. And the person tells me he’s never dealt with an alarm system question before. That’s just great. I tell him I’d like to speak to his supervisor. I get put on hold. For a while. That’s plenty of time for me to start writing this article.
I don’t get his supervisor, however. I get a woman who works with the alarm systems. She seems pretty clueless about the 855 phone number that doesn’t work. She tells me she’ll send out a corrected alarm certificate to us. We’ll see if we actually get that. As for the minor security issue, she says someone will call me to set up a time to come to the house.
Now we wait to see if they deliver on that. I’m not confident.