2019 Volvo XC40 long-term wrap-up: A premium little SUV that never let us down – Roadshow

id=”article-body” class=”row” section=”article-body”> Enlarge ImageWe’ll miss this little Swede.

Manuel Carrillo III/Roadshow While you can learn a lot in a week or 우리카지노 two of driving a car daily, you learn so much more after a full year. That’s why we love taking what you might call a decidedly extended test drive of some of the more popular cars in the market, 퍼스트카지노총판 and given how many of you were clicking on everything we wrote about Volvo’s smallest and most attainable car, adding an XC40 to our long-term fleet was an easy decision.

Choosing how to spec it, however, required a little more discussion. Ultimately, for the car we called “The Swede,” we opted for the T5 spec, with a 248-horsepower, 2.0-liter, turbocharged engine and all-wheel drive. We added the $1,400 premium package to get us Volvo’s Pilot Assist adaptive safety suite plus other niceties like wireless charging. Ticking other boxes like heated front seats and metallic paint gave us a cost of $42,590 delivered.

The car started its time with us in California, where Managing Editor Steven Ewing got first dibs, 우리계열카지노 concluding that our Volvo XC40 is “a really nice little car.” News Editor Kyle Hyatt was similarly enamored after taking our XC40 on an extended road trip, though former reviews editor Manual Carrillo III wasn’t quite so keen on the XC40, struggling to get comfortable.

Following a stint up in our San Francisco office, the Swede went on a little journey. We tied it up with a bow (not really) and packed it off for Detroit, where I took delivery and drove it back to New York, diving in the deep end with a 10-hour, 600-mile run along the wild expanses of I-90. Not the most exciting of introductions, but a great opportunity to test out Pilot Assist. The advanced lane-keep and adaptive-cruise systems, though well short of proper autonomy, do a great job of simplifying the more menial parts of highway driving. And, while the little XC40 is a bit on the stiff side to properly absorb some of I-90’s more tired sections of concrete, the ride quality of our little ‘ute proved to be admirably good.

Boats on the roof, dogs in the hatch, bike on the back, 우리계열카지노 ready for adventure.

Tim Stevens/Roadshow Volvo’s Sensus infotainment system, though a bit old and sluggish at this point, still holds up well enough, providing easy access to vital functions like activating the rearview camera. The navigation functionality is on the basic side, but Android Auto support meant I was far more likely to rely on Google Maps anyway.

With grand plans of adventure on my mind, I fired a note off to Thule, which was kind enough to hook The Swede up with a roof-mounted rack system capable of hauling my pair of sea kayaks. Volvo also threw on a trailer hitch and, so augmented, the XC40 was a more than capable hauler for myself, my wife, 우리계열카지노 our dogs, our boats and my bike, even scoring 23 miles per gallon so encumbered.

I wanted to use that hitch for some trailering adventures as summer turned to fall, hoping to put the XC40’s rated 3,500-pound towing capacity to the test — admirably high for such a little guy. Alas, an unintended series of camper scheduling changes nixed that plan. Always leave ‘em wanting, I suppose.

As the seasons turned and the snow fell, the XC40 proved more than capable in the limited wintery conditions we’ve had thus far in the northeast. Importantly, the remote starting functionality provided by the Volvo On Call app meant the The Swede was always warm and welcoming, even when I’d left it on the other side of a big parking garage.

Facebook’s “House of Fun”, Other Games and Their Many Problems

\u3010\uc288\ud37c\uce74\uc9c0\ub178\u3011 \uc2e0\uaddc\uac00\uc785 \ucfe0\ud3f0\u3163\uc6b0\ub9ac\uce74\uc9c0\ub178 \uacc4\uc5f4id=”mod_40751634″>Paying to Play Slots Games With No Payout? Welcome to the Ship of Fools

H O F – AKA “House of Fun”, known to many as “House of Fools” is an online slot machine games room in the Facebook apps section, owned and operated by the same ultra-rich owners of other pay-to-play games cropping up seemingly weekly on Facebook.
Now, one of the many problems associated with these “new” online casinos is that they cost a LOT of money to play, but you can’t cash out. You can wait for your daily free chips to show up, and maybe get between 5 and 100 or so spins, or you can buy “chips” for an absurdly large amount of money for an online slot machine game that, as was stated earlier, does not pay out. Even if you made it up to 100 Billion dollars, you couldn’t cash that in for $10. However, you can buy 30,000 chips for $9.99 USD, or 300,000 chips for $79.99 – with the lowest bet being $500 per spin on most games, you can easily go through a few hundred dollars trying to play for a few hours – real life casinos may be known as money vacuums, but at least when you win, you can cash out, go home and order a giant Chinese dinner.

Okay, that 300,000 chips can be gone in seconds if you bet big (as the site overtly encourages you to do so, with huge roaming jackpots of tens of millions of chips going to supposedly randomly chosen players. You do see the same names popping up on those winner boards all the time…). At 20,000 per spin, you could go through over $5,000 per hour! And that’s in converted US dollars – so, $100 becomes $138 Canadian Loonies – which, ironically, is what people who pay to play at House of Fun really are (in case you missed that… they’re “loonie”).

Now, an online casino that charges extremely high prices for small numbers of spins should be suspect at least, but when that same “casino”, which, again, does not pay out winnings in any way, does not only not help customers out who’ve encountered problems with the games, but they go as far as to call you a liar for claiming that their games were acting up when huge payouts were about to be received.

But, wait – there’s more!

There are many games, 우리카지노쿠폰 hundreds in fact, that are on Facebook. They get you top start playing, get addicted, then tell you that you need to buy coins, credits, warplanes and tanks, ghost killer apparatus, etc. – no matter the game you play, they will eventually ask you (or, tell you) to buy coins or credits to either continue playing, or to enhance your game (bigger tanks!).

No matter how you look at it, they’re worse than your government in trying to squeeze as much money out of your bank account for so little in return. Surprisingly, hundreds of thousands do, many daily!

HOF really should be selling their “chips” for 5% of what they now charge! As is, you can very easily go through over $40 per hour playing at the minimum bet – and that’s when you get a jackpot, and receive about 2% of the jackpot’s worth.

A Quick Listing of Problems Found
After playing House of Fun’s online casino games, using their free chips – I have had my cash total grow to over $34 Million coins, but there’s nothing to do but to play it out, game flaws and all, because you can’t take it with you. No – I mean you really can’t take it with you – you can’t cash out (or even buy cool gear, like sweatshirts, hats, etc.) – the only thing you can do with your winnings is to keep playing until you’re out of chips, then either wait for 3 to 8 hours for your “every 4-hour bonus free chips” – usually between 600 and 800 chips – and you get to spin the “Wheel of Fun”, where you’re most likely to get one of the smaller prizes… Out of probably 40 pins on that wheel – over 3 facebook accounts – I’ve gotten the top prize twice, and under $50,000 in chips the majority of the time.

So – We were talking about a list of the problems that I found, that I told House of Fun’s “Help Technicians” – who can only tell you to “clear your cache and cookies then reset the game” – and emailed their technical support – who said “there were no problems showing in my spin history”… They called me a liar, assumed I was just looking for free coins – when in my opening statement I told them I didn’t want any money back, nor an absurd amount of chips – I just wanted back what was taken from me when their games freeze up and the reels spin all willy-nilly.

I JUST WANTED WHAT WAS OWED ME, WHAT I’D WON!
So, as promised, here’s just a few of the recent problems – occurring in February of 2016;

1) While playing “Mystic Bear”, with 4 Scatter symbols showing in the first 4 reels, on a $2.5K per spin bet – the reels go haywire. I contact Help and tell them that it is happening now – could they at least mark the time when contacting their higher ups – but no, they just told me to clear my cache and cookies, and to email the tech support gurus (gurus my ass! They knew what game and the exact time, how hard could finding the record of that failed spin be?) I lost over $1.4 Million in chips and at least 60 additional free spins – all at double the payout.

2) On the Lucky Koi game, I had Scatter symbols on the first 5 reels, with the sixth, and final, Scatter symbol stopping on the 6th reel – but, no, the game goes haywire. That would have been 100 more free spins at double the wins, as a retrigger, since I was already in 50 free games I was just rewarded – and I lost all of the chips I had accumulated to that point, plus the chips for 6 full Koi on the 6 reels inside of a free games spin – plus the huge win for 6 Koi showing while in a free spin, which doubles that payout, plus the next 145 spins would have been doubled up… so I guess I kind of got double-double screwed on whatever the highest payout I would have ever gotten from playing House of Fun reels would have been?

3) It seems that the House of Fun games doesn’t like giving out large wins inside doubled up free spins (when you get free spins while on free spins – called a “retrigger”). This same problem has happened to me on at leat 6 different games, and not once on a nothing spin – always a huge payout. Does that make “the list of things that make you go huh?”

4) On the new “Mardi Gras” game, when you get the bonus spin and have red and green arrows, if you get free spins and a multiplier, those free spins are vsupposed to be multiplied by the multiplication factor – if you got 10 free spins and a multiplication factor of 5, you SHOULD HAVE WON 50 free spins, but you only get the 10 – they just don’t bother making the games perform the way that they write them up as!

Real Reels Pay Real Cash – Imgine That!
You can either play or be played. House of Fun plays you – an online casino pays you..- . amazing what one little old “l” can do, eh? Customer Service? Not here!
“I said buy the $299.00 package! It should last you at least 45 minutes! Now, you Holy outwitted fool (HOF)” Here’s Hearing from House of Fun;
Case in point:

I was playing the “Mystic Bear” game, with my winnings down to about 50,000 – from a high of over 1.6 million (from a 6,000 start) – I got the Scatter symbol on the first 4 reels, and the 5th Scatter symbol was abou to stop on the 5th reel, when the game went into black and white and the reels started spinning out of control. Instead of just resetting the page, I got on a different browser and contacted House of Fun’s “Help Section”. How helpful!

I was told “to clear your cache and cookies and refresh the page, and it will go back to where you were when you do it”. I did all that, but when I refreshed the page, the game opens up at the usual opening, with my upcoming free spins gone, the winnings I should have had and would have had from the 100 or so free spins, at $2,500 per spin. It should have been in the millions, as some spins generated winnings of over 650,000 playing that game at that price per spin.

Now, you’d figure that an online casino that doesn’t pay off winners would be apologetic, ay something like “We looked at your playing for the exact time you contacted our Help Section, and noticed you were frozen out with Scatter symbols shown on all four of the first 4 reels…” – but, no – what they responded with astounded me.

Here – from the email they sent me…

Thank you for contacting House of Fun Support Team.

Marc, I’m truly sorry that you encounter this situation while playing House of Fun, however due to the fact that your account in our database showed no irregularities in your gaming behavior we are unable to credit the account. Also, please be as kind as to note that our Technical Department investigated this situations and they didn’t found any error regarding your game behavior, therefore the system doesn’t allow us to credit your account with the amount of coins that you have mentioned in your previous e-mail.

Thank you once again and looking forward to hearing from you soon.

Best Regards,

Aaron Simson

House of Fun
Support Team

Wow!!!

Thanks, Aaron… did you ever think to talk to your help technician that I talked to, who I gave the exact time of the spin (well, within 5 minutes, but more than good enough for any minimum-wage coder) in question?

And, is it weird that this has only happened on huge winning spins, where a major number of free spins were about to e received at a high bet per spin? It’s happened to me at least 10 times now, on at least 5 different games, and each time it was going to be, or was in the middle of, a huge win.

This happened to me on 5 different occasions, and I contacted them each time. Each time, I got the same responses, some worded with better grammar than our friend Aaron here…

WAS IT JUST ME?

No. No, it wasn’t just me. There are anti-HOF “un-fan” groups of like-ilked people who’re royally pissed off about how the games perform, how they can’t possibly be using a true randomizer for the reel spins (if they were, the games wouldn’t be able to “freeze up” when a full-page block of symbols is coming up, 카지노사이트 or to pay off the winnings even before the multiplier amount has been selected on certain games).

Should “House of Fun” refund money to people? No. No, they shouldn’t, because if someone’s stupid enough to spend their money on an online slot machine app through Facebook (with their multi-BILLION DOLLAR EARNING Candy Crush game, and many others – one advertised on TV with Arnold Shwartzenegger no less… just how much money does Mark Zuckerburg need to be happy?

Or, is this some sort of social experiment, to see just how dumb people can be before they come to their senses?

Fun? If you don’t like money, yes…
So much fun to gamble your money with no chance of winning so much as a t-shirt! What to Do?
So, what can be done?
Well, for starters – if you’re buying chips at House of Fun, or any other online Facebook page/group/game, then you should stop it. NOW! Right now!
Then, take 50% of what you were going to spend there and spend it at a real, verified online casino that pays out to winners within 2 banking days of your cash out request. They are all over the place, just Google “online casino” and start enjoying yourself. Heck, you might even win – and there, if you do win, you can actually cash out your winnings and buy yourself that new Corvette Stingray Convertible Roadster…

If you’re paying to play any of the other Facebook games, STOP IT! Stop it right now!

Save your money up and buy an X-Box or Playstation gaming system, with all the best options and accessories. Not only will you enjoy yourself much better, you can even play with friends online – or, gasp! – in person! And it will be a heck of a lot cheaper than playing at House of Fun, or any of the other Facebook sponsored gaming sites, whether casino, Candy Crush (which brings in BILLIONS of dollars per month!!!) or a war simulation game.

Okay, I can understand being depressed, lonely, up against the wall financially, and no real hopes of getting out of that situation without winning your way out. Been there, tried that. But at least I tried it at a real online casino, one that pays winners with the same kind of money the player bought chips with. Oh – I did win about $6,500 – it started at $28,500 but I had to make over $135,000 worth of spins in order to cash out, because I took their “Account Opening Special Bonus”… something I would strongly advise against.

But then again, I would strongly suggest that you take 60% of whatever you’re spending on any of the Facebook related games and spend that on an online casino, take your pick: if they’re registered, they’re checked to ensure that they work as advertised – something House of Fun flatly refuses to do.
Uh – Weren’t We Talking About HOF Here?

Yes. Yes we were. Sorry ‘bout that, chief…

But, the analogy stands true for both the online casino versus House of Fun – in an online casino, they have to keep records of every spin spun – if HOF did that, they wouldn’t have thousands of people rallying against them. Nor would they have this post – with all of my freelance writer friends’ help soon to be viral – exist…

Who pays to play at HOF?
Millions of players spending BILLIONS of REAL DOLLARS to play a non-paying casino? Welcome to your club! Surely House of Fun Cares?
Does HOF care? Does Facebook care?

Heck no!

Why would they care? They’re raking in MILLIONS OF DOLLARS EACH AND EVERY WEEK – or possibly even each day – they do have just about 4 million “Likes”, and not everyone “Likes” places they play, so that others don’t know that they’re throwing money out the window, with no hopes of any blowing back in.

selling chips to an online casino that doesn’t pay off winners… If you do win big, you can tell all of your online friend (no typo… no “s” required there…) about your big win, then continue playing until you run out of money. Then, you can buy more chips, or you can come to your senses and save that money for travel, for online casino play, for a new gaming system and super HD curved gigantic screen AMO-LED TV.

Why wouldn’t House of Fun just pay players who tell them of their problems encountered playing their games off, instead of calling them liars – in writing (but not those exact words) – especially when their Help Section was contacted WHILE THE GAME WAS CORRUPT – if for no other reason than to beat their chests with their fists, yelling “Tarzan smarter than Jane!” and laughing while spending your money on another 600-foot yacht (the first one’s used now, anyways).

Do you pay real money to play at fake casinos?
Do you pay real money to play at fake casinos?

No. Too many problems with the games, and I prefer to have a chance to actually win.

Yes’ I freely admit to being overly stupid.

No. I would only pay to play at somewhere where they actually pay off players.
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Comments – Do you play at House of Fun? Why?
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0 of 8192 characters usedPost CommentNo HTML is allowed in comments, but URLs will be hyperlinked. Comments are not for promoting your articles or other sites.

sendingJeanie gordon

12 months ago

Had over 03 million points. Only to have them disappear. I djd not lose tthem. I will uninstalled the game and reinstalled still no points.. i will not buy any more points to play this game

User

17 months ago

That game was all right I liked it at first and then recently they stoled a bunch of coins for me and they won’t refund me or give me the coins back so I’m trying to get it totally off everything my data everything but the other games I’ll play but not the one House of Fun

Jen C

21 months ago

I DO NOT play there anymore. As of this morning, I have deleted the app. I played there for a long time because I am retired and it was a fun and harmless (or so I thought..) way to pass the time. In total, I only spent under $20 real dollars there. I am from a gaming town, 우리카지노사이트 and worked in the casinos for several years. So, I know better than to get sucked into the trap of hoping for “the BIG one.” The only reason I spent any $ at all at House of Fun is because of their blatantly shady and greedy little mechanism of jumping your bet up to max bet if you happen to switch from one game to another, or take the time out away from your device/pc to answer the phone, go get a snack, or go use the toilet, etc. When you come back to resume playing, and dont realize this, you lose most, if not all, of whatever youd accumulated to that point. So, if you want to keep playing, and build your winnings up again, you have no choice but to spend real $ for more “coins”. Fortunately, I caught on to that little trick pretty quickly. Granted, House of Fun has truly superior graphics and their games are genuinely diverse, well thought out, challenging, and..well.. really FUN. This is what makes it so appealing. Especially to new and naive people. But, these things pale pretty quickly, once you realize the dishonesty, trickery, and greed behind the happy cartoon character mask of House of Fun. Their constant and irritating pop-ups are nothing more than a mild form of enforced brainwashing. They are flat-out LYING when they constantly remind you that their games are random and based solely on chance. Their games are obviously totally rigged. They can program the games any which way they want. All casinos have had that ability since the digital age began. You are foolish if you believe that THEY do not totally control their own “numbers.” There are regulations and laws in place to prevent/police this but, apparently House of Fun is immune, for some reason. They are constantly having technical problems, glitches, issues, etc. As a result, people lose their points, credits, and $ (real, and otherwise) regularly. The “winners” that are constantly being shown, while youre trying to play, are mostly fake. They started a new “adventure” called Legends last week. WOW. What a colossal JOKE! Nothing but problems and complaints. They STILL havent fixed it, or reimbursed people for their losses. They extended the thing for an additional 8 weeks, to pacify people. Big f*#@king deal! Why would anyone want to keep playing a dysfunctional game that blatantly STEALS from them??!!! They obviously think all people are stupid. They obviously are either intentionally creating the constant game problems, or have hired people off the street or kids fresh out of high school for their technical staff. Their games continue to get tighter and tighter. Pure, disgusting selfish greed. The emails and other responses they send to people are computer-generated and often exactly the same from person to person, word for word. I mean, they really DO think everyone is stupid, dont they? Its so true what the many, many, MANY people and reviews have stated about House of Fun. The greediest, tightest, most insulting, and ultimately LEAST fun gaming site on the web. Save your time, save your disappointment and frustration, save your sanity, and save your $$$$. Do not stop at the House of Fun when there are so many other fair, generous, and truly fun places you can go to play.

brian armstrong

22 months ago

LAST NIGHT I HAD OVER FOUR MILLION SLOT POINTS THIS MORNING WHEN I LOCKED ON THEY HAD BEEN REMOVED AND I HAD ZERO POINTS SO WHAT I GOING ON.

Joe

23 months ago

House of fun the worst slot machine, if you have mayor problems they dont want to know about it . I had Diamond status , one day just disappear , 우리카지노계열 contact support may times, but nobody care to help you.

AUTHORMarc Babineau

2 years ago from Cornwall, Ontario, The Seaway City

play real casinos, where you can win real money – BODOG is a good one!

AUTHORMarc Babineau

2 years ago from Cornwall, Ontario, The Seaway City

For what they charge for a “casino” that doesn’t pay out, customer service should be their top priority!!!

Carter calister

2 years ago

Rip off, customer service always says its a random generator like the real casinos.Its an app on a phone nothing compared to a real casino but they will take your money like a real casino but can never win any real money it should be banned

unperit

2 years ago

i have lost my money to buy fake hof chips.. arounded 300$ real money but chance to get winning is faking lies.. honestly i want to say please stop play this HOF fake .. huwaaaa very disappointed.. my lvl 198. already play about 2years.

Roberta Stierman

2 years ago

FB crashed and lost all my points 300,000-400,000 points when i had to redownload hof now i only have 9000 can you please restore my points have tried contacting everyone

AUTHORMarc Babineau

2 years ago from Cornwall, Ontario, The Seaway City

Their prices for coins are like 25 times what they should be… Not a place to spend money on!

Carole.

2 years ago

I love house of fun I just started playing I believe it is puss in boots. Got it up to over 400,000 betting 5000 points. To get a special bonus , I got all the yellow circles entitling me for.

Whooo hoooo big nonus only to tell me I had to get two bonus and would make 50x the amt I won

What a rip off I was so excited to have the 400 pp and boom you took it only telling by May 21 have to have these bonuses.

I need not explain further. Rip off I do not want the silly game.

Nor am I buying any coins from you I can Cdn the exchange is deadly

How about being a good soul and give me back my 400,000 and I shall not Play that silly game besides I am not here all weekend as it is my 70 birthday tomorrow and am out of town for canadas long weekend

Sincerely

Carole patterson

Kevin

3 years ago

So true, HOF is a rip-off….be careful everyone.

Trump to hold campaign rally indoors despite coronavirus concerns

By Jeff Mason

LAS VEGAS, Sept 13 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump will hold a campaign rally indoors on Sunday despite public health professionals’ warnings against large indoor 우리카지노 gatherings during the coronavirus pandemic.

Trump, a Republican, has faced criticism for his response to the coronavirus outbreak, which has killed more than 193,000 people in the United States.
He played down the virus in its early stages and has alternately embraced and disregarded advice from public health experts, who encourage mask-wearing and maintaining social distance to prevent the virus’ spread.

The president’s campaign portrayed the rally in Henderson, Nevada, as an opportunity for 우리카지노계열 his supporters to exercise their rights to peaceful assembly under the U.S.

Constitution’s First Amendment.

“If you can join tens of thousands of people protesting in the streets, gamble in a casino, or burn down small businesses in riots, you can gather peacefully under the 1st Amendment to hear from the president of the United States,” spokesman Tim Murtaugh said in a statement.

Participants will have their temperatures checked before entering and will be given a mask that they will be encouraged to wear, the campaign said.

Trump, who is trailing Democratic rival Joe Biden in national polls and in Nevada, has increased the frequency of his rallies in recent weeks, but he has been holding them at outdoor venues or 우리카지노 in large open airplane hangars to help minimize risk.

Biden, a former vice president, 카지노사이트 has criticized Trump sharply for ignoring health guidelines with his campaign events and promised a comprehensive strategy to fight the pandemic if he succeeds Trump in the White House.

Trump is in the middle of a Western swing that will include a campaign stop in Arizona and a visit to California to be briefed about the wildfires that are devastating the West Coast.

Trump has knocked Biden for doing fewer events and traveling less than he in the run-up to the Nov.

3 election. (Reporting by Jeff Mason; Editing by Peter Cooney)