The Stand-up Philosopher

A New MLM Scheme?

Yesterday, Dave Ramsey and a caller really got into it over something called "United First Financial." Dave called it an MLM (Multi-Level Marketing) scheme and the woman insisted that he didn't know what he was talking about while Dave insisted that she couldn't do math and didn't understand how a mortgage works. Things got really heated when she let on that she was a Realtor. Wow. Of course, in true MLM distributor fashion, she claimed that Dave Ramsey couldn't know anything about their services if he had never been to a presentation.

Having been involved in a couple of MLM's in the past, and having studied various aspects of them, I thought I would check into this "United First Financial." From what I gather, the program involves purchasing a $3500 web-based software program. You also take out a HELOC (Home Equity Line Of Credit.) The HELOC has to be at a lower interest rate than your mortgage. You then use checks from the HELOC to pay your mortgage and other bills. The $3500 program apparently tells you the optimal time to pay your mortgage. The point to this is to hit your mortgage account right before interest is calculated so that interest is calculated on a lower amount. This can apparently save a bunch of money in the long run.

To me, the whole process seems over-complicated, expensive (if you have an extra $3500 around, why not just dump it into your mortgage in the first place?) and has the potential for dangerous amounts of debt to be racked up. Dave Ramsey's books can all be purchased for under $25. I'd recommend starting there.

If anyone who has been or is involved in this stops by, what are your thoughts?

[NOTE: this entry came over from my MSN Spaces blog, and had 5 comments. The original post and comments can be found here.]

How Futures Trading Works

I said a while back that I'm going to start monitoring oil so I can get a feel for what's going on and what's going to happen. I generally don't trust most news reporting because of the "if it bleeds, it leads" policy, among other reasons. I can remember stories back in 2002 and 2003 stating that "gas will hit $4 a gallon this year." While that did eventually happen, it took until this year, 2008, to happen, making the reporting from 5 and 6 years ago highly inaccurate.

Any research into how the oil market works will inevitably come across some discussion of "futures trading" and "oil speculating." I'm not sure how that works entirely, but I have heard that "futures traders are responsible for the mortgage mess we're in" a few times. I don't know what kind of truth is in that statement. It seems like greed, impatience, and shortsightedness on the part of both homebuyers and lenders was a large part of the cause, and yes, I take some credit for that as I am in my own mess in that regard from some shortsighted decisions I made.

Anyway, I came across this brief primer of how futures trading works, and how Congress, which won't allow any drilling for oil on our own shores, is starting to haul oil futures traders in front of their committees as they have run out of oil executives to blame.

"Upcoming" Book on the House Sale

My Realtor and I talked before about writing a book about trying to get our house sold. We've been through quite a bit on this deal. We spent from June 07 to Feb 08 on BuyOwner, where we had a few showings but mostly got calls from Realtors looking to list us. We finally listed with one Realtor who came off strong but in the end didn't seem to possess the drive to market our house. When we hadn't had a single call in over a month, and I started pushing her to get people back in the door, she suggested a short sale. I said "no way" for several reasons. She suggested a bridge loan to cover both our house and my in-laws' house. Ugh. When I said no, she said she'd let us go to refinance. I pressed for an unconditional release, which I never officially got, but she said I could list with another Realtor. When we relisted, things were going fine when the former Realtor's broker called demanding that we finish out our listing agreement. Our Realtor was forced to undo hours worth of work that made for really effective marketing, which got people in the door. After a couple of days, the broker let us go and signed a release. Then we went through the three almost contracts between a woman and her daughter. I'm sure with the proper writing, this would make one heck of a story.

I even picked out a title for the book, but I won't give the address at this moment. The title is "BOHICA- the (our address) Story." BOHICA is an acronym from my Navy days that is very crude yet I believe tells our story perfectly: "Bend Over, Here It Comes Again!"

Bad Weekend for the House

When asked how I was doing this morning, all of my willpower was required not to reply in an Eric Cartman impression "Well, I'm pissed off!" (Pardon the "French.") Perhaps that isn't the ideal description of my overall mood, but it sure is a great conversation starter. I'm not entirely sure what to make of the situation we went through over the weekend, but "crushed" and "disappointed" are family-friendly words that could be used.
I've blogged for over a year on the misadventures of trying to get our house sold. We ran up against what looked like 3 contracts with the same people for the sale of our house. The first person came through several weeks ago. She quickly came back with an offer. We counter-offered. She countered. We countered. She disappeared for a week. Our Realtor kept calling her agent, but got the feeling that they were playing games. She came back a week or so later through her agent and we began negotiations again. I've said before, we're selling the house at a loss and we know that. We went back and forth a couple of times, then she disappeared once again. Her agent wouldn't return calls to our agent, or if she could be reached, she just gave some blather. We finally went back to her with an acceptance of her lowest offer, which would exhaust our financial reserves to get out of the house. We heard nothing.
We had several showings along the way. One person who came through turned out to be the daughter of the woman who started and disappeared twice. She came through with a Realtor from our agent's brokerage. She began to list her home with that agent. We weren't sure why they wanted to run another family member through another agent, but we went through the offer process and came to an offer that we could accept with a contingency so all we had to do was sign contracts. While this was going on, we had yet another showing. This showing turned out to be the agent who showed the house to the first person. We weren't sure why, and she didn't leave a card like Realtors are supposed to do so something seemed shaky. We only knew who it was because our Realtor checked the log book. We found out later that the first person came back through with her Realtor to show her sister the house at the same time that her daughter was supposed to be signing a contract on the house with another Realtor.
OK, I'm doing the best I can to lay out some details without giving away anybody's identification or confidentiality, if any exists. On Thursday, as I was inching my way home down 42 in weekend shore traffic (there should be a law that idiots driving to the Jersey shore for the weekend should have to go down Thursday night so they don't interfere with those of us trying to get home from work on Friday) I got a call from one of the brokers that they managed to nail down an offer from the original woman. The offer would be the lowest price we could accept, with no contingency, and closing on August 1. That would make things tight, but we could do it. We told my in-laws, and started busting our butts getting their house ready to move into so early. Throughout the weekend, I stayed in touch with the broker (my Realtor was on vacation, so I've been dealing with her broker who was working on our case in the interim.) The broker was working on getting this deal to a signed contract, which kept getting pushed off. The woman claimed that she needed to sign a lease on her house. Then, after being put off all weekend, the broker had to ping her agent several times. Her agent responded that her daughter had a baby with heart problems and the boyfriend left so she's not going to do anything until her daughter is settled. That worst part of this is, after almost going to contract 3 times with these people, we really are hesitant to believe this. It really doesn't matter; it's not our problem. It can't be our problem. Our problem is we need to sell a house, and we were so close, only to have all of our hopes dashed once again.
At this point, I'm at about the end of my patience for these people. Unfortunately, they're the only serious interest we've had in more than a year of trying to sell the house, but all they've seemingly done is jack us around. It's possible they are going through some life-challenging situations, but so are we, and we don't like being jacked around. What really pisses me off is that while they've been jacking us around, they've had three tours of the house. Each showing involved several hours of work to clean up, plus if we were home we had to walk down the street while the showing went on, so all of this totals more than seven total hours of cleaning and inconvenience. It almost seems like they've been playing us. I'm so frustrated at this point that I'm ready to tell my Realtor that we're not dealing with them again, no matter which family member or agent they go through. I'm tempted to say that if they do come back, we will accept only our full list price AND I want a contract signed within 24 hours, and if they're not willing to do that, then get lost. My wife is more tolerant of them screwing with us, so I may tell our Realtor to call her if they come back with an offer, but I want a signed contract within 24 hours no matter what.
At least we got to live in three days of euphoria thinking this was all over. No we're back to square one.

House Update

So far we've had no offers on the house, but we have had a steady stream of showings. It seems that every time we're tempted to drop the price, we get some more calls for showings, so we haven't have to drop the price yet, which is good because our list price is just about the break-even point. Since I've been listening to Dave Ramsey lately, I'm kicking myself in the butt for maxing out our equity three years ago, and for the two second mortgages before that.
Our first Realtor, let's give the benefit of the doubt, wasn't quite up to the challenge of selling this house. We had two showings right away, then nothing else happened for the rest of the two months we were listed with her. It was very discouraging, and when I started asking how to get people back in the door she suggested a short sale then let us go from our contract "to refinance." Our current Realtor is a professional associate of a friend of ours, and she is working hard. I a so thankful to have the hope that not all Realtors are created equal, and not all brokerages are created equal. With our current Realtor, it seems that her entire brokerage is involved in selling our house. There are three brokers on the name, and they've visited and brought clients to the house. Other Realtors in the brokerage have shown the house as well. It seems like they're personally involved. I plan to give a glowing recommendation when this is all over.

Bank of America Issues 6 Year Old A Credit Card

Listen here. A woman was getting credit card offers for all members of her family, including a three year old. She had the 6 year old fill out the application and send it in. The application clearly listed his birthday as 2002, his income as $0, and his status as "other" rather than homeowner or renter. BOA granted him a card with a $600 limit. As Dave Ramsey says, this is the same industry that goes before Congress bitching and moaning about how much money they're losing and they need tighter bankruptcy laws.
I keep wondering how the "Debt Industrial Complex" got so loose. 1992 wasn't that long ago, and in 1992, when I was 18, I could not get credit to save my life. Nobody would give me credit, for the reason "you don't have an established credit history." No kidding, how the heck did they expect me to get a credit history? I used to belong to Security Service Federal Credit Union in San Antonio, TX. I think I still have $5 in savings there but I've long since closed my other accounts. I went to visit Security Service when I was home on leave to see if I could get a credit card from them to establish a credit history. They told me that if I saved up $500, I could probably get a secured Visa. It took me a year to save up that money, but I came back on leave about a year later with $500 to set aside for a secured Visa. Then they told me that my income had to be a certain amount. I think it was $1200 a month. At the time I was an E-4 making just over $1000 a month in base pay. This time I tried another tactic, the good old fashioned "Oh, sure, I can die for my country but I can't get a SECURED VISA card from my federal credit union, which I have been a member in good standing of since I was 13." That actually did the trick, and I got the card. A year later, I was able to have the $500 put back in my Savings account.
I wish Dave Ramsey had been around back then. Looking back, I should have just left debt alone. I should have just taken my dad's 1987 Hyundai Excel with me into the Navy rather than buying a Mazda truck.Kids, remember this: Debt is bad. Say it with me.

Father's Day, Road Trip, and Ignoring Cell Phone Bans

I had to make a quick road trip over the weekend. I got news about my grandmother on Saturday afternoon, and we decided to alter our weekend plans and shoot up to Buffalo for a short visit. I was given my Father's Day present early, a Nintendo Wii. It's still in the box at home. The rest of my Father's Day was pretty uneventful, enough that I pretty much forgot it. We left our house around 5:30 PM Saturday. The GPS led us astray. I wondered why we weren't taking the Northeast Extension of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, when my wife took the thing and found that somehow "avoid toll roads" was checked. We lost a good hour of time and went about 60 miles off course. We rolled into Buffalo about 2:15 AM Sunday morning. I still have no idea why "avoid toll roads" would have been checked. I would have checked it earlier, but my wife yells at me too much for "playing with the GPS" while I'm driving.
While in Buffalo, we took the kids to Niagara Falls, since they see it in the Little Einsteins video they watch incessantly. We went to see my grandmother and spent some time with her neighbors, wonderful people who have watched over her and taken care of her for years. We left Monday morning, and stopped for dinner in Plymouth Meeting to sit out traffic on Philadelphia's Schuylkill Expressway. I hate Philly traffic. I wouldn't mind moving to Buffalo. We like my grandmother's area. The cold wouldn't bother me. I'd welcome it.
While driving, we noticed a lot of people talking on cell phones. One girl driving a Corolla that we passed going down I-81 in New York was texting heavily while driving. In fact, we had to pass her on the right because she was so busy texting, she didn't notice all the cars flying up on her in the left lane, then flying around to the right to get back around her at realistic highway speeds. While coming up on trucks, we could often see the drivers in their side-view mirrors. I was amazed at how many truckers were talking on cell phones without hands-free devices. I saw this article on MSN about how drivers are ignoring the laws. New Jersey has some pretty stiff cell phone/driving laws, yet 1 out of every 2 drivers I see on the road here is TALKING ON A CELL PHONE WHILE DRIVING. I don't agree with these laws, but if we're going to have them, why not enforce them? Nobody but me takes them seriously. Since I lost my headset, I won't answer my phone while I'm driving. If it's an important call, I'll put it on speaker. If my wife is with me, I make (kindly ask) her to take the call for me. Nobody else her seems to take the law seriously though. Why not enforce it with hefty fines and maybe give us a break on our "highest in the nation" property taxes?
During the trip, my wife had to use my Pocket PC a couple of times to look something up on the Internet. While I talked her through it, I tried to pitch to her how much easier it would be if she'd led me get an iPhone, or better yet, if we both had iPhones. She's much more disciplined than I am though, at least when it comes to buying an iPhone.
We spent a buttload of money on gas for this trip. Here is a piece I came across at how we can thank Al Gore for that. Don't forget: follow the money. There is a LOT of money to be made on "green tech" and global warming speeches. When I see Gore move out of his huge mansion into a tent in the woods and ride a bike to his global warming conferences, I'll consider that he's doing it for reasons other than it pays really good and makes him really popular.
Anyway, I'm tired and cranky and I should quit while I'm ahead.

Airline Reservation Boondoggle

I have to wonder how much the airlines would be different if they would just charge a flat rate for a ticket for each flight. I can't quite figure out what benefit they have by price fluctuations across different days and travel services.
I was notified of an upcoming trip, so I went to US Airways (Philadelphia is a major hub, so try NOT flying US Airways out of there and tell me how far you get) to look into booking my flight. The price for this trip came up under $500 (it cost over $900 the last time, but I was flying at different times to the same place.) I suddenly balked, remembering that my seat preferences were already set in Expedia.com, so I was guaranteed an aisle seat. I actually prefer a window seat, but I've had to wake up way too many people on longer flights to get out of my seat so I just book aisle now. When I put my dates in Expedia, I was presented with a list of flight segments to choose from. I found that the two flights US Airways gave me were half the price of the identical flights in Expedia. I went back to US Airways and booked the trip directly with them. I was given my choice of seats, and I was actually able to book seats next to one of the people I'm traveling with.
I honestly don't understand why airline ticket prices can vary so much. When I first moved to New Jersey in May of 1999, I found out a friend in San Diego was getting married that September. I started looking for plane tickets to San Diego for his wedding. Over the weeks until I booked the ticket, I watched ticket prices for the same flight fluctuate more than $500 depending on the day. The ticket started around $400, and went up to more than $900. I finally caught the price on a downward slump and booked the flight (round trip) for $400 or so.
Does anyone have a good explanation for why the airline industry, which is constantly bitching about losing revenue, uses a pricing scheme that doesn't seem to be rooted in reality?

House Update

So far, there's no real news on selling the house. We've had several showings recently, and the feedback our Realtor has gotten has been mostly positive, with of course that one deal breaking objection in each case. One potential buyer loved our house, but thought our bedrooms were too small. Hey, so did I. I had a HUGE master bedroom in my former condo. I personally like the large family areas in the house, but I already bought it. One person liked the house and found it fit perfectly within budget, but is a first time buyer and expects to find a house that won't require any painting. When we bought the house, we had already looked at about 25 to 30 houses prior, and this one was in about the best move-in condition of any that we saw. I've been told that buyer was just starting, and may be back after viewing the other inventory in this price range.
We did have two offers come in, from the same person. The first offer involved a contingency to sell another house. That was fine, but my Realtor suggested we counter with a requirement for this person to reprice and then drop the price by a certain amount every two weeks until the house sells. We liked that, because otherwise we would have to take all of the risk. If we were to enter into a contract with a contingency, and the other house didn't sell as a result of being overpriced, we would be screwed. Our Realtor researched comparable properties in the area and came back with a price, but the buyer didn't want to reduce and walked away. The person did come back with another offer with no contingency, but the offered price was too low. We're selling our house at a loss, and though we do know that and have built up a financial reserve to compensate, that price would have been more than we could afford to bring to the table to get out. Why are we selling at a loss? Family. My in-laws asked us to take over their house for several reasons which I will leave vague, and we are happy to comply even though it means taking a loss on our house.
We counter-offered. The potential buyer came back with another counter, which was still lower than we can go, so we countered again. We have heard nothing since. That is very frustrating. It seems to me that common courtesy would be to reply with a rejection or another counter, but we have had nothing but silence from this person and agent. That leaves me wondering if the person went away, or needs time to consider, or is pulling together another counter... We have no idea. I really would have appreciated some word, even a "get lost, and take your counter offer with you." The difference between our offers was very small in the grand scheme of things, and I can't see how it would break the bank on the potential buyer's side, though it would break the bank on our side as it determines how much money we have to bring to the table at closing to cover the difference between the sale price and our mortgage balance plus closing costs..
I will be so happy when this is finally over, although one of my fears is that as stressful and frustrating as trying to sell my house will be, we'll find out that this is the easy part. That is the kind of fear that can keep you up at night. On top of it, I'm hoping to trade our Windstar in on a used Hyundai Accent to help get our gas costs down, but we can't do a damn thing until the house sells. We need to see how much of our reserve is left over after closing before I can consider getting a used, more fuel efficient car.
I debated with myself for a few days whether to post this or not, but I believe I have not given any significant details to identify anybody involved. I doubt anyone involved reads my blog, but I have done the best I can to respect any confidentiality that may be in play.

USA Today- Oil Prices Drop, Price At The Pump Rises

I ended up on the wrong end of an email chain yesterday with that idiotic "Let's not buy gas on Thursday next week, then gas prices have to drop!" This time the email was apparently started by "an (unnamed) executive at Dr. Pepper" or some other soda producer, who likely knows everything there is to know about the oil industry. Seriously, it's not even worth my bandwidth or time anymore to send back the Snopes.com article on that email.
USA Today has a story about oil prices dropping to $123 a barrel, although our local price at the pump is going up above an average of $4 a gallon.
An excerpt from the article:

While the cost of oil accounts for the vast majority of the price of a gallon of gas, other factors — including gasoline supplies and refining margins — can also affect the price. Refining margins are slim because oil prices have nearly doubled over the past year, while gas prices have risen only 27%.

While oil prices have retreated, refiners, gasoline wholesalers and retailers remain under pressure to raise prices to improve their margins, analysts say. That pressure is why gas prices are likely to go higher.

Still, Rozell said, if gas prices get to $4 nationally, they aren't likely to stay there for long: "I think we've pretty much petered out unless there's an event that affects supply."

Even if oil prices remain where they are, gas prices will likely fall 5 cents to 7 cents over the next week, though they may first briefly hit $4, Cordier said.

Even though oil prices are slowly dropping, gas prices won't follow an immediate corresponding drop for various reasons. Even if everybody in the United States didn't buy gas next Thursday, that would not affect anything. If anything, it would throw a statistical glitch into the system and further destabilize everything.

Fake Steve Jobs Link- Apple Needs To License Blackberry or Windows Mobile?

I recently went through a "soul searching" period with two coworkers selling used iPhones for $250. One was an 8 Gig, the other a 16 Gig. A 16 GB iPhone for $250 was worth having my wife angry at me for the next six months. I could have done plenty of surfing on the iPhone while she was yelling at me. I decided to stick with my iPaq 6945 Pocket PC phone for the time being though. I had a few reasons, but probably the biggest is that I finally figured out how to easily get eBooks onto my Pocket PC. For now, that can't be done with an iPhone. I also decided it's not worth having my wife that mad at me.
I've said before that I like Fake Steve Jobs. He has his off days, but generally he's hilarious and insightful. He linked to a video of Gary Krakaw of MSNBC saying that Apple needs to license Blackberry or Windows Mobile for the iPhone to succeed in the business world. I can't help but laugh when journalists start pontificating as to what tech companies "need" to do in order to be "successful." While journalists perform a very vital function, we need to remember that there is a huge difference between stating fact and expressing opinion. Of course, I guess most people turn to certain periodicals for the editorial positions of those news organs. I like John C. Dvorak for that very reason. I don't agree with him on a few things, but so what? I like his attitude and his analysis.
I seem to recall back in around, like, 1997, journalists were talking about how Apple would need to license Windows in order to survive. I think Apple has done just fine.
Just remember when reading journalism to differentiate between reported fact and stated opinion. In some cases, the difference is very, very subtle.Active reading is required to find the difference.

Union City, SD, Approves Zoning Ordinance for Refinery

After hearing a comment today that gas prices *could* hit $6 a gallon by Labor Day, I decided to start tracking issues related to oil. I'll post a few here. I'm hardly an expert on the subject, so I'm sure I'll learn something along the way. I'm going to track in an effort to get a handle on what's going on and how to plan for it.
The first thing I've come across is this article about Union City, SD, approving a zoning ordinance for the first potential oil refinery to be built in this country in 32 years. This is only the approval for a zoning ordinance; I don't know if the refinery will ultimately be built. Although I recognize some disagree with this, I consider it good news. Why? One word: capacity. We've all heard the basic economic terms of supply and demand. These are most of the reason why we're paying so much for gas at present. Sure, there's the mythical greedy oil company executive and of course Congress is beholden to special interest groups, but for the most part our supply is not great enough to balance out the demand. There are several reasons for this, and very few of them have to do with SUVs and minivans and the distance many of us have to commute due to boneheaded zoning laws we've put up with over the years because gas was negligible. You may have heard of a couple of nations, China and India. Both of these nations are modernizing rapidly, and as such are competing with the world's supply of commodities, like, well, oil. As these nations grow more thirsty for oil, there is less available for the rest of us. As the world's supply decreases, we also have to realize that our infrastructure has remained the same since the 1970's. Many oil refineries actually closed during the 80's, and no new ones have been built. That means that no matter what our supply is, we still can't refine and transport it to the local gas station if we don't have enough refineries to provide the refining capacity.
Before I post this, I just want to leave one more comment. Do you know what the difference is between an optimist and a pessimist? An optimist is uncertain about the future. I hope, if I actually track this issue seriously, not to become entirely pessimistic about it. I don't know how the future will ultimately work out. I can track and analyze trends and data, but I can't see what's coming around the next corner. I'll try to keep that in mind. Although I don't see things improving in the short term, I'm not going to herald this increase in fuel as the "Black Horseman" of the Apocalypse (Rev 6:5-6).

Update on Selling the House

I thought I'd post a brief update on selling the house. We switched Realtors, and the new Realtor is working very hard. We still haven't had any substantial development. We had one offer, but the person needed a contingency to sell a house, and when our Realtor asked the person to drop the price, the person said no. That places all of the risk on us, which isn't right. Like I said, this Realtor is working very hard. It's nice to have her to worry about the details, which takes a huge load off of us.
When we bought the house in 2001, it was a seller's market. This was probably the 25th or 30th house we looked at. We looked at a lot of them. Any time we put an offer in on a house, we got beaten out by a matter of minutes by another offer.We almost lost this house to another offer, but the person apparently had two Realtors fighting, so the sellers rejected their offer and accepted ours then put us through hell for the next several weeks. I don't think they really wanted to sell the house, but from what we're heard from the neighbors they didn't have a choice.
It's the exact opposite now, and it's really starting to get demoralizing. One good aspect of the way things have worked out is that although we've been trying to sell for about a year now, our listing appears brand new in time for summer. We have to work hard for a showing. We have to keep the house clean, and any time we get a call about a showing, we have to straighten up, clean the windows, clean and mop the floor and the bathrooms, put away laundry and other items... It's hard work. Even when we can keep the house clean, it's still at least an hour and a half of work at a minimum just for one showing. Then the person walks through in five minutes and leaves. If our Realtor gets feedback, it's usually something like "It doesn't meet our needs" or "The bedrooms are too small." I know that buyers have to buy a house that meets their needs, but it's hard not to take something like this personally. I can't tell you how many times it's taken us two or more days to get ready for a showing and we don't even get feedback.
Last night was about the same. My wife had to do most of the work because I had an eye doctor appointment. When I got home, we had dinner, cleaned up, tried to keep the kids from scattering toys and smudging the windows, then at five minutes to seven, we put the dog on a leash and walked down the street. When we're home for a showing, we'll do that. We'll walk down to the corner so we can watch. We saw the family drive down the street and pull up to the house. They went in, and came out a few minutes later, then drove away. It's all I can do not to ask "What's wrong with my house? Why didn't you buy it? Don't you know how hard we've had to work just so you can walk in for five minutes, drive away forever, and dismiss it?" I haven't heard anything yet, so I guess no news is good news.
I hope we sell soon. I don't know how much more of this we can take. Even my wife is getting cynical about it. There are times I can't help but think "Why clean up? They're not going to buy it anyway."

Clutter- Why Do We Keep This Junk?

I spent Monday night in a hotel in Portsmouth, VA. I turned on the Discovery Channel at 10 and watched Verminators. I've really started to enjoy that show for some reason; perhaps for the educational aspect. I hated reality TV when it focused on Survivor, but I really enjoy reality TV in the context of The Apprentice, Dirty Jobs, Deadliest Catch, Ice Road Truckers, Verminators, etc.
The point I hoped to make in this entry is that the owner, Mike, went to visit a client. The client was the friend of a woman who was not in the apartment, but had accumulated a ton of clutter. This woman had so much junk in her apartment that an entire bathroom, including the tub, was full. The problem is all that clutter caused her a vermin problem, like cockroaches and some kind of carpet bug. The only room in the entire house that could be treated was the kitchen.
The friend made a comment about the clutter "It's all worth a million dollars to her." Where do we (I count myself in here) get the idea that all this junk that we bring into our houses is or will be worth millions of dollars someday? Most of the stuff we bring in is little more than trash.
There are two kinds of energy, as any grade school science student can tell you: kinetic and potential. I'm sure this can be applied to finances: there is kinetic value and potential value. The thing is, potential value is only useful when converted to kinetic value. If you happen to have a 1987 McDonald's happy meal toy that you believe might be worth a million dollars, it's absolutely worthless just sitting in your house collecting dust. Chance are, the way that you're storing it is costing you to lose any value that the darn thing may have had, if any.
Consider this as well: an item's value is determined only by what somebody is willing to pay for it. I'm having a huge problem with that right now. I'm trying to sell my house, but at the moment, nobody seems to think my house is worth what we have to price it at just to break even on the balance of our mortgage plus closing costs.
Just throw the darn junk away. Get rid of it. It's costing you energy and storage space. Just get rid of it. If you believe that you may have something worth money, contact a collector. Just because you find it worth a million dollars doesn't mean I'd give you a quarter for it. Obviously, this rant/post applies to me as well. My ATI video card driver disks for some old card that I used on a Windows 98 system will never be worth money, and are only taking up space. I'm not likely to ever need to use them again.

Plaxo To Be Acquired By Comcast

I'm not sure what to make of this. Plaxo will be acquired by Comcast. I recently rejoined Plaxo. I signed up several years ago under version 2, but that was when Plaxo wanted to email all of the contacts in your address book to ask each to verify his or her information. Some of my friends didn't like that, and when I stopped using or reformatted the computer I had installed Plaxo on, I never bothered to reinstall until recently.

As for Comcast, I've had few problems with them until a couple of weeks ago when my cable modem stopped working and I spent 40 minutes arguing with tech support over whether or not I lost my IP address and had to call Microsoft to get another one. That sort of set me off, but ever since I left Comcast for Verizon DSL and had a terrible 6 months before coming back to Comcast, I have not complained.

Plaxo - Comcast

Wrapping Up The Real Estate Issue

From my post on Saturday night, my wife went back to see the broker today. She was very kind and apologized for Thursday. As somebody who can let a bad day overshadow other people's lives, I completely understand that. I still have no idea what the Realtor we originally listed with did, but it caused a lot of trouble and I'm sure I got pulled into some of that Wednesday and my wife on Thursday. We have the signed paper letting us go from the listing agreement, and I will recommend this broker as a person of integrity.

My wife was looking at our original listing agreement, and she's not sure it was filled out correctly. It's possible that it was never valid from the start from a contractual point of view. That's interesting. We just hope to move forward. We just want to get the house sold.

I've been thinking of writing a post on having to depend on professional services for which a person has no training or experience, and how a person can truly be at the mercy of the so called professional when something goes wrong. Real Estate, for instance, is a heavily regulated field. A lot can go wrong. Most of us are not Realtors, and have little interest in becoming one. When you sign a listing agreement with a Realtor, you expect the Realtor to know what he or she is doing. When the Realtor doesn't, or doesn't represent your interests, a lot can go wrong. The same goes for medical billing. You can read my "Darn It Jim" series on Blogger about how it took two years to get a pediatrician's bill settled for Caleb. I am not a medical billing specialist, but I had to spend way too much time acting as one when Aetna screwed up, and one Aetna customer service representative after another refused to do his or her job properly. I wish I had some journalistic training, so I knew which way to go with that article.

Ending The Week on a High Note

Tonight, I feel pretty good. I started this week on a very low note, as you can tell from my Mother's Day entry. I thought about deleting it, but I try not to delete my writings. I'm hardly an author, but committing my thoughts to paper or cyberspace almost seems to be a snapshot in time of what I was thinking or facing at a particular moment. Losing my composure on a blog, while I'm not sure I want to face later, is still part of my past. That's how I see it, anyway.

I went on Weight Watchers on Monday. I found out that they have an online program for men. My wife joined a few weeks ago, but she goes to Saturday meetings. I decided that since I am a computer geek anyway, and I don't want to have to coordinate who's going to take care of the kids when plus my travel schedule around meetings, I'd just go online. I started Monday afternoon. I made it through dinner and into Tuesday, when I went through that phase where gnawing my desk sounded like a good idea. I made it through Tuesday and into Wednesday, when we went to dinner at church. I'm not aware of many evangelical type churches that are friendly to dieters. We've tried to do Atkins in the past, and we know this very well. I basically ate reasonable and smaller portions than I normally would have.

Wednesday brought some challenges. I've written on this and my Blogger blog about the challenges we're facing with selling our house. We reached a point with our previous Realtor of wanting to fire her. She wasn't very responsive and she wasn't getting people in the door. I got her broker involved twice. I deleted two blog entries from this blog, normally against my policy, but they were probably less than kind. The second time I called her broker, I had a 20 minute call with the Realtor, when I thought we resolved some communications issues and got back on track. After that, I started asking her what we have to do to get people in the house. She came back with the suggestion to do a short sale. I did some brief checking, and came back with "No way. A short sale is not possible." After that, she referred me to a mortgage broker and suggested we refinance.

We went back and forth, and she said she would let us out of our listing agreement to refinance. I asked in an email for an unconditional release. She came back and said that our listing agreement was null and void. Still needing to sell our house, we turned to a Realtor who is a professional contact of a good friend of ours. She was uncertain of our listing agreement release, so I called our previous Realtor to ask again for the unconditional release. I informed her that we can't refinance; we need to get our house sold and if she can't do it, we have to turn to a Realtor who can. She told us that was fine with her and wished us the best. The Realtor we listed with did a phenomenal job. She did more for us in the first 24 hours than the first Realtor had done in two months. She worked hard to get our house marketed. Her broker came to visit the house, as did several other Realtors from her brokerage. This had not been done by anyone from our first Realtor's brokerage. It took her 30 days to print flyers for us, and took two days to get her sign and lockbox after letting us out of the agreement.

I got a call Wednesday afternoon while I was in the middle of my Weight Watchers-friendly lunch. It was the broker from the first Realtor, and she was fuming mad that we had listed with another agent. Apparently the first Realtor had been fired and left a huge mess behind, although I have no details. She said that our listing was only dropped to refinance. This woman would not shut up for two seconds to let me talk. I had to keep asking her to let me finish a sentence. I got spun up so fast I was shouting, and I had to leave the cubicle farm I work in to the hallway because I was shouting so loud and I figured the rest of the building deserved a chance to hear. Not really, but I needed to leave so I didn't bother other people. I argued with her for several minutes. At one point, I got so mad I blurted out "This is why everybody hates Realtors!", a comment I had to spend time apologizing for. I told her that I asked for an unconditional release and she had a copy of that email. I told her that I told the Realtor that let us go from our listing that I intended to list with an agent who was willing to work, and she said that was OK. This broker through in a bunch of legalese and basically gave me the choice: sit out the rest of the listing agreement inactive (which is about the standard of service her agent had given us) or be assigned to another Realtor in her office. She had already called my new Realtor and demanded the listing be taken down.

I called the new Realtor, who has put a lot more work into selling our house than the first Realtor/brokerage. She has worked hard for us. I went back and forth between the two, feeling trapped. I am not a lawyer, nor am I a Realtor, nor do I have a desire to become one. The broker at one point offered a referral, to which the  new Realtor commented that she would do all the work and the broker would get the money. That is not fair.

Suddenly, at 2:35 PM, the broker called and said that she decided to call it a day; that we were free from our agreement. I asked her for something in writing, but she said that we have her word. Sure, her Realtor's word wasn't good. I called the new Realtor back, but she is not willing to work on this woman's word, especially after the phone call that she got earlier in the day. I called the broker back at 2:40 to ask if she could fax something in writing to me. I had to leave the office by 3:20, and nothing came in by that time. I have no idea what prompted the change. Maybe the other Realtor left behind a mess so large she can't cover it. Maybe she read my blog, which is linked in my signature file, or my Twitter feed and saw something documented in there that favors me. I have no idea.

On Thursday, I had to get up at 4:30 to get to the airport to catch a flight to Maine for a business trip. I asked my wife if she could take a form to the broker to get a signed statement that we were released from our listing agreement. After a day of meetings then going out to dinner with some people from my organization, I got back to my hotel room and sent my wife an email. I didn't want to call in case she was trying to get the boys to sleep. My wife emailed me the following, to which I have edited out the names:

It is good that you are having a good time.  I got yelled at from (broker) this afternoon, and she wasn’t in the office.  I have already talked with (Realtor2) and let her know what happened.  The guy that was sitting at the front desk, told me she was at a meeting all day, and he went to the back and called her on her cell, and she told me she was getting ready to board a flight and will not be in the office until Monday, but another time in the call she said she would be gone for two days.  Nobody told her that I would be coming today to have the paper signed, even though I left her two messages this morning, and her voice mail did not say she would be out of the office.  I was ticked, that I wasted my time, and my Dad’s gas to get there.  So now I have to repeat the whole process Monday.

I left her a message on Wednesday afternoon. My wife left her two messages Thursday morning. My wife said that this woman was yelling at her so loud that she held the phone with her arm all the way extended and could still here her clearly. The first Realtor told me she was a difficult woman. This I believe entirely. After my comment about "everybody hates Realtors", this broker said that she had a long list of clients who would testify otherwise. My wife and I obviously are not among that list. How the heck can you stay in business when you don't give anybody else a chance to talk and you just keep yelling at people? Maybe she's friendly to higher priced homeowners, I have no idea. I assume she makes her money somehow, but it can't be through friendly customer service.

After telling me about this woman yelling at her, I was ready to call the broker's voice mail and let her know exactly what I thought about her treating my wife like that. I decided against it. I have a bad habit of going off half-cocked, and I really am working on overcoming it. I decided on another tactic. I spent the next two hours going though my email, call log, and calendar as I began drafting a narrative of events up to that point. I detailed the significant dates, like when we listed with the Realtor, when she didn't show up for an appointment, when we had to call her broker, when she told us it was OK to list with another Realtor, everything that I had went into this. Bear in mind that I got up at 4:30 AM that morning and had a full day of travel and meetings. I was up until 11 PM working on that draft, which may work it's way to the NJ Real Estate Commission as a complaint. Maybe I'll just edit out the names and post it on this blog. Maybe I'll fine comb it for any hint of libel and post it here in case somebody is searching Google for information on any of the people or brokerages involved. I'm not sure. It helped me clear my mind and organize my thoughts, and it also stopped me from making an angry phone call late at night. When I finally finished and tried to get to sleep, I couldn't sleep for a while. I still had to get up at 5 AM on Friday.

Friday I got up, we finished the meetings, had lunch, and headed to the airport. Philly had some bad weather, so when we got to the airport around 2 PM, we found out that our 3:37 departure might not leave until after 7. Doh! We grabbed a table at the airport pub, which became our home for the next 5 hours. We made the best of a bad situation, drinking away the hours and discussing a mixture of business, family, and sea and college stories. We finally boarded the plane around 7. The pilot pulled away from the gate early, even though ATC said that our departure wasn't until 7:48. He was hoping for an earlier departure. We sat on the tarmac. I re-enabled the data connection on my Pocket PC and posted to Twitter and read my Google Reader feeds until we could pull onto the runway and leave. We got back to Philly about 9 PM or so. I picked up my car and was home around 10:20. The kids were asleep. My wife's sister got home, so I borrowed Grey's Anatomy season 2 and watched the first episode while I wound down. Then Doctor G Medical Examiner came on around midnight. I haven't watched that show in years, and sure enough it was a rerun that I had already seen.

Believe it or not, so far I'm enjoying the travel. I work with some really great people from a combination of offices in different locations. I'm home for the weekend, but on Monday I'm heading back down to Virginia for two days. I'm driving down. I pick up my rental car after church and I'll leave early on Monday morning for an afternoon meeting.

I sure wrote a lot about that broker. My point was, I didn't use it as an excuse to break from Weight Watchers (that came Thursday in Maine, when I was at a Mexican Irish restaurant with someone else driving and 20 oz Dos Equis.)

The look on the boys' faces when they saw me this morning was priceless. They both came over to me and climbed into bed on either side of me. I put on Jimmy Neutron for a while and enjoyed being back with them. While my wife was at Weight Watchers, we played hide and seek, until I ran out of places to hide. I can't quite get Joshua to understand that in hide and seek, you don't hide in the same place and yell "I'm in here!"

For tomorrow, our church is having a luncheon for small group leaders and Munchkin Ministry members. The kids are with my in-laws tonight. Originally kids would not be allowed, but a lot of people couldn't make it. By the time we were told that there would be room for kids, we had already made plans. We ate dinner tonight at Applebees, which has a Weight Watcher's section of the menu. The Garlic-herb chicken was awesome! Then we spent some time together and did some cleaning. Now I'm blogging and then it will be time for bed.

Useful Pocket PC Software? Call Firewall

This will be quick as I have to get moving soon. I have a couple of numbers that are driving me nuts. Citibank calls me every single day, but when I attempt to answer, the call hangs up. Then it shows up as a missed call. If I call back, I get stuck in phone menu hell, although I have found that pressing * gets me into a long que to complain to somebody who should be able to fix the problem. I was told two weeks ago that my number would be removed, but it hasn't been. The number I'm getting called from is (800) 967-2400.

I'm also getting calls from (660) 626-1534. The number claims to be from a marketing or survey office that is immune and exempt from do not call lists. This number has been calling me lately as well. I needed a good, free way to block them.

Enter Call Firewall. I just installed it today, and put both of those numbers in. We'll see how it works. Call Firewall features 4 modes:

- Blacklist : All numbers here will be routed to phone messenger (just like your cellphone is off)
- My contacts only : Only incoming calls from your contact list are allowed. Other will be routed to phone messenger
- Whitelist : All numbers in this list will be allowed to incoming call. Others are rejected.
- Reject all calls : Guess what ??? ;)

Of course, all I want is for these two numbers, for now, to stop bothering me.

Technorati Tags: Pocket PC,Call Blocking,Number Blocking,Citybank is evil

A High Pressure Sales Story

I asked in my last post what problem is being solved, and what need is being met by time shares. I thought back to some high pressured sales pitches I've found myself under. I have succumbed to many, including a couple of multi-level marketing organizations. I learned two things:

1. I am not cut out for sales, whether multi-level marketing or otherwise
2. Often, you think life is going just fine until you sit through one of those presentations and learn that somehow your life is all screwed up. It can take years to overcome what they put in your head in one of those organizations.

I figured I would share one. In early 1994, I was a 19 year old FC3 (Fire Controlman 3rd class, or E-4). I was finishing up my class "C" school in San Diego, and had orders to report to the U.S.S. White Plains in Apra Harbor, Guam. I went to the Fleet Exchange for something, probably uniform items. As I walked in the door and showed my ID, a woman sitting at some display booth just inside the door called me over to show me something. To this day, I'm not entirely sure what it was. She was selling some set of books, but they weren't encyclopedias. She was selling the entire set all at once, and as it cost more than $2000, it could be financed and she could arrange the financing. She seemed more interested in giving me the financing as they probably made a lot of their money on interest from young sailors. A lot of people make a lot of money on interest off of young servicemen, which is why they hang around the bases.

From what I can remember, this set of non-encyclopedia books could somehow be used for college credit. You can get a long way with a young sailor by using the words "college credit." To this point, I had come up with a few questions. Note, I did not have the 3-point test I mentioned in my last post at this time. I had just been sucked into that multi-level marketing organization the year before, and I would succumb to many more apparent rip-offs in the years to come.

I asked if I could buy them one at a time. The answer was no, the entire package had to be bought. Hmm, that sounded silly. I said that I was on my way to a ship, and I had no idea what personal space I would have to keep a set like this. She said that sailors told her they can always find places to put things (this is true; sailors can be incredibly resourceful) but she could keep them and mail them back and forth to me while I'm overseas. I had never been to Guam, but I grew up in the Air Force and I know how well the postal system can work overseas.

To this point, she was being very nice. Then I asked if I could think about it overnight and come back the next day. Then her composure started to fail. She said that she wasn't feeling well and might have to be out sick the next couple of days, and I believe this was my last week before going on leave then flying to Guam. She really got insistent that I buy the books before I walked away. At this point, somehow I had enough gumption to tell her that I wasn't going to commit to anything today, and if she's back before I leave, then we can talk. I walked away, bought whatever I came for, then went to lodge a complaint with NEX Customer Service that this woman was trying to strong arm sailors into parting with their hard earned money. I have no idea if Customer Service listened or not, but I never saw her there again.

Maybe I'll have to do a series on sea stories. Do you know what the difference is between a fairy tale and a sea story? A fairy tale begins "Once upon a time..." A sea story begins "You're not going to believe this, but it REALLY happened..." (NOTE: that is the clean version of the joke.)

Technorati Tags: Rip offs,high-pressure sales

Do I Have A Problem That Could Be Solved By A Time Share?

My family and I are in Virginia Beach this week. I'm down this way for work. I couldn't seem to find a decent hotel close to where I needed to be within the price I am allotted, but my search on Hotels.com kept popping up a nice beachfront suite hotel 20 miles away in Virginia Beach for $90 a night. I could not, for this time period, match the amenities closer to where I needed to be, so I decided to just go with it. For a week long trip, a suite is a nice idea. For my next trip down, I'm only staying one night, so I used Hotwire.com to find a 3 star hotel for $79 a night. Hopefully I'll get better at this business travel stuff. Since I had a suite in Virginia Beach, it only made sense to bring the family with me. This is where having a wife who is a stay-at-home-mom is a real benefit (in many other ways as well); she can pack up the kids and come with me on a moment's notice.

Our first night in the hotel, the concierge stopped us to "ask us a few questions". Turns out the company that owns this hotel is building some fancy time-share places up the beach, and want to offer us a nice meal and a 3 night vacation for sitting through a video presentation. They also offered us breakfast and dinner.

I wrote last year about Sundance Vacations on my other (now inactive blog). I've never actually sat through a time-share presentation. I can't quite wrap my mind around the concept well enough to sit through the hype. As I understand it, you "buy" a share in a vacation destination, usually in a suite or a condo at hopefully an upscale resort. You are allotted a certain time frame when you can use this suite. I guess you can sell or exchange your time to other people or locations. It seems to me like having another mortgage, as you have to finance these things. I can't quite see where the benefit is to me. I've sat through many presentations in my life where an opportunity is presented to me, and I have to make a decision that moment. I've come to not trust anyone who won't allow me the opportunity to go home and sleep on it, or do some independent research on the Internet. If it's such a great deal, why be afraid of giving me time to think and research? If it's so great, wouldn't you expect my research to turn that up?

When confronted with these kinds of opportunities, I've devised a 3 point test to decide whether to pursue the opportunity any farther.

1. Problem- I got this idea from Joel Spolski, of Joel on Software fame. Joel is a gifted writer and a successful programmer (I assume his programming is gifted as well, but my exposure to his writing is much more vast than my exposure to his code). He asked the question in regards to a silly, pointless product foisted on Wired Magazine readers about a decade ago: "What problem does this solve?" Joel says that the way to be successful, specifically as a programmer but I think it applies to other areas, is to find a problem and solve it. For this blog post, I'll ask this in regard to time shares: what problem does this solve? Do I have a problem that can be solved by time shares? I know that the presenters want me to think that my problem is that I don't have several weeks a year of access to an upscale vacation resort in Virginia Beach, but do I? My problem is actually a lot more basic, and until I solve this problem, I'm not worried about regular access to a vacation resort. My problem is that my career path keeps leading me into positions where I can only advance by finding another job. I can't seem to stay in a job long enough to build up much of a vacation balance. I also have young children, and a mortgage, so really, upscale vacationing isn't an issue for me right now. My problem is that I need a vacation balance and money. Solve that problem, and we'll talk. (Note, and I'm going to post an update on this soon, I really do love my new job. I'm having a lot of fun, learning a lot of valuable knowledge, gaining some valuable experience, and meeting some fascinating people. I'm really enjoying this position.)
2. Need- This question comes from Rabbi Daniel Lapin, a truly gifted man. I'm a gentile, and a Christian, but I get plenty of insight from the Rabbi. He points out that the way to be successful is to become obsessed with meeting other people's needs. If you meet needs, people will come to you to have their needs me. I ask, in regard to time shares, who's need is being met? I don't really feel that I have a need, at least at this point in my life, that can be met by time shares. The high-powered sales pitch gives me an idea who is getting their need met, and I don't believe it to be me.
3. Think- As I asked above, why can't I have a night to sleep on it? What are "they" afraid I'll find out if I'm allowed to walk away, do some research, talk it over with my wife, and come back?

If a high-powered pitch is presented to me, and it doesn't solve my problem, or meet a need, and I'm not allowed to think, I do my best to get out of there as fast as I can, but I try to be as polite as possible. I try to be kind but firm. Obviously, sales people try to be nice. They want you to think that you may be hurting their feelings by turning them down, but you HAVE GOT TO look out for your own areas of stewardship. Their bottom line is not your concern. It never should be. Be nice, but get out.

Technorati Tags: Time shares,sales pitch,3 point test

My Cable Modem Works!

After 4 calls to Comcast, I was getting frustrated. A tech can't be sent out for a while, at least, it will be more than a week before my schedule can facilitate a tech's schedule. I decided that the only thing left to do was get a new cable modem. I've had mine for three years, so maybe it went bad. While we were running around tonight anyway, I stopped by Best Buy and bought a new Motorola Surfboard modem.

I got home, put the new modem inline, and called Comcast to get it configured. Believe it or not, I finally got a male (the other four calls were women) who understood not only how Comcast's network works, but how to troubleshoot a network problem. (See my post about being told to call Microsoft to get a new IP address below.)

This turned out sort of weird. I put the new modem inline, then called. While we were troubleshooting, I explained my setup. I have a Hauppage WinTV USB2 unit. My cable comes into the room, and goes to a splitter, which goes to the cable modem and the WinTV unit. It's been like that for years, and I haven't had a problem. Well, go figure, I should have thought of this myself, but the tech told me to take the splitter out of the loop. Every single time in the past I assumed it couldn't possibly be something, no matter how trivial, I got bit in the butt, and this time was no different. Well, while he was adding the MAC address and C/S number for the new modem, I prayed. I rarely do while I'm troubleshooting. I claim to be a Christian, but like most 21st century Americans, prayer is mostly reserved for meals, particularly pious times, and trials and tribulations. But I prayed for the cable modem issue. I really need my Internet connection. Anyway, when it was over, I asked if I could have my old modem put back in. He said it was; my account was showing my old modem. I checked the front, and sure enough, it was the old one (Motorola Surfboard 5100 instead of the new 5101.) That was weird. I'm not sure how the old one got back in place. I boxed the new one and told my wife we can get our $80 back; we troubleshot to a much cheaper component.

I'm just glad to have it back. I wrote a while back about my work laptop dying, and I had to send it back. Well, just as I was leaving for the day, I saw a new box in my supervisor's cube with a New Egg packing slip. I pulled it out, and sure enough, it was my Toshiba laptop! Now I can get it set back up to take on my upcoming business trip.

Technorati Tags: Comcast,cable modem,network troubleshooting

Traumatic Tech Support

Ugh, my Comcast high speed Internet connection dropped offline yesterday afternoon. I've gotten to the point of not calling right away, just in case the outage is temporary (outages have become very rare with Comcast.) I finally broke down and called after my connection had been down a few hours. The call ended up lasting 40 minutes and ended up with me really needing a drink. Here is the situation I called with: my Motorola cable modem had Power, receive, and send lights on. Online was not lit, and PC Activity flashed on and off. The rep said that my cable modem was offline. I could figure that out. Internally, my network was fine. My computers could all see each other on my network, so I knew my router was fine. The rep wanted me to connect my computer directly to the cable modem. Her assessment of the situation was this: "because I had a router, (which has been in place for 3 years without a single problem), I lost my IP address." She told me I have to call Microsoft to get another one. After Microsoft gives me another IP address, I can call Comcast back and they'll be able to get me back online.

I tried explaining to this woman how DHCP networking works. I told her that I have an IT degree, and have been supporting my own computers and helping others out as well as working professionally in IT for more than 10 years. I have NEVER had to call Microsoft to get an IP address. I've never had to call Microsoft period. She said something about the OEM has to give me an IP address. I said that I'm the OEM; I built the computer myself (OK, I slapped some parts together and installed Windows XP on it, I didn't manufacture and solder my own chips.) I tried telling her that my router has nothing to do with Comcast assigning an IP address. Comcast's server sees the MAC address of my cable modem and leases an IP address to me. The lease expires and renews automatically and my router has absolutely nothing to do with it. My router has my computer's MAC address cloned anyway, so even in the bad old days when Comcast didn't allow routers they would never have known the difference on their end.

After realizing that I could not get this woman to understand how Comcast's network actually works, I finally allowed her to schedule a tech to visit me so that they can apparently call Microsoft and get me an IP address. As soon as I got off the phone, I called back and got a support person who understands how DHCP networking works. She found the problem right away: my signal was gone. That sounds more realistic. She even found a closer appointment to get a tech out to fix the problem.

Seriously, assuming Microsoft trains their support personnel better than Comcast does, I would have gotten laughed at.

Comcast, if anybody from your corporate training is reading this, I think you are idiots! How can you let somebody on your tech support lines without even the most basic understanding of how your network ACTUALLY works? II don't blame the woman, I blame the trainers. She did work very hard and was very patient with me, but had no clue. Idiots! Do your jobs. Where was this woman's supervisor? I could hear somebody in the background behind her. Don't tell me the entire call center thinks that my IP address comes from Microsoft. I should have told her I'm running Linux on an Apple Macintosh just to see what kind of response I get. Does Microsoft still give out IP addresses, or do I have to get a teleconference with Mark Shuttleworth and Steve Jobs to get an IP address? What if I was running SuSE or Debian? How about my iMac with Mac OS 8? Who do I call in that case (It's actually running Jaguar, and is in my in-laws' basement as we expected our house to be sold by now.)

This happened last night, and I still need a drink. Train your people, you Comcast boneheads. I once saw a job posting for a Comcast training position. Is it still open? I need a solid paycheck, a benefits package, and the authority to flog people.

Technorati Tags: Comcast,tech support

Selling An Overpriced Home in a Nonexistent Market

I have a Realtor coming in a few moments to look at listing the house again. We're not willing to give up, but honestly, it may come to that. I'm going to lay out our goals, and ask if selling is possible. If not, I guess we'll just have to refinance and wait things out. We'll have our BuyOwner listing for as long as we need it; until the house sells. I guess we can just refinance and keep slowly dropping the BuyOwner price as our principle drops until somebody comes along to buy.

I honestly have no idea where the problem actually lies. We've been monitoring prices in our neighborhood all along, and made sure our house was price relative to the others. We don't have a basement, but our house is move-in condition. I don't know if there truly are no buyers, or if somehow our house doesn't tell it's story well enough through Realtor.com, or what the problem could be. Maybe most buyers are still buying those $350,000 Xerox houses rather than a more modestly priced starter home.

Technorati Tags: Real Estate

Options for the House

Background: three years ago, my wife and I combined a first and second mortgage into "one good mortgage", maxing out the equity in our house. We were put on a two year ARM with a huge interest rate blow up after two years, but the mortgage agency was going to refinance us after those two years. Last year, about this time (April), my in-laws asked us to consider selling our house and taking over theirs. The plan is to either build a second floor or finish the basement or something, and have four generations living under the same roof like the "good old days." During that timeframe, the housing bubble "burst", and the company we refinanced with, Decision One Mortgage, disappeared off the face of the earth. Seriously, I called the cell phone number of the broker I worked with and it had become an emergency number for a forest service in San Bernadino (I knew he moved out here from California.)

As we had just refinanced, our equity was maxed out (we planned to stay in the house for a while), so we listed with BuyOwner to avoid the 6% realtor's commission, allowing us to price the house lower. It took us a couple of months to get the house ready to go on the market (lots of clutter), but we finally went up around the end of June. Then very little happened. The ARM ran out and our mortgage interest blew up to astronomical proportions, but we couldn't refinance as we were on the market and the closing costs would eat up any equity we might have had.

In February, we listed with a realtor in the hopes that the MLS listing would generate more exposure in time for spring. We had two showings and that was it. We were growing frustrated. I had a discussion with my realtor the other day in which she released us from our listing agreement and referred us to a mortgage broker to refinance. Although more than a week ago I became very frustrated and posted two entries on this blog (thus deleted), I believe that we parted business amicably.

Now we're at the decision point. We're out of our listing agreement, but still listed with BuyOwner for all the good that's done us. We could stay with BuyOwner, we could list with another realtor, or we could just refinance and apologize to my in-laws for failing. I'm not so sure that would be best for their situation, which I will leave vague.

With BuyOwner, we could drop our price to rock bottom, to just what we need to cover the closing costs in the hopes that would bring in buyers. We've had our price as low as we could get anyway with just a little room for negotiation (like, drop the price $500 to appear willing to cooperate), but we could go the last few bucks to "rock bottom."

We could list with another realtor. We're not sure that ours gave us the best possible exposure. She didn't believe that open houses brought in buyers, and only held one in the entire two months we were listed with her. All we could see is that she put us on MLS and waited for calls to come in, which is what we'd done with BuyOwner anyway. We weren't even on her web page, but to be fair that appeared to be externally operated. I also discovered last week while we were working out a communications issue that led to those two deleted posts I mentioned, that her expertise is in short sales. She did recommend a short sale, but I need my credit for the mortgage and construction on my in-laws' house. My credit could also have a negative effect on my job, so I'm not going to screw with my credit. Perhaps a little bit of pride is involved as well. To paraphrase Forest Gump: "Momma always tole me to make mah payments on time." Seriously, my parents gave me a really crappy financial education that has taken years to overcome, but my mom ALWAYS stressed making payments on time every time.

We've been seeing the "We buy houses, any situation" signs for a while. My wife wanted to call and check them out. We have an appointment on Thursday to see if that could be an option. Considering that we used up the equity in the refinance three years ago, we've known all along that we'd be happy to get out for what we owe and walk away even. Our realtor said she liked that mentality. She said some of her clients sign a listing agreement then spend $100,000 before the first showing, then get mad when offers come in much lower.

Technorati Tags: Realtors,short sale,selling a house,we buy houses

Mike Rowe gets down & dirty with the HP tx2000z notebook

This is interesting. I do remember Mike Rowe, during the first season of Dirty Jobs, using a Mac. I assumed it was a white MacBook, but it could have been an older iBook. In any case, it looks like he's using an HP now.

Maybe this should be my wife's next laptop. She doesn't like Dirty Jobs. When I fall asleep with Discovery Channel on, she usually ends up laying awake listening to Mike Rowe say such witty  phrases as "I got poo in my mouth." She says the mere thought of Dirty Jobs makes her want to throw up.

If we had the money, I'd get this for her.

Mike Rowe gets down & dirty with the HP tx2000z notebook.

Technorati Tags: Mike Rowe,Laptop,HP

Wow, Citibank Isn't Evil

The last time I refinanced my mortgage, it got sold to HSBC, the most evil and impersonal bank on the planet. Any dealing I have ever had with them has been painful. As long as my payment gets there on time, there is no problem (except for the overpriced, blown-up ARM we're stuck with), but if the USPS decides to deliver my payment a day late they start calling and demanding that I put the mortgage on a credit card that moment. Who keeps enough money on hand to make two mortgage payments in the same month?
A year ago this month, my in-laws asked us to consider selling our house and taking over theirs. We expected a quick sale, but a year later, we're still on the market. Apparently, we're overpriced but we've dropped the price to the point where if we go any lower, we'll have to bring money to closing. The blown-up ARM is making things very tough, and with student loans coming due next month, we're (at least I) are starting to panic.
I got a call the other day, but because my Pocket PC Phone was synchronizing and ActiveSuck (Microsoft ActiveSync, which may be the iPhone's undoing) was busy duplicating thousands of records I couldn't get the call to pick up. No message was left, so I figured it couldn't have been that important. The same number called me today, and as I picked up, somebody came to my cube to ask a question. It was a Citibank computer wanting to verify my address. I figured being that impersonal I would disconnect the call and take care of my job first. Then I dialed back the number.
I expected to get another computer, but I was quickly connected to a living person. I verified my address, and she asked if I needed anything else. I have a bad habit of telling everybody all of my problems (hence, my blogs) so I mentioned that I have no clue how I'll pay the student loans in light of my current situation.
She said she would send me paperwork for a forebearance. Wow! HSBC would probably demand I pay the whole $30,000 student loan on a credit card right there! At least that's one less thing to worry about, at least until next year.
I like it when organizations, especially large financial institutions, still retain a level of humanity.

Technorati Tags: Citibank,student loans,forebearance

Econo-Cars

Gas in South Jersey was at $2.65 the day in mid-February when my wife and I bought our used 2003 Kia Sedona. By the time I needed my first tank just four days later, gas was $2.85. Now it's up to $3.30 at most stations, with no end in sight.

Why is gas so high? According to those emails you get every year (and I did believe them and stop buying gas on Tuesday back in 1998) some greedy oil company executives are just raking in money at our expense. They jack up prices for fun and laugh at us as we try to keep up. Is that true? Well, I'm sure there is some truth to it in at least a little form. Oil companies are publicly traded as far as I know (at least in the US; in Venezuela, for instance, they are state-owned) and as such have stockholders and boards of directors. At least in the US, publicly owned corporations have a legal obligation to make the most money possible for their stockholders.

However, there is a lot more to it. Perhaps you once took an economics class, or were alive during the Reagan administration and heard two words that are often left out of those emails: supply and demand. Demand is what happens when you show up at the local gas station to fill up your car. Supply is the gas in the tank. Wait, there's more! See, the gas station only has so much gas. It needs to get gas delivered. That comes in tanker trucks, which also need gas. With gas prices rising, it costs more money to operate those tanker trucks. The tanker trucks pick up gas at (here's where my first-hand knowledge starts breaking down) a terminal. The gas comes to the terminal from a refinery. It comes to the refinery from ships. It gets on those ships from where ever the oil is pumped from the ground at.

What happens is, only so much oil is pumped out of the ground. Sure there is more down there, but OPEC only pumps so much at a time. We aren't using much oil from our own land, but that's beside the point. Only so much oil is pumped at a time, then shipped, then it has to be refined. There are a limited number of refineries, so only so much capacity can be refined at a time. Then, it has to be transported, through truck and or pipeline. Obviously, the Citgo that I normally use doesn't have a pipeline coming straight to it, and neither does yours.

Now, out of the limited amount of oil being pumped out of the ground, shipped, and refined, there are an ever increasing number of places wanting that oil. Look at how quickly China and India are coming into the 21st century. Millions of cars are hitting the road in each country every month, and they all need gas. Now that finite amount of oil coming out of the ground has to go not only to us and Europe, but also to China and India and any number of places experiencing economic growth.

Gas prices won't drop just because you stop buying gas at Citgo or Exxon-Mobile or whatever they are this week. Gas prices will only drop when supply increases or demand decreases. It's simple economics. Supply won't increase overnight, however. New wells have to be dug and new refineries have to be built as well as new pipelines. Try getting that through Congress.

I've been looking at the Hyundai Accent myself. More to come on that later.

Technorati Tags: Cars,gas prices,economics

Changing Economic times: Nelson Pulling Out of BEA, ICRS - 4/16/2008 8:38:00 AM - Publishers Weekly

Nelson Pulling Out of BEA, ICRS - 4/16/2008 8:38:00 AM - Publishers Weekly

My wife and I have been trying to sell our house since last June. I've blogged about it before on my former main blog, which I've stopped using because publishing now requires CAPTCHAS. I'm slowly importing my posts from Blogger, but it's a slow, manual process that may not be worth the time.

Like many Americans, my wife and I used our home equity to pay off and consolidate debt, then of course add some more debt and then consolidate it again. Then the decision/agreement was made to sell our house and move into our in-laws house. Hey, the market was going great. It took us about two months to get our house cleaned up and prepared to go on the market. We didn't have the equity to price our house factoring in a 6% realtor commission, so we listed with BuyOwner. BuyOwner wasn't exactly cheaper, at least not by much, but it was an up front payment and we had the money on hand. Then the market dropped out from under us.

By February, we were getting frustrated, so we listed with a realtor. Still, in the almost two months, we've had two showings and no return calls. I wish the other realtors would at least return my realtor's phone calls requesting feedback on why our house didn't get an offer.

This leads me to the Thomas Nelson announcement linked in this blog, which I already knew about because I follow the CEO's Blog and Twitter feed. Changing economic times are causing a Christian book publisher to pull out of tradeshows and switch to open houses and face to face meetings.

I can't help but wonder if changing economic times don't necessitate a change in house selling as well. I'm also opened to the possibility that my house is priced too high and there's no way out without losing money. I know that people are looking at and buying houses, and that people are getting mortgages. I just don't understand why they're not looking at and making offers on my house.

Technorati Tags: Housing,realtors,BuyOwner

Would You Buy A Car From The Same Car Dealer A Second Time (Part 2)

Part 1 led up to this point, and I'm sorry for the delay in getting this written. I've had some big changes in my life this week. I'll post on those separately.

 

As I wondered whether the oil leak in my engine would be an easy fix or an excuse to trade the car in, as I wondered whether the car would cause me more problems later on, I also thought about my mechanic's specific recommendation to go to Burn's Hyundai. My wife and I talked about how we would work out the purchase of a car and decided to see what Burn's would offer.

 

As we walked on the lot, we were met by Steve. At the time we were thinking about the Hyundai Santa Fe, but he suggested we go inside as it was cold. We told him what we had available, what we wanted in a car, and what kind of payments we were looking at. At this point the script was followed to the letter as he said "I have the perfect car for you." He took us to a 2003 Kia Sedona. It was nice, but I expected the normal procedure to be followed: we test drive the car, like it, decide to buy it, then find out with trade-in and unreasonable down payment much higher than we already said we could provide, the payments will be more than twice what we asked for. Then as we bargain back and forth, the monthly payment will come down $10 to $15 at a time.

 

That actually didn't happen. After we drove the Sedona, we asked about the Santa Fe. The dealer said that if we wanted a $200 a month car payment, the Sedona was our best bet. Wow, that has never happened before! As we needed to get my Suzuki to trade in, we did test drive the Santa Fe. I thanked the dealer for that. I didn't like the Santa Fe as much as I thought but without that test drive, I would have spent the rest of my life wondering if I might have liked it better.

 

The trade in went well. They were clear about the whole process, the financing worked out, and we drove the car home. Based on this experience, I would highly recommend Burn's Hyundai to anyone looking for a car. If you need a car, new or used, and Marlton, New Jersey isn't too far for you, check out Burn's Hyundai on Route 70. They also have Pontiac and GMC.

 

Obviously, not everything about every dealer is perfect. I need to comment on the service department, which I did not find to be anywhere near as professional or competent as the sales department. During the test drive, about two traffic lights from the dealership, I noticed smoke coming up from the engine. It was a fairly clear smoke. None of the engine lights were on, and the temperature was normal, so I wasn't really worried considering how close we were. The dealer took the car to service right away and his manager came out to assure us that everything would be taken care of. She showed us the service record. Three tires had been replaced, as well as the belts, hoses, battery and brakes. Apparently one of the clamps wasn't put on right and anti-freeze spilled out onto the engine and burned up during the test drive. The issue was fixed.

 

I took the car to my mechanic, who wasn't quite as thrilled that I bought a Kia as he would have been a new Hyundai, but I told him a new car just isn't in our budget. We typically buy used cars that can be worked out to around a $200 a month payment. It's what you have to do to get by on a single income. We also get a lot of furniture for free on Craig's List. In any case, my mechanic found a few issues. The rear shocks needed to be replaced, a bolt under the car wasn't screwed back in properly, the spare tire was bald and dry rotting, and some connectors in the engine weren't properly mounted. Except for the spare tire there was nothing life threatening, but all of it shows a serious lack of professionalism and a lack of attention to detail and pride in the work of the service department. I've worked on equipment that could kill people if not properly maintained, so when I see attention to detail problems like this, it scares me. I don't see how a dealership can sell a car without an adequate spare tire. That should have been part of the inspection prior to putting the car out on the lot to be sold. If the data port connector was left hanging rather than remounted on the battery where it belongs, what else didn't this maintenance department screw back in properly? Also, remember that hose clamp that wasn't put on properly that caused smoke to come out on the test drive? They put a new clamp on OVER it, rather than taking it off and replacing it. I can understand being busy and overworked, but add all of these details up and I start to think laziness and incompetence.

 

I brought these issues up and was told to bring the car in. The spare tire and rear shocks were replaced.

 

Like I said, if you need a car in Marlton, NJ, check out Burn's Hyundai. Ask for Steve or Penny. The sales department is great, but the service department scares me. I might try to have any warranty work done at another dealer. I would buy another car from this one again.

 

Technorati Tags: Car dealers,car service,used cars

 

Labels: Shopping

Would You Buy From The Same Car Dealer A Second Time? (part 1)

Since my post on Friday about finding that my car had been running with no oil, a few things have changed in my life. When my mechanic recommended a specific car dealer, it got my mind running. Car dealers are not normally businesses that you hear high recommendations of. Normally, when speaking of car dealers, a high compliment could be "they didn't screw me too badly." When my mechanic, Tim, told me to go to Burn's Hyundai, and that he had sent more than 200 of his customers there, I got interested.

 

I started asking myself how many other car dealers I would tell somebody to go to, and if I would ever go back to another car dealer again myself. I got my first car from Red McComb's Used Cars in San Antonio, Tx in 1992. I was a senior in high school. I had already quit my Kentucky Fried Chicken job so I had a few weeks off before leaving for boot camp, and I suddenly HAD to have a Mazda truck. My mom knew somebody at this dealership so we went there to see what was available. I bought a 1990 Mazda B2200 and drove it for 3 years. The experience was good, but probably because we knew somebody.

 

Next, I went to Westcott Mazda in National City, California, in June of 1995. National City has a string of car dealers known as the "Mile of Cars", literally right outside of the Naval Station. I wanted to buy a 1995 Mazda Protege. I was 21 and just found out that I made E-5. (It didn't occur to me that it would take 6 months for my pay to increase accordingly.) I made a big mistake going to Westcott Mazda, by myself, on a Friday night. I told the dealer that I wanted the Protege but could only do payments around $200 a month and if he couldn't do it, then I'd just have to save up and come back later. He assured me all along that it wouldn't be a problem. After I signed away my truck and completed all of the paperwork, I sat down in finance only to be told that my payments would be $350. I told them I couldn't afford that. The bastard (pardon my language, but I'm going somewhere) actually told me that I would have a nice car and my credit qualifies me. I told him I wouldn't be able to afford gas and insurance with those payments, and the dealer assured me all along that we could do $200 a month payments. He said the dealer was crazy, and I must be too for assuming I could get that car for $200 a month, and said again that I would have a nice car. Like that would do me any good if I couldn't afford to drive it. We looked around for used cars and found a 1993 MX3. I drove that car for the next 10 years until the gas pump went out. The moonroof seal was also going and rain was leaking into the car. Since I had an extra car at that point, I let the Mazda sit too long and it molded out so we gave it away. There's no way I would EVER go back to Westcott Mazda, although they did screw me into a decent and reliable car. They also somehow miscalculated the payoff on my truck, and I had to scrounge up $300 the next week to cover that. I guess the dealer's finance department took my estimated figure "I think I owe about $1800 on the truck" and ran with it, rather than call the credit union which was actually located right there in San Diego to ask for a payoff, which I thought was standard practice anyway.

 

Since I drove the Mazda for 10 years, I didn't buy another car until after I was married. I tried a few times to trade it in on a Saturn or a Subaru, but the financing never worked out just right. Once I paid it off, I got used to living without a car payment.

 

I went to Cherry Hill Subaru twice. The first time should have been enough, but I did go back two years later. The first time I looked at a 2000 Subaru Impreza. It was a nice car. For some reason the dealer was trying to push me into a 5 year lease with 12,000 miles a year. The dealer herself was new, and the sales manager was taking care of everything. She was tough. If the fabled Amazon warriors had a Psy-ops component, this woman would have been their head trainer. I was dating my wife at the time (we got engaged the next morning, actually) and we took her car. I try not to take the car that I'm planning to trade in to the dealer. I don't know why, but Cherry Hill Subaru really wanted to put me in that lease. They were going to give me $4000 for the Mazda, sight unseen, when the KBB was only about $2000. The sales manager kept asking me what part of the deal I wasn't comfortable with, and I kept saying "the part where I have to take the deal right now." She kept telling me "Well, all of our banks change on Monday, so we won't have the same deals then." Normally that line means they're lying, but who has time to verify those kind of claims? It took a lot of work to pry ourselves out of there, but we did leave and I kept the Mazda. I got 4 more years out of it.

 

Cherry Hill Subaru's "mixed test loop" was a joke. You took a right turn onto a highly congested part of New Jersey Route 70 where you have enough room, if the car has a particularly powerful engine, to accelerate up to 35 miles per hour before taking a right into a housing area. Then you can stomp the gas to get the car up to the residential speed limit of 25 before jamming the breaks for a stop sign. A couple of twists and turns later, you come out on a major road at a busy intersection, take a right onto 70, then right back into the dealership. What a joke. If the car you are test driving is a stick shift, chances are you wouldn't get to third gear on this test loop.

 

We went back to Cherry Hill Subaru in 2002. My in-laws loaned us their 1995 Ford Windstar for a trip to see my parents in Texas. They let us use it for a couple of weeks after the trip as well. At that point, we had my 1993 Mazda MX3 and my wife had a 1991 Ford Escort. Both were decent cars, but owning a house with two subcompacts was tough. If we went to BJ's, it seemed that one of us had to sit on the curb with half the stuff while the other ran home. I'm obviously exaggerating, but we often had to borrow a truck when we ran to Home Depot. Now that we have kids, whenever I hear somebody start in with comments about how everybody should drive sub-compact hybrids, I always ask them "Let me guess, you're single and live in an apartment?" They always respond with "How did you know?" You don't have to watch a lot of House episodes to gain that level of insight. Just have two kids and a Sam's Club membership.

 

After driving that Windstar for a couple of weeks, we really came to appreciate it and I wanted one. We got something in the mail from Cherry Hill Subaru promising a toolkit of some kind just for coming in. We figured, what the heck? You can never have enough toolkits. Long story short, we ended up buying a 1999 Windstar. Here is where the screwing really took effect: when we got home, my wife was poking around on their website and found the exact same car listed for $2000 less than we paid. I printed the page and ran outside and sure enough, the VIN numbers matched. I brought this up to the dealer, and was told "a third party manages our website, and we're not responsible for them posting incorrect prices." The windshield had a crack. When I asked them to fix it, I was told "we have to guarantee state inspection. Get it inspected, and when it fails, we have to fix it." I took the car to inspection and ASKED to be failed, only to be told "I can't fail it for that little ding." Go figure. New Jersey state inspections have failed me for some of the stupidest reasons, but the one time I ask them to fail me so I can get the dealer to fix something, they won't. The windshield crack finally spilt straight across on a cold day, costing me more than $300 to replace.

 

I was happy to hear that Cherry Hill Subaru went out of business. I should have marked the date on my calendar so I can have a drink once a year in celebration.

 

My in-laws gave us the 1995 Windstar, and at this point we had 4 cars between the two of us. That was weird. The 1999 was starting to develop some problems. The power steering was going, one of the rear vent windows was stuck open, one of the power windows didn't work, and I think the transmission was failing. What can I say; it was a Ford. Some of them seem to come from the factory that way. It was the first and the last Ford I will purposely buy. Then the head gasket on the 1995 blew. Every 3.8 liter V-6 engine Ford made in 1995 blew a head gasket, but because ours was such low mileage (as of this writing in Feb 2008, it's only 88,000 miles), the gasket didn't blow until 2004, 2 years out of recall. We ended up putting out $4500 for a remanufactured engine. My wife liked the 1995 Windstar better, so we put the money out to fix it but realized that we should get rid of the 1999 before it started to cost us money. We traded it in on a 2001 Kia Sportage at Woodbury Nissan. The experience was positive, and at one point I would have bought another car from Woodbury Nissan until this day happened. That one bone-headed salesman ruined it for me and I'm not going back there.

 

We traded the Sportage in on a 2001 Suzuki Grand Vitara XL-7, which I was writing about previously. We bought it from Mall Suzuki. The experience wasn't bad, but it wasn't great. They drove a hard sell but also worked it out within our requirements. Nothing about it would make me go back, but on the other hand nothing would keep me away if they had a car I was particularly interested in.

 

This post is getting long, so I'll continue in another. There is no sense in detracting from the story with all of the background.

 

Technorati Tags: Cars,car dealers,used cars,car buying horror stories,Would you buy a car from the same dealer twice?

 

Labels: Shopping

Engineering- Assumptions Can Change Everything

I had an incident with my car yesterday that perfectly illustrated how assumptions can change everything. In engineering, business, mechanics, and many other fields, all data cannot be known so assumptions are often made based on available data. During a case study for one of my final classes at the University of Phoenix, my learning team was involved in designing an information system for a company based on a case study. We decided to use Microsoft Dynamics as a solution. During my part of the weekly paper, I wrote that our team "assumes that this company has a trained and capable IT staff." That information was not present in the case study, yet the development of our business case would have changed if we also had to provide a lot of training, hiring, or even provide the ongoing support ourselves.

 

Lately my car has been giving off a rattle when I drive. It's been going on for a few weeks and steadily getting worse. By the time I got to work yesterday, it sounded like a diesel. I'm not aware of Suzuki selling a diesel crossover SUV, and I'm sure the regular gas I've been putting in would have killed it. I finally got worried and called Tim, my mechanic. I've been taking my cars to Tim for six years now. It's great having a trustworthy mechanic within walking distance of my house.

 

Tim listened to my engine. My car is a 2001 with 106000 miles on it. Tim's first suggestion was to take it to a specific Hyundai dealer and buy a Santa Fe. Tim wasn't being cavalier at all. Based on the observable evidence and an assumption I'll get to, he figured I had a valve job that is not worth doing on a car with my mileage.

 

Then the assumption came into play and he pulled out my dipstick. It was dry. That changed everything. I've been driving my car without oil. Ouch. I guess I should have checked that. I've never noticed an oil leak. Tim and I both assumed that I had oil in my car. It took 5 quarts to fill back up, and the rattle started going away.

 

On the assumption that I had oil in my engine, the prognosis was very bad. Adding oil began to fix the problem, but now we're left with the question of why all the oil had gone out of my engine in just 4000 miles. I know I'm a little late but my wife tells me money is tight so I was waiting for yesterday's paycheck to do an oil change. I know I should be able to get 4000-5000 miles out of a car without the oil running dry.

 

I know the common saying goes "When you assume, you make an ass out of U and ME." That is a wise proverb, yet not always accurate. We make assumptions every day. We probably couldn't make the simplest decision without making an assumption. But like in a business case, make sure those assumptions are based on as much available information as possible. Make the assumptions bridge a gap between information that you actually have. Be ready to change your assumptions with new information.

 

Now we wait until Monday when Tim can search for the oil leak. The final assumption I will make in this blog post is that since Tim did my last oil change, it was done right and my oil is leaving my engine another way.

 

Technorati Tags: Assumptions,oil change,oil leak

 

Labels: Hardware

Darn It Jim: Attention to Detail in the Health Care Industry

A while back, I wrote a series of posts about how it took two years to get a single pediatrician's bill settled with Aetna. I spent two years and many hours on the phone. I titled my series "Darn It Jim, I'm a Computer Geek, Not A Medical Billing Specialist". I based that, of course, on Dr. McCoy's famous "I'm a doctor not a..." lines from the original Star Trek series.

When I was in boot camp (United States Naval Recruit Training), I was introduced to the phrase "attention to detail". I did a lot of push-ups over the concept of attention to detail, both for my failure to pay attention to detail and for other members of my company failing to pay attention. In the military, failing to pay attention to detail can cost lives.

What happens while lives aren't exactly at stake? What about livelihoods that are at stake? What about a family budget? I've ranted before about my run-ins with health care. This is a very vital industry, yet it does cause a lot of hate and discontent in society.

Last week, my two year old decided to stick his hand in the car door as it was being closed. This resulted in an emergency room visit. Don't worry, the ER did fine. He broke one of his little fingers. The ER put a splint on him, wrapped his hand, and referred him to a doctor. My wife went straight to the pediatrician, who has an office close to the hospital, to get a referral. She then called to set an appointment. When she called to set the appointment, the staff went through the typical questions including PATIENT'S DATE OF BIRTH.

My wife showed up for the appointment, and when the doctor came in, guess what the first thing out of his mouth was (as reported by my wife)?

"I don't work on children this young."

Sure, AFTER his office collected a copay and billed our insurance for the visit, he lets my wife know that he doesn't deal with two year olds. Anyone care to guess where the attention to detail broke down? At least he rewrapped the hand and referred my wife to another doctor who *might* work with two year olds (which he does).

I think doctors and their staffs should have to do push-ups for every attention to detail error that they commit.

Technorati tags: Health care, medical billing, pediatrics

 

Labels: Hall of Shame

The Biggest Problem With The Microsoft Zune...

...is that nobody seems to carry it, at least here in south Jersey. Nobody. Those who actually do carry it only carry the 4 or 8 Gig model but know nothing about it. The models aren't even turned on, so an interested buyer has no idea how the interface might work.

I have been considering a Zune lately, ever since the news that podcast support is now included. I settled last on the 80 Gig video iPod because podcast support was very important to me. At the time I was downloading several video podcasts and converting them to a format to watch on my Pocket PC was cumbersome.

Now my needs have changed. I record TV shows through my WinTV from Hauppage. These record into MPEG format, and converting MPEG into an iPod compatible format is very cumbersome. Now that the Zune supports Apple formats, my video podcasts are no longer an issue but my recorded TV is. Also, the screen on the video iPod is very tiny while the screen on the Zune is much larger.

We'll see what happens. I wish I could get a review unit. Anybody know how to do that? If anyone from Microsoft's Zune team reads this and wants to send me an 80 Gig model, I'll be happy to post a review for you.

Technorati tags: Microsoft Zune, Video iPod, digital Media

 

Labels: Media, Podcast, Shopping

Darn It Jim Final: Aetna Finally Paid

I'm going to tie up some loose ends before I move on to other topics. As part of my "Darn it Jim" series regarding a 2 year long struggle I had with Aetna and Laurel Pediatrics to get a bill for one visit paid, I'm now posting the final entry. Aetna finally paid, although it took them several weeks after finally approving the bill to actually pay it. I'm really annoyed that I had to literally stand over the customer service representatives shoulders to settle this issue.

Labels: Hall of Shame

What Is Your Opinion of Customer Service in This Country Today?

After two years in the University of Phoneix's FlexNet program, I am now in my final class. Although I have finished the Interdisciplinary Capstone class for the bachelor's program, I have a critical thinking class to make up which I am taking right now. I have to take this class on ground, which means each week I have to drive the the University of Phoenix's Bucks County campus from 6:00 to 10:00 PM each Thursday. For the most part, other than being exhausted and of course having a hard time getting up at 5 AM on Friday after getting in so late, I'm enjoying the class. My instructor has run many businesses and has worked as a business consultant and has a lot of background to share with us in the class.

Last night, he asked us a question pertaining to the subject material of identifying problems. He asked "What do you think of customer service in this country today?" I could have gone on all week. Let's see what I think of customer service off the top of my head:

• For one thing, I'm not very happy with customer service at the University of Phoenix. The classes are great, but you're on your own if you need to speak to an academic or financial counselor. If you call, you had better get a live person on the phone and you had better resolve the issue within a phone call. Nobody will return a message and in my experience, nobody will call you back "after I look into it". I have lost thousands of dollars in GI Bill benefits because they won't report my attendance correctly to the Veteran's Administration, and they have reported to Citibank that I have completed my classes and am now in that six month window to start repaying student loans EVEN THOUGH I AM CURRENTLY ENROLLED! You also cannot expect a consistent level of service from each counselor you talk to. I've had some jump over backwards to email me information while others tell me to look it up on the website.
• Last Monday, my iPaq hx4705 Pocket PC died. I found a Cingular 8125 on Ebay for a good price and took the Buy It Now option last Thursday. The Pocket PC arrived at my house less than 24 hours after the shipping notice was sent, but the wrong battery was in the box. I contacted customer service and was told the correct battery would be sent to me. Here I am, five days later, without a battery. How can it take five days to ship a battery from Virginia to New Jersey? I'm not aware of any anthrax threats, there's no postal strike, and this business seems to ship UPS anyway. UPS shouldn't take five days for this distance unless you specifically paid them to do it.
• And of course, if you look at my archive, I can't get a medical claim processed unless I take my own time to call and call and call and shepherd the claim every step of the way.

I haven't had a very good time with customer service lately. During the discussion in class, I proposed to my instructor that customer service people should somehow have to be accountable when they make mistakes or overlook certain issues that cause pain or financial problems in a customer's life. Why nobody at Aetna over a two year period could look far enough into my case to see that the reason the claim was denied in the first place is because that doctor was not recorded as a primary care physician for an 11 day old baby is beyond me. I did not learn this until right before the doctor's billing office was going to put this on MY credit report and I stayed on the line with the CS representative going through every last line of the database for both of my children to find the cause. I had to do the work for them by standing over their shoulders on the phone.

If you work in customer service, yes, I know the job normally sucks. Maybe it's the only job you could get. Still, please recognize that you may hold the finances and medical cases of other living people in your hands. So what if the people are jerks? It's your job. Please, take some pride in your work.

Technorati tags: Customer Service

Labels: Hall of Shame, Misc comments, U of Phoenix

Darn it Jim III: Why Do I Have To Do Aetna's Job For Them?

The saga of my battle to get Aetna to perform the service that I'm paying them for continues. On Thursday, I realized that the seven to ten business days have long since passed from August 2 when I was told that my claim would be resubmitted. I wanted to find out if the claim would be approved or denied. If denied, I guess I'm stuck paying a bill by the crappy medical system (no, I don't advocate a socialized system, but this corporatized system has got to STOP!)

After giving the customer service representative several minutes to review the notes on my claim (they are getting very extensive) I waited on hold for several more minutes while she tried to track down the status of the claim. Here is what happened this time:

The claims department sent the claim back to the representative that I talked to last time to add some more data. She added the data, AND THEN DID NOT SEND IT BACK TO CLAIMS! It has been sitting in her cue for weeks! The representative that I talked to on Thursday said that she would route it back to claims.

This is getting ridiculous. Here is a large, national billion dollar company and yet a simple claim can't go through unless I have to keep calling and calling and calling to stand over the shoulders of the call center every step of the way.

Have you ever had a customer service issue that didn't seem to go anywhere without your direct and constant intervention?

Technorati tags: Aetna, Health care, medical billing

Labels: Hall of Shame

Darn It Jim Part II- Finally Found The Cause

This is in reference to a post I wrote previously which can be found here. I'm mostly writing this post to vent but maybe I can offer some help or advice along the way. You can read the other post, but to summarize, when my youngest son Caleb was 11 days old, we went to visit the pediatrician for baby's first office visit. For most of the last two years, I have been battling both the pediatrician and Aetna to get that visit paid. After the call that prompted the last blog entry, I thought the charge was resolved. I saw on the Aetna member site that it was paid, at least, I thought I saw that. This afternoon, my wife called to say that we got yet another bill (this makes 6) that states if we don't pay within 15 days they will report it to the credit bureaus. The fastest way to chill an American's blood is to threaten his credit rating. (This is only partly a statement of our greed and materialism; far too many things in American society are tied to credit ratings including car insurance, security clearances, etc.) I decided this time to try a change of pace: rather than call Laurel Pediatrics and yell at them, I would call Aetna first. Before I continue, I will say that the Aetna operator was very diligent and patient and we at least now know what the problem is but cannot guarantee that it will be resolved.

The problem appears to be that an entry dropped from the database along the way. To recap, as of this visit, Caleb was 11 days old. It is impossible to register an 11 day old baby for health insurance because you can't get a Social Security card back in 11 days and you need an SSN to register for health insurance. I know darn good and well that as soon as Caleb got his SSN I registered him with one of the doctors at Laurel Pediatrics as his PCP. In October we changed doctors. Laurel had moved to an office farther from us and became a large practice. My wife didn't care for the coldness of some of the nurse practitioners. We also found that where there are three doctors there are five opinions, and she thought she was being told something different every time she took the kids to the doctor. We found a single-pediatrician practice closer to us so at least we would only hear one story.

What happened is that somehow the database record was backdated showing Caleb's primary care physician (PCP) as the doctor we switched to in October effective from his birthday. I told the operator that can't be right and asked her to check Joshua. Sure enough, Joshua's PCP reflected our current doctor going back to March of 05 when my insurance became effective. That wasn't possible. I asked her to check what bills had been paid for Joshua and we were able to establish that his PCP was Laurel Pediatrics through October. After spending a good half hour on the phone working this issue, I asked her to check any record submitted and paid for Caleb prior to October. What came up were the bills for his hospital stay, including a bill paid to a doctor that I clearly remember from Laurel Pediatrics. Because that bill was paid, she checked the tax ID of the claim paid to him against the tax ID of the claim denied to Laurel Pediatrics, and found a match. The claim was resubmitted to the claims department with the explanation but there is no guarantee that it will be paid, although the chances do improve.

After working this for almost two years, I now know the problem was on Aetna's end the whole time. I would like to publicly apologize to Laurel pediatrics for my accusations of incompetence. We still don't intend to bring our kids back to your office, but it wasn't your fault.

I've spent so much time working this issue that I'm tempted to add a two your stint as a "medical billing consultant" to my resume.

Labels: Hall of Shame

My Car Buying Strategies

I found a post on Wise Bread asking for advice about a new car purchase with total operating costs being too high. The writer said that car payment, insurance, gas, etc all total about $600 a month. I left a comment on the blog with some brief thoughts but decided that I should save my ramblings on the subject for my own blog, so here we go. I've made a few mistakes and unwise car buying decisions in the past and my wife and I have developed some strategies that we now use while buying a car.

For one thing, every car we buy is used. I never set out to buy used cars, but it always worked out that way and now I do it deliberately. We all know that a car automatically starts depreciating the moment you drive off the lot, but the majority of depreciation hits within the first two years. Within two years, a lot of reliability data accumulates and it is much easier to decide if a certain model car will be a better choice than others. Cars can vary from year to year and sometimes a car made in one year is better than that same model car made the previous or even the following year.

My wife and I also set a cap on the amount of money we are willing to finance. I know that a lot of "experts" such as Dave Ramsey say that financing is bad and you should just save up and pay cash for cars and houses. Seriously, have any of you EVER managed to save up $100,000 cash to drop on a house?  Financing is little more than a tool, and if used wisely can be very useful. Now, if you make $35,000 a year and decide to finance a Hummer, a $300,000 home, a country club membership, and tens of thousands of dollars of 21% interest credit cards, then yes, please by Ramsey's book (I haven't) and take his advice. If you're willing to live by a certain amount of financial restraint, read on. Our last two cars we decided not to finance more than $200 a month and we managed to get very decent cars. We decided that $200 a month was a reasonable amount that we could handle and we refused to budge with the car dealer.

Another thing I would like to establish is that I refuse to think of a car as an asset, depreciating or otherwise. I have no idea where this saying came from, but it has reached the status of conventional wisdom. Even people who can't balance a checkbook can parrot the mantra "A car is a depreciating asset!" I don't think of a car as an asset, I think of a car as an appliance. A car is a $20,000 toaster. I've actually never paid more than a $12,500 sticker price for a car, by the way.

Because we only buy used cars and we set a fairly low payment margin, that forces us to do one more thing: research. We have to decide what we need in a car, then what cars will fit those needs. Then we have to look at model years and reliability data. I will share some car buying and owning stories after this section for those who are willing to keep reading.

I learned how to drive on my dad's 1987 Hyundai Excel. I drove that car for the end of my junior year and all of my senior year of high school. I was going to take it with me when I went in the Navy, but for some reason I became obsessed with Mazda trucks, and I decided that I had to have a Mazda truck. I was in my last couple of weeks of high school and I had quit my Kentucky Fried Chicken job prior to leaving for boot camp. I realized that I couldn't afford a new truck. My mom knew somebody who worked at Red McComb's used cars (Red owns or at least used to own the San Antonio Spurs) and said that I might be able to get a good deal. My dad and I drove up to check out the used car lot and found a 1990 Mazda B2200 pickup on the lot (this was in 1992). Because I didn't have a *real* job, my dad had to get the loan with me as cosigner. My payments were about $180 a month on a 4 year loan. I later refinanced the loan after I had been in the Navy for a couple of years and built up some credit. After boot camp, I went to my "A" school (Navy technical school) at Great Lakes Il, outside of Chicago. I ended up with a monthly insurance payment of $240, which just about killed me as an E-2 with a base pay of $880 a month before taxes. I could afford car payment, insurance, and a tank of gas a week. I had roughly $20 a paycheck left over which went to soap and shaving cream.

Six months before that truck was paid off, I was 21 and for some reason had to prove to myself that I could buy a new car. On a Friday night, I went to the Mazda dealer on the National City Mile of Cars outside San Diego's Naval Station by myself. I wanted to buy a brand new 1995 Mazda Protege. I told the dealer that I wanted to keep my payments close to the $180 a month that my truck was at, and he kept telling me "sure, that's no problem". I was too young and naive to know better. When I sat down to sign the paperwork, the finance manager told me that my payments would be $350 a month. I started yelling because the salesman promised me that my payments would be much lower. The finance manager laughed at me and asked how I expected to get a $15,000 car for that little. I obviously qualified for the financing, but I would not have had anything left over after paying for the car and insurance. However, I was determined to buy a new car so I settled for a 1993 Mazda MX3 that was on the lot. I always said that I couldn't have been screwed into a better car. I drove that MX3 for 10 years until the moon roof seal started to leak. Finally, the gas pump went and as I had another car by this point I just donated the Mazda to Kars 4 Kids. I always said that I couldn't have been screwed into a better car.

Over the years I tried to buy new cars, but I always stopped myself. I once tried to trade the Mazda in on a Saturn, but decided I'd learned my lesson about being "car broke" and I walked away. At another point I wanted to buy a Subaru, but again I decided to keep the Mazda, which was paid off by that point. The Subaru dealer was trying to push me into a 5 year lease with a 12,000 mile a year limit and the deal just didn't make any sense to me so I got up and left.

When my wife and I first bought our house, I was still driving the Mazda and she had a '91 Ford Escort. I didn't find it possible to own a house with subcompacts. A trip to BJ's was hardly possible, and forget going to Home Depot for anything without renting or borrowing a truck. In 2002, my in-laws loaned us their 1995 Ford Windstar when we took a trip to Texas to see my parents and we decided that we wanted a Windstar. We bought a 1999 model from the same dealership that tried to push the Subaru lease on me. After we got home, my wife was browsing through the dealer's website and found that same car for $2000 less than we paid. I printed out the page and ran outside to compare the VIN, and sure enough it was the same car. When we went back to complain about false advertising, we were told that a "3rd" party manages the website and the price that car was listed for was wrong and the dealer is not responsible blah, blah, screw you suckers, blah, blah.

The next year, my in-laws gave us that 1995 Windstar. The 1999 was developing some reliability issues. The power steering was starting to go, one of the vent windows was stuck open, and my wife just plain didn't like that car while she loved the '95 which is a luxury model and used to belong to her grandparents. When the head gasket in the '95 van blew, we decided that we wanted to keep that one so we should get rid of the '99 before it started to cost us money. I have NEVER been able to sell a car. One January morning I was driving to church in a snowstorm and the van was slipping all over the place. I decided that maybe we should look for a 4 wheel drive. This was 2004 and my wife was pregnant with Joshua, our first born (who just turned 3) and I was starting to think about the safety of our children. There are only 3-5 times a year when you might need four wheel drive in New Jersey, but you're darn thankful to have it. One Friday night, I was looking for used 4WD cars and we came across a 2001 Kia Sportage for $7995. I researched the model and found that out of all the years the 4 cylinder Sportage sold, 2001 was the best year. We went to the dealer the next morning and bought the car. It was all very easy and during the time we owned the Sportage I enjoyed it for the most part. I called it my "toy SUV".

Last year we started talking about getting a 4WD that will hold more passengers. We thought about the Dodge Durango, but I couldn't find any used models that we could finance for $200 a month or less. We took a long term approach on this car purchase and I spent months watching the used car sites for a used 4WD that will hold us, two car seats, and at least one more passenger. One day I came across the Suzuki XL-7, and my research showed that yes, it has 3 row seating. We went to check one out. There was one XL-7 listed on a used car site, but we passed a Suzuki dealer on our way and decided to see what they had. We ended up buying a 2001 Suzuki Grand Vitara XL-7 Limited, which is what I'm driving now. This car has leather seats, fake wood paneling, and 4 wheel drive. It also seats up to 7, although there is no real storage space when we have the back row up. Our payments are just at $200 a month.

To summarize and finalize the Gadget Geek Dad's car buying advice:

• A car is not an asset, a car is not an extension of your personality. A car is an appliance, a tool.
• Carefully analyze what you want in a car and how much you are willing to pay before you go shopping. If you need an econo-sedan, buy one. If you need an F-250, buy it.
• Shop for financing. When we bought the Suzuki, the dealer could not arrange the payments that I wanted, but my credit union could. Like the car, financing is a tool.
• Don't be afraid to buy used. A two year old car should have tons of reviews and reliability data freely available online.
• Don't be afraid to get up and walk out. Don't be afraid to hurt the dealer's feelings. Worry about your own finances. You be the judge of whether this is a good deal or not. Sometimes the dealer needs to sell the car and by trying to walk out, he'll offer a better deal.

 

Technorati tags: Car buying, used cars, personal finance

Labels: Family, Misc comments

The Entire Point to Buy Owner Is To Not Use A Realtor...

And so it begins. When I got home from work, I found on the kitchen table an envelope hand addressed to me with no return address. I opened the envelope up to find large, bold text with AOL Instant Messenger quality underlining and spam quality writing on a piece of paper with a faint Remax watermark. The text was at least double spaced and and of a font large enough that the small amount of writing took up the whole page. The text said:

4.5%! Thats(sic) right! I will sell your Buy Owner for only a total of 4.5% commission! If Buy Owner sells your home before I can then you pay me 0% commission! You have nothing to lose! Beware of those flat fee real Estate(sic) companies that offer to sell your home for an upfront flat fee combined with a percentage because they are not full service. I take no fees upfront! I will handle the whole transaction from start to finish! Call me, **** ********, Direct at (***)***-****. Remax sells more homes than anyone else in the world!

If you think that was painful to read in a Windows Live Writer blockquote, try reading it on a full page. Obviously, I edited out the name and phone number but I left Remax in there because they rightly should be publicly embarrassed at the quality of marketing of some of their agents.

Well, *****, here's my offer back to you: I will take you up on your suggestion to pay you 0% commission as I will not be using your services. With writing like that, even if I were interested in paying a standard real estate commission (and I have absolutely no problem paying a professional to work on my behalf), there is no way in hell I would want you drafting a contract that my signature might go on. Take some writing lessons at Camden County College. It sounds like you learned how to market from reading your spam folder.

This Realtor doesn't seem to understand the point to Buy Owner. Buy Owner is not a flat fee brokerage; they provide marketing and screening services. I handle showing my house and negotiating with potential sellers, then Buy Owner provides the services of a title company to handle the closing.

Technorati tags: Real estate, marketing, Buy Owner, selling a house, Realtors

Labels: Hall of Shame, Misc comments, Spam

FSBO: Dealing With Realtors

As I mentioned the other day, my wife and I placed our house on the market. We went with Buy Owner partly because we lack the equity to cover a traditional 6% realtor commission. I thought back over the period six years ago when we were looking for a house. I knew a lot of Buy Owner properties were on the market, but we pretty much ignored them. I may not have understood how to buy a house without agents, but I also realized that a seller of a FSBO (For Sale By Owner) property probably won't pay a commission. When we signed with Buy Owner, I began to wonder what I would do if I were contacted by a potential buyer who wished to be represented by a buyer's agent (realtor).

Last night, I actually did get a call from a realtor who had a client who saw my house on the Internet. We spoke for a few minutes. She asked if we were listed with MLS (Multiple Listing Service), to which I answered no. Buy Owner does offer the ability to list with MLS, but again, commissions have to be taken into account. I had given thought to what I would say to a buyer with a realtor, and I came to the conclusion that I would suggest that the buyer pay the commission. The realtor said that is not very common in New Jersey, which is true. Traditionally, the seller pays the commission. After a few moments of discussion, I said that I have bought and sold properties before and I understand a little about how real estate works, and although we have our asking price and very little room to work, we will give consideration to serious offers. She said that she would pass that along to her client.

---

 

I can't believe some people. Naturally, since we're trying to sell our house, we're trying to get rid of six years worth of clutter. Today, being trash day, we placed a lot more trash than normal on the curb. My wife called to say that somebody went through our trash. That isn't a big deal in itself, but they ripped bags open and left a bunch of trash on the ground. My wife had to leave our children unsupervised to clean up the mess left behind by our dumpster diver. Whoever it is moves fast. She was carrying a torn comforter out to the curb while talking on the phone with me, and it was gone within two minutes.

I have nothing against dumpster diving. One person's trash is another person's treasure, and obviously if we're throwing something away we have no use for it, so if you do that's fine; our last two couches were somebody's throw-aways. But if you're going to rip my trash bags open, make sure the stuff you don't want makes it back into the trash can. I don't care if it is kitty litter or dirty diapers. You opened the bag!

Technorati tags: Real Estate, Dumpster Diving, House for sale

Labels: Hall of Shame, Misc comments

My House Is On The Market!

My wife and I made the decision a few months back to move out of our house. We're going to take over my in-laws' house and build an addition. We love our house and our neighborhood and if not for the offer from my in-laws we would probably stay here indefinitely.

I spoke with a realtor whom I was referred to initially, until we discovered that we did not have enough equity in our house to cover the traditional 6% commission. I won't debate here on my blog whether a realtor's commission is fair or not, because I'm not entirely sure. I'm not sure that the tier structure is fair. As you can see, our house is listed for $175,000. A realtor's commission on that is $10,500. Imagine a realtor selling one of those $500,000 homes, and expecting a commission of $30,000. Could we expect the same level of service as the seller of a higher priced house? In theory, yes, obviously a professional would treat us with the same level of service but when human nature is taken into account, I'm not as confident. In any case, the realtor we talked with was highly recommended to us by a friend on a professional basis and we expected nothing but the best. However, the CMA (Comparative Marketing Analysis) generated by the realtor was a little depressing taking into account our current mortgage and equity. My wife told me to check into Buy Owner.

I am very impressed with Buy Owner. What Buy Owner offers a seller is marketing and screening services. We bought the Executive package which gives us a page in their magazine. We also get a certain number of photographs and there was a special on virtual tours. The photographer should be contacting me today to set up an appointment. The pictures on our seller's page were taken from the consultant's camera just to get the ad started. I spent the weekend trimming the bushes in front of the house, cutting the grass, pulling weeds, and laying down mulch. When we bought the house the previous owners spent a great deal of time on landscaping and I was attempting to get some of the curb appeal back.

If you're looking for a house in a good, central location in a safe neighborhood, check out our page. We live in the center of Camden County, New Jersey, right off the White Horse Pike. The Lindenwold station of the PATCO High Speed Line is less than two miles from our house. This offers service to center city Philadelphia and Atlantic City. My wife used to work in Philly and took the train over every workday. We're also under an hour from "the Jersey Shore". We live on a quite, friendly, tree-lined street that is frozen in time. The street is safe and the neighbors are kind and friendly. We hold a block party every year in time for Independence Day. The party will be this Saturday. We get a permit to block the street off, set up barricades, hire a DJ, and bring our barbeque grills and patio furniture the our front yards and just enjoy a day outside. We have a Chinese Auction (which my wife is running this year) and plenty of other festivities. Oh, yeah, also plenty of beer or other varieties of "happy juice".

There is a pizza restaurant just around the corner. I walk over to get food. Across the railroad tracks is Sharky's, which has the best wings around.

If you're looking for a 4 bedroom, 1 1/2 bath cape cod on a quarter acre in this kind of neighborhood, check out our page. If you're interested, Buy Owner offers mortgage pre-qualification services which take only seconds. In the past, I've had to find a realtor, get a referral to a mortgage broker, fill out an application, wait for an answer, then go back to the realtor. The process took weeks. With Buy Owner, you can find out within moments if you can qualify to buy a house.

Technorati tags: BuyOwner, Mortgage, Home Buying, Real Estate, Lindenwold NJ, Cape Cod

Labels: Family, Misc comments

Thomas and Friends Wooden Railway Toy Recall

There has been a recall of some of the wooden components of the Thomas and Friends wooden railway set. I just thought I'd post this here for other parents. I'm sure my kids have chewed on these at one point or another, and they somehow got through with lead paint. I guess whatever communist country these toys are manufactured in hasn't gotten around to banning lead paint yet. If you have any of these toys, follow directions on the CPSC recall immediately.

Labels: Family, Hall of Shame, Health, Misc comments, News, Shopping

Darn It Jim, I'm A Computer Geek, Not A Medical Billing Specialist

For those who don't recognize the paraphrase, this title reflects the sayings of Dr. McCoy (played by DeForest Kelly) in Star Trek TOS (The Original Series). This is brought on by my latest foray into a medical billing issue that is covered by my plan and yet after almost two years is not resolved. I am adding a new category to my blog, Hall of Shame, for products, services, or people that I write about which belong in a Hall of Shame somewhere.

My youngest son, Caleb, was born in August of 2005, almost exactly 54 weeks after his older brother. About a week after being discharged from the hospital, we took him to "baby's first pediatrician's visit" at Laurel Pediatrics. This office used to have a small branch near our house, but they moved to a much larger office several townships over, about a 15 mile drive from us. We all know that although medicine is based on science, doctors "practice" medicine and sometimes there are no hard answers. I learned very quickly after the birth of my first born that where there are three doctors you'll find five opinions. Although the office by our house was small (in fact, my wife's pediatrician was the father of the doctor who practiced there when we first began using their services), the larger office had many doctors and nurse practitioners, and my wife got tired of hearing something different every time she went in so we selected an office with one doctor, so that at least we won't hear a different story every time we go in.

In any case, that first visit went well enough, but the bill was a problem and as of this afternoon continues to remain a problem. Most hospitals, at least in 2005, don't have wireless Internet access and because daddy (and especially mommy) tend to take off work for the birth of a baby, chances are it will be a few days until the child is added to the insurance policy. A child can't be added until a Social Security number arrives, so often by baby's first doctor's visit, baby isn't officially covered by insurance. It's often customary to bill the insurance under the mother's coverage for the first thirty days, and that is what I instructed this office to do when they asked about insurance. Well, why would the person working behind the desk at a doctor's office listen to a computer geek who is married to a former benefit's specialist who has actually researched this with his current coverage? They sent the bill into Aetna under Caleb's name, although Caleb was barely a week old, did not have a Social Security number yet, and surely wasn't covered. Aetna did what any good insurance company would have done when they receive a bill for somebody who isn't covered: they denied the claim.

Well, if the insurance company denies the claim, then the doctor's office sends a bill, which I got. I was confused and sleep deprived, and immediately assumed it was Aetna's fault. I called them, ready for a fight. I found out that the services were of course covered and they would be happy to pay, and the doctor just needed to submit the claim again. No problem, I called the doctor, passed that along, and put it out of my mind. That is, until I got another bill. I called Aetna again, and sure enough, they hadn't seen a bill yet but will gladly pay it when they do. I called the doctor's billing again, and told them to resubmit.

I got my third bill after that. This time, I called Aetna and had them get on a 3 way conference call with me and the doctor's office and between them, it looked like everything was resolved.

NOT!

I got a fourth bill last June. I was ready to go down to the billing office, stand over their shoulders until they got the claim submitted properly, and bill them for my time. They said they'd resolve it.

Now, a year later, I got my 5th bill. I was livid because now there is a late charge attached to a bill for services that are covered and should have been paid long ago. I called the doctor on Saturday when the bill came. Today I called Aetna. Guess what I found?

The doctor did properly submit the claim on the date of service, but because Caleb had not been added to my policy yet, it's been sitting in the cue for almost two years. This time, I'm told that it will be resubmitted for payment.

Almost two years, 10 or more phone calls, you'd think I should be able to bill both the doctor and Aetna for the time I've had to put into solving this billing problem that both of their ends should be trained and equipped to handle. If I wanted to be a medical billing specialist, I'd call one of those 1-800 numbers that come on late at night. This one is definitely going in the Hall of Shame, not quite because the services or quality on either end was bad, but because I shouldn't have to do these people's jobs for them. I have no doubt that the doctor's at Laurel Pediatrics are dedicated, and I've had Aetna coverage for years and have had few problems (except for our current prescription plan, which is really bad). This billing should have gone easier. You'd think nobody has ever processed a medical bill for a baby who hasn't been added to daddy's policy yet...

Technorati tags: Medical billing, Aetna, Laurel Pediatrics

Labels: Family, Hall of Shame, Health, Misc comments

Should You Really Expect To Get Rich By Winning The Lottery?

At my office, whenever the New Jersey lottery reaches a certain point, many of my co-workers start climbing over each other to pool their money in order to buy tickets. From the Department Head on down, the flames of hope are fanned once again by dreams of riches.

Last year, my wife wanted to take the children to Sesame Place. We stopped at 7/11 to withdraw cash for the day, and I decided to get a bottle of water for the drive. I had to wait for more than 10 minutes at the counter behind a woman purchasing more than $40 in lottery tickets while my wife and kids sat in the car. 

My spam folder on gmail is filled with (aside from Viagra spam and promises of cheap software) notifications that I have won the UK lottery, the Yahoo! lottery, the Microsoft lottery, and so many other lotteries. I recently got a notification that I won a bunch of money for one reason or another from Coca-cola.

What is there about the lottery that keeps people coming back over and over and over again despite the fact that the odds of them winning are actually smaller than the odds of them growing wealthy through their own hard work and creativity? I've never really paid much attention to the lottery, even though during my late teen years and early twenties most states began to legalize lotteries. I can remember stories of how the state often got the lottery approved by promising that proceeds would benefit education, while raiding that same educational fund to get the lottery started. While in the Navy, I spent a few months working with a group in Supply led by a Senior Chief (E-8) who read a story about a group of people in the Midwest who all got laid off from their jobs, but won the lottery. He appointed a "Lottery Petty Officer" who had the duty of collecting a dollar every week from each member of the team and buying lottery tickets for us. Obviously, this got us nowhere.

Even before I became a Christian, I was personally opposed to the lottery. Perhaps I have inherited my dad's cynicism, but I mostly see the lottery as a voluntary tax on people who are either greedy, poor at math, or oblivious to probability. At work, whenever the pot of the New Jersey Lottery gets big enough to attract the attention of my coworkers, I always kid them about lining up to pay tax again. I've started telling them that in the time I've worked here, they've spent enough money in lottery tickets to have funded me in a startup that may have made us all more money by now.

If you want to play the lottery, by all means, go ahead.  Don't let me stop you.

When I became a Christian, I found a verse that pretty much cinched the lottery for me. I consider this my own conviction; I know Christians who play the lottery and I have once or twice bought my wife a $1 scratch off that looked interesting. I was reading in Exodus about how, when Moses was on the mountain for so long, the people went to Aaron, who made them a golden calf. Aaron said:

Exd 32:4 And he received [them] at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf: and they said, These [be] thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. 

God was, understandably, angry with the people. He had delivered them from Egypt, and here they go making an idol and ascribing His miracles to that idol. That's the meaning of idolatry, by the way, when we try to represent God with am image from His creation and give the credit for His work to that idol. I'm not sure why that jumped out to me, but when I think of the lottery, I think of "Here, O Eric, is the god who will provide for your family". And so, with that thought, I leave the lottery alone. 

Let's explore a few issues related to the lottery, and why I don't play the lottery. I would have an easy time writing off people who play the lottery as lazy or full of wishful thinking, but somehow I don't think that explains it. I had an interesting conversation with one of my coworkers a few weeks ago which inspired this post. I brought up a few points I have picked up over the years about lottery winners, and during the conversation something occurred to me. 

Lottery winners are often unprepared for the immense wealth and popularity they suddenly achieve.

Robert Kyosaki, in his book Rich Dad, Poor Dad, mentions that there are things the rich teach their children that the poor and middle class do not. I admit that there are some problems with that book, the most obvious of which is that Mr. Kyosaki tells you just enough to get really excited without actually giving you any substantial information, but that is true for just about all "success literature". One thing that really stood out to me,  however, has to do with mentality. I grew up in an Air Force family. We lived in base housing until I was 11 when we moved to Texas and rented a house. I can remember hearing my mom constantly say "We can't afford that" when I asked for anything, be it school clothes or a new toy. One thing in Rich Dad, Poor Dad that really jumped out at me is that "I can't afford this" is the wrong mentality. The proper thought should be "How can I afford this?", or at the very least "Would this be a wise purchase?" (my own thinking). However, having been raised with the "I can't afford this" mentality, I often simply respond to the thoughts of anything I want or my wife wants with that statement, whether there is any truth to it at all.

I remember as a young, broke sailor, one of the most important things to me was to have my own transportation, and I paid through the nose for it. I had a 1990 Mazda B2200 pickup truck, and the insurance to show for it. At one point, when I was stationed at Great Lakes Naval Training Center outside Chicago, my car insurance was so high that between payment and insurance, I had only enough money each paycheck for a tank of gas a week and toiletries. That was it. If I went anywhere, it was often because somebody else wanted off the base so badly that they were willing to pay my way so I would drive. I remember asking some of the drunks how they could afford to spend so much money on beer every night. One of them gave me the most honest answer possible: "It's what's important to us". To me, having that truck and the ability to drive myself off base was important. To them, drinking every night was important. Later on, when I started getting interested in computers, somebody asked me how I could afford to upgrade every couple of months when a new processor came out. My answer? "It's what's important to me." Time and money are often spent on what we value whether we realize it or not, which is why (and I'll get to this later) we should sit down and define what exactly it is that we value. I should do another post on that.

In any case, most lottery winners are ill prepared by upbringing or life experiences to handle the sudden wealth. Some succumb to the constant requests for money, others simply blow it all. Most lottery winners end up worse off after having won than before. Many of their families are torn apart in the process. For once in my life, I decided to perform some brief research for one of my blog posts. Here is a story about 8 lottery winners, and here is an ABC News story Curse of the Lottery Winners. Although these stories may or may not be typical of all lottery winners, they do have a common thread.

What exactly does "rich" mean?

Everybody seems to hate "the rich", and yet that word is often thrown around as an abstract, subjective term. Everybody hates "the rich", yet everybody wants to be "rich". I would like to suggest that what "rich" means may be different to each of us. This comes back to defining values. "Rich" seems to have to do with a large house, fancy cars, lots of toys, and oh, yeah, of course doing something noble like paying off mom and dad's mortgage or as my wife said the other night while discussing this issue "we could give 20% to the church!" Most of us know, at least on the lowest level that we may never think about, that toys and things never really satisfy us. I could get a brand new Pocket PC tonight, and be mostly bored with it in less than a week, lusting after some newer model. Can you tell me how much money you would need to be "happy"? Now, please don't get me wrong; I do not believe even as a Christian that we should all sit around in pious misery and poverty. That is not the message of Scripture at all, even though through the centuries it seems to have been believed by many groups. I want to have nice things myself. I'd love to have a larger house, a newer car, a more powerful laptop, a flat screen HDTV. That would be great. None of it would make me happy (for long), but I'd still love to have them.

What are we teaching our children?

While my wife and I were out the other night, I shared with her that I was writing this entry. We got to talking about the lottery. She shared some dreams that she had if she won (although she does honor my request not to spend money on lottery tickets). Her thoughts were pretty much what I said earlier "pay off our house, our parents houses, give 20% to the church..." I asked her "Why does it have to be the lottery though?" What is so great about the lottery? I asked her what message we would be sending to our children to bank our hopes on one lucky ticket. What message would we be sending, by extension, to the children in our church and community? I asked her, what if I wrote a book that became a best seller and we became wealthy that way? What if through hard work and advancement, I was asked to serve on the board of a major corporation? What if I wrote a highly successful software program (unlikely; I don't like to code)? What if my blog became a successful web destination and brought in plenty of advertising revenue? What if I became a highly successful IT consultant? What's wrong with us banking our hopes on defining our values and then working toward those values together? To me, that sends a much stronger message to our children. I decided right then and that that I don't want to win the lottery, so if you are buying tickets, you don't have to worry about me adding any more odds against you winning it.

So, what does "rich" mean to you?

Before you buy your next lottery ticket, spend some time thinking about what your values are. Be honest with yourself. If your top values is getting drunk every night, then by all means, be true to yourself. But if your top value is something else, and you're not living up to it, then I'd like to ask you to consider a change in course. This isn't easy at all to do. I've been working on my values for over a decade, since I bought my Franklin Planner and Hyrum Smith's book The 10 Natural Laws of Successful Time and Life Management back in 1996. There are all kinds of ways to sort out your values. I ultimately found a tool on Franklin Covey's website useful for defining my values. ThinkTQ has some interesting resources as well. You may try a brainstorming session. I'm sure there are plenty of other resources to help you with this. After you've defined your values, then think about where you want to go in life. What is important to you? What do you want to be when you grow up? Begin to set some goals. Is the mansion really what you want in life, or would you like a Victorian style home in a certain city? Would you like to live in the mountains? What kind of car do you want to drive? Work on your vision. Don't worry about being "practical" on vision, just see how you want things to end up. Take your time on this because this is important. I have a mind map I've been working on for months with my vision. Remember:

Pro 29:18 Where [there is] no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy [is] he.

Once you have your vision, values, and some goals worked out, then get to work on them. Trust me, this will take you much farther than a weekly trip to 7/11 to buy a lottery ticket ever will.

If you've read this far and you think I'm full of it, by all means, continue your surfing somewhere else and good luck on your next trip to the lottery ticket selling destination of your choice. If I've struck a chord with you, then join me in working to achieve wealth not by random chance, but by God's grace and our work. Let's try to add some value to the world rather than fill the world with mindless greed.

 

Technorati tags: Misc Comments, Lottery, Success, Get Rich Quick

Labels: Family, Goals, Misc comments, Time Management

Sundance Vacations- Is There Really Value In Buying 30 Vacations Wholesale?

On Friday night my wife got an interesting call. Last month we took our kids to the Thomas and Friends Day at the Toy Train Emporium. They had a drawing for a grand prize of tickets to the Thomas Show at the Tweeter Center. I rarely if ever enter drawings for money anymore, but I do occasionally enter for things like that. We filled out cards for our kids, partly because the cards enrolled them in the Birthday Club that the store offered. Just after we got home, I got a call from the store saying that the card I filled out for Joshua won and we had 4 tickets to the show plus a special Meet and Greet with Sir Topham Hat. That sounded good. I ended up not being able to go because I had class that day but my wife took her sister along. While there, she filled out a card for another drawing (my wife is more likely to fill these things out than I am; I've gotten on too many junk marketing lists that way) and that drawing won. She was told on her call last night that she won a free vacation to Orlando or Las Vegas. We just had to come pick up the tickets and pay the taxes on them. The company, Sundance Vacations, from research I did is headquartered in Wilkes-Barre, PA and has six more offices in the PA-NJ area. The office in King of Prussia, PA is closest to us. They had an appointment for Friday night but we originally took one for 11 AM Saturday morning because we were supposed to have company over for dinner.

I thought it had to be a scam, or a time share presentation, which I partially consider to be a scam anyway. There isn't very much in this world that you get for nothing, especially something like a vacation. These things cost money, and companies don't just go giving them away because you were nice enough to fill out a card with your name, phone number, address, annual income, or whatever else they required. I really didn't want to have to go Saturday, because I needed to go to work to make up for taking off on Monday to finish a flooring project that went horribly wrong last weekend. Also, due to other events, I needed time on Saturday to finish my weekly assignment for my current class at the University of Phoenix, and being at the office on Saturday provides me with a quiet environment to do that, once I get through my work that I went in to do, of course. When our dinner guests didn't show up, my wife asked me to call them. It turns out that they were under the impression that she was going to call them during the week to confirm, and she didn't. I told her to call the place that claimed we won a vacation and see if the 8 PM appointment was still open. After all, what's a 40 mile drive to King of Prussia on Philadelphia's poorly designed, patchworked, scenic and deadly Schukyll Expressway at the end of Philadelphia's Friday night rush hour anyway? My sister in law, who lives with us, was willing to watch the kids for the evening, so we set out. Actually, if they hadn't expressly forbidden children, I would have brought them. Bored and cranky children make an excellent excuse for leaving an uncomfortable situation. Fortunately, all of the traffic jams were in the eastbound lanes, and we made it in time for our 8:15 PM appointment. (I actually prefer military or 24 hour time, but I'm doing AM and PM for any readers who don't know what I mean when I say we arrived at 2015.) 

I wish I'd had time to do an Internet search before we left, but the search I did while conducting research for this entry turned up little useful information. We arrived just about on time for our appointment. The office was in a corporate park. I wasn't sure what to expect, but I figured there would be a travel agency layout and decor to the office. There wasn't. We walked into a lobby that seemed comfortable enough, The receptionist greeted us and gave us a form to fill out. The form, in addition to the basic questions about name, address, occupation, income, etc. also asked questions about where we vacation, who we go with, where we go, what we like to do, and the ever ominous question about whether we have been forced to sit through been to a time share presentation. That, to me, was a dead giveaway what we were being pulled into but we drove 40 miles so we figured we'd see what they had to offer. 

The woman assigned to our appointment came out to get us and walked us down a long hallway plastered from ceiling to floor on both sides with Polaroid pictures of people holding beach balls and smiling. She said it was their "Wall of Success" or something and she seemed highly confident that our picture would be on that wall shortly. I wasn't so sure, but I kept that to myself. She took us back to a large room with inflatable beach balls all over the place and many tables with presentation folders on them. The outside of the room was lined with offices. It was just like cubeville but without the cubicles. The beach balls were a nice touch, and I should have taken some with me. They might liven up cubeville where I work. 

When we sat down at the table she explained what we already knew, to get our free vacation we just had to give her 20 minutes. Then she took the presentation folder and launched into the presentation. I was once in a multi-level marketing organization, and although I never did very well, I was highly trained in the "sales and marketing plan", which I was once able to do on a bar napkin. I was pretty good at it, actually. I recognize aspects of that method in situations like this one, and to be honest it really destroys any sense of legitimacy for me. She went through the pages in the presentation folder, and she also had a printed page with numbers and slogans on it that she kept circling and writing on, just like the sales and marketing plan form I once used. 

Here is the gist of the presentation for any who are interested. It actually doesn't sound like a bad idea, and I'll explain our thinking and what we did in a little bit. OK, you probably take vacations once in a while. What this place, Sundance Vacations does, is buy vacations wholesale. They don't advertise, and they pass the savings along to their members (that's the claim). You buy all of your vacations at once, sort of like the difference between, say, paying $3 a beer at a bar versus buying a case for $14.99. (They used soda in their presentation). You get 8 days of vacation a year in a nice vacation condo in locations all over the world, from the Jersey Shore (great place, really) to Las Vegas to the Caribbean. You make a call to them and pay $99 for them to book your vacation. As best as we were able to reconstruct the details in the car on our way home, it sounded like you had to pay airfare but they got you the best rate possible. You also had to pay for the condo, but it was much cheaper than if you went to the destination retail. They had a peak season cap. Also, somehow the plan was completely protected against inflation. If you buy now, in 20 years you'll still pay the same price. I should have asked how they did that and what would happen if the economy tanked so badly that it would take $48 to get one Euro, but I didn't. I honestly didn't expect her to have an answer to that worst case scenario. This plan, which is as best I recall because they didn't exactly offer to let us take any materials home, cost *only* $15,000. You just have to put down $2400 and finance the rest for several years at 16 3/4% interest. I laughed at that. Seriously, if I really wanted to finance $15,000 I can get a much better interest rate than that. 

Of course, that wasn't all. For that day only, they had a really special package with 5 more vacations at a lower cost plus a few bonuses for $12,000. That required putting down less money. We told her it would be nice if we could have time to think about it. I've made some really stupid decisions over the years because companies like this force you to make a decision on the spot, so by this point in my life I refuse to do it. To my thinking, instant decision = scam. If they're really afraid of losing a sale because they gave me time to think about it, and of course do some research on the Internet, then it cannot be legitimate and I will walk away. Of course, I'm not equating illegitimate with illegal. I'm sure this is perfectly legal, but I don't consider it a legitimate place to put my money if I have to decide right now. Even in the multi-level marketing system I did, we would send people home with materials and tapes (which really told them nothing) and give them 48 hours to think about what they heard.

By this point, the woman had finished her presentation and we politely declined, but of course they can't just let you walk away, so the heavy artillery or "bad cop" is brought in. She said she had to get her manager just to make sure that she did a good job and answered all of our questions. Now, of course the first person you deal with will be very pleasant, but there is a second tier of salesmanship. She brought back a man in a pin-stripe suit who seemed very authoritative and imposing. When I was younger, I might have folded under his pressure, but at the ripe age of 33 I've seen enough that I wasn't intimidated by his act, nor was I impressed. He went through the formalities of asking how our presenter did, and of course we said she did fine. Then he asked if they could give us another package that would be more to our liking, but of course, this package was only good for today. We said we would probably be interested but of course would like to have some time to talk it over and think about it. We also explained that we are about to undertake a massive home renovation project and we've barely even started getting the details together, so we really need to keep our budget clear and our savings up. We remained pleasant. Finally, the man stood up and said "I'm sorry we couldn't help you", like he was disappointed in us. It was at that point that I realized there was no way we would consider any offer from them, because somehow he made the deal seem much more personal in a not so nice way with that statement and tone of voice. I actually think it's the other way around; we're sorry we couldn't help them. 

Finally, we were ushered into another office to pick up our free vacation. The woman in there was much less pleasant than the receptionist or our presenter. She seemed cold. She took out another plan page and drew out a package that was still less and offered it to us. Of course, like all of the others, this was good only for today (Friday, actually). 

I'd like to call at this point what we referred to in the Navy as a Training Time Out. I can't help but wonder, and my wit wasn't working fast enough Friday night to think of this until we were in the car on the way home, what their reaction would have been if I'd asked them "We originally had an appointment for tomorrow, but changed to tonight. What '1 day only' offers would you have given us tomorrow? What '1 day only' offers did you give to people yesterday? What's on tap for Monday?" I actually love these high pressure sales tactics with their "1 day only" special offers. Think about this in the grand scheme of things. In all of history, there is only one day on the entire timeline during which you could possibly expect to get a special deal on a wholesale vacation package from Sundance Vacations, which has been in business since 1992 (1996 according to the BBB), has seven offices, and the office in King of Prussia seems equipped to handle many presentations at once. Never mind that you're about to sell one house and build on another, no, you have to get that vacation package today or you'll be staying at a Motel 6 for the rest of your life and your children will go on Oprah and tell the world what a horrible parent you were for missing that one day in time that could have changed all of your lives for the better! You family will be disgraced for generations to come! Think about it, anyway. Secure from Training Time Out (that means return to our regularly scheduled blog entry). 

We politely told the woman that again, we would consider the deal if they would only give us time to think and talk about it. Sadly, this final offer was only good for Friday night. It will never be offered to anybody again, apparently. I still wonder what they would have told us had we kept our original 11 AM appointment Saturday morning. We were asked to sign a paper saying that we received the vacation. We were then ushered out of the building to our car. When we got there at 2015 (8:15 PM) we were the only people in the lobby. When we left at 2038 (8:38 PM), the lobby was utterly packed. I asked my wife how many of those people would be pressured into that deal and regret it later. 

On the way home we talked about it, and we both believe that we did the right thing. Can you really plan out your next 30 years of vacations? What happens if one of you gets sick, or something happens to a family member? What if I lost my job, or the economy tanked, or something? What if I actually managed to succeed as an independent IT consultant and didn't have time for a vacation? Heck, we don't really take vacations anyway. I do manage to eat up several weeks of vacation a year, but most of that is for home improvement or taking care of the kids when my wife is sick or when I'm waiting for Window Wizards to show up for a service call. I can't remember the last time I actually used my vacation balance to take a vacation. 

Now that I've laid out the story as best as I recall, I'll give you some tips on how to survive a high pressure sales environment. 

Be Pleasant and polite

You have nothing to gain by growing impatient. Keep yourself calm and be polite. In these situations, I would love to grab these people by the collar and tell them "It's because of people like you that I have to spend an hour every year sitting through ethics training". That would get me nowhere, and I'd probably have yet another yearly training session to sit through. Be kind. 

A Better Business Bureau Award Doesn't Mean No Scam

During the presentation, our presenter made a big deal out of how many awards Sundance Vacations has from the BBB. To be honest, a BBB rating doesn't mean a good value to you, the consumer. Don't forget, the BBB represents Businesses, not consumers. They do attempt to enforce certain ethical standards, but businesses can maintain those ethical standards while providing no real value to their intended customers. Check out Sundance Vacation's page on the Rip-off Report, a service of the Bad Business Bureau. According to Wikipedia, Sundance Vacations has BBB complaints against all of it's offices. While I was still in the Navy, I went through a phase where I was getting constant calls claiming I had won sweepstakes and lotteries all over the world. Of course, I woudh have had to pay to get the funds released. Most of the phone calls came from businesses claiming to have high ratings and many awards from the BBB. Once again, a BBB rating and awards really don't mean that you won't get ripped off. Actually, I have stopped trusting any business which works like Sundance Vacations and makes a big deal out of their BBB affiliation. I consider it one thing to stop into a mom and pop restaurant to get a cheese steak and see a BBB plaque on the wall and another thing entirely to sit through a sales pitch for a product that I wasn't even looking for that tries to use a BBB award to gain my confidence.

You are under no obligation

No matter how you find yourself brought into these situations, you have no obligation to anybody but yourself and your family and your existing creditors. Even if you win something, or they feed you, they still cannot legally obligate you to buy into their program. They'll try to tell you "It's only $90 a month", but I know we've had quite a few months in our lives where $90 in the budget would have made a huge difference. My wife and I try to keep our outgoing cash flow to a minimum, barring of course the mortgage payment and utilities and an occasional credit card. When we do finance things, we try to buy on a "12 months no interest" deal, which Lowe's runs several times a year. We bought a stove and refrigerator one year and paid them off over the next 12 months with no interest. We bought our Sleep Number bed on a 16 month no interest deal and paid it off with our tax refund. When we absolutely must finance a car, we spend time researching our needs and we find a used car that meets those needs that we can finance for $200 a month or less. Financing can be a useful tool, but don't turn it into a slave driver for yourself and your family no matter how good the deal sounds at the moment. 

Why can't you think about it or take some literature home?

I immediately grow suspicious when I have to make a decision on the spot involving my budget and financial future. It took me a long time to learn that my wife hates it when I try to get her to tell me her opinion in front of a salesperson, and that's gotten us in trouble in the past. My wife would rather let me browbeat her into agreement then be mad at me for the next few weeks than publicly discuss this kind of deal in front of a salesperson. I've learned that in order for us to make a good decision, we have to get away and do it in private. This also allows us to play our own game of "good cop, bad cop" for the salespeople. When they look at me and say "Can't you come up with $2400 tonight?" I say "I don't know. My wife handles the budget. All I know is when I stick my Check Card in the gas pump, gas comes out." 

All that aside, ask yourself what they could be so afraid of if they give you the chance to walk away and think about their program. I don't know much about the psychology of sales tactics, but I do know that they lay heavy on the emotions and keep away from the rationalizations. When I used to present that sales and marketing plan, I was trained to focus on emotions. I had to get people to think that their lives were incredibly boring and routine and I what I was offering was wealth and excitement and adventure. The people who come up with these sales tactics probably know that most men are likely to make a rash decision and most women aren't comfortable standing up and saying "What do you think you're doing? We can't afford this!" in front of a salesperson. If they're so afraid to let you go home and think about it and research it, what is it that they're worried about you'll find? 

Keep it in perspective

Seriously, is this really that life altering decision that you have to make on the spot or your kids will hate you? Really, if you don't buy this vacation package tonight, because you'll never, ever see it again, what is the impact on your life? Does it really matter? Will you kick yourself in the butt later if you don't do it? Most people I know who have bought into these things come to regret them later anyway. When my wife had preeclampsia and the doctors needed a decision that moment to perform a C-section, that is what I consider a life altering decision that must be done on the spot with lives hanging in the balance and the possibility of lasting ramifications for all of us. On the last day of my mom's life, when the hospice nurse wanted to transport her to a respite care facility even though there was a high probability she wouldn't survive the trip, that was a life altering decision which had to be made on the spot and may have been regretted for the rest of our lives. This is only a vacation package, and it really won't matter in the grand scheme of things. Trust me, another company, if not the same one, will call you later. Programs like this will always be around. 

And of course, for all I know, it's a perfectly legitimate program and our lives could have been greatly enhanced by participating in it. Too bad they wouldn't let us think about it overnight. 

Note: I originally wrote this entry with the wrong name. Somehow I remembered this place as Paradise Vacations, when in fact it is Sundance Vacations. 

Technorati tags: vacation, wholesale vacation, finances, family finances, scams, high pressure sales tactics, Sundance Vacations

Labels: Family, Misc comments, Scams

How Your Family Can Survive On A Single Income

My wife and I, by the grace of God, have gotten by for the last two years on only my income. This hasn't been easy and my wife has been tempted several times to look for a job but so far things have worked out. Many families today either can't or aren't willing to get by without both parents working, but it is possible by making some sacrifices and planning. There are of course many situations where a family cannot or does not want to get by on a single income, and I'm obviously not writing to those situations. I'm actually going to keep this brief and focused on one thing that we do to keep an affordable lifestyle on a single income: free furniture. I'll probably follow up with other posts as we go along.

Now, don't get me wrong. Not all furniture comes cheap. We bought a Sleep Number bed last year on a 16 month no interest plan on the hopes that our tax refund this year would pay for the bed. Our gamble paid off. We've also bought most of the kids' furniture from Ikea for a good price. When it comes to living room furniture, however, we seem to go through that very fast. Diapers leak, sippy cups spill, and of course the kids want to jump on the couch as much as they can. Our last couch and chair had those buttons that held the upholstery in place, and the kids pulled most of those buttons off. Needless to say, after about six months, our last couch wasn't doing very well.

Our last couch came from Craig's List. My wife scans through there at least once a week to see what interesting things she can find. I got my now non-functional iBook from Craig's List for $100. I think the hard drive is dead, but I don't have time right now to check it. Since Apple doesn't ship their operating systems with a decent disk utility, I'm going to have to put that hard drive in another laptop and use Windows XP to examine the disk.

One day last week, my wife's sister was driving and called to say that she saw a couch on the side of the road. My wife sent me back with her sister to pick the couch up in our Windstar. You can fit a lot in a Windstar. I took the couch and went back later for the chair. The couch is in really good shape and is much more comfortable than our last couch.

When children are young and budgets are short, consider getting your furniture cheap or free. You'd be amazed at how much money you can save that way.

Labels: Family, Shopping

Corporatism Part 2- HSBC Is A Pain In My Butt And I Hate Them

For an interesting documentary about corporations and some of the good and harm they have done, I highly recommend the film "The Corporation". I ordered this documentary from Netflix and found it interesting. You may have noticed a trend in the world, or at least in the developed world, toward large corporations exerting vast control over our lives and affairs. These corporations are often run by people with a lot of power and influence (See Enron: "The Smartest Guys In the Room", also available from Netflix.

Not all corporations are bad or evil, and not all are working toward government favor in their operations. I've done business with some corporations that make it very easy to work with them. Then there is HSBC: the absolute worst mortgage lender I have ever dealt with.

I've had two properties, and I've refinanced my current house several times. Normally I'll use a mortgage broker who will work out a deal with a lender who will shortly sell off my mortgage servicing to another bank. This time, we got sold to HSBC. I don't like them very much at all. It seems to me that they pay consultants to create business processes that make it as difficult as possible to do anything with HSBC.

Our mortgage payment is due on the 1st of the month. That's pretty normal. My wife and I use Checkfree as our web bill pay service. In November, my wife logged in a little bit late to make the payment on time, so she scheduled it for the 14th which was the soonest Checkfree claimed they could issue the payment. The payment arrived at HSBC on the 13th, but was postdated for the 14th so they returned it. Then they called me asking where my payment was. My wife assured me that she paid the bill. When HSBC calls you for a payment, they are not willing to let you off the phone until you take out a credit card and make that payment. I don't know about you, but our budget most months doesn't exactly allow us to make 2 mortgage payments, so I demanded to speak with a manager, said I would look into it, and called Checkfree. They explained that the check had been returned to them and set up a conference call between us and HSBC. It took more than 30 minutes to convince HSBC to make a note on my account that the check was in the mail, but they said they would charge a $30 late fee. I tried to appeal the late fee, but they said it couldn't be taken off my account until the payment arrived so I would have to call back.

After the payment showed up, I did call about the late fee. The Indian call center representative I spoke with didn't understand at first, but tried to encourage me to send a fax. I wanted to just deal with it over the phone, but they insisted on a fax. Guess what? They declined my appeal over the late fee. OK, you bastards, you and your billionaire stockholders can keep the $30. I'm sure you need it more than I do.

Try calling HSBC. There is not a single option in their entire phone tree to speak to a customer service rep, and pressing 0 will just get your call dropped.

My wife got the idea to try to make our mortgage payment with our Rewards Visa. I tried calling their office today to make a payment, and they're closed.

HSBC is an example of a corporation that thinks it's your privilege to do business with them. They seem to intentionally make everything as difficult and painful for the customer as possible. They are unreachable unless they are trying to extract money from the customer.

The next time I refinance my mortgage, I will not do business with any broker who does business with HSBC. IF I could only go back to Washington Mutual...

Labels: Misc comments

Need New Windows, Doors, etc?

Before I start, I would like to say that the purpose of this blog entry is not in any way, shape, or form to be critical of Window Wizards, but to share an experience. I haven't been ripped off or wronged. I'm a paying customer, and I just want to post some information for potential shoppers to consider. I won't be critical. I'm just a little frustrated and if you're looking for windows or doors then please read on if you're considering Window Wizards. I'm not even saying not to use them. I'll explain.

When I first moved to New Jersey in 1999, Bell Atlantic was the local POTS (Plain Old Telephone System) provider. They've long since been purchased by Verizon. When it comes to the incompetence of large corporations, I'm not sure if its simple bureaucratic inefficiency or deliberately crafted business practices, but I literally had to call them three times to get anything done right. Each time they would promise to resolve the situation, and not do it. Twice they sent my Caller ID box to the wrong address and tried to charge me for it, for instance. That was back when not all phones came with Caller ID, and I liked the phone I brought here with me anyway. I had a problem with my voice mail once, and that required three calls to straighten out. I guess they hoped if they didn't fix it you'd go away and somehow their shareholders get rich. Kevin Trudeau, in his "Natural Cures" books, frequently points out how corporations have a legal responsibility to their shareholders to make a profit. If somehow you benefit with good service, it's sometimes an accident.

Anyway, Window Wizards is sort of like that, without the feel of a big bad corporation. I'm sure they don't mean to cause some of the frustration that they do. My house was built in 1950. My wife and I bought it in 2001. Half of the windows had been replaced with the dual-pane vinyl windows, the other half were original installs: wood frame single-pane. They let in cold and drafts, many were stuck in place, and those that weren't stuck in place were about one more cold season away from being stuck in place. The sliding glass door in my kitchen was about to disintegrate and badly needed to be replaced. That and letting the dog out was a major workout.

We were in the process of taking out a second mortgage, so we called Window Wizards. Because their office is in Pennsylvania, we didn't have to pay some tax or other for them to install across state lines. The salesman came out and worked with us for a few hours to decide what windows we wanted to replace and what to replace them with. Then the carpenter came out to make the measurements. After that, they scheduled the installation. I took the day off, the first of many.

The installation went very well and they carpenter and his workmen did a good job. It took about a workday to install 10 windows and a sliding glass door. They were good guys and didn't mind me watching them and asking questions. The trouble began when the carpenter noticed a small machine mark on the sash of one of the windows in my family room. It wasn't a big deal, but he said since we have a lifetime warranty we should have it replaced. We figured sure, why not?

When the worker came out to replace the sash, he accidentally cracked the glass. It wasn't a big deal; it was only one pane. However, it took several more weeks to get a window replacement, and I had to take the afternoon off again to wait for service. I seem to remember living in San Diego that you could actually get appointments for deliveries and service calls. One time I called the cable company late at night on a Sunday and I was told that the serviceman would be there at 10 AM the next morning. He showed up by 10:10. Here on the East Coast, you get a window of time, say from 8-12 or 12-5. That means you may have to wait 4 or more hours sitting around your house waiting for someone to show up. What happens if they don't show up? Well, that's happened to me several times. You call to complain and get another 5 hour window to take off work and wait for them to show up. (My wife is a Stay At Home Mom, but isn't comfortable with servicemen so I still have to take off and wait for them. She takes the opportunity, like this morning, to sleep in because I'm here to watch the kids).

Anyway, I took off again to wait for service. Because the window was broken, they had to bring a new one. Would you believe the new one was 1/2 an inch too small to fit? ARRRRRRG! When I called to reschedule for them to bring the right sized window, they began asking me if I want to blow a morning or an afternoon waiting for them, and I might have said that I've already used up me entire year's worth of vacation waiting for Window Wizards service department so I really need them to try to make it convenient for me. They said they'd call me with a time. Several months later, winter was coming and my wife was nagging me to call them, so I did. I asked why they never called me back and they said there was a note on my account that I couldn't get anymore time off. We scheduled the appointment, and I spent yet another afternoon waiting for Window Wizards.

This time the window was the right size and I was glad that's over with. Thus concludes 2003.

Not long after that, the 1950's window frames began to expand and contract and my wife complained of a draft. Two of the windows weren't fitting in correctly anymore, and one wouldn't even stay up. Then my wife left the dog out too long and he destroyed the screen for one window. The nagging started to build up (Seriously, why can't she make the darn phone calls?) and finally I had to call Window Wizards again about the middle of 2006. I got a voice mail and left a message. A week later, I had heard nothing back, so I called their warranty service department again and left a message. Two weeks later I called and left a message. Then I called their sales desk, because I know that HAD to be manned, asked for help, got transferred to service, and left another message. Then I called, demanded to speak to a live person, left my information, got promised a callback, and three weeks later still hadn't gotten it. I called again, asked for the person I had talked to, asked why I'm waiting more than 2 months just to schedule a service call, and finally get something worked out. They came out and adjusted my window frames. However, that lifetime warranty really isn't a lifetime warranty. They'll come out, but we have to pay $65. Maybe Hyundai should start selling windows. They have the best warranty in the cars business. While we were waiting for service, we also noticed a crack in the vinyl of our sliding glass door, so I called back and added that to the list of things to look at.

The service guy came. I couldn't get off work, so my wife had to handle it. They adjusted the window frames, said they couldn't fix the screen (again, what exactly does LIFETIME WARRANTY mean?) and promised to call us back about the sliding door. After almost two and a half months of waiting, I had to call them.

They came out last Thursday to replace the sliding glass door. My wife had to handle it again. It's not that I can't leave work whenever I want, but I was already flexing time for something else and this would have left me too tight to make up. I'm trying to build a decent vacation balance. When I got home, we found that the sliding glass door didn't fit right and it rocks back, leaving a gap in the top right against the frame. The only way to keep it closed to to rock it up and lock it. I called Windows Wizards and, even though it was still business hours, left a message. They called me back Friday to schedule an appointment for this afternoon. My wife now refuses to deal with them, so I'm sitting home, with work piling up, and they called just before I got the idea to write this entry to say they have to reschedule. They might be able to make it out tomorrow, but they'll have to call me back. That normally means I'll be calling them in six weeks to ask why I'm having to go through winter with a glass door that doesn't seal into the frame correctly.

Like I said, I'm not trying to bash Window Wizards. I'm not even saying not to use them. They make a good product, and they do sort of support it although you have to be very proactive and have a flexible job and a huge vacation balance in order to get that support. Chances are if there's a defect in the installation, you'll have to schedule that cruise for another year because you'll use the whole 40 hours of vacation waiting for Window Wizards. If you want to buy from Window Wizards by all means go ahead.

I'll leave you with this. My wife has an Averatec laptop that we bought from Circuit City. It's been sent in for service five times, four through Averatec's manufacturer's warranty and once through Circuit City's extended plan. I think the service is very good, very responsive, and I'm glad we got it. On the other hand, I have a Compaq V2414NR laptop. I don't have the first clue how HP's service department or Best Buy's warranty work. And you know what? I'm much happier that way. Warranties are good and nice, but I prefer products and services that are built well enough that you NEVER, EVER have to learn how good the service department is.

I can't say that for Window Wizards.

Labels: Misc comments, Shopping

Corporatism Makes My Head Spin

I got my first cell phone in November of 2000 when I was dating my wife. (We actually got engaged in December and married in February of 2001). I remember joking that I wasn't afraid of commitment because I had just entered into a 2 year cell phone contract with her. In any case, the company that we chose to provide our cell phone service was Cellular One because it advertised an unlimited family plan.

I remember Cellular One being a fairly decent service. Their customer service line was always patient and helpful. At one point, I hung up on my voice mail while listening to a message, and the bit got stuck telling my phone that I had a new message when in fact there was none. I kept getting a new message notification on my phone. I called Cell One and they walked me through fixing it. Cell One was short lived, however, because they were promptly bought out by Cingular Wireless. My initial impression of Cingular wasn't good. It seemed like our area coverage degraded, wait times for customer service were long and service wasn't very helpful, at least at the beginning, but first impressions die hard. When we moved, we moved into an area with poor cell coverage and reception in our house was pathetic. We did end up upgrading our phones in 2001 and signing another 2 year contract.

At the end of that contract, we decided to switch away from Cingular Wireless. We hoped that another provider would cover our area better. The company that I worked for at the time got a discount with AT&T Wireless, so we went with them as several of my coworkers claimed that the service was very good. In our experience, it really wasn't much better than Cingular's, but we got cool phones. We had the Motorola t722, a cool flip phone with an 8 line screen. My wife and I like flip phones for some reason. I like them because they look like those old Star Trek communicators I guess.

As I said, AT&T wasn't any better than Cingular and guess what? Within 2 months, Cingular bought out AT&T Wireless, so we were back with Cingular again, except we had AT&T Wireless accounts which they reminded us of every time we logged onto their website or called customer service.

In 2005, just before our second son was born, we talked about trimming our budget. I like technology, and I had one bill that really bothered me: Verizon. I didn't so much have a problem with the company, but I was getting so sick of the land line service. Our phone rang literally every 20 minutes all day long with telemarketers. I had every single protection from them possible: Caller ID, Call Intercept, etc, plus I was on every "do  not call" list I could find, but they kept getting through. Our phone bill was $50 a month for local service alone (we had a 3rd party long distance provider that we paid separately) and all $50 of it was going to pay for a service that allowed people that I didn't want to talk to to call me incessantly. I took a gamble that switching to a full fledged Cingular account and getting newer phones would improve our coverage and we wouldn't have to pay for a redundant service. We were using the cell phones more and more so it just made more sense to me to switch to cell.

We renewed our contract (my employer again has a contract with Cingular so we got a corporate plan) and got new phones: the Sony Ericsson z500a. Our phones worked well and I canceled our land line and never looked back. I still have a phone hanging on the wall in the kitchen to cover up the phone jack, but it's only for decoration.

But that's not all. Guess what happened again within a short time of renewing our contract with Cingular? AT&T bought Cingular!

I'm telling you, my head is spinning. I'm going to ralph. I just can't keep track anymore. It's blowing my mind. I've either had 5 separate cellular providers, or just one continuous provider that can't decide on it's name.

All I know is I don't want to hear that Cellular One is buying out AT&T. I think my head will explode.

Watch below as Stephen Colbert explains the whole mess in a much more eloquent manner than I am capable of.

Labels: Telecommunications

Steve Olson on Wal-mart and Target

I read a post at Steve Olson's blog about differences between Target and Wal-mart. I would love to have left a comment, but there are already 232 as of the start of this posting, and I'm sure Steve has better things to do than read an email from me, so I'll just post a quick thought here.

First, I'll start by saying that this is only my opinion, nothing more, nothing less, and it has only as much weight and authority as you the reader are willing to give it. I do agree with Steve that I prefer Target over Wal-mart. There are times when a trip to Wal-mart is warranted, and my wife and I recently joined Sam's Club rather than renew our BJ's membership, but given the choice I always prefer Target.

My mother in law works for K-mart as an HR manager, and will tell prospective employees that she is looking for serious workers (my paraphrase, not her exact words). She tells them that if they're not willing to work then they should apply at Wal-mart.

Steve compares the aisles in the two stores. Wow, he makes a great point there. One thing I hate about Wal-mart is that every time I need anything in an aisle, there is always a person standing right in the middle of the aisle in front of exactly what I need (like light bulbs) and has no intention of moving before I have to go home and put my kids to bed. Target, on the other hand, does have very long and wide aisles, wide enough for two shopping carts to fit in. I have enough room to keep my kids amused by racing the shopping card around while my wife takes too long to shop. I wouldn't try that at Wal-mart.

But yes, some trips to Wal-mart are required. I guess it's just the culture. Wal-mart has a model of the lowest cost at any price. Target seems to have a little more class.

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Labels: Shopping