Window Shopper

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Having just seen the breaking news that the price of oil is down UNDER $70 a barrel now, are the oil companies going to continue to give us the break we have needed from this greed that they continue to put on us? Honestly, I believe that they should have done this long before now. When the housing market went downhill, it would have been fantastic if some of the big oil companies had the compassion to drop their prices so that Americans could keep their homes. I have no doubt whatsoever that big oil contributed to many of the homes lost during the crunch on mortgages. Don’t get me wrong here. People should not have fallen for that snake oil salesman’s dream loan. But if big oil had one grain of compassion, they could have helped the economy and the American homeowners who were standing on the precipice with their mortgages.

Hopefully, big oil will get a clue since we have stayed away from the pumps, found other ways to cope. It sure does not hurt to let them know that we can deal with this and live without as much gas. I truly hope it hurt them in the right place, the wallet. They had no problems whatsoever hurting us there. In these perilous financial times, it is a breath of fresh air to see the prices of things coming down again. I did not think we would see that unless we had a full blown depression. And that still may occur.

Having said all that, I also saw today that retailers have plans to give big breaks on prices this holiday season. That is a fantastic thought too. We have been hit and hit hard in many places at once. It will be a relief to see lower prices especially during the Christmas buying season which has definitely started. All in all, it might just be a better time now. Well, except for the stock market which has fallen as of this writing. Who knows. It may bounce back at closing. The good news is all about the gas prices and goods prices. That will help us all.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Before I tell my story, I want you to know that some members of my extended family have Alltel cell phones and they are being treated just great. They have been customers for years and have very few complaints against them. In fact, they have nothing bad to say about them at all. Now, having said that, on to a different experience.

I should also mention here that the original problem came because of an arrogant employee of a company that sells for Alltel meaning a go between, middle man. My husband and I had been waiting patiently for the day we could have a cell phone like so many others in the world. It seemed like everyone and his brothers and sisters had one. Yet with our financial situation it would be hard to do. Finally, the day came that we decided to bite the bullet and get one anyway. We found that there were certain circumstances in the rural area we live in that it would be wise to have one.

After receiving a nice little card from Alltel telling us that we could have a cell phone for a ridiculously low price, we went to investigate. The young man at the store let us know that he had been doing this for years and would be glad to make sure that we could have a cell phone in our neck of the woods since there were the nasty little “dead zones” all around our house. In fact, he would be glad to come out to our house to test it out for himself before we bought. He also mentioned that even if we got a cell phone and found that it would not work satisfactorily for us, we could return it and a cheerful refund would be given. As a matter of fact, the one selling point that worked with us was that if, for whatever reason the cell phone wasn’t what we wanted, we could return it and it would cost us nothing except our usage…meaning the time on the cell phone…so stated by the person at the store.

We decided to give it a try. He happened to be out of the particular phone we were to get but they would be in on Monday. We specifically told him that we had been without one this long, a weekend was not a big deal. We left. On Monday, we returned to the store. He was busy so we looked around. They had really nice phones. Ours was a pretty basic one but that was fine with us as long as it worked inside our house. We specified that several times. He said that he understood that, again mentioning how long he had been in this business. We filled out the paperwork, signed it, paid out the $10 for the cell phone and we were in business. At that time, we were told of the return policy of Alltel. It included a 14 or 15 day allowance for returning things without penalties. We agreed to that.

On the way home, we were trying it out. I called my Texas sis to see if it would work like it should. Fine. We talked for about two minutes. Once again at home, we discovered the nasty truth. The cell phone was not receiving a signal in our house unless we turned into a pretzel off in some corner where it would be very uncomfortable. With a huge sigh, we decided to return the cell phone to the store for the promised refund. We did not use it again with the idea that it was not ours if we returned it to the store. No sense in putting more time on it that we would have to pay for.

It took us about 4 days to actually get back to the store but when we did, the guy did cheerfully return our $10 and received the cell phone back. No questions asked. My husband DID tell him why we were returning it. He mentioned, for the first time I might add, that the side of the hill we were on was notorious for not getting good reception. And that was that. Until……..the bill came. It was a brand new startup package costing over $90. We were aware that we would have to pay that in the event of keeping the cell phone. However, we did not do that. So, I called them. They were happy to fix the bill……BUT……there was a $25 activation fee that was not going to be waved nor was the insurance on the TWO MINUTES of time going to be waived. Okay, I can see not waiving the insurance and I told them I was glad to pay the amount of time we were on the cell phone which amounted to TWO MINUTES. However, we were promised that if the cell phone did not work out, we would not have to pay any of the fees other than what we used. They insisted that when it was activated, that cost money and we could not get away with not paying it.

I asked to speak to a supervisor. She informed me that she was sorry but the rules are the rules. The activation fee will not be waived. She did get the bill chopped down to the $25 for activation, $5 for insurance, another small fee for handling or something and the fee for the less than two minutes that we actually used. It came to somewhere around $35. I insisted that we did not have the cell phone long enough for that amount of money especially for people who had to watch every penny. She said how sorry she was but that if we had a problem with the promise made by the young man at the store, then our problem was with him not with Alltel. It was said sort of rudely. Sigh.

We went back to the young man who had been doing this for years. And we finally realized that he conned us, telling us what he did so that we would be another sale. When he was confronted, he told us how much of a hurry we had been in, how we knew that the money was not returnable, how we were so interested that we could not wait for another cell phone he had coming in at a later date. Oh, and he told us that he had a great memory and remembered us very well. Wrong. None of that happened the way he said it. None of it was true. Now, another member of our family who had been a customer of Alltel for some time had gone in that same week to renew a contract and get a new phone. I have no idea what type of hurry they might have been in at the time but I suspect “Mr. I have a great memory” was remembering them, not us.

Since then, Alltel started to chase us down to get the money from us. We refused to pay it based on the fact that we were lied to and that Alltel did not apparently care that someone in a store representing them had lied. After calling us sometimes every day for weeks and weeks, they went to automated calls. We got those a couple times a day, several weeks. We also got bills in the mail that started to rise higher and higher. We did not just get a bill a month. Sometimes we would get several in a month. When the bills got to over $50, they suddenly stopped. A few weeks went by. Then the calls started coming at all times of the day or evening, automated so that you could not object or hang up on someone. They wanted us to call a number concerning a “business matter”. Once again, bills started coming in the mail but this time from a collection agency.

Over the three years or so that this has been going on, we have seen this bill go from one collection agency to another. Each one getting more and more aggressive for a while. Sometimes we would actually have real live people calling us, usually at supper time. And almost always, they would be THE MOST OBNOXIOUS humans I have ever talked to on the phone. I was commanded to pay my bills since I was such a deadbeat. I was told off by several men and women, sometimes the women getting more aggressive and nasty than the men. I was told that if I did not pay the bill, dire things would start happening. I was even called names by one of the callers. No, I did not get the name. DUH!!!

These are all tactics to get someone to pay them so that they can collect their fees. The caller is on commission. I have not yet bowed to such tactics and I never will. Things have died down for the moment though I have no doubt that it will happen again sometime soon. Who knows what that bill is up to now. The biggest problem I see is that no one since that first supervisor is willing to listen or help in any way. Even she did not help the way we needed it to be.

Yes, I am aware that with the usage of the phone that we did activate it and use it for the vast two minutes and kept it for four days. That is true. I cannot change that. HOWEVER, and this one is huge, we were promised by the young man at the store that we would not have to pay for something we did not have. We believed him. Alltel did not care that he lied to us. Did not care that we had a problem and want to help other than deduct the original fees that were not applicable to us anyway. They made no effort whatsoever to help us resolve this in any way. We would have worked out something and had a cell phone from them all this time if only they would have worked with us. They did not. And now, we do have a cell phone but it’s a prepaid one. And it works IN OUR HOUSE. Isn’t that strange?

Since then, we have had visitors to our home who had Alltel cell phones. They still do not work in our house. Ours does. MORAL of the story. If you are unsure if the cell phone works in your home, have someone go out and try it. And by the way, the young man promised us that he would be out before we bought our phone but was too busy to get there to test it out. Yep, that’s the deal. It all comes down to that young man who was pretty arrogant by the time we were done talking to him. He knew that no one would ever do anything about it at Alltel. And it was never his fault. If you want to know, just ask him. Of course, a tornado came and blew the store away one night. The company relocated the store but I have no idea where the guy is. Perhaps we were not the only ones with complaints. And yes, we did try to talk to the owners of the store. Nope. We had to got through the young man. That was not going to happen. Ah well.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

I have used calling cards for years. We get them at a well known large discount store and pay out, because we have an ongoing card, about $5 to reload it each time. We get 100 minutes for that, I believe. Now, you cannot tell the cashier that you want to pay out five bucks for minutes. You have to translate that into minutes for them to be able to charge you for it. That was a side issue but it bugs me. They should know the charge and the minutes. Onward. Calling cards are sometimes not giving you the actual minutes that you bought. Who am I kidding here. They never really give you ALL your minutes.

My calling card is from an extremely well known phone company, not one of those fly by night scheme cards. Still, if we call from a pay phone, at least the last time, it cost us 30 minutes worth of time just to connect to the other phone. But that is nothing compared to what some other companies are doing. Some were charging whether you got an answer on the other end or not. How about extra fees just for calling a cell phone? Cards were being given out that included a large number of minutes but they would deduct minutes if the minutes were not used up during a single call. Cards sometimes expired only a short time after purchase and some that never worked at all. Post call fees, 99 cent hangup fees on cards that had little money on it at all, fees that happened if the card was used more than once, activation fees, maintenance fees, cards that are billed in three and four minute time periods even if the card holder only used it for a minute or less.

It is estimated that cards like that were only giving about 60 percent of the actual worth of the card. That is called fraud at least by some people. The problem is that there are companies out there, like the one that I have a card for, that are up front. That does not mean I like the idea of charging me a half hour of my time on the card just to use a pay phone. That is not right either. However, there is a probable case against the other companies, not so with the one that covers my card. Those fees will be considered fair…by them if no one else. I feel ripped off. I paid for the card and for the minutes long ago. I add to those minutes from time to time. I expect to receive minutes because that’s what I paid for but it ain’t so. And for heaven’s sake, do not let the thing expire or you lose it all!!! Sigh.

Some day, this will all go away. I just know it. In the meanwhile, we bought a cell phone. They charge us for every use except when we call a company cell or they call us. Then it’s no charge except for that pesky little first time of the day call fee. Do you see a pattern here? You cannot get away from it, can you?

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Today, I was reading about this thing with eBay cutting 1000 jobs. Hey, no one is going to question a company that’s having financial problems in this particular time, right? Well, I question it. Here’s why. eBay is cutitng jobs, not because they are having a bad year, quite the contrary. Their year is good. Bigger profits. Yes, and I know how. They changed their fees again recently. It cost more than ever to sell something on eBay. When I first joined, the fees were tiny. You could actually make a small income there. Now, the fees are getting higher and higher. More rules. More problems. Yet, they have a bigger profit than it appears since they are cutting jobs. So, what’s up? The company line is that they are streamlining the business. Uh huh.

In effect, they are cutting 10 percent of their workforce. Then, they are getting rid of the temps. Experts say that they will have restructuring charges in the millions. Guess who gets to pay for that? Actually, the consumer will only pay if the seller ups the prices to compensate for the fees. The big bywords here are “efficiency” and “savings”. And that sounds great. It won’t help the consumer but what the heck. And why are we doing all this, eBay?

While I was reading all this in an article, it occurred to me that if they had bigger profits and were still cutting jobs, there had to be a reason beyond the two bywords. Just made sense. And I found it way down at the bottom of the article, just a couple of sentences. It pretty much said that they were buying three companies. This is happening as they are cutting jobs! The companies they are acquiring are: Bill Me Later which is an online payments company which will be part of Paypal soon. That’s already owned by eBay. Then there are two foreign companies: Danish classifieds site dba.dk and vehicles site bilbasen.dk. Did I mention the sales tag on these?

Bill Me Later: $820 million in cash and $125 million in outstanding options. Some savings here and plenty of efficiency, right?
Danish classifieds site dba.dk and vehicles site bilbasen.dk: $390 million in cash

And they needed to drop 1000 jobs to do this. Right.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Now that the original bailout of the many companies that, admittedly, brought it on themselves has failed, what is next? That’s a little bit up in the air at the moment. Gas prices are falling which is good news. Wall Street came back today with over a 500 point regain after a disastrous day yesterday when the Dow fell almost 800 points. With all the advice flowing around all over the country and the way things are going at Wall Street, there may be some jobs in Manhattan available very soon. Try looking at CEO spots to start with. Those could be a tad shaky right now and they should be. Those people allowed their companies to become extremely vulnerable at a time when it was not the right thing to do. You would almost think there was some type of common knowledge about all this, a memo going around the companies.

Lenders who once were so liberal with their lending out are now locked down, nervous and stressed. Credit is not as available as it once was. Things are getting really tight here until the stress of the major crisis is over. No one really knows what is going to happen about all this. However, you need to protect yourself. Watch for deals that seem too good to be true. At this time, there will be many con artists out to get the last dime someone has. It is a very vulnerable time for so many people. Think before acting. Do not do anything financial without giving it a day or two to cool off first. These things have been good advice through good times and bad. Right now it is a bad time. Just do not do anything you will regret in a few weeks.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

The enormous greed of many companies is finally coming out and the companies are falling or being bailed out. While those same companies were so shaky, the CEOs and other top officials were taking and taking and taking multi millions of dollars as perks and other items they felt were theirs to have. What bothers me is that these people who are running the private companies obviously do not care about their own companies enough to stop the payments to themselves and help their company. The result is that the American public is going to pay and pay while the CEO gets to be in the lap of luxury. What is wrong with this picture?

Several of the top officers in the failing companies you have heard about recently in all the bailout talk were grabbing and grabbing. Their company is failing and they grab. Personally, I feel that each of these people are not worth the money that they are receiving. I do not for one moment think that even the top official in the company does enough to be paid multi millions of dollars. No one is that good. No one. These people get $30, $40, $60 million in pay, stocks and other perks. Where is the justice in that?

Now the bailout that the congress is working on is going to limit those same people to much less. That is so good. Why should they sit in beautiful surroundings while the rest of us struggle to exist when their own company is failing because of just such greed?

In the meanwhile, another bailout was happening at the same time but little media coverage occurred due to the massive bailout of the Wall Street greed companies. The Other bailout was for the Big Three auto makers who have also been having a rocky year. They, too, have been suffering due to the financial problems stemming yet again from greed. Does no one see this? The housing market is falling on hard times because of greed. Those lenders that are just about to fall on their own faces or already have, ended up this way due to ridiculous loans that could not work in the long run. Yet the greed of those who thought up this stupidity is the cause of the whole thing.

Gas prices are another reason for the Big Three problems. Greed again, this time coming out of the middle east…at least at first. OPEC has been playing us like the fiddle we are trying so hard to be. They cut production and raise it at their whim. We, here in the states, feel that each and every time. People in the 70s with a curious lack of foresight did nothing to help our situation though they knew about it even then. Heck, *I* knew about it then. How could they not know? Just as the engineers down in New Orleans did nothing about the levees that broke, people here could have done something to stop this madness long, long ago. But they did not. Now, big oil is working with that. Their greed is exceptionally obvious yet no one does a thing.

However, just as Wall Street is finally getting to see what the results of their greed is, big oil will soon follow along as each of the greediest companies on the face of the earth fall or get bailed out. Soon, there will be nothing left to bail them out when the public wakes up to the fact that, eventually, they….meaning *we* will be paying the bills on all this. Sure we will. Those of us who can hardly make it through to the next month on what we have, those of us who cannot make it from month to month, we will be paying the bills that the greedy companies are costing us though the bailouts. Just as there once was a revolt against double taxing and taxation without representation, there will be another revolt when the American public has had enough of greed and will be unwilling to pay another dime.

Wall Street, CEOs, Big Oil…..do not relax. The American people may sometimes be slow to act but we are here, we see what is happening and we are no longer willing to just sit back, pay out, live from paycheck to paycheck….and then pay more for some greedy CEO or company that gets millions of dollars to live large. The honeymoon is over.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Ordinarily at this point, I would be wanting to tell you about places to go, things to see for vacations. This year, I cannot think how to do that because of the astronomically high gas prices which, shockingly, have reached a national average of $4 a gallon according to AAA. And of course, it is conveniently at just the time that most Americans are wanting to travel on their family summer vacations.

I think it is an absolute shame that the oil companies, who are increasingly greedy and self interested, are causing the American public to change their whole lifestyles to serve the CEOs and companies so that their pockets can be lined with bucks from those of us who can ill afford to even pull up to the pumps these days. I don’t know about you but in our house, we cannot afford more than a couple of tanks of gas a month even in our rural area. The price at the pump here is somewhat lower at the current rate of $3.89 which is horrifying to us but much lower than other areas of the country.

At our house, we could not afford the gas prices over the $3 mark let alone $4. We, like so many Americans, live on a fixed or semi-fixed income. We unashamedly find ways to have an income but are constantly stopped by other just as greedy companies that think they can run our lives. The oil companies make us pay extremely high prices at the pump while the internet company, Google, chooses to slap us down when we do the horrendous thing of blogging for money online if we do not do it Google’s way.

Through it all, these money grabbing companies are going to not only bring the American public to it’s knees, it is going to bring down the whole country as they are currently doing. What is it going to take to change all this? I have no idea. Wish I had a magic bullet to fix it all but I do not. My only advice, as crappy as it may sound, is to stay home this vacation…not going to the pumps at all. Let the greed of the oil companies have their day by not having the sales they expect to have. The problem is that all people do not go on vacation at once. So it will hardly be seen at the pump unless we all agree to boycott the pumps for a few days. Yeah, like that’s going to happen.

As for Google, that greedy company online that does not want others to share in the wealth of the net, we are choosing to blog for pay anyway. Some of the blog for pay companies are getting the idea of not basing their criteria on the page rank that Google shows those of us who do blog for pay. That is a step forward and I certainly hope that Google falls on it’s nasty little internet tail bone. It AND the oil companies as well as the oil people in the middle east deserve everything they get when they do fall on their posteriors. I just hope we can enjoy that instead of standing in a food line somewhere. Sigh.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

After seeing the news again, we needed gas. Gee, I bet you know the next line by now. The price had risen again. Up several cents from a couple of weeks ago. And worse, it’s WAAAAY higher than it was last year at this time. And it isn’t getting any better. Why? For one thing, the oil companies are so greedy that they won’t change the war at the pump.

Personally, I cannot see how the oil companies execs can actually sleep at night. Of course, if they have the cold hearts that it truly looks like, it doesn’t bother them a bit as they rack up more money in salary and perks. Shouldn’t this be a crime? At this point, it is legal theft.

Those execs had the guts to sit in front of congress after having had the biggest profits seen in human history and ask for more tax cuts for themselves. HELLO???? What is wrong here? What’s wrong is that they are so greedy that they want it all, to bleed the American public dry. When that happens, other countries can take over because we will be helpless.

It’s just like the Chinese products that get recalled so much. This is all about bringing the United States to it’s knees and by golly, they are gettin’ ‘er done too. Take a look at the big picture.

Housing is in the pits because of ridiculous loans that any truly sane person should not have entered into. So the market is in trouble. Credit cards are getting ridiculous and not really regulated on fees. You can go broke on a couple hundred dollar charge. How about food prices? Those are sky high because of gas prices, another setback in the US. Should I go on or are you living it like we are?

What is it going to take for the American public to get a clue that all is not well here at home. We are being bled dry by big oil, the car companies, grocery stores, lenders, credit card companies’ fees, banks and the list goes on. How can you tell what you can safely buy these days? I have no idea.

I would say Happy Shopping but I think that statement needs to be retired so this is the last time you will see it here. I am sorry! Times are tough.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Recently, I came across a phrase that I had not heard before, fee harvesting credit cards. What the heck is that? It’s quite simple really. It is a credit card that has all sorts of fees and interest tacked onto the bill for every little reason. For instance, you could have a fee for starting to use the card, activation. Then, there would be a monthly fee for HAVING the card. In addition, you might get late fees if you are even a day late with a payment. And so on and on. The fees will be there whether you like it or not.

I talked with a friend of mine who believes that she should pay everything on the credit card bill because it’s the honorable thing to do. I agree that if you incur bills that you should pay them. I agree that if there is a balance on a card, it should be paid and on time. I agree with all that. HOWEVER, I do not agree that your money should be poured down a rat hole just because some unscrupulous company decides to milk you for all you are worth and then get more. That’s what a fee harvesting company does. The whole thing is in a very technical language that you will not be able to understand, sometimes even the lawyers do not understand it.

Now, this friend has a credit card bill that is so far above what she and her husband could pay that she will drown in the debt of it if something is not done. Before you start to judge this person about paying for things bought, I should like to let you know that the couple in question has no income other than social security. I wonder what type of credit card company would be willing to give a card to somebody who has no more income than that? And you should know that they were needing some type of way to pay their bills. This was not as cut and dried as it may seem. One more tiny thing here. These people scraped and put together $500 a month to pay it off and still did not dent the balance. COME ON!!! That type of credit card, legitimate one, is simply not possible with their income.

The end result here is that they are piling up interest and fees on a very low balance. And after a number of years that they had not been contacted because the company was sold to another and then the credit card bill sold again….all the while, fees and more fees, interest and more interest being put onto an already inflated bill and you have a mess that will likely NEVER go away. EVER! There are only a couple of ways this will be resolved. ONE, they find a lawyer or mediator that will make the company drop all fees and interest and pay only on the principle of the bill. TWO, go file bankruptcy and hope that this company doesn’t sell the debt again. If they do, the nightmare will likely continue until the people either die or change their names.

So the answer to the above question is NO, NO, NO!!! NO WAY will I get wrapped up in that mess of credit cards and the ripoff companies that hand them out. There is a word for these people, GREEDY!!!!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

If you haven’t already heard, Starbucks has been ordered to pay out over $100 million in tips to the baristas. You know what they are, right? These are the people who do the work making the fine, great tasting coffee that you buy at Starbucks each day. The problem is that instead of paying the shift supervisors the wages they deserve, they required the baristas to share their tips. How cheap can they actually get???? Are they serious???

I know that Starbucks is a well loved name in coffee places but this is ridiculous. The judge in California awarded the baristas their tips back plus interest and that was as it should be. And when I got to the news story on this, I was appalled that many of the comments were against the lawsuit. Come on!!! The company was stealing the tips from the guys and gals that actually did the work and giving it to the shift supervisors who should have been on salary anyway. Why on earth are people against the baristas who make the coffee that they drink in the first place? They were the ones stolen from, after all.

The question I continue to ask is…how cheap can a company actually get??? Well, now let’s see, the company took in $9.4 billion dollars last year, profits of $672 million. HELLO!! I think they could afford to PAY their shift supervisors, don’t you? Frankly, I do not see wanting to go into a Starbucks after that. SHAME ON YOU, Starbucks!!! Shame!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!