New Hampshire Real Estate & Consumer Resources

It’s no secret that I pretty much hate telephone calls from anyone but family and friends. There are of course exceptions, doctor’s offices confirming appointments, employers, someone advising you that you won the lottery — that kind of thing.

Although I dislike receiving calls from those political pollsters, I don’t dislike them as much as I do the telemarketers.

Sometimes, I’ll even have a little fun with these pollsters, but will usually refuse to donate my valuable time to their cause, which is probably profit-driven in one form or another.

Last evening the phone rang and the Caller ID displayed the name of an outfit called "Research Center," with a telephone number of 231-224-2031. This call was coming in on our business line, so, figuring it could be a potential customer, I picked up.

The young lady in the other end babbled something about a political poll and if I would like to participate. I was in a pretty good mood, so I figured I would play along for a change and see what kind if info they were looking for.

The first question was something like this:

In the upcoming Presidential election how would you rate the chances that you will go out and vote?

A. Very Unlikely
B. Somewhat Unlikely
C. Somewhat Likely
D. Likely
E. Very Likely

Well, taking into considering my views concerning the state of this nation and in particular, politicians in general, I told her my answer was "A. Very Unlikely."

At that point, she thanked me and said goodbye.

So, that may be a useful tip if you get one of these calls. If you want to end it quickly and politely, just pick that "A" answer and you’ll be all done. I suppose they simply are not interested in opinions from people who have no plans to vote.

They say flying is no fun anymore. You have to pay extra for the food now and even for your luggage on some airlines. I am not sure if Delta Airlines is one of them, but one thing I do know is that their idea of customer service sure has taken a dive.

I talked to my brother today on the telephone and he shared with me the story of his recent drive from his home in Massachusetts down to JFK airport in New York City to rescue a couple of stranded passengers.

His sister-in-law, a military spouse, by the way, was flying from Dallas, Texas to New York City, where a connecting flight was scheduled to take her to Boston. Oh, I almost forgot: She was traveling with her 9-month-old baby. Just her and her baby, on the way to Massachusetts to visit family.

When she arrived a JFK in New York City, she was greeted with information that a traveler in her position certainly does not want to hear: Her connecting flight was canceled.

No explanation was offered for the cancellation. She was offered what amounted to a stand-by ticket to Boston that "might" get her in a flight to Boston the following morning, but that was it.

No offer of a room or a meal or anything. I guess she was expected to spend the night in an airport terminal with her baby and if she was lucky, she might be able to catch a flight to her destination in the morning.

When my brother got word of this last evening, he volunteered to drive down to JFK and pick her up. He’s the kind of guy that tends to be quite the night owl, and staying up most or all of the night is not at all unusual for him.

He left for JFK around 11:00 PM and arrived back home around 7:00 AM. Fortunately, the trip was a safe and uneventful one.

I realize the airlines are struggling these days due to the high cost of fuel, kind of like the rest of us, I guess. Still, if that is Delta’s idea of customer service, perhaps they ought to just close up shop and sell off their fleet. There really is no excuse for treating a paying customer like that.

I cannot remember when the trend started, but just about every television channel on the air these days has to have their logo on the screen during every program. I believe these are generally referred to has "bugs" and although a small semi-transparent bug in the lower-right corner of the screen does not bother me all that much, this new stuff they are starting to do is really annoying.

There may be legitimate reasons for the bugs with the station’s or network’s bug on the screen during a program to assist them in combating piracy. I can also understand this kind of stuff on news channels like Fox News, CNN or MSNBC since they like to put crawlers at the bottom of the screen with current news items or stock quotes or whatever, and quite frankly, I don’t care if the corner of Shepard Smith’s desk is obscured by a rotating graphic telling what station I am watching and what time it is.

What I am beginning to notice now is taking place on networks that are not focused on news, but are supposed to be entertainment-oriented. What I am seeing are various graphics popping up on the screen advertising other programs that are carried on that particular network. To make matters worse, many of these graphics are animated and appear at the bottom of the screen while taking up a significant portion of it, and blocking out part of the program I are trying to watch.

So far, the animated graphics I have seen run for only a few seconds — but even that is an annoying distraction.

The latest invasion of television screen space that I have seen is a permanent bug that is advertising another program that is scheduled to air on that network.

For example, last evening I was watching a program called The First 48 on the A&E channel. In case you are not familiar with it, it’s a show about homicide detectives and how they solve murder cases, and it is one of my favorite programs.

Last night’s broadcast of The First 48, featured and annoying semi-transparent bug on the upper-left corner of the screen that advertised the program that was going to air next. In the case, it was some new program called The Cleaner or something like that.

What made this bug so annoying was that it remained there throughout the entire program. Not only that, but the commercial breaks also featured advertisements for this new program! Even though I was watching The First 48 on my DVR about an hour after it aired and was using my "commercial skip" button to zap through commercial breaks quickly, I could still see that the new program was being advertising during the breaks, since the commercial skip button advances the program about 30 seconds at a time and allows you to catch a glimpse of the commercials that are airing between button presses.

I suspect that DVR’s and Tivo’s are part of the reason the networks are starting to make use of these permanent bugs that promote their other programming. They know many people are zapping commercials and perhaps this is their way of making sure we are aware of their new programs, but leaving a promotional bug like that on the screen throughout the entire program is a bit overdone if you ask me. Couldn’t they just show it on the screen periodically for 30 seconds or so a few times during the program?

Not only would doing that make these bugs less annoying, I think it also may yield a better result for the network. Having it pop up here and there will catch the attention of viewer, where as leaving it on the screen 100% of the time is simply going to condition viewers to its presence and they will soon be oblivious to it.

That’s the way it has become with those network logo bugs that are usually displayed in the lower-right corner of the screen. I hardly even notice that they are there any longer.

I can tolerate the network logo bugs at this point, but I sure do wish the networks would put an end to the obnoxious animated graphics that interrupt my viewing and the new permanent bugs being used to advertising other programming.

I do not watch all that much TV. Perhaps just the news and an hour or two in the evening, and sometimes not at all, so I imagine there is a lot more of this stuff going on that I am seeing. Give us a break TV networks and just let us watch our favorite shows in peace, will you?

This guy knows what I’m talking about:

With all the foreclosures and credit card defaults these days, it seems the credit card companies are having a harder time signing up new customers. This can work to your advantage, and in some cases, you don’t even have to sign up for a new card.

I recently used my Discover Card to make a small purchase online for my son. I don’t usually use that card much, but since my son is too young to have his own card, I will usually order for him and he simply gives me the money for whatever it was he wanted to order that week. He recently got his first job and has been on a bit of a spending spree lately.

When I received my statement in the mail from Discover, there was an intriguing offer included with the statement. They were offering me 0% interest until July of next year if I transferred a balance from one of my other cards to Discover.

I decided to call Discover to verify this and the customer service representative confirmed it. This meant that every penny that I paid on the balance of my Discover Card after the balance transfer would be applied to my balance. One heck of a better deal I currently have with Chase.

Due to the fact that Chase ticked me off recently, I was kind of looking for a way to dump them anyway and when I decided to take a closer look at my Chase statement, transferring to Discover was a no-brainer.

I’ve got a fairly substantial balance on the Chase card and finance charges were eating up half the payments I was making every month. For example, let’s say my minimum monthly payment was $100. That means they were taking $50 and applying it to the balance of what I owe them and then pocketing the other $50 for themselves. Clearly not a good deal for the consumer in any way, shape or form.

That is the reason that it often seems to take forever to pay down a credit card balance.

Transferring my balance to my Discover Card was quite easy. I signed up for an account on their website and followed a few simple steps to initiate the transfer and I was done.

Bye, bye, Chase, you’ve made your last dollar off of me for a while.

Some readers may know that I am a former resident of the Bay State, commonly known as The Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Sometimes I consider myself more of a refugee than just someone who decided to move away after living there all my life.

Living in New Hampshire these days, I still watch a lot of TV out of Boston and while I was watching the Fox 25 Morning News this morning I was surprised to hear that Massachusetts cannot afford to allow for a sales tax holiday weekend this year.

This is something that they have been doing for a little while down in Mass. The great powers that be within the Massachusetts State House decide to give the people one weekend a year when they do not have to pay the state’s sales tax on items purchased for less than a certain amount of money. Don’t want to miss out on tax income from the sales of those Rolls Royces and Yachts, don’t you know!

Needless to say, Massachusetts retailers and consumers just love these tax-free holiday weekends, and are pushing for one this year. New Hampshire retailers probably aren’t as enthusiastic about them since the folks that come up to make major purchases without a sales tax tacked on probably just make their major purchases in their home state that weekend.

Anyway, what really struck me about this story was the reaction of the Massachusetts House Speaker, Sal DiMasi, when faced with pressure from retailers to allow for another tax-free holiday weekend this year. The legislative session is nearing its end, so Massachusetts retailers are getting a little worried that they won’t get their tax-free weekend this time.

Speaker DiMasi’s response? The tax holiday this year is "very unlikely" because the state can’t afford to give up millions of dollars in tax revenue during these difficult economic times.

The state can’t afford it? A state that has to be one of the most wasteful and mismanaged in the whole country, and they can’t afford it? How about cutting back on some wasteful and useless project somewhere? I guarantee you won’t have to look too far in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to find one.

And what about Joe Consumer? Wouldn’t it be nice to give him a little break with a tax holiday this summer? Sure, all the folks that live close enough to the state line can just come up here to New Hampshire and enjoy tax-free shopping, but what about the folks down towards the southern part of the state and on Cape Cod? Don’t they deserve a break in these difficult times?

Maybe Speaker DiMasi should spend less time using taxpayer money on mis-managed, over-budget projects like the "Big Dig," with it’s leaky tunnels and optional collapsing roof, and give the consumer a break with a single sales tax-free holiday. That sure doesn’t seem like too much to ask for.

By the way, there’s a fairly fresh story in the Boston Globe about the "Big Dig." Check it out for a good example of how a big public project is administered in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

These days there seems to be a lot of argument about whether or not speculators are a major factor in the rising price of oil. Speculators basically invest their money on the basis of what they think the value of something — in this case — oil, will be in the future.

I traded stock index futures for a while myself and eventually stopped because it was just too stressful. Trading futures seems complicated at first, but it’s really pretty simple when it is explained in simple terms.

For example, if I believed that the NASDAQ index was going to go up, I would go “long” and buy a contract that would pay off for me if the NASSAQ did indeed go up and I sold my contract. I would then make a profit and pocket the difference between what I paid and what I sold it for.

If I believed the NASDAQ was going to go down, I would go “short” and sell a contract that would pay off for me if the NASDAQ went down and I was able to buy my contract back for a lower price. I would then pocket the difference between the price I sold the contract for and what I paid to buy it back.

Going “short” always seems to be the hardest concept to understand and I once heard of it explained in a way that made it quite easy to grasp.

Suppose a friend if yours moves overseas for a while and he decides to let you borrow his car while he is away. You get a very credible tip that the value of this particular type of car is going to drop dramatically in the near future. Maybe it is because it is a gas-guzzling SUV and people want to get rid of them due to the high price of gas. The market will soon be flooded with cheap SUV’s because the supply is so great and demand is so low.

So you sell your friend’s SUV for $15,000 and a few weeks later you buy the exact same model of SUV for $10,000 to replace your friend’s. Since you sold your friend’s SUV for $5,000 more than you paid for the one you bought to replace it, you pocket the nice $5,000 profit!

Naturally, it is probably not a great idea to sell your friends SUV without his permission, but this is essentially how going “short” works. You are borrowing futures contracts from a broker with the hope that they will drop in value and then you can buy back the contracts you need to pay back what you borrowed at a lower price and keep the difference.

Personally, I don’t think there’s any problem with the existence of a futures market for stock market indexes or pork bellies or a bunch if other things, but I do have a problem with a futures market for oil, since it is such a vital resource that pretty much powers the planet.

Today a bunch if airline companies sent a letter to Congress asking them to look into speculation in the oil market because the high cost of fuel is threatening to put them out of business. I happen to agree with them and believe that millions of people should not have to suffer because speculators want to line their pockets. There are plenty of futures markets to trade and I don’t think oil should be one of them.

There’s much disagreement among the experts about whether or not the speculators are having a significant effect on oil prices. I’m certainly no expert, but my belief is that the speculators surely aren’t doing anything for the price of oil except helping to drive it higher.

When you start talking about $100 to fill up your SUV or $1600 for me to fill my propane tank to heat my house, I’d say things are starting to get out of control and consumers the world over are getting quite fed up with it.

I sincerely hope Congress steps in and at least takes a good hard look at how these speculators may be driving the price of oil to these unprecedented high prices we are seeing these days.

Here’s a site that may be worth a look: Stop Oil Speculation Now

Like a lot of people, when I heard the phrase "online pharmacy," I would always think of all those spam e-mail messages I would get that were pitching Viagra or Cialis or some other drug or herbal supplement that would promise to dramatically increase the size of a certain part of my anatomy.

Because of the all the spammers and other low-life that were promoting online pharmacies, it seemed to me like these online pharmacies might be a little on the shady side. I think a lot of us tend to think that online pharmacies may not be legitimate businesses.

Well, I’m happy to be able to tell you that there are indeed very legitimate and reputable online pharmacies and wait until you hear about their prices.

I had to see my doctor recently and ended up with a prescription for a drug that was not covered by insurance. Fortunately, there was a generic version of the drug that was prescribed for me and I headed for the local pharmacy to get the prescription filled. In this case, it was a Rite Aid pharmacy.

I asked the nice lady behind the counter if she could check the price for me first since I had to pay for this out of my own pocket. I had already checked with Wal-Mart and knew this was a drug that was not on their list of drugs they offer for $4, so I wanted to know what I was up against. Knowing it was a generic, I did not expect it to be all that bad.

I was more than a little surprised to hear the nice lady tell me that it would be $84. For 60 tablets of a generic drug! And this is no cutting-edge drug that was developed within the last few years. This one has been around for about 17 years and is a very common drug that is prescribed a lot.

I had to have it, so I really had no choice and I filled the prescription. I wondered if there was somewhere else I could get my prescriptions filled without feeling like I had just been robbed as I left the store and headed for my car.

Fortunately for me, I was talking to my dad a few days later and discovered he had been doing some business with an online pharmacy called "Life Extension Pharmacy" in Florida. He was happy with the service and the products, and the prices were dramatically lower than my local Rite Aid for many prescription drugs, and probably all the other big name pharmacies in the county as well.

Since I had 1 refill on the prescription I paid $84 for at Rite Aid, I decided to give this "Life Extension Pharmacy" a chance. They advertise the fact that you can transfer your prescription refills from other pharmacies to theirs, so that is just what I did.

Care to take a guess how much the same prescription that I paid $84 for at Rite Aid cost at Life Extension Pharmacy? $12. Yes, that $12 as in twelve dollars. With free shipping by the way!

Now I know what you may be thinking. Are the drugs from Life Extension Pharmacy the "real thing?" Yes, indeed they are. I saw a report on TV a while back about counterfeit drugs being brought in from China and being sold as the genuine article — in some cases legitimate and well-known pharmacies where ending up with these counterfeit drugs and were not even aware of it. Unscrupulous business people were passing them off as the real thing.

This made me even more suspicious of anything purchased from an online pharmacy, so I knew I had to figure out a way to make sure I was getting the real thing and not some counterfeit that would do me no good whatsoever.

With a little help from someone else who is very familiar with this particular drug, I was able to do a test on the drugs I received from Life Extension Pharmacy. The test involved a very specific effect this drug has when you chew it instead of just swallowing it. Not something you would normally do, but with this drug, it actually does not taste too bad.

The drugs from Life Extension Pharmacy resulted in the identical effect as the drugs I got from Rite Aid when I chewed one of them, proving to me that it was exactly the same drug I had purchased at Rite Aid.

When you are paying for drugs you need out of your own pocket and find out you can get then for $12 instead of $84, it’s the kind of news you want to share with the world. Especially with people that have no health insurance.

Now we all know that Life Extension Pharmacy, like any other business has to make a profit. Kind of begs the question how they can sell something for $12 that Rite Aid demands the princely sum of $84 for? I would guess that Rite Aid is making one enviable profit on the drugs they are selling. Very thoughtful of them to be so helpful to people who are paying for drugs that they may need to stay healthy or maybe even stay alive.

There are a couple of Rite Aid stores in my area, and they sell other products in addition to prescription drugs and I have stopped in on occasion to pick up a greeting card or a small gift item. I don’t think they’ll be seeing me in any of their stores anytime soon after this experience.

I’m certainly no Communist or anything like that and understand that retailers can charge whatever they want for whatever it is they are selling, but when I get the feeling I’m getting screwed, don’t expect to see me walking through your front door again.

By the way, Life Extension Pharmacy is not just an online pharmacy. It appears that they have a brick-and-mortar location that customers in their area can visit.

I should also mention that the customer service people I have dealt with at Life Extension Pharmacy have been some of the most friendly, helpful and patient people I have ever dealt with. I highly recommend them.

You can visit them at https://www.lifeextensionrx.com if you’d like to check out some of their prices. That’s a straight, no-nonsense link, and it is not an affiliate link. I don’t have any kind of relationship with them other than as a satisfied customer. In fact, I don’t even know if they have an affiliate program.

I know that not all the drugs at Life Extension Pharmacy are priced as low as the prescription I have when compared to other pharmacies, but a lot of their drugs are priced well below what you’ll find at your local pharmacy, and if this helps just one person afford the drugs they need that they have to pay for out of their own pocket, I’ll be very happy I took the time to post this information.

Every so often I like to troll around the net a bit and see what kind of scams are out there attempting to lure people in. As much as I like the well-known classified site Craig’s List, their “Jobs” section has become a place that draws scamsters in droves.

Although I’ve actually had good luck finding some great opportunities in the Craig’s List “Jobs” section in the past, sadly, the people that run that site have either decided to allow it to become the wild west for scamsters or have just not figured out a good way to put a stop to them yet.

While browsing through the “Jobs” section not long ago, one particular ad caught my eye. It was an advertisement for article writers and was offering between $5 and $20 per article for “quality writers.” Having done some writing work in the past, $20 per article seemed like a pretty sweet deal. A little too sweet perhaps. I had to find out more.

I responded to the ad and told the advertiser I was interested and wanted to learn more about the opportunity. This was the e-mail message I received the following day:

Sorry, for the EXTREME delay in getting back to you. I have had so many applicants, and it is hard for me to sift through all of the applications, read material, and pick the best candidates. I also have had some spots open up..

Like I said in the listing, we START out at $5 per article written. That is because we NEED quality articles and I fully expect quality articles to be written.

I have selected what I think are the best candidates and this is why you are receiving this email.

You can expect $500 a week from my writing projects alone, BUT, and this is a big but, if you fail to meet my quality standards, you will not get any more projects from our company. All you need to do is follow the guidelines and write, and you have been selected because you have shown that..

We may need to contact you from time to time and send you presentations .We use a company through exciting promotions, called EFAX. It is an all in one web conferencing platform.

Go to the links below, and sign up for the free 30 day trial, go to your corresponding country, so if USA, you go to the USA link, if Canada you go to Canada’s link -  it takes no more than five minutes. This is our main software program, and we require every one of our freelancers to have it. It requires a credit card or debit, but will not be charged.

The links are:

(Removed) - for USA

(Removed)  - for Canada

(Removed) - For UK

We will try each other out for a 30 day period, and if you do not like working for us, or we do not require your services you can cancel Efax in the free trial period.

If our relationship goes further than the 30 day trial period, you will be required to pay the monthly fee from the projects we give you. It will only be $16, and like I have already mentioned, you will be getting at least $500 a week in projects.

Ok, if that is all good, I need you to contact me after you are Efax enabled and I can begin giving you projects.

I need a confirmation email from you that says that you are EFAX enabled. I also need to know how you would like to be paid. Mostly everyone I work with has paypal, but we can send you a check if need be. In the email you need to specifiy how you want to be paid.

The email I need you to send -

Subject – EFAX enabled – Good to Go

Body:

  Payment method – paypal – my paypal address is ” yourpaypal address@mail.com“

That is all and if you do good, I send some freelancers over $1000 a week in articles.

Cheers,

Now let me take you through the clues in this message that began to convince me that this is a scam and not a real opportunity.

First, there was no “EXTREME” delay in getting back to me — I received the message the very next day, which tells me that this e-mail came from an “auto responder,” which is kind of like the “vacation” feature that some e-mail programs feature which allow a pre-written message to be sent out automatically to anyone who sends you an e-mail message. This same exact message is going out to every person who responds to that ad.

Secondly, the message says “I have selected what I think are the best candidates and this is why you are receiving this email.” With the same message going out via auto responder going out to every person who responds to the ad, it kind of shoots a sizable whole in the claim that he has selected the best candidates.

Thirdly, the promise of $500 week for writing articles is a bit tough to believe. I’ve seen legitimate opportunities for article writers and they typically do not offer that kind of money, much less tell you it will happen every week!

Fourth we find the most glaring evidence that this is a scam. As you can see, he claims you are required to sign up for the eFax service. He provides a link to the sign up page where you can sign up for the 30-day free trial. However, it is not a link to the eFax site. In fact, it is a link to a site he controls that re-directs you to the eFax page with a little bit of extra information attached that benefits this scamster.

That little bit of extra information in an affiliate ID number. When a visitor arrives at the eFax site with this affiliate ID number appended to the web address (URL) of the eFax site and then signs up for the 30-day free trial, this lowlife makes money - about $12 if I recall correctly. This is because he has sent a “lead” to eFax, someone who has signed up for the free trial and may decide to stay on as a customer for a monthly fee.

He re-directs all inquiries through his own web page to hide the fact that his affiliate ID number will be seen if he simply puts the eFax URL inside his e-mail message, because it will have to have the affiliate ID number appended to it and it could make people a little suspicious, especially if they understand affiliate marketing!

The problem for this guy is that this kind of “marketing” is very much against the terms of service of most affiliate networks and if they found out he was up to this kind of thing, they would likely terminate his affiliate account and refuse to pay him the money he has managed to make so far. That’s the risk that these types of low-life affiliate marketers take.

As you can see, he tries his best to lend an air of credibility to his scam by sounding firm about the qualifications required for anyone the he hires. “…we NEED quality articles and I fully expect quality articles to be written.” Oh, give me a break, please! This coming from a moron that can’t even spell “specify,” and he has the nerve the be asking for “quality” writers?

Asking for your PayPal ID also intends to make it look more like a legitimate opportunity and may make some people more inclined to believe he is serious about paying people for writing assignments.

Fifth, the part about requiring eFax is also a bunch of baloney since any writing assignments or other materials that needed to be sent could be sent using e-mail attachments. There is NO need for a service like that in order to send out writing assignments.

Sixth, he really tries to set the hook on unsuspecting victims by saying that he pays some freelancers $1000 a week. Wow, $1000 week for writing articles sure sounds great, doesn’t it? That’s because it’s a crock of you-know-what.

Although I was sure this was a scam, I decided to try a little test on this weasel and I sent him a response to his ad from another e-mail address. In this message, I intentionally misspelled words and even misspelled his name and I still received the exact same e-mail message. Confirming that this is coming from and auto responder (or perhaps even a cut-and-paste job, I suppose) and going out to everyone no matter how poor their writing skills may be.

He has no intention of sending writing assignments to anyone, much less pay them for it. Chances are good that responding to his e-mail would result in him telling you that he has found a sufficient number of writers and does not need any more. If he’s a real maggot, he might even ask for a sample of your writing and then tell you it is not good enough and he cannot hire you.

Although this particular scamster isn’t really hurting anyone financially, it’s a pretty low-life trick to be playing on people during a time when the economy is in bad shape and some people are desperate for work.

Scumbags like this have been around since the beginning and there’s no reason to think they will be going away anytime soon.

So I’m lying in bed this past Friday morning and a realization hits me. The due date for my Chase credit card is June 29, which is a Sunday. Since I normally pay all my bills online through my credit union and I realize that all payments made to Chase are electronic and take one day to be posted to the account, I know there is no way I can get it paid on time. The soonest I can get it to them would be on Monday, the 30th.

Why credit card companies allow due dates to fall on weekend days is beyond me. The due date seems to fluctuate a little from month-to-month, so it does not seem that avoiding weekend days as due dates would be all that difficult.

I log onto the Chase web site to check things out. Sure enough, the payment is due on Sunday the 29th. After a little digging around in the site I find that there is one way that I can make the payment that very day, but there appears to be a catch.

Chase provides the option of paying my bill right out of my checking account. All I need to do is enter in some of those strange-looking numbers on the bottom of one of my checks and off goes the money from my checking account to pay my bill that very day. Problem solved, right? Not so fast!

My reading of the details regarding this method of payment suggests to me that doing this will result in the implementation of automatic payments from my checking account every month, which is essentially allowing Chase to reach into my checking account and pull money out of there at their discretion.

Call me old fashioned, but I never have and never will allow any type of automatic payment to be made from my bank account. It’s like giving them the keys to your account. I do have some automatic payments set up which are tied to some of my credit cards, but to me, that just does not have that same intrusive feeling I would get from some company snatching money right out of my checking account while I’m out mowing my lawn or something!

Seeing that my only option to get this bill paid on time and avoiding late feeds and possible other penalties was to grant them access to my checking account, I decided to call Chase and see if there was any chance that my payment arriving a day late could be excused.

I got a friendly fellow on the phone who asked me the usual questions about my name and account and all that. I then proceeded to inform him of my situation and ask if there would be any problem if my payment arrived a day late since the due date was a Sunday.

He assured me that it would be no problem.

Now this is one of those situations where you want to be 100% sure you understand what is being said. So at that point, I asked him to simply confirm for me that I would not be facing any late fees, interest rate increases or other penalties if my payment arrived on June 30th. Again, he assured me it was no problem. He could not have been more clear.

I then asked him his name and if he had some kind of employee ID number or something. All he would tell me was his first name and that he was located in Springfield, Missouri. At that point I thanked him for his help and we ended the conversation.

I then logged into my credit union web site and set up the payment for the 30th and assumed all would be well.

Past experience, however, has given me hesitation when it comes to an employee of some big company providing me with advice that involves money that might be coming out of my pocket!

I made detailed notes about the time of the call and the first name and location of the fellow at Chase that I talked to.

This morning I logged into my Chase online account to see that my payment was received and guess what? My payment was indeed received but was accompanied by a $39 late fee. Maybe that’s why credit card companies allow due dates to fall on weekend days!

I got on the phone to Chase immediately and explained the situation to the first employee I managed to get on the phone. She politely told me there was nothing she could do, but would connect me to a supervisor.

The supervisor was very friendly and polite, one might even say “perky” in this particular instance. She asked me how I was doing and I responded “Not so good.” In a tone that might best be described as “pouty,” she asked me what the problem was.

I explained the entire situation to her and she agreed to reverse the late fee and also assured me that no other penalties would be forthcoming. She also wanted me to know that there was no grace period for payments (no kidding!) and that I did have the option of paying the same day from my checking account, at which point I advised her that I was aware of that, but did not think it was necessary after my conversation with the Chase employee on Friday. She did apologize for his mistake and she was very nice throughout the entire conversation. I also remained calm and never raised my voice or anything like that.

I did however, encourage her to listen to the recording of my conversation with the Chase employee on Friday for verification if possible. You know how they always give you the old “this call may be recorded for quality control purposes” spiel when you dial them up. I thought this time it might actually serve a useful purpose for me — the customer!

I am beginning to wish I had a nickel for every incompetent employee I have encountered when calling to address a problem or ask a question of some big company. To say nothing of the shenanigans that have resulted from some of the calls that were answered by one of those overseas call centers that are so popular with big companies these days, who apparently want us to believe that there is nobody left in this country that would like to have those call center jobs.

Anyway, I suppose the point I am trying to make with all this rambling is that you should always take the time to verify what some corporate employee tells you — especially when it involves your money! Don’t let some poorly-trained or just plain dimwitted corporate employee cost you your hard-earned money!

It came a bit later this year than last, but once again, N.M.E. or “National Magazine Exchange” has invaded my mailbox with the latest version of their deceptive mailings. And this time this important message comes to us not from our old friend Pat Haines, but from someone calling his or herself “E. Scanlon.”

Although they are not using the familiar “pink nightmare” envelope this year, there are the usual deceptive tactics in use that are designed to get the recipient to open the envelope rather than simply tossing it in the trash.

As you can see on the front of the envelope (click to enlarge), the paragraph in the upper left corner is intended to make the recipient believe that they may have already won some kind of prize or sweepstakes. And of course, the ominous “deadline” date of July 3 shows through the little window on the lower right with the rather humorous “DEADLINES ARE ENFORCED” warning just beneath it.

On the back of the envelope, the sender’s return address is revealed. Across the top, where most people would probably look first to determine the origin of the letter, they include just and address with no company name.

The company name is printed vertically on the left side of the envelope with “NOTIFICATION SYSTEM” printed in large letters and their actual company name printed in smaller letters below that. Again, they want to make it look like it is some kind of notification that the recipient has won something.

The letter contained within is the typical effort to entice the recipient to call a telephone number. In this case, it is 800-420-5478. Their efforts to make the recipient believe they have already won something is toned down a bit and they have to admit that this is simply a chance to enter a sweepstakes when they begin the second paragraph with “If your prize is selected…” which gives the whole thing away.

If my experience with N.M.E. is any indication, calling 800-420-5478 will connect you to a very friendly-sounding sales person who may engage you in small talk about the weather or your home town. Then they get down to business.

They are peddling magazine subscriptions and they don’t take no for an answer very easily. The woman I spoke with when I was tricked into calling them was quite pushy with her magazine pitch and I ended up hanging up on her when she would not take no for an answer.

The back of the letter has the usual page of legal mumbo jumbo about the sweepstakes rules and whatnot. What is kind of interesting is that next to the last sentence, where they offer you the opportunity to have your name and address removed from future mailings. Whether this is due to some consumer law or simply N.M.E.’s chance to save a little money that would be spent on postage and materials by sending this stuff out to people who are not interested. Personally, I think I’ll just let them keep on sending them since they do give me something to rant about here.

I am left wondering what happened to our beloved Pat Haines? A reader commented last year that she was a known scammer, but I have never done any research on that so I would have no idea.

At any rate, E. Scanlon seems to have taken over for Pat at N.M.E. Is Pat on a beach somewhere sipping a Pina Colada or did she perhaps end up in a less pleasant locale? We may never know.