May 27 2010

Lying Your Way Out of Fees: Is it Wrong?

lying eyes

This is a guest post by Greg McFarlane, an advertising copywriter who lives in Las Vegas and Lahaina— a testament to the power of entrepreneurship.

When is it OK not to pay a bill? (If you’re the Greek central bank, “Whenever it suits you.”)

Your humble poster automates whatever finances he can, setting and then forgetting the cable bill, the phone bill, the car payment etc. and freeing up time our ancestors would have spent reconciling statements and hoping that payments would post once checks had cleared.

Two weeks ago I received an email from…well, a company whose parent is based out of Cleveland and grosses $2 billion annually. I patronize this company only sporadically, but they make you buy an annual membership. Like a moron, I ignored the email’s unambiguous message that said my account would auto-renew within a week.

A week later, another email. From PayPal, saying my account had been debited.

(Aside: What’s more nerve-wracking than an email from PayPal? For me it usually means I spent money for some legitimate purpose, sometime in the previous month, couldn’t recall what I bought and am only remembering it now.)

I’d automatically re-upped with the Cleveland company and was now on the hook for another 363 days. The price of the membership is nominal, but I shouldn’t spend money on something I can’t justify.

I called the company and spoke with its Interactive Voice Responder. “So you wish to cancel your membership? Please say ‘cancel.’ Thank you.” She confirmed my cancellation, but I still had to plead my case to a human to get the charges reversed.

Once I got a real person on the line, I got creatively dishonest and explained that I was out of the country and had left the job of cancelling my membership to my girlfriend. (Because when you have to get something done, it’s always smart to wait until the last minute and put someone else in charge of it while you’re thousands of miles away.) And, as long as I was weaving fiction out of the ether, I mentioned that my girlfriend happens to have a thick Czech accent. (More lying.) And, on the day before the account was set to auto-renew, she attempted to cancel via the… Interactive Voice Responder. Yeah, that’s it. But she couldn’t, because…it couldn’t discern her heavily accented English.

(Editor’s note: lying is wrong and everything…but this is pretty funny)

I felt dirty doing this, especially when the customer service person bought my story without question. I didn’t have to defend my ridiculous charade even slightly, which left me wondering whether she was naïve or just couldn’t be bothered to treat me with the skepticism I deserved.

If you’re persistent, polite, and apologetic, you can weasel your way out of minor charges like this. Which gives you a second chance to use the money you thus recovered to buy assets and sell liabilities with. (Note: This method will not work with the IRS or almost any other federal government agency.) But it does bring up an ethical question: How wrong is this? There are degrees.

Did I receive a service and fail to pay for it?

No, unless you consider the 1½ days of membership that I received but didn’t use to be a “service”. Extrapolating from the company’s annual dues, I owe them about 6¢. Having me on the membership rolls for that period cost them a small fraction of that.

How big a deal are we talking about?

Using the traditional scorekeeping method of dollars and cents, almost nothing.

What burden am I putting on the other party?

6¢ divided by all that company’s employees? I’d have cost them more money if I’d shown up at corporate headquarters and asked to use the bathroom.

Is there a pattern?

No. I learned my lesson. Once was enough.

Social convention dictates that we honor certain legal obligations and ignore others. Making the payments on your car falls into the former category—you can’t be surprised if your car with delinquent payments gets repossessed. Paying your mortgage used to fall in that category, at least before 2007. On the other hand, driving 4 miles an hour over the posted speed limit to keep up with traffic is hardly the kind of thing you should feel guilty about doing.

So is there a special circle of Hades reserved for deadbeats like me, or have I committed the equivalent of removing the tag from a mattress I don’t own?

Greg recently wrote Control Your Cash: Making Money Make Sense, a financial primer for people in their 20s and 30s who know nothing about money. Buy the book here (physical) or here (Kindle) and reach Greg at greg@ControlYourCash.com.

Image by neogabox


May 25 2010

Doing What You Love: Baby Steps

The other day I wrote a post about Why We Love Money that diluted our need of money down to one key idea: fear. The more money we have, the less fear we have, and we often confuse that with happiness.

Anyway, I mentioned that in a perfect world I’d love to just write about baseball and the Cubs. And that I know where to start to make that happen: just write for myself, on a blog, anywhere. On my own time.

So I’m actually doing it.

A friend of mine invited me to write a couple days of the week on the Cubs Fan Report; an all things Cubs daily email. We basically scour the web for everything worth knowing (and some stuff that’s just plain fun) and pack it into a sweet daily email.

So for all you Cub fans out there, make sure to check it out.

The Point Is

The point is I’m doing something about my whiny post about wanting to write about baseball and it feels pretty damn good. It’s not the big, feature-type stuff that Bill Simmons does. But one small step at a time…something is better than nothing.

We spend a lot of time worrying about hatching these big, master plans to get what we want and 90% of the time we wind up doing nothing but daydreaming.

I’m just as guilty as anyone else. That’s why I’m proud of myself today. I’m writing about the Cubs and I’m having fun doing it. The big-picture stuff will take care of itself…for now I’m content in knowing I’ve taken a small step in the right direction.


May 24 2010

Bed Bath and Beyond Return Policy: It Rocks

The first time I wrote about Bed Bad & Beyond and their return policy, I was really curious about how a company could be so liberal in taking things back from customers and still make a profit.

After all, aren’t you giving too much of your money away by doing it?

I am no longer asking myself this question—the answer is obvious: customer loyalty. Take a look at the comments from that post and you’ll see how much people love BBB. They give their workers the power to keep customers happy, and that is something most companies won’t do.

The other day I went back and returned another Wok. They gave me a new one with no questions asked.

Then our year-and-a-half old coffee pot broke and we took that back too. They let us pick out a new one of equal value…no hassles.

The Grill Story

But here’s the thing that truly converted me: M and I wanted to buy a grill for the tiny bit of outdoor space that we have, so we bought a Weber Q. Bought it on Amazon but then bought the cart and the cover off of Bed Bad & Beyond’s website because we had a gift card that we needed to use (and the store didn’t have these items in stock).

Then after reading some surprising things online about the Bed Bath & Beyond policy, I did the following:

  • Printed out my online receipt of the purchase of the stand and the cover
  • Grabbed two 20% coupons
  • Went to my local store to ask for the 20% off from the two items I’d bought online

The response?

No problem, I can help you out with that today.

That’s customers service and that’s the way to create a legion of loyal customers.

And that’s how Bed Bath & Beyond not only stays in business but thrives in business. More companies should take a look at the passionate customer base Bed Bath & Beyond has created and take a few pointers.

For more on customer service, check out Wisebread’s 10 Examples of Shockingly Excellent Customer Service


May 18 2010

Want to Start Your Own Empire?

Empire Building Kit

Do you want to start your own one-man/one-woman business but have no idea where to start or how to get it done?

Then today is your day because Chris Guillebeau is opening up his Empire Building Kit for the second time ever, and it’s going to be awesome. He only opens it up for 24 hours at a time and I missed the boat the last time around.

That’s not going to happen this time.

What is the Empire Building Kit?

It’s a guide bursting with information, motivation, and passion to help you start your own business. The Empire Building Kit is a program that’s going to help you launch your own small business in one year by doing one thing every day.

I love that idea—it combines strategy and persistence to kick ass and accomplish an ambitious goal. It’s got case studies, videos, strategy guides, checklists, interviews, and more.

Wait a Minute…

Didn’t I just say I missed out on this the last time it was open? You’re probably thinking: Is this guy recommending a product he’s never tried?

Technically, that’s true. But let me tell you what I do know: the quality of Chris’ work.

When I missed out on this last month, I was devastated. OK maybe not devastated, but I felt like I missed out. So I bought his Working for Yourself Guide and it kicked ass. The level quality of the guide and of the information inside was awesome, and I know how hard he’s worked on the Empire Building Kit, so I know exactly what to expect.

Is this for you?

Maybe it is and maybe it’s not. But I don’t want you to feel like you missed out, so I’m trying to tell as many people as possible about it so they can go over to Chris’ site and find out for themselves. Maybe you need to do some research and start out with another of his products first—just like I did.

Or maybe you are so fired up you want to get started right away.

Either way, I feel like you should know about this opportunity since Chris is closing it up 24 hours after it opens—from today at 11pm EST to 11 pm EST on Wednesday, May 19.

Do yourself a favor and head over to Chris’ site—he does a much better job of selling than I can. And remember: he’ll open up shop at 11pm EST today and shut it down 24 hours later.

Oh and one more thing: once you buy something from Chris you can apply to become and affiliate and make some money off any sales you send his way. So if you’re interested in his products and I sent you there, I get a cut of the sale. Everyone wins!

Good luck!

Read more about the Empire Building Kit