Coffee heat rising

Mysteries of blogging

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Tina, my associate editor at the Great Desert University and partner in crime at our business enterprise, e-mails to report that our Copyeditor’s Desk site appeared among WordPress’s fastest-growing sites. It arrived at number 64, after a reader stumbled one of Tina’s recent entries.

Isn’t that amazing? Our readership is anything but huge, and so, I suppose, when a spike to 340 hits appears, it’s relatively so large it creates the impression of rapid growth.

I never cease to marvel at what attracts readers. The olive-oil hair conditioner story still is cranking readership: over 300 yesterday. Every day, someone out there googles “olive oil” and “hair conditioner” and shows up at Funny. Interestingly, the piece I posted on using lemon juice or vinegar to bring out blonde or red highlights hasn’t generated anywhere near that much traffic. Must be a lot of folks out there with dry hair.

Wish I knew what people love. Then I would give it to them. But then, if we all knew what people love, we would all be rich, eh?

Or better yet, happy.
😉

Qwest update

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Yesterday while I was at work Julie called from Qwest’s corporate headquarters in Denver. She left a phone number that, believe it or not, dialed straight through to her, unfiltered by any gate-keeping robots.

Butter would not have melted in Julie’s mouth. She was soothing, she was apologetic, she was smooth.

Julie revealed that when the Josh claimed he could save me $10 on a “bundle,” he really was claiming to “save” that amount on a much larger set of services than I had or wanted. In other words, his scam scheme would save me $10, all right: off a much larger bill! I said he had led me to understand he was going to reduce my existing bill, and that I never asked for nor needed any of the extra bells and whistles. It was thanks to the Josh’s deceptiveness that I ended up with a doubled bill.

She said she would deactivate all the extra services he had put on the system and cancel the long-distance “membership plan,” which costs an astonishing $30 annual “membership fee” (give me a BREAK!) and $20 a month for the privilege of being billed 2.9 cents per minute of long-distance talk. If you’d prefer not to pony up the monthly premium, for just the thirty-dollar annual rip, you can talk for 5 cents a minute: exactly the rate Cox charges with no extra fee.

She also agreed to cancel the cell phone contract, effective immediately.
*****Ta DAAAA!*****

Since I’d already canceled Qwest’s phone disservice and am about to cancel its DSL disservice, all I really wanted from this transaction was to get quit of the extra $30/month ding for the cell phone that I hardly ever use.

She said the various credits for all this canceled service would appear on the December bill. The $170 inflicted by the Josh’s “bargain” still is to be extracted from my checking account the first part of November, but the final bill will show a bunch of credits. She asked that I not cancel the automatic bill payment until the final bill comest through in December. Reluctantly (as usual), I agreed to this.

So, since I can’t afford a $170 phone bill, now I will have to transfer money from savings to cover it—timed perfectly as I’m looking at a possible layoff. Thank you SO much, dear Qworst. It also means, of course, that I’ll be buying less than planned in the way of Christmas presents next month. Merry Christmas, dear Qworst!

It also means I won’t be fully disconnected from Qworst until the first week in December, at the soonest. Meanwhile, she said the Cox service will start on October 30 but the paperwork will not go through until November 3. She also said that, contrary to what Cox’s “Rose” told me, Cox has to request the DSL disconnection, not me. Qwest cannot cancel it at my request. I said Cox had told me that after the serviceman came by and installed the new Internet connection, I had to call Qwest and tell them to end the DSL service. She said Cox is supposed to do that.

So it looks like that will be another bone of contention. {sigh} When will this be over?
Previous chapters:

Back Again—Temporarily?
“We Value Your Business”
Unbundled! Qwest Strikes Again
What Happens When a Live Qwest Guy Shows Up
Qwest Redux: How Do These Companies Stay in Business?
Qwest: The Saga That Will Not End

Moments of Fame

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Hallowe’en comes to the Festival of Frugality at Living Well on Less, where some very weird characters appear at the Monster Mash. Funny’s report on the fall garden (you have to live in Zones 9 or 10 to appreciate it) appears in this round-up. For those of you who live in more normal climates, check out Frugal Pursuit’s tips for how to prepare your garden for autumn and winter. Check out the amazing photo and Money Ning’s self-questioning about the wisdom of buying certain products in bulk. Saving Advice has an interesting post on the “freegan” lifestyle which has elicited some even more interesting comments.

Hot diggety! If you blog, check out Financial Wellness Project, where FWP uses a heuristic theme for the 82nd Carnival of Money Stories that generates about a jillion new ideas for posts: he asks a series of questions related to his plan to move to full-time freelancing. Along the way, he fills the carnival with a treasure chest of very interesting pieces, among which he has kindly included one of Funny’s several rants about the Qwest misadventure. In FWP’s editor’s pick, Mr. Credit Card’s Mrs. describes what happened in the couple’s lives after they declared bankruptcy. The story is at once inspiring and cautionary, and shows that the bankruptcy laws should never have been changed to cut off this avenue for ordinary people trapped in credit-card debt to turn their finances around. The Financial Blogger tells a funny job interview story, one that will especially entertain anyone who’s ever had to screen job candidates. For those of us who are blowing around on the winds of layoff rumors, Retired at 47 has some encouraging words…his story makes me think I may be able to pull off unemployment without too much agony.

The current Carnival of Personal Finance is up at Master Your Card.

Another day, another dollar

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Are we all canned tomatoes?

Once again we were told a big announcement of layoffs would come down today. And once again, no such horrible fiat occurred.

I am beyond getting myself worked up over this stuff. Who knows how much truth lurks in these rumors, and really: who cares? There’s not a thing anyone can do about it. If GDU decides to can you, you’re canned. So deal with it!

The current flap arose when a local television news program interviewed the chair of a department on the East campus. The reporter spelled the interviewee’s name wrong; described faculty associates (low-paid semester-to-semester temporary workers) as “professors”; and claimed that today the university would announce that most or all such wretches’ jobs would end with the start of spring semester.

Well, in addition to our intrepid investigator’sobvious little lapses in fact-checking and her glaring ignorance of how a university works, there’s no reason to believe that the guy she interviewed should know any more about pending layoffs than any other chair of any other department. And to my and my spies’ considerable knowledge, departmental chairs presently are sitting in the pitch dark.

A fair amount of stürm und drang arose over this, with much uneasy watching of e-mail in-boxes and the university’s homepage. Once again, the nothing that happened amounted to an anticlimax.

About all anyone can do in these conditions, IMHO, is get one’s financial ducks in a row and then forget it. Figure out what emergency fund or other resources you have to fall back on, pay off as much debt as you can, get check-cashing protection on your bank account, learn what your employer will pay you at severance, and find out how to apply for unemployment. Maybe apply for a few jobs and activate your professional network. Then put it out of your mind and go on about your business.
And be thankful for every day you still have a job.
🙂

Cassie’s dog treats

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We’re about out of the fancy home-made treats I got at the dog bakery (yes!) last time I visited the upscale shopping center where the Apple store is located. Cassie likes the things and they appear to be unadulterated (or so the sales staff says), but the cost is ludicrous.

Contemplating one of those little doggie-bite-sized gems, I wondered what, really, could be in this stuff? A cruise on the web revealed that by and large dog treats are made from heavy biscuit dough rolled out thin, cut into cookie-like shapes, and baked until they’re crisp.

We can do that. And we don’t have to pay a queen’s ransom for the privilege. Check this out:

You need:
2 1/2 cups whole wheat (or other) flour
1/2 cup powdered milk
1/2 cup wheat germ
1 egg
2/3 cup water or broth (meat or chicken)
6 tablespoons oil or melted butter
1 cup cheap shredded cheese

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Check the ingredients listed on the cheese package to be sure it’s actually cheese and not an artificial imitation. If you use canned or boxed broth, be sure it doesn’t contain onion, which is toxic for dogs.

Lazy person’s technique: Put the liquid ingredients in a bread mixer’s container. Add the dry ingredients and the cheese. Run the “dough” cycle until the stuff is well mixed and holds together. No need to run the cycle all the way through, since this dough is unleavened and (of course) will not rise.

Another lazy way: Put the ingredients in your food processor and blend until the dough holds together.

Normal person’s technique: Mix the dry ingredients in a big bowl. Add the remaining ingredients and stir with a wooden spoon to form stiff dough.

Because I am extremely lazy and desire not to wash the cookie sheets, I Iined the sheets with tinfoil. These dog biscuits do not stick, so you can save the foil to use with your next baking project, which as we speak will be this week’s store of fresh bread (and which, coincidentally or not, will contain whole wheat flour, white flour, powdered milk, wheat germ, egg, and water, among other things).

For a little dog: Roll the dough between your hands to form long strips and, using a sharp knife, cut into small bite-size pieces. Arrange on a cookie sheet.

For bigger dogs: On a lightly floured board, roll out the dough to a thickness of about 1/2 inch. Use cookie cutters or a clean, dry frozen juice can to cut out cookie shapes (cute bone shapes keep the human happy but make no never-mind to the pooch).

Bake on an ungreased cookie sheet at 350 degrees for 25 minutes. Cool the baked treats completely before feeding to the dog.

Consumer Headaches: 15 ways to get help

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My two-month-long fight with Qwest, which barring a stroke of luck will no doubt go on a lot longer, would have been lost early on if I were not adept at writing the dear-sir-you-cur letter (more about which in a later post) and experienced with tracking down corporate executives and agencies that regulate commerce.

Consumers have more resources than you would think—and certainly more than outfits like Qwest think you will find out about. Qwest is the worst I’ve ever dealt with: combatting serious problems that might damage your credit rating or cost you big bucks requires you to roll out the big guns—state and federal regulatory agencies, attorneys general, and possibly even a paid lawyer of your own. But for smaller fry, there are easier ways.

Consumer protection resources fall into two groups: those you can and should take advantage of before you do business with a retailer, contractor, or service provider, and those to whom you have recourse after you’ve had a negative experience. Here are a few worth knowing about:

Before the Fact

The Better Business Bureau.I’ve never found a complaint to the BBB effective after the fact, but it’s a place to check before you do business with a chosen company or contractor. Though the group doesn’t seem to do much about complaints, it does at least keep a record and will let you know the company’s history.

Your state’s registrar of contractors. This is a very powerful resource. States regulate a wide variety of contractors, and in doing so they gather consumer complaints. Before hiring a contractor, get his or her contractor’s license number, call the state agency, and find out what complaints have occurred and how they were resolved. Some states turn filing a complaint into a major hassle; that means that if the agency shows a complaint record, the incidents in questionprobablywere serious.

The Consumerist. Simply enter the name of the product or the company you’re considering into this site’s “search” box and all sorts of enlightening reports will come up. This is where I learned that Qwest had pulled the “let us give you a cheaper package” scam on other customers. This site is so useful it’s worth bookmarking and revisiting regularly. This site also lists the names and addresses of many high-ranking corporate executives. Thanks to The Consumerist, I finally tracked down Mr. Ed Mueller, Qwest’s well-hidden chairman and CEO.

The RipOff Report. Unlike the Consumerist, which carries a fair number of positive reviews, the Ripoff Report consists mostly of angry complaints. Some of these must be taken with a grain of salt. It’s useful, however, simply to compare the volume of complaints registered for two similar companies. Also, if the same issue appears over and over again, that should tell you something.

Consumer Reports. This site supplements the print magazine, and unfortunately you have to subscribe to get much value from it. But it does have a few free features. By and large, Consumer Reports reviews are more useful when they address things mechanical or electronic rather than in matters of taste.

Google. Enter [“name of product or service”] and “consumer reviews” with each word string inside quotation marks. This will usually bring up several sites, some more useful than others, where people hold forth about their experiences with services and stuff.

After the Fact

Get Human. This excellent resource lists strategies to reach live human beings at companies and organizations whose representatives barricade themselves behind telephone punch-a-button labyrinths. Bookmark it!

Corporate headquarters: This link offers some leads. Also you canGoogle the company name + headquarters, or try The Consumerist. Don’t be shy about going straight to the head of the company.

State attorneys general. Few companies relish an inquiry from the biggest, meanest lawyer in the state. If you can’t get satisfaction and you have evidence that fraud or a rip-off has occurred (or is about to occur), a complaint to your state AG’s office can be an effective way to get the attention of someone at the company who will do something about your problem. If a company’s home office is located in a state different from yours, you need to complain to the AG in that state.

Your state public utility commission. These agencies also are surprisingly powerful. They have a lot to say about what a utility can charge and how it can treat its customers. I sent a copy of my letter to Qwest CEO Ed Mueller along to the Arizona Corporation Commission, with the commission’s PDF form showing which specific regulated issues apply.

County and state trade and professional groups, state and county medical societies, and state and county bar associations. Some of these organizations actually license members; others simply try to ride herd on businesses to keep up the communal image. When a sleazy used-car dealer kept telephoning me looking for some mysterious woman who had welched on her car payments after giving the outfit my phone number, I discovered a statewide trade group of used car dealers. After I contacted them, the guy gave up pestering me.

The U.S. attorney general. If you have been the victim of an interstate fraud or other crime, this is the agency for you.

The Federal Communication Commission’s Consumer & Governmental Affairs Bureau. The Bush Administration has effectively defanged formerly powerful federal regulatory agencies, among them the FCC, leaving American citizens with far fewer resources to defend themselves against predatory corporate interests. However, the FCC still does provide a fair amount of consumer information and accepts complaints or reports on a few interstate matters.

The Federal Trade Commission. This agency retains substantial clout. It oversees consumer protection in seven major areas. If my current approach to Qwest through the state corporation commission and the company’s upper management fails, the FTC will be hearing from me.

Other federal regulatory agencies. Thelen’s Construction Weblinks includes a list of federal agencies. If you don’t see what you want here, this wiki provides a few extra leads.

When you’re certain you’re in the right, don’t give up. Pursue all avenues to get recourse. Often when a company sees that you’re serious and that you will not be brushed off easily, it will capitulate or at least offer an acceptable compromise. Keep up the good fight!