Jan 23
I’ve written about this before.
Customer Service / Customer Relations is one of the absolute most important things a business can do. When I worked as a server, it was always drilled into our minds that a happy customer tells a handful, but an unhappy customer tells a dozen or more.
I’ve got three stories here, one about good customer service and one about bad, and one that has yet to be resolved.
All three of them happened today. Read the rest of this entry »
A week or so ago, Ryan Smith from SpendOnLife had stumbled across some posts I had written about dealing with Collectors. He asked if I’d be willing to mention him in this blog, and I offered to plug his website in exchange for a brief interview.
“SpendOnLife.com is an online resource dedicated to helping consumers achieve healthy credit. Your credit rating can make an enormous difference in your life. By smartly managing your credit, you’ll qualify for low interest rates on new loans and lines of credit. SpendOnLife.com provides you with up-to-date, accurate information and advice about credit reports and scoring.
We also educate consumers about the dangers of identity theft and how you can protect yourself from this fast-growing crime. Our goal is to help consumers and students build and maintain a positive credit rating, while raising awareness about the risks of identity theft and credit fraud. We offer knowledge and power: Discover the benefits of developing an advantageous credit history today!” (From http://www.spendonlife.com/aboutus)
Our goal is to be a complete and accurate source for people to get information on credit reporting, credit scores, debt, and identity theft. We try to present this complex information in a way that is useful and applicable to everyday personal finance decisions.
Jan 14
As the beginning of my last undergrad semester looms near, it’s time to buy books. Books are expensive, of course (I only needed two textbooks: “The World of Cell” and “Elementary Differential Equations”, and it cost just shy of $300), but receiving a fat student grant makes it far more manageable.
As is my tradition, I apply the leftover grant money (the bulk of it anyways) to my credit card. This time around, I was able to pay off half of the remaining $2,600 balance with grant money.
I have had an active line of liquid debt for 11 years — it has never once been zero’d out completely. In fact, if you think of a credit card like a stack of plates, where each purchase gets stacked on the next, and you pay them off by removing plates, then the first purchases I made 11 years ago are still waiting to be paid off!
This isn’t a “stay away from credit cards, they are TEH DANGERUZZ!!!!!” post, although I do believe people should have a healthy respect & awareness for the amount of debt they accrue.
There are a few things I think every consumer (i.e. you) should know about credit debt, and I say this as someone that has been almost obsessively debt-minded (ask my wife) for a little over 5 years. Read the rest of this entry »
Game Design Workshop, Second Edition: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games (Gama Netw