Hello Ms. Bachmann,

I am curious if anything can be done to require companies to be held accountable for the statements by their “customer service” departments. On more then one occasion I have been given information that is simply false.

When trying to set up a computer this is frustrating, but when it comes to financial institutions this can end up in costly late fees, interest rate hikes, and extensive credit damage.

I know that part of President Obama’s economic plans included some credit card reform (http://www.barackobama.com/issues/economy/index.php#credit-cards), but I think that this should be extended to require financial institutions, and companies in general to have some type accountability when it comes to the statements that their representatives make.

I realize the burden of proof in these cases lies solely on accuser, but in a world where “calls maybe recorded to improve customer service” there must be some sort of way for companies to be held to what they tell their customers.

You can ask just about any person on the street if they have ever had a bad customer service experience, and you will be met with an extremely detailed description of a time when they were wronged by some faceless company, it’s bad enough that you need a PHD in numerology to decipher the correct sequence of digits to even get to speak to live person. When you do finally speak to a person, you should be able to trust that the information they give you is accurate.

I am sure that given the economic situation the entire country is currently facing that an issue as simple as this can easily be over looked, but I hope that you will consider the impact that this type of deception has.

Consider this;
according to USA today (7-11-2007 “Banks make billions more on overdrafts”)
*the average overdraft fee is $34 dollars,
*in 2007 that contributed to 17.5 BILLION dollars (how much are they asking for in bail outs?)
*That 17.5 Billion was to cover an estimated 15.8 Billion that was over drafted Essentially banks charged more then a Billion dollars MORE then the actual cost of the overdrafts!
*Bank fees jumped 70% from 2004-2007
*Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., introduced a bill that would require banks to gain approval before clearing charges that would overdraft an account.
*Checks are cleared from highest dollar amount to lowest (allowing more fees to be charged if the account DOES become over drawn.)

Given all that information, try this. Call your bank (or one of your staff members banks who may not have the security that you do given your political position) and ask them to explain their “Funds availability” policy to you. Ask them about when deposits become available, if they are deposited on a weekend, or at an ATM, if your “direct deposit” is available at 12:00.01 on the day your paid. Then call back and get a different person, see if the answers are the same….. If their employees have a hard time answering the questions, how are consumers supposed to comply?

Thanks for your time,

I say any company that spends THAT much for 30 seconds (not to mention the production costs etc.) automaticly is NOT elligible for any type of govt bail out…

YOU HEAR ME DETROIT … I”M TALKING TO YOU !

I am frustrated because I feel the same way about the team as I did at
the end of last season, I am unsatisfied. The Vikings don’t sell hope,
because the team already has all the pieces in my mind, there are no
GLARING gaps, special teams needs work, but that’s scheming, and
execution. We need a legit person to compete for the starting QB job,
but I still think there is a strong chance T-Jack is the guy, I think he
finally “got it” in these last few games….. But I am still frustrated
by Childress, and the coaching in general, which is why I am
unsatisfied, and frustrated.

Coach Childress has been given every oppertunity to succeed. The last three years the Vikings have spent the money to assemble one of the most tallented teams in the NFL. Names like Adrian Peterson, Jared Allen, Antwan Winfield, Steve Hutchenson and Bernard Berrian stack an all star roster.

The defense is number one in the NFL the defensive coordinator leslie fraiser is being considered for prestigious head coaching jobs like the Dallas cowboys.

The Vikings offense is pathetic, gutless and uninspired.

But once you get past that 1st level of basic questions the usefulness of those options drops off dramaticly.

I say the same goes for “call center’ support

1) The secret pin code you have to enter once you call an 800 number to get to the right person to help you with your problem. “oh prima en espanial diga espanial”

1a) Why is EVERY COMPANY ALWAYS Expiriencing “heavier then usual call volume”. If that is your outgoing message more then 50% of the time your open…. THE HEAVY CALL VOLUME IS [I]USUAL [/I][B]HIRE MORE PEOPLE!!!![/B]

2) You finaly get through to somebody 9 times out of 10 they are not the “right” person so again you get transfered. less then 5 minutes ALWAYS means more then 30……

3) Very true in the tech world, but other places as well. I finaly get to somebody, my guess this person does NOT actually speak english they are just parroting a script (this is why everytime you get transfered you have to start all over again “please verify the cable is pluged in securly to the back of the device…” I KNOW ITS FUCKING PLUGLED IN!”)

Dont get me wrong they speak english better then I speak Hindi or Spanish or what ever their native tongue is, but its still frustrating when I have to constantly try and find the most basic way to convey my message something is ALWAYS lost in the transation

4) After 30 min on hold, and another hr trying in vain to clarify my problem, you finaly get transfered to a manager…. I am rarly in a bad mood when I start one of these calls, but the process is so painful, that I am usualy in one by this point…. Having worked as a customer svc agent before I do my best to maintain my politness, but somtimes its just impossible….

I dont know if there are any studies to back this up, but I would hope that as more and more companies rely on outsourced customer service, and more and more consumers become dissenfranchised and frustrated. I HOPE this causes some form of backlash that forces companies to make their Customers a priority again ….

Eh but what do I know?

What an amazing trip I have had more fun this Christmas then ever before. How privlaged I am to have all the people I love the most near me over the holidays. What an incredible time, Christmas morning was beautiful the presents were fantastic and everybody had a great time.

Limo
Kimbo
Bitches!!!!
Worlds largest slot machine
Paintball
The hockey game

Thank you all for making this so special!!

More in that later tray tables locked seats in there up right position and cross check; what ever that means!!!!

Wish me luck.

More in that later tray tables locked seats in there up right position and cross check; what ever that means!!!!

Wish me luck.

Major Shake up at work (More later)

Stock Market goes kerplunk!

And The Holidays Wont slow down for me !
I’ll write more but thats a quick update I’m sure it could apply to just about anybody reading this …
On the plus side I did fill up my car the other day for 31 dollars! YAY

This is the beginning of an ongoing story, diary, education of me and my stock market expirience. (*Small disclaimer, I am buying and selling stocks with my own money, I have no formal training in any financial field, and anything I write here should not be taken as advice, instructions or even as a good idea. I started this venture considering it an education, and am fully prepared to lose every penny as the cost of the education I am trying to obtain… So basically I am not trying to portray myself as any sort of expert, and if you do what I do and lose all your money, don’t blame me!

Greed works.

Those are the two most famous lines from the 1980′s movie “Wall Street”. If you haven’t seen it, go rent it, one of the best moves to come out of the 1980′s. The reason I bring this up is because many years ago when I first saw that movie I knew back then, that the Stock Market is where fortunes are made (and lost). I knew that I wanted to figure it out.

When I was in my teens I remember reading an article in “Maxium” magazine about investment bankers, these twenty something Harvord, Yale, Ivy league grads that were living in NYC making 6 figure salaries and living this crazy 24/7 life; they were “Investment Bankers” what ever that means.

Well I never made it to Harvard, Yale, or even Vassar! Hell at this point in my life I haven’t even finished college (although I am close, and getting closer). What I am is 31 years old, I have a small 401K an even smaller IRA, and quite frankly like just about everybody else out there they are getting SMALLER (which is not the intent).

For the past 6 months I have been seriously considering making the leap from Mutual funds and just letting my money sit there and hope for the best,  into out right purchases of stock in companies. Now understand me I do not have any grand fantasy’s of being the next Warren Buffet (Although I love Margaritavill!). I do know that this (the stock market) is where the truly wealthy play, or rather hire people to play for them. They take their money and make it “work” for them, they earn fortunes; penny’s at a time.

That was 6 months ago, about 3 months ago there was a key change in my IRA. ING Direct changed all their “investment” accounts over to “ShareBuilder” accounts, essentialy I now had an online brokerage account. After some initial laziness for lack of a better term I called ING’s customer service number and asked if I could do as I suspected, and “buy” stock with the funds in my IRA. I found out that is exactly what I can do. Now I had just want I wanted (or feared) money to play with in the stock market.

So now I have this money that isn’t really money, because it locked in this IRA and it was just a 401K roll over to begin with, so its not REAL money, its play money and if I lose it no big deal, it was never REALLY mine (or that’s how I have rationalized this so far).

Since I am trying to be transparent and open about this entire project I will start with my personal finances (as they pertain to this venture) 2 years ago when I left my former company I had about $5000.00 in my 401k, I rolled those funds in to an IRA with ING direct. Over the first few months it bounced up and down but stayed between 4500 and 6000 dollars. Then the bottom fell out of the market and like everybody else the value of my IRA fell too. When I started this venture it was worth about 2500 dollars. I owned 2 different mutual funds and my money was split about 50/50 between them:

• IDROX: one year ago = aprox $17.00 As of market close yesterday 7.61
• IDSGX: one year ago = aprox $14.00 As of market close yesterday 6.92

So after some fear, some uncertainty and confusion I decided to jump in.  Having NO idea what I was doing, I started by liquidating (see big broker dealer word for SELLING) $500 dollars worth of IDROX. I chose IDROX …Because….Thats about as much thought as I put into it…This is the education from my first sale:

• Mutual Fund transactions post at the END of the day
• There is no fee to sell Mutual Funds with ING’s ShareBuilder

So that night after the market closed I learned that I now had 1000 dollars in IDROX, 1200 of IDSGX and 500 dollars in a “Money market” account that I could use to buy and sell stocks.

I dont know if anybody other then my friends who have listened to me babble about this endlessly, will read this, but here comes the “fun” part. For my first stock I chose to buy Las Vegas Sands Corp. (LVS). Now I can’t read all those fancy charts or really follow what the numbers mean (I’m trying to learn), but what I did know is:

1. Casinos make LOTS of money
2. LVS has HUGE expansion projects in place that will may COULD be online in the next year
3. My brother works there (So I can tell him I’m now his boss)
4. the stock price was at almost 150 a year ago, and now is trading at less then 10
5. Sheldon Anderson has invested over 1 Billion dollars in the last 6 weeks; he believes in this company and I think I can trust him with my $500 dollars.

With that knowledge in hand I decided to place my first trade. So here is my first educational piece. I placed the trade after hours, my assumption was that when the market opened the next morning I would get the “closing” price (which was about 8.50 a share). I calculated how many shares to buy so that I could cover the cost of the shares as well as the 9.95 transaction fee. I was wrong…

• The Market close price is NOT the same as the market open price
• If you place an order for MORE then the funds you have it will go through
• There are no “overdraft” fees on a brokerage account at ING (Provided you pay them back at the next close.

Well when the sale went through I owned 55 shares of LVS, I paid 11.00 per share, more then I wanted, BUT less then the value I believe them to be.

Recap:

• IDROX: Buy = Unknown, Current =7.61
• IDSGX: Buy = Unknown, Current = 6.92
• LVS: Buy = 11.00, Current = 5.36

My next buy was TiVo. Everybody who knows me knows that I am a HUGE fan of this company, I think that TiVo is one of the greatest inventions of all time. I also read that they are working with DirectTV again. That was enough for me to try TiVo Next. So I sold $300 of IDSGX and bought 40 shares of TiVo so now:

• IDROX: Buy = Unknown, Current =7.61
• IDSGX: Buy = Unknow, Current = 6.92
• LVS: Buy = 11.00, Current = 5.36
• TiVo; Buy = 6.75, Current = 6.28

My most recent purches was Pfizer, cause well I figured everybody loves Viagra, who doesn’t to buy a product for your penis endorsed by former presidential hopefull (or maybe still hopeful) Bob Dole? So as I leave you untill next time here is my current portfolio (See I’m learning the terms!):

• IDROX: Buy = Unknown, Current =7.61
• IDSGX: Buy = Unknow, Current = 6.92
• LVS: Buy = 11.00, Current = 5.36
• TiVo; Buy = 6.75, Current = 6.28
• PFE: Buy = 16.30 Current = 16.73

So… Ive started, that much is clear…. but whats the score here? Whats next?