So, the other day I received a call from Capital One to tell me that I’m a valued customer they would like to ‘upgrade’ me to their new Venture card. It has no annual fee, I can earn all kinds of ‘perks’ like ‘free miles’, ‘rewards’, etc… Note the quotation marks?

My informed consumer radar is usually pretty strong. I understand that nothing in life is free. That doesn’t mean companies are the enemy. You’d hope they’d provide great service or some value to you to compete in a competitive market. Yet, the financial services industry isn’t a competitive market per se. It can be if you have stellar credit and are generally a well informed consumer. Even then, when understanding what does and doesn’t effect your credit can be a mystery. It’s getting better but, we have a ways to go as far as this industry is concerned.

Anyway, back to Capital One and my upgrade. So, I decide to let them ‘upgrade’ me to the Venture card. In doing so, shortly after I receive a letter detailing the card and the jump in my interest rate. Needless to say I’m no longer a Capital One customer. They provided me a nice shiny card and a humongous interest rate jump to go along with the new card. Bonus! (not)

Moral of the story, I should have asked some very simple questions. I was blinded by the ‘generosity’ of a company I had decided to do business with and have had great relations with in the past. Shame on me for not doing my homework.

Before I rant too much on this, I want to share some info with the three people who read this blog regularly.  If you want to contact one of the three major credit reporting agencies and speak with a human being, take the following numbers down:

• Equifax - 800-846-5279
• Experian - 800-493-1058
• TransUnion – 800-916-8800

The numbers provided above will get you straight to a human being within a matter of minutes.  Getting them to do what you want and what the law states in many cases in another matter entirely, so your mileage may vary. The key is knowing the facts pertaining to your particular situation, being honest and probably most important, being persistent.

Before contacting a credit reporting agency, be prepared with all the facts and circumstances pertaining to your particular issue.  If you’re looking to dispute an item on your report, I would recommend you speak with someone who has experience in dealing with these types of issues. In many instances, you can do yourself more harm than good.

The cottage industry that has sprung up around credit repair is nothing short of astounding. It’s an industry that is masked in secrecy with a mixed reputation. Just like with anything, you’re paying for their expertise and experience. I highly encourage you to do your homework before paying anyone to work on your behalf.

Avoid anyone who states they can ‘fix your credit quickly’. It’s simply not possible and the old adage of ‘if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is’ certainly applies here. Your credit score is a reflection of how you manage your credit, bill payments, and limitations of credit. If you’ve been irresponsible with credit, future creditors have a right to know this. However, if you have a legitimate issue, the system is designed to help you – which is where the persistence comes into play. If something is an error, you’re not going to stop until it’s corrected.

What is so frustrating is that the credit agencies make it absolutely difficult for good people to dispute legitimate issues.  Not everyone deals with these things everyday and sometimes all we need is a human being on the other end of a phone, helping us navigate this confusing and frustrating maze of mis-information.  It’s my hope the numbers provided in this post will help you the same way they helped me.

Unfortunately, work is challenging and my time is limited so… keep your fingers crossed that I find a little time in the next few weeks to pull the trigger. It’s nothing to write home to mom about. Just different than what I have now and will hopefully look decent on a Windows machine using Internet Explorer (that sorry excuse for a browser).

Look for the redesign within the next week. Should simplify the structure of the site greatly while providing me greater flexibility in posting style.

This post is intended to answer that question. I didn’t have time to get into detail with everyone so hopefully you can find something here that will help with your decision to keep or ditch cable. Since we made the decision to do away with it, we’ve not missed it.

Deciding to ‘get rid of cable’ shouldn’t strike fear into anyone. If your primary goal is to save money then you’ll with this decision. We saved $160 a month. You’ll also be happy to learn that you really won’t miss much (if anything). We did pick up a digital antenna and have found it acceptable in the sense that we can pick up a few of the local channels. Combined with our Apple TV we’ve not missed any of the show’s we enjoy. Keep in mind, most people only watch a few select channels anyway.

The downside to going the Apple TV route is that you’ll need to purchase the content you want to watch. If you only watch a few shows a week, you’ll probably be ahead. If you like a ton of variety, this option can get expensive fast. Luckily, we own every episode of friends and most epsiodes to date of ‘Two and a half men‘. We’ve augmented our Apple TV viewing with a subscription to Netflix This seems to work pretty well for us.

Another option is the Boxee Box. Like the Apple TV, you can stream Netflix movies and TV shows. The benefit to the Boxee Box is that you can do a little more with it – think a bit more flexibility. A great example is the ability to use RSS feeds from your favorite Video website view them on your TV using the Boxee Box. Gigaom‘s NewTeeVee site has a great video on some of the great tricks you can use with the Boxee Box. View it here: Gigaom NewTeeVee Tips

The Rocku is another great offering that provides a bit more flexibility for those less willing to get down and dirty with RSS and some of the other features of Boxee. The really great thing about the Rocku is that in addition to Netflix, you can also subscribe to hulu content from the Rocku device. Aside from that I’m not completely familiar with this device. I’ve read some pretty good things about it however. Your mileage may vary like anything else.

There has never been a better time cut the cord. There are a tremendous amount of options and online resources to help educate yourself. I know from our vantage point, the $160 a month in savings was worth the decision. It’s not that we can’t afford it. Just based on the options we have available in our area, combined with the utter crap on television (aside from ESPN of course) we just decided our money and time could be better spent elsewhere.

I hope this helps. Feel free to drop a question in the comments. Good luck and happy savings!

I’ve been absolutely mortified in doing some research lately about the business practices of the major credit bureaus. It’s nothing short of scandalous and I am absolutely curious about how they can sell your personal information and it not be viewed as wrong. I guess that’s an argument for another day.

If you go to this ftc website: http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/alerts/alt063.shtm you can actually opt out of unsolicited offers. You essentially have two options; you can choose to opt out of credit card offers or you can opt out of credit card offers AND all other types of junk mail.

The credit card offers coming by the dozen? Then simply go here: https://www.optoutprescreen.com/?rf=t This website is run by the three major credit bureaus – it was mandated by the Fair Credit Reporting Act. It allows you to opt out of all credit card solicitation offers. You can opt out for 5 years or for life. If you choose the ‘for life’ option, you’ll need to also mail a form into them. They’ll enter you in the 5 year option in the interim.

It always amazes me how people are so willing to complain but, when you get a little further along in the conversation you find more people than not just never bothered to vote. It’s a civic duty people. You don’t vote, then don’t complain!

This is more about earning the right to complain. It’s about participating in the process. Having a say and telling our leaders the direction you want the country pointed. Go vote!

Face it, your life’s memories sit on a hard drive. Memories tend to elicit emotions that run the gamut – imagine the emotion of losing those memories. I’m instantly mortified. I can see all my memories gone forever. Am I sad? Sure. Mortification turns to panic pretty quick. That pretty much defines the task Data Robotics has indirectly on top of their day job of keeping your data safe. Needless to say, when a person thinks their memories are gone forever, calm and rational are not the emotions at the top of the pecking order.

The situation I describe in the previous paragraph is the predicament I encountered a few weeks back. Fortunately, I utilize more than one method of backup. Doubly fortunate for me that my computing platform of choice (Mac) has a wonderful utility called ‘Time machine’ that does an admirable job. However, while time machine is fine for a quick recovery here and there, it’s not the solution for optimum safety and redundancy.

With backup, the key is redundancy. The drobo makes backup easy. You plug the drobo in to an electrical outlet, plug it into your computer and finally, pop the drives into your drobo. That’s all you do. It takes your data and spreads it over several drives, for redundancy. It also does this automagically. You don’t need intimate knowledge of RAID arrays, or anything technical. It does all the difficult, mundane and boring stuff for you. It makes an incredibly complex and difficult task as easy as turning something on and plugging something in.

Ok, back to things going wrong. In very short order I had three drives go bad and it appeared my drobo was acting weird. I’m writing this article while I await the arrival of my replacement drobo. I wanted to take a few minutes to share a few lessons I learned about this experience:

I’ve been incredibly impressed with the support from the people of Data Robotics. You have real people trying to make a great product, improve the safety of our digital lives and do it with kindness and humility.

Is it Data Robotics fault that hard drives sometimes fail? No, it’s not. They’re taking a bad situation and attempting to make the experience of something that fails into an experience of “we’ve got your back”. How many companies can you say that about?

These are just a few. I’ll most likely add to this post if the coming days. Feel free to add your own.