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How to Complain – The Squeaky Wheel Gets the Grease

Finance

A U.S. riverboat deploying napalm during the V...
Image via Wikipedia

Have you ever been screwed by a company?  Have they sent you the wrong item, or an empty box, or left your order backordered for so long that you can’t even dispute it with your credit card company any more?

What can you do?

I know you’ve heard the phrase, “The squeaky wheel gets the grease.”  That means, he whines loudest, gets the most.  The thing is, you have to whine effectively, or you’ll just get round-filed.

Targeting Subsystems On

Who you complain to matters more than what you complain about.  The clerk at your local big-box retailer isn’t going to refund your online purchase.  You need to complain to someone who can make a decision to help you.   First, find the customer service email address.   Next, if you are complaining about a recurring service, find the retention department’s email address.  Finally, find the email address for absolutely everybody Vice-President or above for that company, including the board of directors.   Go to their website, find the email for some PR drone and figure out the format.  First.Last@Company.com or FirstInitial.LastName@Company.com or whatever.   Look up the company in Google Finance and translate everyone’s name into the email format.   You might not have the perfect list, but it should be close.

Target Locked On

Now that you know who you are about to blast, what are you going to say?   A few things to include are:

  • Your contact information.   If they can’t get back to you, they can’t make it up to you.
  • Details of the problem.  Include the date of purchase, date of delivery, and a detailed description of what actually went wrong.
  • Scanned copies of receipts.
  • Any names of anybody you’ve had to deal with, either in the original transaction or when the problem occurred, if you have the names.

Engage!

What to say, what to say?

  • Don’t be abusive.  It’s okay to be angry, and it’s okay to let them know your are angry, but swearing or threatening their lives will–at best–only get you ignored.  Worst case, threats are illegal and they can pass your email along to the police.
  • Stay brief.   It doesn’t matter that your daddy took you to Starbucks to use their free wi-fi when you were just three years old.   Don’t talk about that time the aliens abducted you or how sad you are that they never call like they promised they would.   Keep to the point.   “This is who I am.  This is what happened.  This is what I want you to do about it.”

Send that sucker out.   If you feeling particularly perturbed, send a CC to your state’s Attorney General and any possibly related regulatory agencies.   I tend to save this step for round 2.

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Living the XBox Life on an Atari Income

Finance

Nintendo GameCube Silver.
Image via Wikipedia

At some point, everyone has “champagne wishes and caviar dreams.” Over the last 25 years, we’ve even been peddled the “you can have it all” myth from every direction, including the media and the government.

The truth is simple: you cannot have it all.  You can have anything, but you can’t have everything.  In order to have one thing, you have to give up something else.  It’s a law of nature.   If you have $5, you can either get a burger or an overpriced cup of coffee, but not both.

“But wait!” you shout, rudely interrupting the narrator, “I have a credit card. I can have both!”

Wrong.

And stop interrupting me.

If you have $5 and borrow $5 to get some coffee to go with your burger, you will eventually have to pay that money back with interest.  You will have to give up a future-burger AND a flavor shot in your overpriced coffee.

Everything you buy needs to be paid for, some day.

If you have an Atari income, but insist on living the XBox life, you will wake up one day, buried in bills, forced to live the Commodore-64 life out of sheer desperation.

There is a solution.

Don’t get all XBox-y until you are making XBox money. That way, you’ll never have to worry about going broke tomorrow paying for the fun you had yesterday.

Even when you have an XBox income, ideally you’ll restrict yourself to living a Gamecube life, so you’ll be able to put some money aside to support future-you instead of constantly having to worry about your next paycheck.

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Make a Budget

Finance

DSC02103
Image by r.lovewell via Flickr

In the past, I’ve gone through a detailed series of budget lessons demonstrating how to make a budget and showing my personal budget spreadsheet template.  If you weren’t here to see them develop, you probably haven’t seen them at all.    I’ve never built an actual index for those posts.

This is the master index of my budget planning resources.  As I develop more, this will grow.

Budget Lesson #1 – In this lesson, I go over how we handle discretionary income and I explain our modified envelope system.   The discretionary budget contains things like our grocery bill, or the clothes we buy.  We have near-total discretion over what is purchased, hence the name.

Budget Lesson #2 – Lesson #2 contains the details of our monthly bills.  These are the ones that are consistent, predictable, and actually due each month.  Most people take these for granted as the bills they have to pay, but it’s not true.   You can get almost all of your regular bills reduced just by asking.   You would also be surprised what you can do without, when properly motivated.

Budget Lesson #3 – This is where I explain how we deal with the non-monthly bills.  That is, the bills that have to be paid, but are not due on a monthly basis.  I also share the personal budget spreadsheet template I developed.   I am working on a few sample templates to match various imaginary scenarios.  If you’d like to be an anonymous case study, and get free help setting up a budget, let me know, please.

Budget Lesson #4 – In this lesson, I describe our “set-aside” funds for things that will need to be paid eventually, but not on a set schedule.  Sometimes, they are never actually due.   We set aside money for the parties we throw, for car repairs and for a number of other things.  A few of these items are outright optional, but they are part of what makes life fun.  You can’t make a budget without including some of the extras.

Budget Lesson #5 – This is the companion piece to lesson 2.   Learn how I’ve reduced–or attempted to reduce–each of these bills.   For the better part of two years, I called Dish Network every few months to ask for a discount.  For almost 2 years, it was granted.  Then one, day, they told me they were putting a note on our account to keep us from getting any more discounts, so I canceled.   100% discounts help us save more.

Budget Lesson #6 – This is the reduction companion to lesson 3.  These bills are harder to reduce.  Have you ever successfully gotten your property taxes lowered?

Budget Lesson #7 – This is the reduction companion to lesson 4.  Notice a pattern, yet?

Budget Lesson #8 – Here, completely out of order, is the reduction companion to lesson 1.   Watch as I magically reduce–or rationalize–our discretionary budget.

So, dear readers, what part of budgeting should I address next?

Inadvertent BOGO

Finance

I refuse to buy my kid more expensive video game systems.    He’s got a friend who’s got one of each, going back 15 years.

This is a picture of an XBOX, and its controller.
Image via Wikipedia

We don’t do that, so he’s spent the last 6 months saving to buy his own XBox 360.  After his birthday this month, he finally had enough, so we ordered it a few days ago.

Wednesday was the Great Unboxing.

I was making dinner in the kitchen while the punk and his friend unpacked the box from Amazon.

The squeals were normal.   The shouts of “Dad, why did you buy two XBoxes?” were a surprise.

Two?

No.

Actually, yes.   There were two of the things in the box.   Did I order two?  Did I accidentally pay for two?

Nope.  The packing slip only listed one, my order history only showed one, and my credit card was only charged for one.

Yet, there were two in the box.  Free XBox! Woot!

That means an XBox in the bedroom for Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption, and an XBox in the basement for Madden and Star Wars.    No fighting.  No turns to take.   And it didn’t cost us an extra $200.

That’s all win.

If there’s nothing on the packing slip, then Amazon didn’t know I had it.  Even if they did, I didn’t do anything to make them send it.  There was no fraud.  Legally, I had no obligation of any kind to do anything other than enjoy my new prize.

Lots of win.

The kids were excited.  Everyone gets a turn.  Multiplayer games.

The parents were excited.  We get a turn.  M-rated games.

So much freaking win in that box.

But….

There’s always a but.

We didn’t order it.  We didn’t pay for it.  It wasn’t ours.

A friend told me to sell it.  She knows how hard we’re working to pay off debt.

A coworker said, “Screw them.  They’re just a big corporation who’d be happy to screw you first.”

But it wasn’t ours.

I spent 12 hours trying to rationalize a way to keep it that wouldn’t be unethical, make me feel guilty, or–most important–send a horrible message to my kids.

I couldn’t do it.

It wasn’t ours.

I had a talk with my son.   It was his money that got this little prize into our house, after all.    He wanted to keep it, naturally.  He’s got a lot to learn about persuasion.   He acknowledged that sending it back was the right thing to do.   He agreed that it would suck if the roles were reversed.  His only argument in favor of keeping it was “I want it.”

Even he admitted that was completely lame.

It’s going back.  I let him think that was his decision.

I talked to Amazon.  They apologized for the inconvenience and gave me a UPS label to send it back at no cost.   It didn’t cover pickup, but I’ve got a drop box in my office building, so I can deal with that.

My wife was pissed.   The customer service rep never bothered to say thank you.   She called Amazon to complain to a manager.  After reminding him that we had no duty to return the free XBox, he gave us a $25 gift card to say thank you.

I love my wife.

My son, for deciding to to the right thing, gets to spend the gift card.   My wife, for being awesome, gets to be with me.  I miss my free XBox.

What would you do?  Would you keep the free XBox, sell it, or send it back?

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Debt Burnout

Finance

Burnout.
Image by LunaDiRimmel via Flickr

You’ve got a budget.  You’ve got a debt repayment plan.  You’ve been paying off your debt.  You’ve even paid off a few of your smaller debts.  Now you’re staring down the barrel of your big debts: your mortgage, a $30,000 credit card, maybe a car payment.  You’re looking at months of payments with no quick wins; no more watching your debts die every few months.  You’re in the middle of a very long slog.

All of the easy milestones have been reached and the next one is a year or more away.  This is when debt repayment gets hard.  How can you avoid getting burnt out doing the same thing, month after month, with no major visible progress?

1.  Keep your eye on the prize. Try focusing on the end result, while ignoring the time it takes to get there.  Do you have a reward planned for when you pay off your debt?  If not, consider that to be your new shining goal-post.  My wife and I plan on taking an Alaskan cruise when our debt is repaid.

2.  Ignore the prize. If #1 doesn’t work for you, try focusing on just the current month’s progress.  How much did you pay off this month?  Was it more than last month?

3.  Make micro-goals. Try breaking the long slog into bite-sized pieces.  How fast can you pay off the next $1000?  How many months will it take to pay off that TV you bought last year?  Sometimes, meeting a smaller goal can make the whole works feel like it’s going by faster.

4.  Take a snowball vacation. For just one month, take every dollar you would normally apply to your debt–except your required payments–and have some fun with it.  Take a weekend trip, have a fancy dinner, or pick up that video game system you’ve been eying.  Something.  Anything to take your mind off of your repayment plan for a while.   Be careful not to make this a habit or you will never get out of debt.

5.  Start a blog to share your pain.

A debt snowball is a long, intense process.  If you’re not careful, you can burn out and let the whole thing collapse.  How do you avoid burnout?

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Saturday Roundup

Life

I’ve spend the last 10 days at home with my two youngest kids.   It’s been a lot of fun.   It’s amazing watching them interact with each other and seeing how their imaginations works.   It’s also been a helpful reminder that, if I don’t turn on the TV, they will happily find something else to do.

30 Day Project Update

This month, I am trying to establish the Slow Carb Diet as a habit.   At the end of the month, I’ll see what the results were and decide if it’s worth continuing.   For those who don’t know, the Slow Carb Diet involves cutting out potatoes, rice, flour, sugar, and dairy in all their forms.   My meals consist of 40% proteins, 30% vegetables, and 30% legumes(beans or lentils).    There is no calorie counting, just some specific rules, accompanied by a timed supplement regimen and some timed exercises to manipulate my metabolism.   The supplements are NOT effedrin-based diet pills, or, in fact, uppers of any kind.  There is also a weekly cheat day, to cut the impulse to cheat and to avoid letting my body go into famine mode.

I’m measuring two metrics, my weight and the total inches of my belly, waist, biceps, and thighs.   Between the two, I should have an accurate assessment of my progress.

Weight: I have lost 11 pounds since January 2nd.  This is crazy.  At least part of this has to be due to the natural swing of up to 5 pounds from day to day, and part of it is due to the fact that I was wearing jeans when I weighed in the first time and cotton pajamas this morning.  From now on, this is going to be the first thing I do on Saturday mornings, so everything is as consistent as possible.  Another factor is that I’ve cut most of the crap out of my diet for a week.  My body has been flushing garbage.  But dang!  11 pounds in a week.  I’m a bit excited.

Total Inches: I have lost 5.5 inches in the same time frame.  This is proof that it’s not just water that I lost, which is where first, dramatic losses usually originate in a diet.

The loss seems a little bit nuts.   Here’s hoping it stays consistent.

Best Posts

Your retirement account shouldn’t be an optional investment.   Do you know how to maximize retirement savings?

I’m a big fan of making extra money.   Money Crashers lists 6 sites to help you rake in the cash, without needing any special skills.

Unclutterer is giving away three Fujitsu Scansnaps.   I want one of these is a way that isn’t quite right.

I’ve been moving to LED lights instead of CFLs for a few years.  CFLs make lousy security lights in Minnesota in the winter.  They take 5 minutes to get to full brightness when it’s cold.  LEDs last forever.

LRN Timewarp

This is where I review the posts I wrote one year ago.

I posted about the difference between bribes and rewards and the problems inherent in trying to buy good behavior.

Lesson 2 of my budget series went live, detailing my monthly bills.

We made some changes to our budget plans that haven’t worked very well.   Over the course of the last year, every one of these ideas has either been partially or totally abandoned, but it’s working for us.

Carnivals I’ve Rocked

How to Complain – The Squeaky Wheel Gets the Grease was included in the Carnival of Personal Finance.

3 Things You Need to Know About Homeowner’s Insurance was included in the Festival of Frugality.

Thank you! If I missed anyone, please let me know.

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That’s all for today.   Have a great weekend!