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The Library vs Amazon
A few weeks ago, I discovered the queue at my public library’s website. The process is simple: Select your books, wait a few days, then pick them up. They are available from any library in the county, delivered to my local library. That’s awesome. Much more convenient-and cheaper-than Amazon
So I moved a couple of pages of my Amazon wish-list into the library’s queue.
I must not have been thinking, because two days later, I got an email telling me that 19 books were ready to be picked up and 10 more were in transit.
In this county, each checkout is good for 21 days. For items that don’t have a waiting list, you can reserve 3 times. That’s 12 weeks for 29 books. Hopefully, I’m up to the challenge. Please keep in mind, I’m a father of three, two of whom are in diapers, and I’m married, and I have a full time job.
I have frugally blown every second of spare time for months.
Update: This was another post written in advance. When all of the books came in, I suspended my request list. Little did I realize, the suspension cancels itself after 30 days. That was 30 more books. Whee!
Buying on Craigslist
On Friday, I talked about selling safely on Craigslist. Today, I’m going to talk about buying safely and getting a good deal.
I love Craiglist. It’s safe to say I’m a fan. We’ve refurnished most of our house for 10-15% of retail by being patient and persistent there. We scored a $1200 oak entertainment center for $200, a beautiful oak headboard/storage thingy for $150, a nice china cabinet for $70 and much, much more. There are a lot of deals to be had, but you have to be careful.
I never buy anything without either a picture or a model number. Stock photos do not count. I want to see an actual picture of the actual item. With electronics, I want the model number so I can tell exactly what features it has. If I can’t positively identify the item, the seller gets an email. If I don’t know what it is, I’m not interested.
Once I have the item identified, it’s time to hit Amazon and Google for a quick price check. Acceptable prices vary, but I’m generally looking for 25% of retail for items that aren’t collectible or antique.
While it’s not a common occurrence for the things I buy, some sellers do lie. The technical term for this is “fraud”. Fraudulent sellers needs to be kicked in the shins. Before I go to actually see an item, I do enough research that I will hopefully be able to pick out a fraud or forgery. The easiest way to tell if the backstory is a lie? If you are given a backstory, it’s probably a lie. Never assume that the seller is telling the truth about the little old lady who only drove her TiVo to church on Thursdays in the summer and never went above channel 10. The story is always a lie. Check the condition yourself. Check the value yourself. If you can’t verify it, it isn’t true.
If you are buying tickets or documents, know what you are looking for to tell if it is a forgery. If you can’t tell, ask the seller to meet with someone you trust who can verify it. Ticketmaster tickets are laminated, so they glare slightly in the light. If you hold the tickets up to a strong light, the white parts will glow blue. Finally, if the ticket looks like it was printed at home, don’t trust it.
[ad name=”inlineleft”]A few months ago, a local couple was trying to buy a car on Craigslist. When they met the buyer, he took their cash and their car and left them on the sidewalk in an unfamiliar neighborhood. The moral of the story? Ride the bus. That, and always meet in a public, well-traveled spot.
If the seller suggest escrow, he’s probably actually the deposed ruler of Nigeria in need of someone to help him get his fortune safely out of the country. You should immediately give him your name, address, social security number, PIN, place of business, all of your bank accounts, and the kidneys of your first-born. He’ll hook you up. Really.
Don’t do that. On the internet, escrow=fraud, almost every time.
Rental fraud is an issue I have absolutely no experience with, but it’s common in places with a competitive housing market. The felonious candidates for extremely prejudiced termination will scan the real estate listings, and post some on Craigslist as a rental unit with a low-ball price. People get excited for the extreme deal, shut off their critical thinking skills, and hand their nest-egg over to someone they’ve never met so they can keep the scam from being snatched up by some sucker who’s just a little bit slower at dumping his wallet into a crowded room on con-artists. It’s a big decision, so take the time to research it and do it right. Find the ownership records and the owner. If you’re buying, get an actual realtor to help you. They are worth the money.
Tips for Buying Safely on Craigslist
Don’t wire money. Ever. If someone suggests that for an internet sale, ask for their address and send a leg-breaker their way. They are trying to steal from you.
Trust your gut. If something smells fishy, it probably is. Walk away.
Don’t ever give out personal information. Nevernevernever. Not your address, not your favorite flavor of chewing-cud, nothing. Keep it private.[ad name=”inlineright”]
Meet in a public place. Criminals tend to dislike witnesses, so go somewhere that has them by the score.
Bring a friend. I may be a bit of a chauvinist or over-protective, but my wife doesn’t bring money to go meet strangers on the internet without me. If your local laws allow it, consider bringing some form of protection with you.
Craigslist can save you a ton of money, but it brings some risk with it. Keep yourself safe.
Reputation Isn’t Everything
- Image by Getty Images via @daylife
I’m a code monkey by trade. Software development pays my mortgage.
I’m also–and separately–a small business owner and have been for years. I’ve actually got several side-hustles going, but only one of them is formal, organized, and incorporated as an LLC. A few years ago, a friend and I decided to go into business together, got certified by the state and start making some extra money.
I have recently discovered that two of the government agencies related to our business have been referring students to us. When our customers call the certifying organization, they are–at least some of the time–recommending us over nearly 200 of our competitors. You can’t buy that kind of marketing. At least, I hope you can’t.
How did that happen? How did two faceless bureaucracies decide that we were the company to recommend?
People talk. Over the last few years, we have worked to make sure people want to say nice things about us. What did we do?
1. We never lie. Our business is training. If one of our students asks a question I can’t answer, I admit it and promise to find the answer. Then, after class, I find the answer and email it to everyone.
2. We are reliable. If we schedule a class and just one person shows up, we hold the class. We have had classes with two instructors and one student. Our hourly rate sucked those days, but the students loved the attention and sent us business afterward. I’d never cancel if even one person is planning to be there.
3. We give it away. We give a lot away. If our customers have questions before or after class, we answer them. I spend time on related forums answering questions. Veterans take our class at cost. I try to give away at least as much value as I get paid for.
Now, this sounds like a sales page, but it’s not. I’m not mentioning the name of my company or even the industry, just so nobody thinks I’m trying to drum up business.
We have dropped a crazy amount of time and effort into building our reputation. With a firm foundation of knowledge and the 3 items I mentioned above, a good reputation is easy to build. A bad reputation is even easier. It’s been said that a happy customer will tell 1 person about his experience, while an unhappy customer will tell 100. Repairing the damage from the unhappy customer is much more expensive than just doing it right the first time.
Building a good reputation is absolutely critical for a successful business. Be ethical, honest, and helpful. Always be there when you say you will be, and try to give away as much as possible without actually hurting yourself. People will talk, so don’t give them a chance to say bad things without being liars themselves.
Reputation isn’t everything. You also need knowledge, marketing, and a product. Without a good reputation, however, the rest doesn’t matter.
Lost Wallet: What to Do Before It’s Gone
I’ve never been mugged. Hopefully, fate has decided that I never will be. Given my habits, it is far more likely that my money clip will fall out of my wallet without me noticing.
That’s a significant piece of my life. That would mean I lost my driver’s license, my debit card, my business credit card, my insurance cards, my carry permit, and the only credit card I carry.
What happens when you lose your wallet? You go to the DMV and get your driver’s license replaced. You call your credit card companies and ask them to invalidate your credit card numbers and send you new cards. You write off the missing cash and hope you don’t need the business cards that you tucked in behind the photo of your great-grand-uncle’s neighbor’s cousin’s mistress’s puppy.
How do you reach your credit card company? You take the card out of your wallet, flip it over, and call the number on the back. But you lost your wallet? What now?
Do you have every statement, that comes with the phone numbers you need to call? I don’t. At this moment, I do not have the phone number for the bank that issues the debit card for my Health Savings Account. I don’t actually know who issued the card. I don’t even know who I would call to report the card missing.
How do you prepare for that? What can you do do make your life much less miserable when your wallet walks aways with a pickpocket, or falls out of your pocket while you’re tooling down the highway on the back of a motorcycle doing 100 miles per hour, dodging the police and winking at the innocent passerby rocking out to really bad back-room country western music in a late model orange convertible? (That’s probably just me.)
How would you prepare for a lost wallet?
There is an 6 step solution to remove all of the worry about someone finding your wallet and using your credit card to fund a Russian adult chat membership, the only site where basement-dwelling losers can talk to someone pretending to be the cooperative mail-order bride they are about to order.
- Take everything that matters out of your wallet.
- Find a copy machine or a scanner.
- Put everything from your wallet on the scanner.
- Scan it.
- Flip the cards over and scan again.
- Either print the scan and put it in a fire-proof safe, or encrypt it and email it to someone you trust who does NOT live in the same house you do. If your house burns down, you want to have access to the files.
Depending on the number of things you keep in your wallet, you might have to repeat the steps a few times to get it all copied. You definitely want to copy both sides, so you can have the card numbers and the phone numbers saved.
Now, if you lose your wallet, you have all of the information you need to deal with the problem and get those cards cancelled.
How do you track your cards and contact information?
Nigerian Phishing Scams
phish·ing/ˈfiSHiNG/
Noun: The fraudulent practice of sending e-mails purporting to be from legitimate companies in order to induce individuals to reveal personal information, such as credit-card numbers, online.
Have you ever gotten an email from someone claiming to be a Nigerian prince trying to smuggle money out of the country, or the administrator of the South Sudanese lottery commission?
The emails tend to be similar. You’ve won the lottery, but need to pay the transfer fee and applicable taxes before the money can be sent, and by the way, they need your checking account information to transfer the money out of your account. Or, the elderly wife of the Reverend Saint Whateverhisnameis has the entireGDPof some small African country in her bank account that her dear, departed husband stole honestly, and she needs a trustworthy soul in the States to accept the transfer and your reputation proceeds you.
Yeah, people still fall for it. It’s called Financial Darwinism. Only the strong shall retire.
Yesterday(as of this writing, not as of your reading), I got my first-ever phishing phone call.
The conversation went something like this:
Worthless scum scammer: Hello, you’re schedule to receive a delivery at10:30 this morning and I need to verify your information.
Me: What delivery?
WSS: Is this Linda, L-I-N-D-A?
Me: Yes. (Please note, I am very much a guy and clearly sound like it.)
WSS: You buy international. I’m scheduling delivery. Are you at (lists house number correctly, but no street or city).
Me: What’s getting delivered?
WSS: A brand new Mercedes.
At this point, I wanted to play, but I had to get to work, so I hung up.
Worried that I may have made the wrong decision, I called my wife to see if she made a side trip to buy a luxury car while she was running errands last week, but she said she didn’t. I’m not sure I believe her. I think that it may have just slipped her mind.
It’s worrisome that some scammer call-center in Nigeria is buying lists of potential marks in theUS and calling them. I much prefer my scammers to send emails.
Have you ever gotten a 419 phone call?
