New Hampshire Real Estate & Consumer Resources

Archive for August, 2006

No, that’s not a line from the latest action-adventure thriller hitting the movie theaters. Actually, I just got a call from Dish Network and it was one of those recorded messages that I hate. I didn’t get upset about this particular call for two reasons.

Firstly, I have been a very happy Dish Network customer for almost 8 years now and I still love my dish.

Secondly, they were not trying to sell me anything so I cannot say that they insulted me by having a machine call me with a sales pitch (like TracFone did!) instead of having a real live person dial me up.

The reason for the call was to offer me the chance to give up on receiving a ‘real’ bill in the mail every month. You know, the kind that is printed on paper and is delivered by a dedicated Postal Service employee right to my mailbox each month.

From what I could gather, the main benefits they offered for agreeing to discontinue my paper bill would be that I could get online and review the last two years of my billing history and do the same thing through Dish Channel 100.

Whoopee. My Dish Network bill is the same every month. Why would I want to look back two years to see my old bill? I cannot think of a reason other than to use the old bills as proof during some kind of dispute or something.

Since I tend to save things like old bills for a while, I am sure I still have my old bills from two years ago anyway and probably even further back than that.

When I heard the recorded message prompt me to ‘Press 1 to continue receiving my paper bill,’ that is exactly what I did.

The reason I want to continue to receive my paper bill is not so much because I like collecting paper. It has more to do with what I’ll get out of an offer like this.

As a the cranky old devil that I am, the first thing that springs to mind is that Dish Network wants to eliminate as much paper billing as possible to save themselves some money. It must be expensive to send out a few million bills every month. It costs money for the paper, the printing and the postage.

I can understand why Dish Network wants to save money. Heck, who doesn’t want to save a few bucks whenever they can?

If Dish Network is successful in talking a significant portion of their customer base into opting out of paper billing it will indeed save them a nice chunk of change.

But what I wonder is the following: Will the price I pay for Dish Network every month go down? Even by a penny or two? I really doubt it. They certainly didn’t say that.

As you can see, I have no real incentive to want to give up on paper bills unless you get into saving trees and that sort of thing. The incentives they offered during the recorded call didn’t really sound to attractive to me. I’ve got all kinds of room to store old paper bills.

If you want me to give up on my paper billing, Dish Network, you are going to have to come up with a better reason. Something like: ‘If you opt out of paper bills, we’ll knock 10 cents of your monthly bill.

Ten cents ain’t a whole lot to be sure, but it is something, and I would probably take them up on that offer. At least they’d be offering me something real.

I just don’t have a burning desire to help Dish Network save money and therefore put more money in the pockets of the top executives while I am left feeling like I have given something up and received nothing in return.

Then again, maybe it’s all because I am just a cranky old devil.

[tags]Dish Network, paper billing[/tags]

I am continually amazed at the number of low-life characters that have crawled out from under their rocks to infest the internet with all manners of schemes and scams. I imagine these must be the types of people that would have been pulling telephone scams on old ladies back in the days before the internet.

Beyond the obvious crooks who are out there sending spam and phishing e-mail messages, there are other lesser-known idiots who are turning automated programs loose on the net in order to spread their garbage as far and wide as they possibly can by taking advantage of sites that have been set up for legitimate purposes.

These automated programs are commonly referred to as ‘spam bots’ and they roam the internet in search of forums and blogs where it is usually possible for almost anyone to post a comment to a blog or a forum discussion.

Since I manage a blog or two and also an active discussion forum, I have had a good deal of exposure to these rogue programs.

The idea behind these spam bots is not primarily intended to place ads in front of humans as much as it is to create links to other web sites. Every link that is found on the net that points to a certain site essentially gives that site a ‘vote’ when the search engines encounter these links. The more links pointing to a site, the better chance that site has to obtain a prominent listing in the search engines.

For example, consider two sites selling Viagra. One site does not use spam bots or any other techniques to generate links on other sites that point back to it. The other site makes use of spam bots to scour the internet and post spam messages in blogs and forums that contain a link back to it.

The site using the spam bots probably has a big advantage over the other site because the search engines have discovered all the links pointing to it from other sites all over the internet, and when someone goes to one of the big search engines and searches for ‘buy Viagra,’ the site with all the incoming links is likely to appear in the search results ahead of the site that has no incoming links.

This is not as straightforward as it sounds since there are many more factors that the search engines use to determine where sites are ranked and they are getting more sophisticated all the time.

Still, incoming links remain a powerful technique to boost a site’s rankings in the search engines, and the fact that there are still an endless stream of spam bots visiting my sites on a regular basis proves that beyond a doubt.

Fortunately for those of us that manage web sites, there are a variety of very effective tools available to combat spam bots.

Just about everyone has probably run into a ‘captcha’ form on a page at one time or another. This is one of those sections of a web site where you have to type in a series of numbers, letters or some other code before you are allowed to make a purchase, post on a blog or forum or use some other service available on a web site.

Since spam bots cannot read these codes due to the fact that they are presented as part of a graphical image, the spammers are not able to program their bots to successfully enter the required codes and the spam bot is stopped in its tracks when it encounters a captcha. And that’s a very good thing.

I do not use captcha forms on any of my sites and have instead decided to use some of the other tools that are generously developed by programmers and provided at no cost to anyone who cares to make use of them in the fight against spam.

On this blog I use a very simple and effective option that is provided by the program that controls the blog which does not allow any comments to be posted to the blog unless I approve them first.

When someone posts a comment here, the comments is held until I have reviewed it and determined that it is not spam.

This option can still present a problem since a large volume of spam comments will need to be reviewed one at a time to determine if they are legitimate, and that can take up a web site operator’s time.

Once again, another program comes to the rescue and identifies about 99% of spam that has been posted by spam bots and prevents it from ever making it to the list of posts waiting for approval. It holds them in a special area where I can review them at my leisure with a quick scan and delete them all with a single mouse click.

The combination of these two spam-fighting tools make the control of spam on my blogs almost effortless. I use similar tools on the discussion forum I manage with good results there as well, although a little more work is involved with an active forum.

What kind of crap are these spam bots attempting to spread all over the internet? Well, I will include some of it here just for your amusement. It is included below as a image which the search engines will not be able to read. I certainly don’t want them picking up links to these sites or associating any of this trash with my site.

Here is a very small sample of the trash that these spam bots have attempted to post right here on this very blog:

As you can see, one of the latest trends I have noticed lately is that they are using portions of legitimate news stories and including their links as part of the story. I am not sure if this is an effort to trick anti-spam programs or web site operators who the spammers presume are scanning through a lot of content trying to identify obvious spam content.

For the time being, the tools that are available have reduced the spam problem to a very easily manageable level for me. I know there are many different sites with many different requirements who may still have to devote more time to the fight against spam, but I am sure these tools help a great deal.

There are countless other nasty things going on around the net and I hope to devote some time to discussing some of them in the future.

[tags]spam bots[/tags]

Before I get into this I’d like to make something clear. Not every real estate agent is a Realtor. In other words, ‘Realtor’ is not a job description like ‘real estate agent’ is.

A Realtor is a real estate agent (or broker) that is a member of the National Association of Realtors (NAR). The association bestows the name ‘Realtor’ on real estate agents that are granted membership into the association and, more importantly, are willing to pony up the annual dues that allow them to wear a shiny little pin with an ‘R’ on it and call themselves Realtors.

To answer the question in the title of this post, namely: Is your agent a Realtor and should you care? The short answer in my opinion is no, you should not care.

The most important things you should concern yourself with when seeking a real estate agent are things like whether or not you feel that the agent is knowledgeable, experienced and most importantly, trustworthy.

There are a lot of real estate agents out there, so be sure you take the time to pick one you genuinely like and that you feel is an honest and trustworthy person. Don’t sign any papers until you are sure you want to work with an agent.

If you talk to an agent you are not comfortable with, simply move on and find another one. Like I said, there are many to choose from so don’t settle on someone you are not completely comfortable with.

Not all good, trustworthy agents are Realtors and not all Realtors are good, trustworthy agents. Despite what those clever Realtor commercials on TV would have you believe.

Those commercials make is look as if every Realtor on Earth has been sent down from the heavens as a gift to all those seeking to sell or purchase real estate.

Since I was once an actual, bona fide Realtor myself, I can speak from a bit of experience on this subject.

While I was attending my real estate licensing classes here in New Hampshire, there was a fellow in our class who had been working as a real estate agent for a while and was in the class just to pick up the additional classroom time he needed to take the broker’s exam.

One day the subject of Realtors came up and this fellow remarked that the National Association of Realtors was basically just the real estate agent’s union. I’d be hard pressed to think of a better description of the organization myself.

After being hired by the real estate office I worked in, I was told that I had to join NAR. No, I did not have a choice. If I wanted to work in that office, I had to join and come up with the dues, which were around $400 a year at that time, as I recall. That was the policy of the company I was working for at the time. No NAR membership meant no job with that company.

What, you might ask, does the NAR actually do? Well, as they are so fond of informing the public about, they have developed a code of ethics that all members are sworn to abide by. They do a lot more than that, but that’s their big selling point that they want to get out there in front of the real estate buying (and selling) public.

Before you start picturing intensive classroom training for weeks, or even days, which instills a deep sense of responsibility and ethics in all the attendees, let me fill you in on exactly how it all played out.

I was required to attend approximately four gatherings of other new applicants at various locations around the state. If memory serves me correctly, the lengthiest of these gatherings lasted about four hours ‘ give or take an hour or so.

I will say that a lot if the information and material that was presented at these gatherings was indeed very good and useful information for new agents. All the advice and guidance given was helpful to me and I was happy to have had the opportunity to receive it.

The final gathering was where the actual swearing in took place. The location was a very nice country club in Manchester where all of the new members were provided with a breakfast buffet (which was actually quite good) to enjoy while we listened to the local NAR luminaries drone on about how wonderful the association is.

I must admit to feeling a bit silly and perhaps rather like a Boy Scout toward the end of the event when all of us newbies were directed to stand up at the front of the room and recite (in unison) the association’s pledge (or whatever they call it) with right hand raised. I half expected a secret passage to open behind the fireplace for the purpose of granting access to the Bat Cave for the assembled newly-minted Realtors.

Beyond feeling a bit ridiculous, I felt that the stated goals of the association were worthy ones and that I would be a better real estate agent as a result of my NAR membership.

The gleam of a new penny will, of course, diminish with time. And being a bit of a cynic at heart (can you tell?), my opinion of the association evolved over time. Accelerated perhaps just a bit each time I found myself in receipt of a billing notice for dues.

Beyond their efforts to assure that their members are not screwing the public over (how anyone could, while wearing the coveted ‘R’ pin is beyond me!) lies the primary reason for the associations existence.

Money, of course. How could you imagine otherwise?

That’s a bit simplistic perhaps. The money that is extracted from their willing (and perhaps no-so-willing) members is used in great quantities for political lobbying purposes. Another great surprise!

Just like any other association, they are most interested in furthering the causes of their industry. And you can be sure there is no shortage of bottom-feeding, low-life politicians in Washington and elsewhere with palms extended and a receptive ear for the taking.

Favorable legislative outcomes mean more money for the real estate industry just as they do for any other industry. It’s all about the money, as it nearly always is.

Another huge portion of the associations coffers are utilized for the public relations campaigns. Among them, the commercial advertisements you may have seen on television that encourage you to be sure that your agent is a Realtor.

More customers asking if their agent is a Realtor means more Realtors, which means more money for NAR, which means more money for legislative initiatives, which means more money for the real estate industry. See how simple it all is?

The guy in my real estate licensing course was right on the money, so to speak. NAR’s goals and actions are hardly different than that of any other labor union.

This is not intended to be a hatchet job on NAR. After all, as I pointed out, they are hardly any different from the steel workers union, electricians union or any other union whose main goal is to protect their industry.

They also do actually provide a ton of useful information and resources for their members, including a very extensive web site. They also have another nice web site that lists real estate for sale all over the country for anyone to utilize.

My real motivation for writing this is because I hate to think of some hard-working and honest real estate agent who is not a Realtor losing out on some business because a potential customer ended up with the impression that their agent just had to be a Realtor.

I can easily understand why some agents might want to reject the ‘party line’ and keep the $400 (or whatever it is these days) that would otherwise go into the NAR coffers each year. Maybe they just don’t like unions.

The bottom line is this: If you find and agent you like and feel that you can trust, don’t give the question about whether or not they are a Realtor a second thought.

[tags]realtor, national association of realtors, real estate, agent[/tags]

No, I’m not talking about sites that feature pornography or other subjects that may be considered offensive to large segments of the population. Although the creators of these sites often figure very prominently in the schemes I will be talking about.

Although some old-time internet purists probably still lament any commercialization of the internet whatsoever, I do not feel that way at all. That is despite the fact that I am somewhat of an old-timer myself, in the sense that I was using the internet back in the early 1980′s due to my former occupation at a technology company.

In fact, I love the convenience of using the internet to make purchases and research products and services I am considering. I even run an internet business or two myself and enjoy it more than any other job I have ever had.

What I am talking about are the low-life individuals out there that take commercialization of the internet to new levels. And I’m not just talking about spam here (more on that later).

Just about everyone with an e-mail address is well aware of the spam problem. Most of the greed-crazed spammers out there are sending millions of spam messages and sending it to literally every e-mail address they can get their hands on.

If you have ever bought anything as the result of a spam message that you received out of the blue from someone you did not know and had never heard of, you are not going to like what I have to say next.

Spammers make their money because of one time-tested and utterly reliable human trait: Gullibility. Yes, that is the single, limitless fuel that powers the mighty spam machine.

Spammers send millions of spam messages because the response they receive is so poor in terms of what might be expected for a legitimate direct marketing campaign. But with millions of spam messages being sent, even a tiny percentage of recipients who actually make a purchase make for a nice profit.

Sending spam does not involve printing, envelope stuffing and postage fees. That means it can be very cheap to send out millions of spam messages, and that is why it is well worth the spammer’s effort to come up with a brief spam e-mail message and simply instruct a computer to send it out to a few million e-mail addresses.

Among these millions of e-mail recipients are enough gullible individuals that will actually send money to the spammers for whatever it is they are selling.

That is why spam continues to be a problem. If nobody was gullible enough to send spammers money in response to their lame offers, spam would come to an end.

If you have actually ever purchased anything in response to a spam message you have received, please do the rest of us a favor by never doing it again. Millions of e-mail users will thank you.

Is it just me? Am I the only one around that is just completely and totally fed up with our global-all-things-to-all-people-call-our-overseas-call-center-and-everything-will-be-just-peachy corporate customer service push-button society?

You’d think that with all the technology at our disposal and all the advancements made in recent decades, that we’d be getting the best-ever service from companies we decide to do business with.

I don’t know about you, but I find the exact opposite to be true, and the customer service experiences I have on a continuing basis just plain suck. It is a genuine challenge for me to find someone to help me that it not an idiot when I find myself in need of help with a product or service I have paid for.

That’s not to say that I am laying all the blame at the feet of the front-line workers out there who are answering the phones. There are some real bonehead decisions being made at the corporate levels as well, and since the higher-ups do the hiring, create the policies and make the big decisions, I single them out as the most prominent idiots.

You may have seen my earlier post regarding TracFone and the problem I encountered due to the way they track (or, more accurately, fail to track) the airtime customers use.

Well, I just had another enormously satisfying experience as a TracFone customer that I can’t wait to share with you!

Only a few moments ago, my telephone rang. Caller ID did not display a name but did display an 800 number, which always sends up red flags as a warning that this could be a telemarketing call.

After saying ‘hello’ about 5 times and preparing to hang up the phone, I finally heard something. It was TracFone with a recorded telemarketing message for one of their lame promotions.

Oh sure, I’ll buy another 400 minutes and hope my phone doesn’t die so you can tell me that you can only give me 150 minutes on my replacement phone because your service is not capable of tracking how many minutes I actually used. Yeah, right.

What TracFone does not realize is that there is one thing I hate worse than spam ‘ and believe me I hate spam about as much as you can possibly imagine ‘ and that one thing is telemarketing! And I hate recorded telemarketing calls most of all!

After all, a recorded telemarketing call is like saying: ‘Hell, we don’t value you enough to actually have a real, live person call you on the phone, so we’ll make a recording and stick it in a machine that just dials all of our customers so we can convince them to purchase more airtime minutes that we are unable to track, so we hope your phone does not break anytime soon.’

So they ring my telephone which essentially demands my immediate action and attention so I can hear a lame telemarketing pitch? They don’t want to pay a real person to call me on the phone because it’s too expensive, so they let a machine do it and apparently don’t care about interrupting whatever I happen to be doing at the time?

You would think that my experience with their sending spam to my phone in the form of text messages and my response to that would provide them with a hint that I am not the kind of person who appreciates sales pitches and that it may have occurred to them to take my name off the telemarketing list. Apparently not. See what I mean about lousy customer service these days?

I am happy to say that putting my telephone number on the ‘Do Not Call’ list has just about eliminated telemarketing calls to my home entirely. It is a very rare event around here these days.

Alas, as the ‘Do Not Call’ list does not apply to companies that you have a ‘relationship’ with, they can still call. Presumably, until you tell them to stop, which is what my recent e-mail message to them just advised them to do. Among other things.

My ‘relationship’ with them, however, is about two months from coming to an end. When the current airtime minutes on my phone expire towards the end of September, I intend to fetch the biggest, heaviest hammer I can locate on my workbench and smash my TracFone to bits with one mighty blow.

Boy, is that ever going to feel good. Come to think of it, I may grab my video camera and record the event and post it here on the site for the amusement of my visitors.

I guess that pretty much sums up my feelings about TracFone and their service, don’t you think?

[tags]tracfone, pre-paid wireless[/tags]

This is the first time I have posted anything about retirement communities here, but my friend Dave Nelson in Minnesota has decided to turn his dream of a floating community into a reality.

Although not strictly a retirement community, it is anticipated that a large percentage of residents will be retired.

It is such a cool idea that I decided to devote a page on my web site to the project.

Check it out here.

[tags]retirement communities, floating community, river cities condominiums[/tags]