You Know I Don’t Normally Promote But…
By Sean | November 19, 2011
Hi Guys. Look through all my posts. I’ve never promoted a commercial product on my site. But if you see this tonight there is only a few hours left to get in on it. However I’ve been an owner of this membership for years and it has changed my life for the better. Here is the link http://bit.ly/tZfD5G and apologies to all who are disappointed that I’d promote a commercial product. Thing is I owe it to those who could benefit the way I have.
http://bit.ly/tZfD5G
Topics: Good Products, Income | No Comments »
Harassed by telemarketing — CTI Group in Orange County?
By Sean | August 24, 2011
To be permanently removed from their calling list contact them at: CTI, a division of VICTORY TRADING, located at 3857 Birch Street, Newport Beach, CA 92660 phone 323-348-4766, General Manager Mark Bishop.
I had a hard time tracking down the company that owns them. They are notorious for telemarketing aggressively to people to invest in their trading schemes. Usually it’s commodities but more recently robotic S&P systems, and so on.
Too Many Unpleasant Calls
I’ve been inundated with calls from them for years — repeatedly asking their reps to take me off of their calling list. I’ve continued to get calls and numerous times tried to locate them to file a complaint or even take them to small claims for harassment.
Recently I was able to get their actual office phone number. 323 348 4766. I spoke with a rather combative person. She advised me that she would put my number on the “permanent do not call” list.
She also mentioned that they had honored all my previous requests for removal from their calling list but that they rotated my number back in every six months. I told her that I could not have been removed from their calling list because I’d gotten plenty of calls during the last six months from them.
She seemed of the opinion that I’d brought this on myself by not contacting her sooner. I advised her that they were hiding behind CTI as a front for their real business. She became very emotional at that point shouting “you are just full of accusations”.
Now Why Would We Do That?
I replied that it was an accusation but a reasonable one since all my web searches had not until today turned up a real phone number I could call them at. I further pointed out that if they were an honorable company they would publish the CTI company on the internet with a phone number so that people who were being harassed by their telemarketers could just call them. Her defensive and emotional reply “Why would we do that?”.
I was astonished that she didn’t seem to have any clue what I’d just told her. I tried again to explain that it would help people find them who were being harassed by their telemarketers. She adamantly denied their telemarketers were bothering anyone.
Complaints About Them
I mentioned the thousands of complaints littered around the internet. She explained that is was just ex-employees who were doing that and not the public. She further threatened that she could post bad things about me on the internet and that I would not be able to do anything about it. It was a bit disconcerting to be threatened so boldly by the company that had continually badgered me with unwanted telephone calls.
I also pointed out that the complaints that I found posted all over the internet were people complaining about being treated exactly the way I’d been treated. No ex-employee would have a motivation to pretend to be thousands of different people only to say they were being harassed by telemarketers. An ex-employee would be more likely to talk about the half truths they were telling people in order to sell risky financial instruments, or to talk about hiring and firing practices, or internal polices that were not favoring the customer.
Aren’t I doing them a favor by calling them to get off their list? Aren’t I preventing them from wasting their efforts? Why would they want to continue calling me and why would this woman I spoke to be so combative about the problem?
What do they have to gain by continuing to call me? Personally I think it’s vindictive of them to keep calling once someone has objected to them calling so many times. There is no other rational explanation I can think of other than vindictiveness. Kind of like “OK you don’t want to buy from us — we’ll punish you for that”. I know I’ve experienced that attitude from their sales people when they’ve called and I’ve said no.
Speculation Aside
Anyway if you’ve been getting calls from numbers like 949 752 2368 identifying themselves as CTI then call Victory Trading at 323 348 4766 and require them to permanently stop calling you.
CTI, a division of VICTORY TRADING, located at 3857 Birch Street, Newport Beach, CA 92660 phone 323-348-4766, General Manager Mark Bishop.
Hopefully posting this will provide the means for others to more easily find them and get off their “call incessantly” telemarketing list.
Topics: Complaints | 2 Comments »
Make a 25,000 Charitable Donation Without Spending any Money!
By Sean | May 20, 2011
Something worth doing:
Here is a totally cool way to begin doing something really worth doing that will put 25,000.00 into an amazing program for teaching music to kids who could otherwise die at the wrong end of a needle.
How would you like to ensure that a great group of youth who have been learning music as a way to develop confidence and self esteem while enshrining the belief they can actually be somebody?
Would you spend 5 minutes of your time to see that happen?
It is so easy! All you need to do is visit a web site and vote for them to get the funding. They have already qualified as finalists in their area and are currently the number one candidate for the funding. However YOUR VOTE will keep them on top and see them through to the 25,000 prize.
That’s ALL I’m asking you to do. No back end sales pitch. I’m not asking you to join my mailing list or even acknowledge that I exist. Just take a few moments of your time to vote for them at the link I provide below. In fact if you don’t have time to read this entire post now just click on this link:
and go vote for them by clicking on the “vote” button and following the instructions.
THAT’s IT! All you have to do is click the link and vote for them once a day each day for the next two weeks. The first time you click the link to vote they require you to confirm your vote by email verification. After that you can vote once per day every day without having to keep verifying.
Every vote you provide will get them a step closer to them receiving 25,000.00 for their youth program. The great news is that this program is sponsored by “The Keg” restaurant chain. They are giving away a million dollars in 25k amounts to various charitable efforts who have challenged their contest.
Why do I think this is so worthwhile?
Let me tell you a quick story:
I recently met a woman at a store my wife and I were visiting whom I immediately recognized was most likely an accomplished musician because was whistling a jazz riff to a song playing on the store radio.
Long story short: She was trying to make sure her son was not developing too many friends who were likely to lead him into trouble. Instead of trying to control her son’s behavior she instead decided to take action and partnered with the local government sponsored youth center to get space where she could teach these kids, many of them domestically challenged by violence or drugs, how to play music and also how to play as a band.
She mentioned that they jam every Sunday from noon to 4 pm and that we should check it out.
I checked it out the very next Sunday and was amazed at how well these guys played. Keep in mind that a year ago this program did not exist and I’m standing there listening to some talented young musicians who can play and sound pretty decent — some of whom didn’t play any instruments a year ago.
One day a week for four hours over the course of a few months can make a positive impact on a kids life forever.
They are already teaching these kids to teach music to other kids. I’ve been there, spoken to these guys, and have been looking for ways to help them.
Last Sunday when they told me about this opportunity to win a 25,000 grant. The spirit of these two women who run this place was amazing. They are not waiting around to “see if” they win this. They are moving ahead regardless. You can’t buy that kind of dedication.
I want to make it clear that there is no commercial upside to this for me or any of these people. The youth center provides food for these kids so your vote will go towards the purchase of lasting assets. Period!
Further I want to be clear that nobody will solicit you for donations or other involvement. The only thing I want you to do is go and vote. Even if for some twisted reason you don’t care whether these kids get the 25k then please just do it (if you know me) as a favor for me.
Here is the link:
http://www.thekegthanksamillion.com/en/phase2/projects/show/p/1218
Just click the link above and it will take you to the page.
1. Click on the “Vote” button about 1/2 way down the page on the left side of the link.
2. Fill in your email addy and name and you’ll be sent a link in your email to click to verify that you’re a legitimate voter. Also watch for the check boxes in case you don’t want the Keg sending you their promotional emails.
3. Read their story on the voting page to learn more about their work.
Once you’ve verified your email address your first vote is counted. Be sure if you forget the link when you vote the next day to just come back to this post and click the link here again so that you can continue voting each day for the next couple weeks.
Also please feel free to copy and forward this article or at least the link to anyone you know that may want to help these guys.
Thanks!!
Topics: Daily Observations and Insights | No Comments »
Gforce Chips Scam?
By Sean | April 11, 2011
I can’t tell if this company is a total scam or if they singled me out for bad treatment. What I can talk about is my experience with them and hope to warn anyone who tries to do business with them to be careful or just avoid them altogether.
1. I ordered the chip and it actually took longer than the two weeks they promised to have it ready.
2. Then another two weeks shipping by US mail from Southern to Northern California.
3. They claim the chip takes minutes to install and that anyone can do it. I say baloney. I had to disassemble the intake manifold just to get to the sensor I had to connect the wires to. The instructions did not look anything like my vehicle — even though they claim the reason it takes so long to get the product ready is due to having to “custom make it” for my vehicle. The instructions I got were not even remotely close to being customized to my vehicle.
4. I emailed tech support for help and he wrote back making a sarcastic comment. Not wanting to engage his combativeness I wrote back addressing the tech issue and simply said “regarding your other comment — what are you talking about”. He wrote back indicating that he was upset about how many complaints he gets about the company but can do nothing about so he unloaded on me. We got along OK after that.
5. After installing the chip I looked forward to seeing a change in performance and gas mileage — something they advertise. I did not get the slightest change in gas mileage or performance even though they advertise about 20 percent or more. The tech support guy thought the unit may be defective.
6. I called back on the telephone line to discuss my options. I mentioned that the original sales guy assured me that if I bought the unit and was unhappy and returned it within two weeks of receiving it I’d be credited back the price of the unit plus the postage to return it.
7. I returned the chip and got a refund.
8. As a conciliatory gesture — Gforce chips sent out another chip free of charge for me to install and test. Thanks guys that was appreciated.
9. I installed and tested it. I’m sure it was installed correctly and was certainly installed exactly to their second tier support guidance.
10. Still no difference in performance or mileage economy.
11. I recently did a web search on Gforce chips and found a lot of evidence from people that tested them and got no results. However almost all the sites were selling something so the reviews were possibly biased.
12. The result in inconclusive but I can say the chip did not work for me. However Gforce chips did give me a refund and a free chip to try and if it worked for me — that I’d have to pay for it.
Bottom line. Can anyone give me a reliable and unbiased source to check with that has independently tested these performance chips?
Thanks,
Sean
Topics: Good Products | 9 Comments »
Annoy Customers – Lesson From MBNA
By Sean | December 8, 2010
I called MBNA one of my credit card providers to sort out a problem I’d become aware of.
The representative I spoke with did something so common in the marketplace that most of us tend to think a business is in the right when they accuse us of a crime or of lying without evidence to support it.
The simplest example of this was when I tried to return a mop to a grocery store in California. I had the receipt somewhere my car but didn’t want the hassle of searching for it.
She demanded that I produce a receipt insisting that I may be lying about where I bought it. I turned to the cashier and said “you know me” and looked her in the eye. She intervened and they gave me the refund.
What astonished me is not that they had a policy of “no receipt no refund” — because that doesn’t accuse anyone of anything — it’s just a policy. What I find unpleasant is when employees suggest that I might be defrauding them and that I must prove my innocence before they’ll help me.
And this is what an MBNA employee did yesterday. She cast doubt on whether or not I’d actually received a letter they’d sent even though I told her otherwise. Why is our society so prone to accusing people without probable cause (some kind of evidence) that you actually did something wrong?
Why are we prone to accepting that sort of communication from people as a reasonable argument? What they are essentially saying is “because you cannot prove your innocence the reasonable default position is that you are guilty”.
In our society we “say” that justice is best served by presuming innocence unless compelling evidence of guilt exists. But why do we act otherwise? Even my own family members have been prone to believe they have a right to presume guilt because they have a suspicion someone is guilty.
The press and other media promote “guilt by suspicion” making billions from it every day. Yet there is not one of us wants that done to us — why do we do it to customers who trusted us with their money?
Isn’t the fact that they trusted us with their money sufficient to give them the benefit of the doubt when there is reasonable doubt?
Topics: Good Products | No Comments »
Boycott Hostage Advertising…
By Sean | December 3, 2010
I don’t know about you but I watch enough Youtube and other videos on various sites to know what I like and don’t like.
The most irritating thing to me is the increasing trend toward forcing me to watch a 12 to 30 second video advertisement before they let me see the video I clicked on to watch. To add insult to injury after being forced to watch the advertisement I may not even like the video I see afterward — which is a double slap in the face. I’ve not only wasted my time on the advertisement I care nothing about I then find that my time was wasted even watching the video much less tolerating the advertising.
I have therefore made it a policy to instantly click away from any and all video ads that I’m forced to view before being given access to the content I was promised.
Please join me in doing so. Unless the public (that’s you and I) refuse to watch these ads they will only increase. If we refuse to watch them it won’t be long and the analytic software they use will notice that people are refusing to have their time wasted by that form of advertising.
Stop being so hypnotized by video and technology that you don’t draw the line somewhere and realize that you have the power to change the mind of video display sites that push these ads. Such sites are only on the increase so let’s stop this trend before it gets a bigger foothold.
These sites already make obscene amounts of money from all the other forms of advertising that inundates us at these sites. They don’t actually need to have the “hostage ads” in order to continue making obscene amounts of money.
The only reason this kind of advertising is on the increase is because people don’t value their time and attention sufficiently to click away and find something that does not hold them hostage to an unwanted advertisement.
Value your time. The older you get the more you will wish you had not traded your time to advertisers who value your time more than you do.
They pay to have you give them some of your time to watch these ads. Are you getting any of that money? You should be but you’re not so refuse to watch them.
Topics: Daily Observations and Insights | 1 Comment »
How To Annoy Your Customers
By Sean | September 10, 2010
Honest I don’t have anything against Ray Edwards. I believe he works very diligently to enhance his customers experience and I believe he cares about customers.
But recently I saw some irony worth writing about and it sort of casts him in a bad light. But not really. I’m sure he was not aware that his own blog does something annoying. So I wrote this letter to him in response to his article here: “How To Annoy”
Here’s another way not to annoy your customers. I recently spent over an hour writing a thought provoking post for Ray Edwards blog post “How To Annoy Your Customers”.
But after when I tried to post my comment I got told that my comment could not post because of a problem. Then I clicked the button only to find out I had to change my carefully designed security settings to accept third party cookies.
In order to make my post then I have to go to my browser and spend another few minutes figuring out how to change the settings just for the privilege of adding value to Ray’s blog.
Even though I’d spent quite a bit of my valuable time writing a post that I thought would bring value and promote intelligent discussion on Ray’s blog – I just said “screw it” and ditched the entire exercise vowing not to post on Ray’s blog again. Now I did that in a moment of frustration, and it isn’t written in stone, but that’s the way of it when we are annoyed customers.
The real question is whether we ourselves know when and how we are annoying our customers. Usually we are not aware of it. The very few who even bother to tell us when we annoy them are like gold to us because most people will not let us know when they are annoyed.
How do we treat those few who bother to tell us?
Topics: Daily Observations and Insights | No Comments »
Authenticity
By Sean | September 7, 2010
I just read a cool post about being who you are. The link is here.
I personally enjoyed some genuine thoughts from a guy who’s done very well at marketing but who does not seem to have bought into being someone else in the process.
Some of you may have noticed that I’ve allowed some other marketers to post articles in this blog that I did not write. I did it as an experiment. I wanted to add content from other sources because I didn’t always have something to say and I thought it might be nice to give you some content that didn’t come from me. I didn’t find the articles very good in general because they had no personality. While that experiment was a good idea in principle I’m not going to let people I don’t know create articles for me anymore.
From now on if I let writers post articles here it’ll only be people I know. Thanks to Jason Moffat for reminding me to keep it real.
Topics: Daily Observations and Insights | No Comments »
Addressing Your Depression
By ContentAuthor | August 2, 2010
Depression is a serious condition that affects millions of Americans. This is a condition that will lead a person to disruption in their life. It can interfere with their family life, their work and their own sense of self.
There are several things that you need to know when it comes to depression. The first thing that you need to keep in mind is that depression is not just in your head. This is a condition that can actually make the rest of your body not function properly. We all have had that person in our life tell us “just get over it,” this is often easier said than done.
What are some of the warning signs that you or a person you love is suffering from depression? There are certain items that you need to be on the outlook for, one of these is the fact that you feel down all the time. In addition if you have lost interest in your favorite activity, then you may be suffering from depression.
While we do not know the exact causes of depression we do know that a hormone family called MAOI’s are involved and that these complex chemical messengers, most often associated with mental stability and emotional health. You can get out of the very delicate balance that they need to operate effectively. When this happens the foundations for depression have been laid. In many cases, known as “mild” depression, the body can with time make the needed adjustments to the balance on tit sown and the person will rise out of their depressed state. In other more serious case of depression, known as deep or “clinical” depression the person’s brain is not able to make the adjustments on its own. In these cases the depression, if left untreated, will continue to get worse.
The odd thing about depression is that sometimes it can go away as quickly as it arrives, while this is the rare case and proper treatment is always preferred. There are several ways that you can treat depression, some of these are medical while others are more natural.
One of the most common methods of dealing with depression is the use of antidepressants. These drugs, which can restore a balance to the MAOI activity in the patient’s brain, can do wonderful things to help them get their condition under control. You should be aware of the potential side effects however and use these drugs with caution. You should also make sure that you are working closely with your doctor to monitor your progress. These drugs are relatively new to the world of medicine and there is not exact science to their prescription. One patient may react in a totally different way to the same dosage of the same drug than another person.
Exercise is also a very effective method of dealing with depression. The reason for this is unclear, but the general belief is that endorphins which are released in the brain during exercise may have a natural balancing ability on the MAOI activity of the brain. It has been shown that regular exercise by people who are experiencing moderate to severe depression has reduced the manifestation of classic depression symptoms.
The most effective means of dealing with depression is to locate the underlying cause of the emotional imbalance that lead to the chemical imbalance in the first place. This can be done with the use of professional counseling and therapy. Most of the time the onset of depression can be directly tracked to an event or a situation which caused the person to no longer be able to cope with the stresses of daily living and drove them to a place in their mind when they no longer see joy in anything. Counseling can help this situation to be addressed and hopefully restore the person a place that they can enjoy living again.
It doesn’t matter what the base cause of the depression is you can get through this and get back to a normal life. There are many more methods that can be listed here that you can use to get to a point where you are in control of your depression and not that your depression is in control of you.
Brent McNutt enjoys working with healthcare professionals. He is an avid writer for UniformHaven.com. They offer Urbane Scrubs, Landau Shoes, and Baby Phat Lab Coats.
Topics: Good Products | No Comments »
Relationship – Communications Strategies For a Road Trip
By ContentAuthor | July 30, 2010
Haven’t we all wanted to hit the open road at some stage in our lives? Just get out there and follow the long white line to who knows where; wind in your hair and a smile on your face, free as a bird. Sounds great and there’s no reason why your dreams shouldn’t come to fruition, but there’s a little voice inside your head that won’t be silenced: “What if something happens? What if someone needs me? What if I need someone else?” There’s no need to silence the warrior within; you CAN have your adventure, just make sure you set some communications strategies in place to keep you covered in an emergency like these ones…
You’re about three days into your epic road journey and things are going great (even your cactus bite is healing nicely). You decide to pull into a nice motel and treat yourself to a soft bed and a large steak. As you sign the register and the clerk asks for your credit card, your stomach sinks as the realisation hits that the last time you remember seeing it was when you were using it to flick a giant scorpion off the back seat of the car – and that was three states and 400 windows-wound-down miles back. Just as well you’d set communications strategies in place between your Mum and your bank account and all it takes is one quick call (well ok, it’s your mother; not so quick) and your card is cancelled and there’s $500 wired to the Fedex down the road.
You finally made it to Vegas and you’re living it up on the money your Mum wired when, suddenly, in the blink of an eye you glance across the room and fall in love! After a few hours using some of your best-practiced communications strategies for romance, you and the object of your affection are pledging undying love and heading to the Little Chapel of Love for a quickie wedding ceremony overseen by Elvis. Ain’t love grand?
Fast-forward three years and two kids later and your little Nevada Rose is definitely beginning to exhibit some thorns. There’s never any time for the two of you and you’re wondering if some of the magic is beginning to fade. But in truth, yours is destined to be a happily-ever-after road trip story and you know it’s worth putting up a fight to save your marriage.
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Topics: Good Products | No Comments »