George Mindling Column 9-30-2005 - Free Credit Report is Free

Making Sure Your Free Credit Report is Free

If you don't cancel your membership within the 30-day trial period, you will be billed $12.95 for each month that you continue your membership. That’s the fine print contained in the Web Page of http://www.freecreditreport.com/. That web page is advertised on television and offers consumers credit services that are often needed. However, it is not to be confused with the free credit reports everyone is entitled to under the current credit card laws. The Federal Trade Commission web page at http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/credit/freereports.htm explains the only authorized web site for the federally mandated reports.

Everyone is entitled to an annual free credit report from each of the three major credit-reporting firms, Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian. The three companies jointly sponsor a web site for you to easily get your free annual credit report on line. The free annual credit report web site is https://www.annualcreditreport.com/, and can now be accessed by everyone as the last region went on-line September 1^st.

Each of the three companies must be accessed individually for their report. The beauty of the joint page is each of the firms can be accessed, one after the other if you choose to do so, from the one page. Each firm asks a different series of questions using secure web links to validate who you are. The questions and formats differ between companies, and even the information reported by the firms differs somewhat. The “Credit Score” is not part of the free report, but can be added for a nominal one-time charge by each of the companies.

To keep a running check on your credit status, request one report every four months from one company, wait four months then get another report from the second company. Finally, ask for your last report four months later from the third company.

The first thing I noticed about my reports was an incorrect address someone had accidentally entered for my former address in Miami. The correct address was listed prior to 1997, but an extraneous digit had been added in 1998 effectively changing my residence to some 20 miles out in the Everglades. Other than that, I could see no other discrepancies in my report. Each firm has a web page explaining how to dispute the information if I decide to correct the address error. You must follow several steps to initiate an investigation into your complaint, and of course you can do it by mail if you choose to do so.

Each of the three firms offers more detailed credit reporting services for different fees, much as Freecreditreport .com from their respective web sites. In fact, it is difficult to find your free credit report on any of their individual home pages pages. The joint credit report page is fast and easy to use. By the way, the “s” in the https part of the Internet address means it is a secure site.

It is a good idea to keep track of the companies that are keeping track of you.

George Mindling

George Mindling Column 9-23-2005 - Paper tiger (Unpublished) My Last Column

George Mindling Column 9-23-2005 - Paper Tiger -  For Immediate Release

(The Charlotte Sun-Herald elected NOT to print this column.  This is its first publication) 

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“The Capitalists will sell us the rope we use to hang them.” While Lenin’s exact words were far more verbose, they apparently did not fall on deaf Chinese ears.

According to a recent published report, the Communist Chinese government holds 790 billion dollars of U.S. currency and bonds! Chinese General Zhu Chenghu told the world the very same week of the report they WILL attack the United States with nuclear weapons if we try to defend Taiwan, the Republic of China, from Communist takeover. We are paying for the two largest military buildups in recent years: Ours and the very forces we may have to go to war with, the Communist Chinese.

Why do American companies, especially those that purport to be Christian based, do business with the godless dictatorship that is Communist China? Which is the real answer: money or morals? Are we so busy trying to create a democratic utopia that selling our energy and technology assets to a security threat to our country in the name of “Growing Democracy,” is naively ignored? What will we sacrifice chasing the 490 billion dollar market China appears to offer to American retailers in 2006? Chinese leaders have had the inscrutable patience to let the Americans “dig their own graves” with their unbridled greed.

Last February, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld testified at a Congressional hearing on the Chinese buildup and the Chinese policy paper challenging the U.S. military presence in the Pacific. U.S. intelligence had believed China to have a fleet of only “60 to 70 operational submarines, most of which are ageing, and only a handful of which are nuclear powered.”

However, the June 9^th Washington Times reported a U.S. security document found that American intelligence has missed the Chinese naval buildup for TEN years! Among the items missed were China's development of a new long-range cruise missile, deployment of a new attack submarine known as the Yuan class that was missed by U.S. intelligence until photos of the submarine appeared on the Internet, (http://www.jeffhead.com/redseadragon/planbuildup.htm) and development of surface-to-surface missiles for targeting U.S. aircraft carrier battle groups. According to CNN, The Chinese Navy will soon be the largest in the world. This from a country from which we borrow 2 billions dollars daily! If we default, how will they foreclose?

Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice warned on August 18^th that China must make significant structural changes in its economic policies, lest it remain "a problem for the international economy."

"The overwhelming sense I got was that they do not want a conflict with the United States," said Robert B. Zoellick, the deputy secretary of state. But he said that he, too, "tried to get them to see how their actions are perceived by the other side," particularly "if they were not transparent, they would create uncertainties, and uncertainties lead people to hedge."

The patient Chinese are not stupid. They measure time by generations, not fiscal years. By then, we will be the Paper Tiger.

George Mindling © 2005

George Mindling Column – 8-26-2005 - Online Banks Competing

 For Savings Dollars

The competition for your savings dollar is getting fierce. There is a new banking game in town. It is called direct savings and it is an on line, or Internet, method of bypassing the costs of “Brick and Mortar” banking institutions. Actually, the game isn’t in town at all, but available everywhere to anyone on the Internet. Without the cost of doing business in a traditional neighborhood establishment, cost savings are passed on to the consumer. Or, in this case, the banking customer looking for a place to put cash with the highest return. The current big players are ING with their “Orange” accounts, and Emigrant Savings Bank with their American Dream Accounts, and Presidential Savings with its Premier Savings Account.

ING Orange accounts currently pay 3.30% APY. ING at http://home.ingdirect.com/ has a quick and easy sign up procedure and has a deposit confirmation procedure to validate your new account. It takes 10 days before you can draw against the account, but only takes a couple of days for the account to be active.

Emigrant at http://www.emigrant-direct.com/ was made famous by Suze Orman’s recent endorsement. The Emigrant American Dream Account currently pays 3.50% APY with no fees and no minimum.

Also competing is Presidential at http://www.presidential.com/ . Presidential currently pays 3.87% APY and is also relying on the PC and Internet to do direct transactions.

The name of the game is the highest return available anywhere on your savings deposits. Only on line transactions, or telephone activity, is handled as there is no person-to-person interface available.

Opening an account is simple. Only two or three screens of information, including an active checking account and you have a new savings account. The checking account is required for the on-line transfer of funds between the new savings account and your current bank. Your checking account is a DDA, a Demand Deposit Account. A DDA account gives you the right to demand immediate payment of funds. Savings accounts, however, usually have a restriction of requiring you to provide the bank with 60-90 days notice of your intention to withdraw funds. While Emigrant has this warning in their on-line agreement, ING does not. According to Internet sources, the time period is rarely enforced and most transactions appear as completed within 48 hours. My personal experience with our direct account is that transactions are completed in a matter of hours.

How the traditional banks handle the new on-line competition remains to be seen. For example, Bank of America http://www.bankofamerica.com has its current rate buried at the bottom of the fourth web page about the benefits of their savings accounts. The difference, of course is that is all full service banks have a local, neighborhood presence, and offer far, far more than just a savings account. Like a real person to see and talk to, face to face. Traditional banking services will have to compete with cost, and the consumer will win either way.

George Mindling

George Mindling Column 8-12-2005 - Web Service Change Has Big Consequences

Web Service Change Has Big Consequences

Backing up PC or electronic data is a subject I have written about many times. I thought I had covered just about every contingency requiring an up-to-date copy of your computer data. Surprise! This column is being written because the original column planned has been rendered useless due to the people who administer my web site.

All they did was change one little character in the name of my web site. Not just mine, but every web site they host. The result? Not only can I not find my site, no search engine in the world can find my site.

Why would the hosting service change the URL, or Universal Resource Locator, the alphabetic name assigned to a series of numbers that point to my web site? A change in server software, from Unix to Microsoft, dictates the URL not contain the tilde character, the”~”. The ~ is used in Unix systems with User Names, but not MS systems.

The problem is the web hosting service thought so little of their customers they didn’t bother to tell their customers the change was coming. We found out when we tried to visit our web site and got the famous “404” error, site not found.

To make matters worse, the web hosting service doesn’t care if I’m out the cost of business cards or advertising, or in my case, a column about web sites! They offered no apologies, or assistance to resolve the issues.

I have a feeling the legal eagles will descend on the comatose propeller heads with a vengeance. In my case, the web site I maintain is about my old Air Force unit and is used as a community site by a group of people with a common interest. No financial loss, just a regal loss of time and effort. As soon as I have a new URL, I’ll upload the corrected backup data. Of course neither Google nor any other search engine will be able to find my site for quite a while, so I have to rely on word of mouth and e-mail. One thing bothers me, though. What is to prevent any other web hosting service from such an insensitive change? I had moved my wife’s business site off of this web hosting service several years ago, but I can’t help but wonder about the small businesses that are suffering without recourse.

I’m shopping for a new web hosting service and that is where I use a full backup of my web site. The old service won’t restore the old name, so since I have to start over I certainly won’t use the same service. Hopefully, my next web hosting service will be customer oriented instead of totally unconscious when dealing with its customers. Technology changes that destroy customer loyalty are not going to keep any company in business.

I’ll keep a backup of the web site handy, just in case.

George Mindling

George Mindling Column 11-12-2004 - Rebates Won't Help

Rebates Won't Help Unless You Use Them

A local chain store recently offered two mail-in rebates on a PC I wanted to buy. One was from the retail store chain itself for $150, the other was from the PC manufacturer for $50. I wouldn't have purchased the PC without the rebates simply because I wanted to wait for a competitive offer from another vendor. The rebates would have expired before long, so I bought the unit.

After waiting the usual six weeks without a response from either of the offers, I went online to check the status of my rebates. Going on line to check the status of my two PC rebates was as easy as signing in to each of the web sites and following a few simple instructions. The results, however, were as different as night and day. The rebate check from the retailer was already on its way, in fact it came two days after I signed in. The PC manufacturer, however, had no record of my rebate.

I had followed instructions explicitly, making copies of everything from the instructions and the receipts and the product proof of sale tags and had carefully submitted the originals to the manufacturer. I haven't given up on that one yet, copies are still being submitted.

Many savvy shoppers carefully watch for rebates on products they purchase. Rebates can make almost any new product price affordable when compared to the actual off-the-shelf cost. Amazingly enough, according to the Federal Trade Commission, about half of all rebates are never redeemed! In addition to that astonishing fact, posted on TCA rebate fulfillment center's home page at http://www.tcarebates.com/advantage.htm, is one almost as incredible: 10 percent of all issued rebate checks are never cashed!

TCA is a leading rebate and fulfillment center service organization in New Rochelle, New York, that handles rebates for many manufacturers and retailers. They actually advertise on the same page that they rejected 800,000 fraudulent or non-compliant rebate requests. Making the rebate process complicated of course is a great help to the manufacturers. The fewer rebates submitted or approved is to their benefit.

Rebates are an interesting marketing tool. Similar to a coupon to the consumer, the differences to the manufacturers are great. With a coupon, the seller takes the price off at the register, actually reducing collected sales tax on the item. The seller then places claims against the manufacturer to reclaim the lost credit or money at the register. In a rebate, the buyer pays full sales tax on the item and the seller is usually not involved in the process, except for supplying receipts and forms. The manufacturer usually claims the financial loss of rebates against advertising or product costs.

Following the exact rebate requirements is the only way you can be sure you will get your rebate. Read the rebate carefully and make sure your purchase is actually covered by the time and conditions stated on the rebate.

One way to make money for the manufacturers seems simple enough: throw away the rebate and pretend it never got there.

George Mindling© 2004

George Mindling Column 9-17-2004 - Something Good Out of Charley

Something Good Out of Charley

While idly watching the local conditions on the Weather Channel, it dawned on me they were playing "Cast Your Fate to the Winds" as background music. We were in Georgia, waiting for the updates on Hurricane Ivan at the time, so the irony of the music was more than just a little pointed.

My friends in Miami sent me e-mail animations of the Hurricane Ivan track showing the hurricane cutting Florida completely off, leaving the seashore at the Georgia state line. And, of course, there's the current Internet favorite, postcards from Florida showing nothing but a huge photo of a hurricane cloud with a small arrow pointing to the middle saying, "We are here!"

Hurricane Charley's direct hit on Charlotte County put the fear of hurricanes into our local population more than any lecture, film or television show could possibly do. After Charley and the slow, agonizing week of watching Frances toy with us before passing close enough to flood our streets and byways, all it took was the 5 am. Friday NOAA Hurricane Ivan prediction chart showing another direct hit on Port Charlotte to be the catalyst for action as many of our residents said, "Enough! We are out of here!" We were among those that split for the hills of Georgia

To say we needed a breather is an understatement. We needed a chance to reflect on Florida and our lifestyle. That is when we began to get our sense of humor back. We stayed with our daughter and her husband in the rolling hills just south of Athens, Ga. Our daughter is a Georgia transplant thanks to Hurricane Andrew in Miami in 1992. She lost everything when her condo in Cutler Ridge blew apart like so many matchsticks. She did not return to Florida, finishing her college in Atlanta and joining the work force there.

Many in Port Charlotte may relocate elsewhere, but there will be those who stay. New people will move here. Some businesses closed permanently on August 13, 2004. Others will find a way, with good planning and insurance, even government help, to rebuild and reopen. They will not be the same as before. Now, during the rebuild, is the time to correct mistakes.

People are looking for something good to come out of Charley, although that is hard to say to someone who lost everything, perhaps even a loved one. Those who have been through these storms in the past know our community will be back It will be back better and stronger than before. No matter how badly someone was damaged, they say, "Oh, we got hit, but others had it worse than us ... "

Port Charlotte and Punta Gorda will finally be less of a group of relocated, and sometimes dislocated, northerners, banding together because they had no common experience in their new home. No matter how you did it up north, you didn't do it like Charley. The people of Port Charlotte and Punta Gorda are starting to sound like Floridians.

George Mindling © 2004

George Mindling Column 7-16-2004 - County Planners Face Busy Times

County Planners Face Busy Times

I was wrong when I told Deanna that Miami-Dade County has 48 high schools, when in fact they only have 39. They do have 55 middle schools, though, and 210 elementary schools. Deanna is a fire/EMS specialist with Charlotte County, and we were casually discussing the growth of Charlotte County and the need for future schools and fire/EMS stations. Will Charlotte County ever reach the population that requires as many schools and fire/EMS stations as Miami? Even the high-growth areas of the state will be hard pressed to match the phenomenal past population growth of Florida's lower East Coast. However, we are growing here, as well. It isn't just retirees corning to our area.

With the outside structure of the new 880,000-square-foot Wal-Mart distribution center in DeSoto County, adjacent to the DeSoto/Charlotte County line, nearing completion, the immense size of the center becomes obvious. The structure has over 20 acres under roof and will feature a fully automated cold-storage facility. According to original figures from Wal-Mart spokesperson John Hay, the number of employees is expected to be over 600, almost all of them full-time.

While both counties will benefit from the arrival of the new center, Charlotte County's gain will be indirect. While many residents from our area may find employment at the new center, many Wal-Mart people will relocate here from other assignments. The gravity of the center will pull in not only needed new housing, but also the retail and support services to support the hundreds of new employees.

The desirable residential properties near Prairie Creek and the area around Washington Loop Road are already experiencing increased queries about availability. Whether or not all of the increase in activity is due to the soon-to-arrive Wal-Mart employees is a matter of opinion, but the area is bound to show growth in the near future. The Peace River area of eastern Charlotte County may indeed be a growth area to rival other areas of the county.

The area east of 1-75 and north of County Road 31, near Prairie Creek and Washington Loop Road, is proving to be of interest to not only residential buyers, but commercial developers as well. Most of the area is now zoned for farming, citrus groves or five-acre ranchettes, rather than pre-platted, 10,000 square-foot lots like those in northern or western Charlotte County.

This, in itself, lends to the gated -community style of growth, where larger tracts of available land offer flexible interpretation of community growth. With access to 1-75 via the almost-finished, four-lane, divided U.S. 17, the international airport at Fort Myers is just a 45-minute drive. The zoned industrial complex at the Charlotte County Airport overlay district is just minutes away from the area.

Charlotte County planners will have a very busy future. We may never need 39 high schools, but I'm sure that is something that never crossed the minds of Dade County planners 60 years ago.

George Mindling © 2000