Thoughts by Gary

It's a lot of little brushes that paints the big picture
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What are all these wooden ‘book’ shelves used for?

Posted by admin on May 17th, 2011 No Comments

We are not far off from needing a new name for those wooden shelves in offices at work and home. There may be some classic books or ‘coffee table’ books that will need a home. But, the shelves are quickly becoming not needed for Instruction/Tech Manuals, Novels and even most Magazines.

Currently, there isn’t a perfect single electronic solution to carry and provide access to all of the needed reading materials. Most manuals are text only so they work nicely on the Kindle. It is easy to search for key words, move rapidly through pages and can even read (audio) most electronic ‘Kindle’ books to you. Black and white images are fine but color and even most gray scale images do not do well on the Kindle.

For color image ‘books’, I turn to PDFs and ePub electronic books, viewed through either my iPad’s iBooks or GoodReader apps. There can be some limitations for getting through the book quickly, but generally search is supported. Color diagrams and charts are usable in these formats.

Lastly is my magazine subscriptions. My wife has magazines she buys that she sells later while most of mine are for research or just for fun. Very few electronic magazines are less expensive than their print counterparts. For me, they are much easier to carry and read on-the-go in the electronic form. My iPad is with me everywhere at the office and most times around the house so I have several years worth of Wired, Photo Pro, Dwell, MacUser, Macworld and StuffUK. Great to have in hand when on my exercise bike every night.

The purpose of this article isn’t to convince you to sell your print books and go all electronic. Instead, it’s a statement that it works for me and my crystal ball says that there are types of books in your life that will actually be more usable if you had it as an ‘eBook’. They aren’t perfect for all books for all people, yet.

Electronic versions are easier to carry in bulk and most carry more ‘features’ than you can have on paper. Wired has multimedia built into their electronic versions (US version is very nice… not sure why the European version has lost their way with weird scrolling mini boxes). Providers like O’Reilly offer very large selections of manuals and instructional eBooks to get me through my work day. Searching a eBook is much easier than trying to remember what page I had read content on later. And the Kindle books play through my headphones as I put my PowerPoints together.

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Posted in Gadgets, Lessons Learned

It is easy to tell who is running the project

Posted by admin on March 16th, 2011 No Comments

As a project moves towards a deadline, two things become obvious. Was the project started based on a end date rather than level of effort to deliver. And, if the project is being run by a manager or a Senior Executive.

Senior Executive projects generally start their life as a PowerPoint. Where a vision is expressed and promises are made. There may be some effort quote but the project is still very young so effort numbers are from a call or a napkin. The most important item to note is that a PowerPoint for the project has started the project so there is a “high level deck” that everyone wants to see green.

As the project moves along it hits a few snags but no one wants anything red or they will allow as long as there is a plan to bring the date back in. At the 3/4 point, things will start to look like all of the pages of the deck’s promises are not tracking for the right delivery date. It is at this point that the project will take one of two directions.

if the project has a strong Sr Executive directly leading and reporting greens and yellows in they report out decks, there will be a sudden de-scoping effort of “just what is needed” to service the needs of the business or clients. Hall way conversations start at this point to get people on the side of the “on time” delivery of an altered version of the project. it is important to have friends back up the new PowerPoints that say everyone is happy with what they will get. Of course, they aren’t really and the project will be frowned on in the future.

Another project being guided by a manager level employee is less concerned about the color of the boxes and more concerned about letting people down. It is hard for senior level business people to understand but teams will work very hard on their own out of sheer pride of their delivery.

If given the chance to be creative in the project and being allowed to own the success, the front line project working team members will do what it take. On their own! No money or fame promises are needed. Just the knowledge that they are in control and are being instructed to do the right thing.

There are teams that will start to slice out parts of a project but generally this is frowned on by other team members so it can be short lived. Teams are not instructed to work long hours or over weekends, they just do it. Give them the chance to shine and be ready to call out their successes in the PowerPoints rather than only having red dots and smaller delivered lists.

Of course, this works the first time if the PowerPoint deadlines where anywhere close to being doable. Even a stretch will be accepted. But the next time or if very unrealistic deadlines are set then people start to feel they are being taken advantage of. Do your best to keep it doable and give the team the power to be creative in their solution or methods.

I started thinking about this post a while back. Just recently a friend pointed out the below video on what motivates employees. You may want to take a look.

Posted here with an iPad… just for fun!

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Posted in Lessons Learned

Microsoft, win at your own game

Posted by admin on January 8th, 2011 No Comments

Yesterday I saw a post on Facebook that said the individual hoped that Microsoft responded to the new Apple App Store with like. Microsoft, a company not known for controlling rules around software guidelines is going to have a competing store? How is that Windows Mobile app store working out for them? Especially when compared to the iTunes App Store. Here is where everyone gets defensive and starts the flaming, lets work through this before we go there.

Microsoft has as many great ideas as they have bad ones. Not many companies can say that. What they do with their ‘great ideas’ is a  real head shaker. Let’s go back to the tablets… they showed us a all screen device (a step away from the notebook with a touch screen). It had one or two buttons. The concept videos really got us thinking about what could be. Then, the hardware came out, we bought a Samsung right away. Just as quick we stopped using it as everyone kept forgetting what all the 10 plus buttons did just to do the basics. Why didn’t Microsoft enforce their vision? Why didn’t they reach out to developers to help prove their concept of ‘no buttons needed’?

The recent start/end of the Kin looked more like a internal company war than a real business decision for a change in product path. Here we had a device that connected individuals to their friends via a variety of social systems. This device really didn’t have to be a ‘teen’ only device, it would have been great for business people that are limited to what they can do socially on their company phones and company networks. For teens, I was hearing a lot about how parents are more concerned about social network time than actual phone talk time, so why not add parental controls? The actual connection charge should have been near to nothing, Kin users will buy phones, services, software and want to interact with other Microsoft devices. Own the market, own the future.

The Kin lost out to the Mobile phone folks at Microsoft. All of the commercials explained that we spend too much time heads down doing things on our cell phones. The commercials were great, with their ‘Really?’ tag, we started hearing it everywhere. The phones started coming out with the new OS and we found that the new ‘big features’ was a home screen that constantly updated with a count of all of the things we are missing and need to look at. Driving people to tap the boxes to see why the numbers were growing. The ‘Really?’ tag has dropped from being used in meetings almost completely now, in just a matter of months.

Hang around any group of people that play games and you will hear the XBox name mentioned. There is still the Wii and PS3, and they own their markets through their unique offerings and their specialized equipment. The XBox has gotten a recent jump in attention through the introduction of the Kinect. The system that allows people to be the controls, it’s a concept that I remember from more than 10 years ago at Las Vegas in the Microsoft and Intel booths. Microsoft finally has it right. They contracted an outside design firm to come up with a snazzy looking device rather than just trust a third party to get it right. Could we see a future of DVR abilities, playing movie DVDs, and ‘other’ entertainment? Maybe… but please don’t think for a minute that the home TV is a place to do social media with a keyboard on the couch, the concept does not work!!

Getting a lot of attention at CES this year is the updated Surface computing device. The table that has the whole top as an interactive touch screen. The device has dropped in size from a big cube of a table like the old ‘table’ video games popular in the 80s to what looks more like a real table with a thinner table top area being held up with legs.

Imagine a world where an effort was applied to the Surface world to drive down costs so it became a common place as an office desk, a home coffee table that knows what is sitting on it and even a night stand (syncing calendar events to the Mobile Phone sitting on it overnight). It would connect and control the TV, what is for dinner, control the house, be the expanded power of the future Kinect, and keep the whole family connected as it talks directly to the Kin in everyone’s pockets.

This isn’t a market area that anyone else is ready for. There wont be a iPad table or office desk. There isn’t anyone that is aligned to control the home central system, always connected to a cloud service which the family shares. All with the Microsoft logo. Or… Microsoft can release a software store of their own, have low numbers, and receive negative press drives everyone to another option in that market space.

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Posted in Gadgets, Lessons Learned

Can ‘doing the right thing for others’ do anything for you?

Posted by admin on December 9th, 2010 No Comments

Everyone around me knows my mode of operation is to always promote people’s efforts and successes. I work their names into meetings and fully expose their delivered work. Presenting the wins as how they will help many rather than just a project done and behind us. This is not only for their ears when the hard working individual is in the room, it gets done if they are present or not. It’s a matter of giving credit so that later when their name comes up, people automatically associate a winning attitude with them.

When things go horribly wrong, those same team members know that it doesn’t do anyone any good to get called out in a meeting as at fault. It isn’t often that there is a single point of failure either so naming names only does harm. We as a team win, we as a team must answer for issues. The team has a tendency to help guide individuals that may put them in the position of failure.

Of course, win or fail, it does come down to the leader and their ability to both guide and forecast. Attention must be given to the what-ifs and the whys as a project moves forward. I usually stand alone in the meeting to answer for any issues so I push the other managers and team members to do the right thing. Take pride in their work so their name is mentioned… yearly reviews go much better for those that had their name mentioned with a win-win.

Team members learn to trust that their name will be inserted when ever possible for maximum credit. They see results when Sr. Management comes through the offices and thanks the team, pointing out wins for individuals involved.

It is interesting that most managers try to look for an hidden agenda for why they are being given credit in a meeting. They keep waiting for the follow up, ‘but’, and then the blame game. Although that never happens, many continue to question the motivation of pointing out other people’s efforts rather than have the manager take full credit. Usually these individuals will accept the credit when their name is called out and take over the meeting with great detail of their efforts. Missing the point that they are diluting the credit and generally causing the meeting to go in the wrong direction, undoing all the positive attention.

The path does require upper management to understand that by giving credit to individuals, you are pointing out the quality of the team members. They must not loose site of the guidance given and the planning that must be done to help make individuals shine. Some, let’s call them ‘weaker’, upper management, will think that unless you take credit your not a key player. They are destine to fail… but you may want to work your own name in there as a direction giving team member.

Lastly, the hope of this method of credit giving, works best if people across the team share in the same mind. When asked, does the individual you gave credit to mention your name as being a good leader? Does the team get referred to as your (enter your name here) team? Do other managers give credit by name to your team individuals or to you?

Just amongst the Business groups I work with now, I find it interesting how they can be so radically different. It helps if upper management believes in the same credit giving. But, if a group is being led by management that spends their time promoting themselves, they most likely wont want to give you credit. It’s a tough field to plow, but I’m going to stick with it. The folks that do the work really need to be called out for their efforts, it helps makes their day job something to be proud of rather than just a paycheck.

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Posted in Lessons Learned, Life

I make recommendations through project success

Posted by admin on November 5th, 2010 No Comments

I received a few emails from friends after they read my post about my not doing endorsements. To keep with full exposure on this site, I thought I might explain how/where I speak to the value of folks which they can use to their advantage to promote themselves as needed.

As you may have started to understand. I have a full time ‘job’ working for a larger corporation which had many years back brought me on to assist with several open issues. Having closed those out, I have stayed on to help put out fires and creating new solutions. Along with the ‘day job’, I maintain my software business and do a variety of other ventures with individuals and groups of individuals. Occasionally the need arises for me to partner with other companies as well.

Because there is many more ideas and opportunities than there are hours in a day, I have to select projects and partners very carefully. Many ideas never make it past the initial outline and planning stage. More than three quarters of my projects requiring finding key individuals to partner with. People with talents outside of my own and who will share the passion in a project can be a difficult last mile that can cause a project to never become a working reality.

When the team comes together, the ideas are flowing, people go off and do their part and we roll out something we are proud of. I then tell the world about what incredible people I’m working with along side of promoting the project. I can understand that the location and time of the endorsement may not present a way for my partners to use as a stepping stone so I’m adding a tab to the site here. It’s light in detail right now but I will be filling the area in with past and current projects. Due to the level of secrecy around new projects that hope to be ‘first to market’, I can not go into detail on many projects in the early stages.

Several projects, like movies and books in play right now will be listed prior to going live since we always want more press for those in advance of releases.

I hope that this will provide a bit more information about the key individuals I have had successes with. Those that are strong in their fields and you would do well to partner with when the need arises.

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Posted in Lessons Learned, Life

More effective marketing through quality service – fail

Posted by admin on September 4th, 2010 No Comments

I mentioned in a previous post a way of doing Business for a local plumber (The most effective marketing is the quality of your service), on that same day I had the same company come out to see what was wrong with my A/C.

Wednesday night, our A/C downstairs started to not stay ahead of the heat so my wife scheduled to have a A/C specialist come out (provided by the same company that sent the plumber the same day) to see what could be done. A year ago, this company replaced our upstairs A/C and did a fan/capacitor in the downstairs unit so the visit was a no-charge inspection.

The technician checked the basics quickly and found ice on the outside unit’s pipes. Coming inside, he said the air filters were plugged up and needed replacing. I questioned it a bit as they were just replaced three months prior. He pulled the two for downstairs out and showed how they were gray. He offered to show next to new, I pulled out a couple I had in the closet (bought a bunch a year ago so they would never be blocked and the air would be clean). He held the two up so the light from the window could come through to show how the one, even though there was no dust bunnies on the surface it was blocked. I found this interesting since I know in the automotive world, it is not legal in most states to show old vs new for auto air filters – they go off white a mile down the road if they are working.

We put in my new filters.

Since the pipes outside where frozen, he wasn’t able to check anything else. He turned everything off, requesting we turn it back on in four hours after it defrosts. If there is no cold air, we should call his cell and he would come out and check the freon. He went out to his truck, returning with a sheet of quotes to replace the whole downstairs A/C system. His feeling was that if my system was low on freon, it must have a leak, and if there is a leak the rest of the system must be wearing out too.

His quotes where on several 13 ton options in the $6k range and 16 ton options in the $8k range. A selling feature of the 16 ton was a end-of-year $1500 tax credit. I asked if the 16 ton would make that much difference over the 13 ton I have now for cooling vs monthly power bill. He let me know I actually have a 10 ton and that a 16 ton for $8,000 to $9,ooo would save me a lot every month.

As I mentioned, this was Friday. When the four hours was up, we turned on the A/C. Cool air started coming out and since it was so hot outside I thought it would take a while to come up to maximum coolness throughout the downstairs so we didn’t ask for the service gentleman to return. Saturday morning, we found the A/C frozen again… as luck would have it, to have the system checked on Saturday would be an emergency call and there would be a charge.

Unlike their plumber with a couple hundred dollar up-sell, I can see how the profit from selling everyone who calls a whole new A/C unit does pencil out to pay for marketing. I might just mention them by name to my local social group…

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Posted in Lessons Learned, Life

The most effective marketing is the quality of your service

Posted by admin on September 4th, 2010 No Comments

Where word of mouth yesterday was over a water cooler at the office or over the back fence, today it happens more often on Facebook and Twitter. A friend will ask if anyone can tell them of a good plumber and folks dive in with names to help.

This works good for things like a plumber or electrical work, not so much for who to build a Web site or Point of Sale system. There is a pretty clear cut off on what a person will recommend out in the open and what they will avoid.

For companies that provide house repair or ‘handyman’ services, they can really get ahead with a few good mentions. I’m not talking about paying Opera, I’m talking about the casual friend to friend recommendation that is read by many more people than those two friends.

Recently I was reminded of this when I was faced with for-pay services and was asked online if I would recommend someone in that exact space.

Friday, I worked from home as all of my meetings had dial in phone numbers and a project just wrapped so the team needed a break from the tension. It was a great time to catch up on a couple items that required a service come into the house to handle.

First up was the plumber. He had been out 6 months ago on a regular maintenance systems check and quoted a few items he could help us with. One item, a sticking toilet that is in a very thin room making it an environment I had no desire to squeeze into. The quote said $150 which I would rather not spend but seemed worth it since I wouldn’t be squeezing in that area and could continue with my day job as the repair was being done.

When the gentleman arrived, he mentioned that he had quoted on several of the bathrooms. I said I only needed the one since the other two were in bigger areas and I handled myself. He went in to each one to inspect my work. He commented that I only replaced the Fill Valve and Float Assembly, to do the job right I should have done the Tank Bolts and Flush Valve too. I let him know I had actually replaced everything in that area as it came in a kit.

He left for his truck to get parts and a price agreement. When he returned, he showed me a price of $127, a pleasant surprise as it was lower than the earlier quote. He asked if I wanted just the $127 Fill Valve and Float Assembly or if I wanted to pay an additional $100 for the Tank Bolts and Flush Valve. I had to ask him a couple times to repeat what he was asking since he had just said you should always do the whole job and now he was saying he had only quoted us for half the work. I tensed up a bit but signed for the work…

Upon completion he brought me the bill and suggested we take a look at the repairs and see if we needed him to make any adjustments. Just as we were wrapping up looking over the $200+ worth of plastic bits, he asked if we had any other issues with the toilet. I wasn’t sure what that could be so I said we were OK. He then proceeded to let me know that they have full toilet assemblies available and he could put one in, he would just credit the repairs he just did against the new unit, leaving a $300 balance due (on top of the $200).

I wont mention them by name here or on Facebook to answer my friends request for a good plumber… I may need him as a friend later. I do wonder how the math works out for up-sells vs having to spend extra on marketing. If they quoted like what they said must be done for a proper job and then had not tried to tag on an addition $300 service, they would have gotten their name out to 200+ of my local friends. It’s all just a numbers game. They feel they will get enough people to bite on the extra services/profit and spend the additional on advertising to make more money than pay nothing on advertising and lower their average visit bill.

We know the truth though, they haven’t thought this through at all… they feel that marketing is a cost of doing business and everyone needs a high average ticket. True yesterday, doesn’t work for long term successes in the modern ‘social’ world.

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Posted in Lessons Learned, Life

Branching to be more successful tomorrow

Posted by admin on July 5th, 2010 No Comments

Planning for tomorrow is fine when it comes to a list of work you need to get done. Tomorrow, I need to type a letter about my project, I need to be ready for a couple meetings and I need to pick up coffee on the way home. It all works when you know the future. What about when you don’t know the future? Can you actually successfully plan for what your Business’s future will be? What products or services will be hot? Those who can do this are usually controlling the future and the path many think those chose. Is your Business strong enough to do that? If you said ‘yes’, most likely you will be out of Business soon.

Some Businesses do make a strong attempt by creating products for the future. Generally, these are done by folks working the current product line and are made up of changes clients asked for. Sorry, but your clients do not know the future. They only know what may make their job easier from their limited view of how your products work. They wont get a budget unless they have to for a whole new direction so they will always answer surveys in the direction of least resistance.

“When the boss designs it, it all looks like the boss” – I speak from a long history of this. I had over a hundred employees that loved what they did, they tuned and helped clients in every way they could to keep our products on the leading edge. But, unless I suggested it, there was no ‘other’ projects going on. Most employees will fear projects that are outside of the standard as they think that the project will fail and they will be let go while their day job would have continued on. When all ideas come from one source (Microsoft under Bill Gates had this problem), no one owns the idea and there almost never be anything radical.

We did have a lot of ‘outside of the norm path’ projects that we worked on for Intel. They had a pretty good system (10 years back now) of encouraging employees to come up with ideas. That employee would make a case for their project and get to put a team together to jump in cubes on the far side of the building and try to make it all a reality. We were generally called in at the very end when there was shortcomings since we were known for pulling off just-in-time programming outside of the norm.

Most of my product development time now is at one major corporation. We have a ton of projects that are basically ‘new paint’ on the current. Bug fixes and minor updates are the norm. Just enough to be able to get the big clients what they want. My old hat went on when a team member came to me about a completely new direction. The idea fit into no current project so to give him time to develop idea meant everyone else had to suck up his work. Most folks jumped in, others didn’t understand what was wrong with our new can of paint.

The project went along, showing slow progress but it kept moving forward. The next major finance project round came around and we went into sales mode. We needed to sell this new way of doing processes. It was not a paint job on current methods, rather a whole new back end and front end… a new way of thinking about data management. Of course, now we must deliver on time and on budget with few hick-ups so no one goes back to the ‘old way’.

Several months ago, a long time employee said that they didn’t understand before where I was coming from but read a book that explained it all. I may have put too much expectations on team members to get it and want to run with an idea, or they didn’t have any new ideas since they were thinking too much like our clients. The book, The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton M Christensen does a really good job at showing examples of companies that followed their clients till they went out of business and their clients moved on – and other companies that put a few creative folks in a corner to work on a completely different direction. Of course, not all new great ideas pan out, but the ones that do will keep the income hitting your company bank acct.

With no graphics needed to be viewed, I grabbed the audiobook version from the iTunes store and listened on my iPhone driving to and from the office. It is only a couple hours long but Clayton does a great job of using that time to get the idea across… now I just need to get company ‘C’ class folks to listen so the next group working on the a special project wont have to do it offline.

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Posted in Lessons Learned

someone is selling – someone is buying

Posted by admin on August 9th, 2009 No Comments

In every situation, someone is making a sale. Even when it’s a mutually agreeable solution – at a point in the negotiation, someone is selling.

I was reminded of this as I ate breakfast this morning. My puppy sat and stared at me. She always asks for the sale. She is always ready for me to speak first. Since, who speaks first looses the advantage. A lot of classes will say that whomever speaks first ‘looses’. I don’t believe they have lost, but they have lost the upper hand.

In the case of my pup, she introduces her request for me to give her what she wants by sitting close and staring me down. She will push just a little by scooting forward just a bit or licking her lips. If she whines, she has lost the advantage because she has forced my hand to correct her. If she just stays on me with her poor puppy look (lowering the ears and tipping the head is a pretty good emotional play she can use without speaking) she might get me to do something.

I can tell her to go away. She will look down for a bit, maybe even walk away. But, she wont give up. No, this isn’t because we have fed her from the table before. It is because she wants something and is motivated to force an action out of us. She is hoping that we will go with what she wants. If we push her away, we have spoken and she has an objection to handle. She may react with a come back sad look or like I said before, she will round the table and come back at another attempt. She knows her options in advance.

In a puppy’s case, she may not have a full plan in mind but she has it in her head what she may do to get to where she wants to be in the end. Lessons learned… go in knowing what you want to be in the end. Plan on a lesser, what your willing to give up, throw always, in case things get tough. Plan, even if for a few minutes in the shower or the elevator… think who your selling to and why they may object to joining you in being a happy client. Maybe have someone else through objections at you. To make a sale, you must be able to handle every objection as smoothly and thoughtfully as possible.

With a plan in your head, you can access your pitch quickly without hesitation. Allowing a short elevator ride with someone that you just met and appear to need what you have becomes a possible sale. You have seconds to handle objections, know what they may be going in. Lowering your ears is handling the objection, whining looses the sale.

TigerDirect

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Posted in Lessons Learned

Many dimes make millions

Posted by admin on May 19th, 2009 No Comments

Do you ever look at your cell phone bill? I mean, really look at what your paying for.
I don’t stress over it every month but since I have a family acct that includes my folks, wife cell phones and my wife’s notebook 3g card, I take a glance at it from time to time. It always seems strange that it bounces up and down so much from month to month even though we don’t break out of our included minutes.

Where I have found the expense bounce is when the nieces hit us with a lot of text messages. They are half way across the US so it’s allowed to keep everyone in tune without need to sit with the phone to your ear while you enlightened to the latest school function. The months there is a lot of activity in their social lives sees us breaking out of our ‘in plan’ texting plan. That can add up quickly.

Why don’t we just go to unlimited. Well, ATT wants a ‘unlimited’ charge on each phone in the family plan… a item that ever family should pencil out before jumping into.

Let’s get to the reason for this article. Imagine if you had millions of customers. And each customer one of those customers you could hit with a couple dimes extra charge each month. Would an individual take the time to go through a Support phone web of options just for 20 to 30 cents extra charge. Most likely not, so that is a safe bet you can bank that extra cash every month.

How would the average person catch that they are getting hit with an extra couple text message charges a month? Have two 80+ year old parents that have their Text Messaging turned off on their phones. Or, a wife’s 3G card acct hooked up to a notebook with no Text Messaging software installed. Pretty sure neither of those situations would have Text Messaging traffic.

My own notebook uses a Verizon cell connection. There was a Text Message charge from time to time… I did nothing. Then, one day at the mall I was walking by the Verizon Connected Store and thought to drop in (the girls were in a store I knew would take an hour so I had some time to play with). The greeter was surprised that I was there to discuss a few dimes. They did call without much pushing thought. You know the person on the other end of the phone was surprised too as the in-store women said “no really, he is standing here and wants it straightened out”. Less than one minute later I was offered a refund/credit for the last few months charges (70 cents) and have not had a miss charged Text Message on my bill since.

You milage will vary depending on the person who you grab. Judging by the speed of the transaction, this was not a new thing to them. The fact I have not been charged since tells us that they can control the Text Messaging. My guess, only a guess, is that the Messages were one from them about an update which I can not receive so why pay?!!

Lets say that the person in the store and the person they called makes $12/hour (even though the credit happened in a minute, I actually used up about 15 minutes of their time with the problem outline, calling and ‘thanks’ wrap up), then there is the correction to the bill, the credit entry and authorization, and the blocking of the miss charge happening again. In my case, 30 cents/mo x 12 = $3.60 is what they stood to make on my if I did nothing. Their labor and paperwork to correct the problem is about $10 if everyone was efficient. How many people calling the cell phone companies out for their creative billing will it take to get them to stop? Anyone have a way to make it easier for people to request a stop/refund so more people will get the phone companies to do the right thing? And lastly, will our bills go up in the near future to make up for the loss in income?

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Posted in Lessons Learned
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