With the sad state if the economy these days, I’m seeing my share of ads on TV and online that tout the benefits of credit counseling services. I don’t know a whole lot about that industry, but I presume their stated intent is to assist consumers who want to reduce their debt and learn how to better manage their finances.

It’s easy for many consumers to end up in financial trouble during times like this when some of them are forced to rely on credit cards to pay bills and cover other expenses after losing their jobs.

I suppose I should not be terribly surprised to hear a story like the following in the age of “It all depends on the meaning of what the word is is,” but at the very least, some might find it amusing.

A story from the Orlando Sentinel not long ago described the credit card trouble that a credit counseling company called Breakthrough Credit Counseling Inc. is having with Bank of America.

Bank of America alleged that the company ran up about $18,000 in credit card debt and then failed to make the payments. The bank has filed suit against the company for the alleged non-payment.

Hearing news like this about a credit counseling company could surely give pause to anyone who had been considering contacting them for help with their debt. One might wonder how a company can counsel others regarding financial matters when they cannot pay their own bills.

Apparently, this is not the only trouble the owners of Breakthrough Credit Counseling Inc. are having. The article also states that a mortgage company sued to foreclose on their home during 2008 and that their their homeowners’ association filed a lien against them.

It seems as if the only “breakthrough” that they need to concern themselves with at this point is breaking themselves through to a debt-free life themselves.

It’s not uncommon to hear stories about stupid criminals. There are even television programs devoted to the subject. I suppose it’s bad enough being exposed as a crook, and even worse for earning a reputation as a stupid crook.

This description seems to fit Maria Elena Booker, a 40-year-old woman from Arizona who actually used a credit card she had stolen to pay a find imposed on her in a court of law. How she imagined she could get away with that one is anyone’s guess!

Booker is alleged to have stolen a purse from an unlocked vehicle as it was parked in the victims driveway. The victim reported the stolen purse to the police and later realized that someone was using one of her credit cards.

In addition to the court fine, Booker stands charged of using the credit card to pay her car insurance and telephone bill.

I must admit I am a bit baffled by the whole situation. If someone attempts to pay a bill or a fine with a credit card that does not bear their name, doesn’t that make the service provider, or in this case, court officials, a little suspicious?

Perhaps I’m just not savvy enough when it comes to the intricacies of credit card crime. I guess that’s because I tend to use only those that have my name printed on them.

For more on this story, visit The Daily Courier.

Now here’s something I had never heard of before. Who would have imagined that closing a credit card account could have a negative impact on your credit score? One would think it would be a positive move, since you certainly would not be using that card to rack up more debt.

But, like the Wall Street crooks whose slight-of-hand maneuvers helped push the economy to the brink of disaster, I don’t suppose we should expect things like FICO scores to make a whole lot of sense either.

A FICO score is just another way of saying credit score. We’ve all seen the ads on TV or online that advertise services that allow you to find out what your credit score is. FICO score and credit score are pretty much synonymous.

Anyway, an piece in USA Today surprised me a bit when it was revealed that closing a credit card account might actually lower your credit score a bit. It appears that the extent of the damage is pretty minimal – perhaps a couple of points – but if you have been working hard to build yours back up after enduring some financial hardships, those hard-earned couple of points may mean a lot to you.

This may put some credit card customers between the proverbial rock and a hard place, since some credit card issuers are coming up with new ways to generate profits after new regulations were enacted recently that stripped away some of the sneaky tricks used by some of them to fatten their coffers.

One might just decide to pay a card off and then stop using it. It was the first option that popped into my mind. However, with the effort to raise new revenue, some issuers are now instituting annual fees and inactivity penalties (I think “penalties” is the best word in this case), which make it impossible to just stop using your card and avoid sending money to the card issuers.

This Discovery (hint, hint!) comes at an interesting time for me, since a credit card company has managed to recently land itself on my bad side. My intent is to pay it off as soon as possible and close the account.

For me, shaving a couple of points off my FICO score will not be a serious problem, and if it happens, I’ll just live with it. Despite new regulations designed to protect consumers, you can be sure the credit card companies will come up with innovative new ways to extract money from consumers.

Your best bet, if at all possible is to simply use your credit cards for purchases that you can pay off in full as soon as the bill comes in. Since having no credit cards actually diminishes your credit score, that seems like the best way to keep your score as high as possible and also stay out of troubling debt.

I’ve got to say that I have never received an offer for SEO services via the U.S. Mail before. Technically, I still haven’t, but my wife has.

She received what appeared to be a letter in the mail, which, in my opinion is a bit on the deceptive side. Although they do state clearly on the letter that it is not a bill, it is designed in a way that could easily make someone believe that is.

How do I know this? Well, my wife asked me about it! She assumed it was some kind of a bill for web hosting or something. She does have some domain names that she has registered, and apparently this outfit, calling themselves “Web Listings, Inc.” pours through the whois records and sends this kind of crap out to people who have registered domain names.

It’s not the first type of mailing I have seen similar to this one, since other companies have sent us “domain renewal” letters that have been quite deceptive in the past.

As you can see from the images of the letter, it is formatted in a way that is pretty typical for bills you might get in the mail from credit card companies or perhaps even a utility company.

Basically what they are offering here are SEO, or “search engine optimization” services that are intended to influence the way search engines such as Google list your web site. The goal, of course, is to get as close to the top spot as possible when someone conducts a search for whatever it is you are selling.

Their website is full of the sales-speak I would expect from an SEO company of this caliber. Basically, it’s just a bunch of technical mumbo-jumbo that really doesn’t say a damn thing of any use. Besides the fact that we do not have a need for any SEO services right now, this “Web Listings, Inc.” would certainly not be one that I would even consider.

Their mailing has the faint aroma of deception in my personal opinion, and I suspect they are hoping that recipients of this crap just assume it is some kind of bill and simply send in a payment.

Perhaps they also make a few bucks from people who are new to the world of managing their own website, and believe that this type of service might do them some good.

There are indeed honest and reputable SEO firms out there, and if you are looking for that kind of service, feel free to use my contact form for a recommendation.

No, I don’t have an SEO business, and I am not an affiliate of any SEO businesses, so I do not stand to profit from any recommendations. I’ve just been around the internet long enough to know who the good guys are.

I could be wrong, but I’d hesitate to put “Web Listings, Inc.” in that category. I just don’t care much for their marketing techniques.

Click the images below for a larger view.

As you may recall from our first episode, I was trying to convince the “technical support” team at 1&1 Internet that one of their servers had a problem. They were quick to blame me, since it was a PHP script that was failing and they did not support user scripts.

My third call to 1&1 was indeed the charm in this case. The woman I talked to half-way around the world was more patient than her colleagues and spent some time digging into the problem. After being placed on hold a number of times, she finally realized that I was not crazy after all!

She informed me that they had indeed discovered a problem with the server that was causing my PHP script to fail. As far as I could tell, it took her a number of calls to the system administrators to get to the bottom of the problem.

Their acknowledgement of the problem led me to believe that the problem would soon be solved and my scripts would begin working in a short time. I was mistaken.

It took them a full three days to resolve the problem. A completely unacceptable response when there are likely to be numerous people with domains hosted on that server that were depending on it for some or all of their income.

Yeah, I can hear some of you already. If you’ve got sites that are critical to your business you should invest in a dedicated server. Well, for some of us, the cost of a dedicated server is prohibitive. When you’re building a business you simply are not able to start at the top. You have to work your way up and expand your business as your revenue allows.

I did, after all, have 1&1’s “Developer” package which was supposed to be their top-of-the-line shared hosting account. Server uptime is one thing, but a server that is technically “up,” and not working properly is nearly has bad as one that is down.

I reached a point where I realized that I really had to move all of my sites off of 1&1’s servers for good and never do business with them again.It took a bit of time and a lot of work, but all of my sites are now being hosted with other hosting companies and my 1&1 account will soon be closed for good.

Most of my sites are now hosted with HostGator with one of their VPS packages. I was a little apprehensive about using a VPS which is a “virtual” server that is really just a kind of server within a server. The great things about a VPS is that they are far less expensive than a dedicated server but give you just about the same level of control.

With a VPS I can reboot my entire virtual server, install software on it and restrict access to it which allows me to block spammers and hackers as I see fit. So far the VPS has been as reliable as the shared hosting I was signed up for at HostGator and I have closed my shared account and moved my sites to the VPS.

The support from HostGator has been very good. Since I am a newbie when it comes to managing my own server, I did run into a few problems. It was a nice to change to pick up the phone and get someone on the phone who was sitting in an office in the same country!

No more “can I put you on hold” nonsense like I had to deal with 1&1. Each time I have called 1&1, the support personnel have worked through the problem with me while I stayed on the line and was not put on hold. They are head and shoulders above the “support” at 1&1.

If you can believe it, 1&1’s billing department is as incompetent as their technical support department! My nightmare dealing with them will be the focus of part 3, which will be posted when I finally finish with them and I am confident that they are no longer able to place new charges on my credit card.

Ever since I decided to get my own cell phone and give the one that we shared to my wife for her exclusive use, I’ve been getting strange calls. Actually, they all end up being strange voicemail messages, since I very rarely use my cell phone. and it spends the vast majority of its time sitting in a drawer with the power turned off.

It didn’t take long for me to start getting calls for the individual that had been assigned that telephone number before it was assigned to me. Some of the calls sounded job-related, as if someone was seeking this guy to do technical support work or something.

I then started getting calls that sounded like typical telemarketing calls, but most of them would mention the guy’s name. It got to the point where I changed the voicemail greeting for my phone so that it announced to whomever was calling for that other guy had not reached the person they were looking for, and to stop calling my number looking for him!

The calls stopped for quite some time, and I figured that might have been the end of it. Today I ran an errand – one of the few occasions I turn on my cell phone and was a little surprised to hear the tell-tale beeps that alerted me to the fact that I had new voicemail or text messages.

This time it was a series of three voicemail messages claiming to be from a “Mr. Martin” at “Integrity Financial Partners” (got to love that name!), which is apparently some kind of collection agency. Each of the messages was automated, and was obviously intended to lure the former owner of my cell phone number to call them back and discuss a debt they were attempting to collect.

I got a real good laugh from the second one, which stated that if I was not [insert name of guy who previously had my number], I should hang up immediately. It then said, this message will pause for three seconds and then proceeded to emit three beeps – no doubt counting down the vital three seconds. You can imagine my breathless anticipation!

It then proceeded to tell me that by continuing to listen to the message, I was acknowledging that I was indeed [insert name of guy who previously had my number]; a statement that resulted in great amusement for me. Naturally, I continued to listen.

As expected, it was just another request for the guy to call and talk about the money that this outfit claims he owes to someone.

A little research on the web resulted in a lot of nasty comments about “Integrity Financial Partners,” including one that says the owner of the company is a registered sex offender in the state of Florida. Others claim that the company has attempted to scam money from them.

I have no idea if any of those accusations are credible, but that’s what I found out there.

I decided to call the number and see if I could get these people to stop calling and leaving messages on my cell phone voicemail. I dialed up 866-851-8055 and after a short wait, was talking to a young guy who seemed a bit clueless. He was surely polite enough and all, but seemed a little uncertain of himself.

In the end, he did tell me he would record the fact that my number is not the correct number for the guy they are seeking, and that I should not hear from them again. Time will tell.

This post has been a long time coming. I was a customer of 1&1 web hosting since 2004. The reason I remained with them for so long was that I did not require much in the way of technical support and I had quite a few domains hosted with them. It just seemed like too much of a hassle to relocate all those domains. Until I could not take it any longer!

Since I’m a refugee from a big computer company, and did technical support for 20+ years, I was able to solve most of my technical problems on my own. However, I had a shared hosting plan with 1&1, and did not have “root” access to the server, which would have allowed me to fix most of the technical problems I ran into that required the kind of access to the server that only system administrators have.

First, the good.

1&1 hosting was quite reliable. I rarely experienced downtime with 1&1, in fact their server availability was excellent. I also never noticed any significant performance problems. My websites always responded with acceptable speed.

Another nice thing about 1&1 was that they gave me SSH access, which many web hosting companies will not do without making you jump through a bunch of silly hoops. SSH access allowed me to log into my hosting account via a “command prompt” window, which made performing some tasks a lot faster, such as wiping out entire directories or copying from one to another. I’m not sure of they still provide SSH access without putting customers through a hassle.

For a newbie, I think their custom control panel is actually a plus. I found it to be a bit more straightforward than the more common cPanel that most other hosts provide, but that was really the only thing good about it.

The downside to their custom control panel is that it is as slow as molasses flowing up hill on a cold day! I used 1&1 almost exclusively for over five years, so I was always a little thrown off when I had to use cPanel on another hosting account where I had a couple of domains.

Since then, I have become a big cPanel fan, and can now see how superior it is when compared to 1&1’s custom control panel. It’s much faster, and now that I have become comfortable with it, I find it easy to work with. It also seems to simply work better; giving me fewer errors or other glitches like the ones I ran into using 1&1’s version.

The custom control panel on 1&1 may be better for newbies (some folks will probably disagree), but there is a much larger problem that newbies will encounter if they decide to sign up for hosting with 1&1.

Their support is horrendous! Like I mentioned earlier, since I’ve been working with computers for years, I did not often require support from 1&1, but every once in a while, something would come up that was beyond my control and I had no choice but to contact 1&1 to correct the problem.

I had two major problems with 1&1 support. The first being that they were basically incompetent, and secondly, their support is located on the other side of the world.

I’ll tackle the second problem first, since that is probably the one that might make people think I spend my evenings wearing a white hood and burning crosses on people’s lawns.

When I call a company for support, I expect to talk to someone who understands me and whom I can understand easily. On those occasions when I had no choice except to call 1&1 for support, I was always connected to someone in India. And I don’t care for that at all.

Without getting into the political issues, I find it difficult to relate to someone half-way around the world. They do not understand my culture and I do not understand theirs. This sometimes makes it hard to get a point across. For example, some phrases or words (you might refer to it as slang) is meaningless to the majority of people in another country. Particularly when the native language of that country is not English.

It just isn’t an efficient way to do technical support. Most of them spoke decent English, but even the ones that did gave me the impression that they were not trained properly to provide customers with technical support. Every call seemed to be and endless string of “I do apologize” (they are masters of that phrase!) and “May I put you on hold?” Probably so they could call their tech support to get some idea of how to handle my problem!

After a couple of experiences with 1&1 support through the years, it reached the point where I would spend hours coming up with elaborate work-arounds to solve technical problems just to avoid calling them!

Why did I not move to another hosting company sooner? I had between 20 and 30 domains hosted at 1&1. Yes, I worked in computers for more than two decades, but I really had no experience with building web sites and conducting business on the internet until 2004. Moving all those sites seemed like a gargantuan task, and I surely was not going to trust some employee at a web hosting company to do it for me after seeing what it was like dealing with 1&1!

My last call for technical support from 1&1 was probably two or three months ago, if not a bit longer than that. I had a number of domains that were hosting websites and using a simple little snippet of PHP code that generated an e-mail message to me when a visitor clicked a specific link or interacted in some other way with the site.

One day I noticed that I had not received any e-mails at all from any of my domains that were using that code. Since I normally received many in the course of a day, I knew something was not right, so I visited one of my own sites and tested it. Sure enough, no e-mail came. It was the same for all of my sites that were using that code.

Anyone with even a little background with tech support or system administration would know that a problem like that smells a lot like a system-level problem and not something specific to one hosting account. To me it was obviously not a programming error since nothing had been changed, and all of my sites exhibited the same behavior.

This was one of those problems that I knew I could not fix on my own. I had to call 1&1 support, and tell them they had a problem with their server. I picked up the telephone, realizing exactly what I was up against.

My first go-round with 1&1 tech support got me basically nowhere. Not that I was the least bit surprised. The friendly gentleman sitting half-way around the world started by trying to weasel his way out of doing his job. Before I could even finish explaining the problem, he was only too happy to inform me that “We do not support user scripts.” I think he told me that about three times before I got through to him.

After numerous apologies and oh-so-polite utterances of “May I put you on hold?” He simply could not verify that there was any kind of problem. I attempted to explain that it was most likely a server-wide problem, but he did not seem to fathom that. Finally, I gave up in frustration and ended the conversation. Maybe it would resolve itself in a while when some system administrator noticed it or something. I decided to give it a little time.

If you’re tired of waiting for 1&1, or sick of dealing with their substandard support, I highly recommend HostGator (click on the link to check them out).

HostGator came highly recommended to me and they have lived up to that recommendation. I even tested them before I signed up by calling their technical support telephone number (I pretended I had the wrong number) and the phone was answered by someone right here in the U.S.A. That was a breath of fresh air in and of itself!

Still want more information on 1&1 and how they compare to HostGator? That’s coming in Part 2.

Well, it seems as if the telephone is getting a bit busier these days. Hey, maybe it’s a sign that the economy is picking up and these obnoxious telemarketers are a barometer! They’ve got to pay these rude morons something, after all.

It was my business line that rang this time, and as a result, I answered with my “business greeting.”

Now I’m not sure if that was a turn-off for the ignoramus on the other end of the line, or if it was just one of those typical telemarketing hang-up calls, but all I heard was “click” after I answered.

As I normally do under these circumstances, I researched the number that showed up in my Caller ID. Other consumers have reported receiving calls from this outfit, called “FBK Products” who were reported to be trying to sell some kind of septic tank treatment or something.

I could think of a number of suggestions for someone making telemarketing calls regarding septic tanks, as well as a few suggested new company names for “FBK",” but I’ve got other things to do.

Watch for the above number and/or company name on your Caller ID so you can take whatever action you deem appropriate.

This may be only one of the number that these dirt bags are using, since I got a very similar call a few weeks ago from a different number.

These idiots are some kind of debt consolidations outfit or something. It’s a robo-dialer with a recorded message that’s worded to make people think that their credit card interest rate is about to go up.

They try to make it sound like it is one of your credit card companies calling, but the tip-off is that they never mention a company name. Obviously, if you had a Chase MasterCard, you’d expect to say something like, “Hi, this is Ashley calling from Chase MasterCard” or something.

A little searching around the net revealed a good number of people who have also received these calls and that the people on the other end are pretty rude and arrogant if you manage to get through to them.

Could be a “legitimate” debt consolidations company that uses slimy telemarketing tactics or could be criminals fishing for credit card info. My caller ID said “Wireless Caller” which I find a bit unusual coming from a company making calls like that, so I’m leaning towards criminals myself.

Don’t be taken in by crap like this. Pay attention to how they word things. They may avoid using any names like Visa or MasterCard for legal reasons, since that might bring big guns to bear on them. Scum like this likes to stay hidden in the shadows for obvious reasons.

If you get any call from someone about credit card interest and how you can stop if from going up, just hang up on them. Make sure you know who you are talking to before giving out any personal information. If you are not sure, you can tell them you will call them back and then you can verify that the number actually belongs to your credit card company or bank.

For quite a while now, it’s been very quiet on the telemarketing front at our home. It looks like that period may be coming to an end.

I realize that someone calling to do a survey is exempt from the ‘Do Not Call’ regulations, but that does not mean I want to talk to those people any more than I want to talk to a telemarketer. They both interrupt whatever it is I happen to be doing, and are asking for my time to benefit their organization while offering me nothing in return.

Last evening when the phone rang at 6:45 the called ID displayed the tell-tale ‘Out of Area.’ Since I was actually expecting a call from a company, I thought that it might have been the call I was waiting for and I picked up.

The fellow on the other end sounded rather odd. Robotic. In fact, for a moment, I actually wondered if it was one of those automated calls, since the guy was so monotone. He first wanted to assure me that he was not calling to sell me something.

He then went on to tell me he was from ‘Opinion Dynamics’ and they were doing a survey for a major television network. At that point he asked if I was ‘one of the heads of the household.’

I told him that I was, and without giving him a chance to respond, I asked him if I was going to be paid for taking part in the survey.

Click.

Yep, the ignorant idiot hung up on me. Which is actually the outcome I had hoped for since it results in less of my time being wasted.

I’ve complained about this in the past, but would like to bring it up again. How is it that these survey companies expect people to waste their time on the phone answering questions which will help some huge corporation increase their profits, and not offer participants a dime?

Was the moron who called my home last night doing it for free? That’s highly doubtful. It’s likely that he collects a paycheck from ‘Opinion Dynamics.’ Sure there might be calls that go out from volunteers who may be working for organizations like Greenpeace or whatever, but last’s evening’s call was certainly not one of those.

I wish more people would start telling these survey companies that they would like some form of compensation for their time. Why should we be expected to work for free? I wouldn’t apply for a job that advertised the fact that they were not willing to pay me, and I bet you wouldn’t either.

I’m not talking about charity work here. The guy that called me last evening said he was gathering information for a major television network. Now why would I want to work for one of those corporations for free?