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According to clark howard they will unlock your phone if you have been with them for 3 months.

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Links to cheap textbooks

> Openoffice has really matured lately

I knew it had arrived when I heard Clark Howard, the self-declared "techno-idiot" talk about it.
http://clarkhoward.com/shownotes/2002/06/20.html

"Every once in a while I get a spurt of calls and nasty-grams from collection agencies"

You have protection from this harassment under the federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. Here is a good form letter ("Drop-Dead" Letter to Collection Agencies) that you can use to assert this right.

This moring I sent a letter to the middle of nowhere over 1000 miles away for under 40 cents.

No, it does not count. Here is what Atlanta-based consumer advocate Clark Howard has to say about the United States Postal Service:

"The president of the United States has appointed a nine-member board to figure out what to do about the U.S. Postal Service. The USPS is $11 billion in debt right now. That's a lot of debt! The postal service has been raising rates for the past few years, and the picture moving into the future is not good. It's because people are starting to pay bills electronically more often and people even send greeting cards electronically. So the post office faces enormous difficulties because the amount of mail isn't going to be there. Do you know how many post offices there are across the U.S.? About 30,000. How many of those make money? Only half make money. So, really there would be almost no hardship if we closed half of the post offices. But politically, Congress chooses to waste our money by opening more post offices so they can get re-elected. Clark would love to see the postal service spin off into a private company that is completely free from government interference. If you go to FedEx or UPS, what you pay to ship a package is based on how far it's going. But with the post office, it's the same price no matter where you send your mail. The postal service used to have a very different role in our lives. If you go back even as recently as 1980, a long distance call would be $3.55. Today, it's about 2.5 cents. The cost of sending a letter in 1980 was six cents or eight cents. Now look at the price. We need to make the post office a real business and make it work for once."

Link: http://clarkhoward.com/shownotes/2002/12/12.html

For something hideously expensive like a car, maybe. But never buy one for home elenctronics (unless maybe you're buying one of those $6000 plasma TVs or whatever).

Clark Howard puts it into his "Ripoffs" category:
http://clarkhoward.com/library/tips/extended_warra nties.html

Clark says:
Don't buy an extended warranty on electronic devices such as a computer or VCR. The value of a new computer will drop to nearly nothing in just a few years, and a VCR can be replaced very inexpensively if it breaks.
A TV or DVD player can be replaced very inexpensively if it breaks. Update!
An extended warranty for an appliance is a bad deal because they rarely pay off.
People often lose the contracts, they move, or they forget they purchased the contract in the first place. The usage rate is even lower than the breakdown rate of the appliance.
You're better off taking the money you would have spent on service contracts and putting it into a repair fund.

Don't sign any contracts that extended beyond that period.

At least here in the states, cell phone carriers will be required to institute true number portability on cellphones. They've been pushing it back for about 4 years now but the FCC told them it was do or die time.

This is from: clarkhoward.com:

"Cell phone portability stays alive - July 18, 2002
If you are one of our listeners who took the time to write to the FCC about the cell phone industry, Clark wants to congratulate you. A law passed in 1996 allowed you to take your cell phone number from company to company if you changed providers. It was called "true number portability" and the cell phone industry was terrified of it. So, they have tried everything they could to postpone the law going into effect. The FCC asked for you comments in this matter and your voice was heard. The FCC has issued a decision, saying the rule will stay in effect and you'll be able to keep your number. But reinstatement will not go into effect until Thanksgiving 2003. So, we will be able to take our number with us, but not for a while. And, when this goes into effect, many cell phone companies will go away because of mergers. As long as we have four major players, we will have a decent amount of competition."

Here's the original link.

Good luck!

Initially the debit card liability limit was the banking industry's attempt as you describe. I don't know that it's Federal Law yet either, although I suspect so since Clark Howard stopped campaigning against them on air.

Even so, you still have a lot more to lose with a debit card. Someone steals your credit card? Report it stolen, pay $50, fini. Your credit report isn't impacted, you get a new card, life moves on.

Someone steals your debit card? Now you're screwed. Sure, you can report it stolen and only be liable for $50, but that money is gone from your account and the bank has up to 10 business days (M-F) to restore it. Hope you don't need any cash for those 10 days. Or to write a check. Or have any bills already in the mail. Because there's nothing you can do - except maybe borrow cash from a credit card and pay those exorbitant finance rates. If a check bounces then you get hit on your credit report, along with getting hit with additional fees. Get them reimbursed? Maybe. Depends on your bank - they aren't under any requirement to reimburse you those fees. And how much more paperwork is that going to be?

Fact of the matter is, no matter what your bank says, credit cards are still safer than debit cards. If you can't handle a credit card and keep spending yourself into debt, fine, use a debit. But otherwise avoid them like the plague -- they're only good for the bank. Not for you.

Why dont people realize there is such a thing as 'your dollar vote'.

Not every finance instution will be doing this just becuase they can.
What you need to do it find the ones that are not, drop any you have that do, and use your dollar vote.

That is one of the fundemental concepts in a Free-Enterprise society.
To many people put up with crap from businesses, and are unwilling to change where they bank, shop, what they buy, etc..
And as for not having a choice with the whole Ma-Bell thing.. I know several people that have dicontinued standard telephone service in favor of only using a Cell Phone. Also, there are many many ILEC's around that are not Ma'Bell puppets.

Oh, and if you every heard/visitied Clark Howard ( http://clarkhoward.com ) he points out alot of this type of thing.

Then I found eRealty through a mention at Consumer Advocate Clark Howard's web site. The attractive thing up front was the 1% rebate at close (I did receive a check for $2,100 -- 1% of the $210,000 sale price -- within days of close). But I also liked the service itself.

eRealty has traditional realtors (working, at the time anyway, on salary, not commission -- a wonderful advantage for me, the buyer) who are Internet-aware (mine was, anyway; Cindy Morgan, BTW) as well as experienced realtors.

They not only provided cool search and alert tools via their web site, but the the person touch provided by my agent and, when things got rocky with the seller's agent (idiot), the regional managers kept the deal alive and made a potential disaster rather pleasant. These guys fought for me. (They even fought for the seller, who was in the process of be forclosed upon for non-payment of mortgage; they arranged a deal with her lender to keep her out of foreclosure until my financing was approved; then, they worked with my lender, DiTech.com, to secure my financing within 2 weeks of application).

I guess this is what I appreciated: eRealty provides traditional service with modern Internet tools.

eRealty.com - Highly Recommended
--

BTW, Check Cards, Debit Cards by any other name, are very dangerous: the money is debited from your checking account immediately. Why does this matter? Because theft happens, and, just as bad, mistakes happen.

For example, I've seen "settlement" programs (programs that submit payment transactions to the credit card processors) get stuck in loops and repeat the same charge hundreds of times. Not fun (unless your transaction happens to be a refund...). Credit card users may have been temporarily inconvenienced by maxed out cards (pretty bad, I know), but Debit Card holders actually have the money transferred out of their accounts - and if checks bounce because of it, oh well!

Don't use Debit Cards. Learn restraint and use Credit Card or Charge Cards (Amex, DC) responsibly.

For more information see: Clark Howard's Consummer Action website. Search for Debit cards.

If a credit reporting agency refuses to remove a fradulent report, they can be sued.

A good site to check for this issue is www.clarkhoward.com , especially here.

I guess YMMV applies to negative as well as positive experiences, eh?

No doubt. If you go over to Clark Howard's website, you will find that there are numerous complaints against Best Buy, but very few against Circuit City when it comes to customer service issues. About the only things I get from Best Buy are CDs or specific models of equipment after doing extensive research (which is about the only way I buy stuff anyway).