Mystical Beauty Updates

Well, I bought my first advertisement for Mystical Beauty, so I am really excited! I hope it brings us some good traffic, and lots more forum members

We’ve also got a new member on the Topsites List, and hopefully we’ll have lots more.

I’ve also just discovered plug boards! They are so much fun, and I’ve found some great sites while I was looking at them

Now I just need to figure out how to make a nice pretty button, so mine will be as nice as all the other buttons on the plug boards. I actually have seen some traffic from the plug boards, so that is really exciting!

Well, off to work, have a great day!

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Tmobile is Evil

I just got off the phone with Tmobile.

Apparently, back in October they sent me a letter asking if I wanted an extra 50 minutes each month.

So I called in and said yes.

They failed to mention that when I said yes I also agreed to a 2 year extension on my contract.*

I hate it when companies do such sneaky, deceptive things.

I was planning on upgrading to a family plan since DH is coming home, and that had been the plan since I got married in January.

Now I don’t want anything to do with them, and I’m stuck with them.

And I have to call them back tomorrow because the first person didn’t know how to set up the new plan, and I got so mad I didn’t complete the transaction when the 3rd person I talked to about adding a family plan and upgrading phones told me that my contract was through 2007 when I knew I had only signed a one year contract in Dec of 2004.

And to top it all off DH gets a cool new phone, and I get my old one

Oh well, at least I don’t have to transfer all my phone numbers to a new phone, or learn how to work a new phone.

It’s just a shame that this day and age companies still feel as if they have to lie and deceive people in order to “keep” new customers.

Before today I probably never would have thought about leaving Tmobile.

Now…I’ll be counting down the days to when the new contract is over…if I can actually manage to add a new line and upgrade to a family plan in tomorrow.

Nah, I won’t really be counting down the days, now I just feel an overwhelming sense of sadness that businesses don’t think they can get ahead without lying and cheating their customers.

I will be looking for a new cell phone provider when my contract is through though.

PS - Can you believe that #2 of the 3 people I talked to was unable to tell me which rate plan I was on? How can you have a business that is so divided that they can’t answer basic information? Especially when that person was adding a line to the plan? How are you going to add a line to a plan when you don’t know what plan the person is on?

*For all of you that are asking “Didn’t you think something was funny? Why would they offer you 50 minutes for nothing.”

Yeah, I thought something was funny, but I also thought that businesses were also obligated to tell you when they were extending your contract. I didn’t know that if they said “I’m going to give you 50 minutes a month” it meant “If you accept I’m going to extend your contract by 2 years.”

I also received a promotion from Alltel for being a loyal customer which gave me 50 extra minutes a month and did not obligate me to any other time in their service, so I thought Tmobile might be doing the same thing. (I only left Alltel because it was dropping calls in my house, and with DH deployed that was bad.)

And again I’ll say, I thought they had to TELL you that they were going to extend your contract, in plain English!

I guess I was wrong, at least when I’m dealing with Tmobile.

Posted in Life, Business | No Comments »

Vistaprint

Vistaprint drives me crazy! Am I the only one?

Not only havethey emailed me at least twice a week since I placed my order, sometimes it seems like I get an email from them every day…and that’s not counting the emails I get about them from mypoints.

In addition to that they called me and left a message on my answering machine…weeks after I’d got my order, which means they had no reason to be calling me! I have no idea what they wanted, but it annoyed me that they called. If I want to order something else from them, I know where to go…after all, I’ve gotten 500 emails from them since I’ve placed my order.

And then someone just forwarded me an email about their Columbus day sale. Thanks, but I’m really not interested. And Columbus day is OVER!!!

What’s the point?

I wonder if they ever sell anything that’s not actually on sale?

Posted in Life, Business | 1 Comment »

Telecommuting aka I work at home!

Yes. I admit it. I telecommute.

And after everyone realizes that yes, I have a job, I’m not just staying at home saying I work at home because I’m ashamed to say I don’t have a job, and yes I get paid, and yes, in most cases I make more than you do, they want to know how I found my telecommuting job.

So, here is my telecommuting advice.

Never pay for a job, or for information leading to a job. Many of the places that charge you for information about jobs, or that charge you for jobs are scams. They may simply take your money and run with it, they may take your money and require you to place the same type of ad that you signed up for, and hope that people will fall for it like you did, or they may take your money and promise that they will send you “fresh job leads that are updated daily.” If the company actually does post fresh leads daily, by the time these “fresh leads” are posted, all of the other people that are paying for the leads will be able to see, and apply to these jobs as well. And the more people that apply to that job, the less the chance that you will get hired for that job.

There are so many free resources to help you find a telecommuting position, that I have never found the need to pay for anything. I learned most of what I know about telecommuting through Wahm.com The Online Magazine For Work at Home Moms.

Wahm.com offers a telecommuting forum where you can ask questions about, and research potential companies and job opportunities. They also have a telecommuting/work at home job listing section, and many members post job leads in the telecommuting forum as well.

There are many ways to search for telecommuting positions. Work at home, and work at home jobs are usually not the best search terms to use, because these words usually bring up scams, or business opportunities. Some of the words that are more likely to bring up legitimate results are telecommute, telework, contract position, freelance, virtual, virtual employee, or independent contractor.

It is very important that you research the company that you are applying to before you send them any personal information. I know how scared I was to send off my hire papers, and I knew the company I work with is legit, so I can’t image how scary it must be to mail off your name, phone number, address, and social security number to someone, and then find out that they aren’t a legitimate business. Unfortunately, you will have to mail of this paperwork to most legitimate jobs, so it’s important that you have enough information about them so that you feel comfortable doing so. There will be times when you will be unable to find information about a company, and that doesn’t necessarily mean that the company is bad, but it is a situation where you will have to use your judgement.

If you can’t find information from an outside source, at least get a name, and a phone number for the business, and make sure that the company is using a professional website. Free hosting, and free email addresses with no contact information are definite red flags.

There may also be cases where you apply to a job that you think is legit, and then you find out it isn’t. Take the steps that are needed to protect yourself from fraud (hopefully this will never be a problem for you) and then forgive yourself.

You can look for telecommuting positions on most of the online job sites, such as Monster.comand Careerbuilder.

I personally found my job at craigslist.org in the San Francisco section. That’s the great thing about telecommuting. Your job can be anywhere!

When I look search craigslist, I search all jobs, leave the keyword section blank, and check the telecommute box, that brings up all of the telecommuting jobs for that city.

I do know people who advise entering “telecommuting is ok” in the keyword field, and that is what I did when I ran across an elusive site that allows you to search all of the craigslist cities at once. Unfortunately craigslist frowns on sites like that, so it was removed :-(.

The only thing that I don’t like about craigslist is that you don’t always know what company you are applying for. I’m pretty sure that I got on a couple of junk mail lists while applying to blind ads at craigslist, but they have so much information that I keep using them.

Well, that’s my telecommuting advice for today, if you have any questions feel free to ask!

Posted in Life, Business | 1 Comment »

Etailers Mall has it’s own toolbar!

UPDATED!

Unfortunately I have uninstalled the effective brand toolbar. I had 2 occassions where the toolbar took over my screen, opening at least 30 new windows on one occassion. IMHO this is completely unacceptable behavior.

When I wrote the company, they said there was a bug in that version of the toolbar, and all I had to do was download it and I wouldn’t have any trouble anymore. The thing is, I had reinstalled the toolbar the day before, and then I had the errors again.

Even if they had updated the version of the toolbar, which I am not sure they did, I think they should have notified it’s users that there was a bug in that toolbar. After all, if people are using their toolbar to promote their websites, and they are guaranteeing that the toolbar is adware and spyware free, when the toolbar starts opening 30 pages in someones window, the person who is promoting the toolbar is going to lose credibility. And that is not acceptable.

Here is the original message.

I ran across Effective Brand while searching the web, then got a newsletter about the toolbars being good, and spyware free, and effective, so I figured I’d try it. It’s going to be pretty cool. Right now I am planning on having an Etailers Mall site of the day, that will go out everyday. I will also be able to send messages to everyone if there is a sale or a party going on that day. I will definitely not abuse the priviliges though!

I have a radio with preset stations, and you can also add your own stations-the only problem is you just have the call letters for most of the stations, so you have no idea what kind of music they play until you listen to it.

I also have a search engine (they get their revenue from sponsored results from the search engines, so the toolbar is completely free to download) they do offer to let you plug your code in so you can get some of the money from the search engine results too. I also have it set up so that the Etailers Mall logo is displayed on the search engine results page.

I do have the Etailers Mall logo on the toolbar, and if you click on that it takes you to the homepage. I should probably change it so it goest to the mall though.

I also have a link to the forums there.

And I have my very own toolbar chatroom, which is interesting since I was thinking about putting up a chatroom on Etailers Mall.

And I have the RSS feed that allows me to contact everyone with the toolbar.

There are a few other things that you can put on there, and you can also customize it and add links to certain programs after you download it.

The toolbar fits right underneath the google toolbar so it’s pretty cool. Just so you know…I’m pretty paranoid about downloading stuff. I just downloaded the google toolbar today. LOL. But I really do think this is safe.

This is kind of fun. My very own toolbar I’m off to play some more!

Posted in Business, Etailers Mall | No Comments »

Craftlister.com

Craftlister.com craft experts, articles, and listings.

Posted in Business, Soap and Candle Making | No Comments »

Note to Self

Dani Johnson Calls recommended for new recruits, or people new to her.

April 11, 2005

January 3, 2005

May 31, 2004

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