Goodbye mega huge conglomerate bank

My current mega huge conglomerate bank finally pissed me for the last time. I just got back from setting up my own personal checking account at a local credit union and I am shedding no tears for leaving US Bank.  I will not regale you with my list of annoyances designed to extract the maximum amount of money from my banking 'relationship' with them.

A typical mega huge bank manager? Perhaps.

Lest you think I'm just harping on US Bank for this rant I previously banked at Bank of America until they annoyed me too many times.  Long ago when getting my first home loan Washington Mutual backed out of a locked and approved home loan via a technicality.  I'm not playing favorites in my ever increasing disdain for the mega-huge-conglomerate banks here.

My wife has been a member of a local credit union for several years and after the Bank of America separation I opened our joint account there. What a difference.  The credit union people go out of their way to actually help you solve your problem instead of directing you to the courtesy phone for support somewhere in the world. No activity fees, no minimum balance requirements, no waiting for you to screw up to hit you with a massive fine fee.  I'm not against being charged for items but it appears the current trend in large publicly traded banks is to extract as much as possible from their customers without having them leave in frustration. I'm sure getting the fee/annoyance balance just right occupies the time of several legions of up and coming bank executives.

If your current mega bank pisses you off, take a look at your local credit union. I'm pretty sure the ethos of treating your customers fairly and in a respectful manner is much more common at your local credit union than at the very large banks.

For those of you training for a bank manager position here's the Ferengi rules of acquisition.

Japan Nuclear Update: Fear and Loathing about Fukushima

It hasn't taken very long for the charlatans and plain fear mongers to try to capitalize on the situation in Japan. I recently saw a banner ad on my web site for a company shilling a supplement to prevent radiation injury to Americans. I am not going to link to the company and give them free publicity.

To be very clear:
YOU ARE IN NO DANGER IF YOU LIVE IN ALASKA, HAWAII OR THE CONTINENTAL US.
The EPA agrees with me without using all caps.
A professor from Berkeley agrees with me.

Those who have a memory longer than a year may recall two nuclear weapons detonated OVER Japan a few decades ago. The amount of nuclear radiation emitted from those events were several orders of magnitude higher than the current situation yet we didn't have anyone dying in America did we?

This chart from http://xkcd.com/radiation/ has been floating about showing the relative levels of radiation and I think one should really take a look at it to put some of the news reports in context.  One problem is our instruments are so sensitive that its very possible in America to detect the slightly elevated levels of radiation that have made it to our shores.  Then again, getting on an airplane would provide a much higher dose but that doesn't seem to be mentioned at the same time the TV breathlessly tells you the clouds of nuclear radiation are coming this way.

Plutonium:
There's been reports plutonium has been found on the grounds of the Fukushima power plants and we should all hit the panic button  Plutonium is a natural by product of the normal fission cycle which occurs in a power plant. What they didn't mention in the first reports is the scale of the plutonium concentration and that matters a lot. For some sanity I suggest you listen to this interview:
http://georneys.blogspot.com/2011/03/14th-interview-with-my-dad-nuclear.html

Tepco came out with some clarification of the Plutonium and it's not something to worry about
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/11032812-e.html


Finding people in Japan:
The red cross has another site for finding people in Japan here:
http://www.familylinks.icrc.org/web/doc/siterfl0.nsf/htmlall/familylinks-japon-eng
I mentioned another site run by Google a couple days ago.

Predictions for cleanup taking 30 years:
I ran across a Bloomberg article predicting it will take 30 years and billions to clean this mess up. I link to it so we can see how accurate they are. I find it odd to make such predictions when the smoke hasn't even settled.

There's an interesting presentation by Arevea floating around which appears to give a good timeline of what has happened. Of course this is a theory regarding the damage of the cooling torus but it does look like a possible reason for the elevated radiation readings in the water.
https://docs.google.com/present/view?id=dg4hcz37_289dr9g62f6

I'm not trying to sugar coat the issue in Japan which is still volatile and dangerous but please respond to any positive or negative news reports with a healthy dose of skepticism.

Drugstore.com and Complete savings scam followup

I recently posted about drugstore.com and the Complete Savings post transaction scam. Apparently it is rather widespread and even the US Senate has noticed.    Please go to the Consumer Reports blog and see how this is unfortunately very widespread. 

I don't intend this to be a consumer safety blog but this sort of behaviour just chaps my hide.  One of the cornerstones of any corporation should be respect for the customer and their ability to trust you with their purchase and your products.  It's part of the 'brand'.   These scams destroys trust in the consumers whom you have finally convinced to buy from you. Short term thinking like this will seriously harm your corporation in the long term.  Cut it out!

On an interesting side note I received an email within 24 hours from Complete Savings after my first post on the matter explaining how the transaction occured.  Telling me in detail how I was deceived does not defend your actions.  Why don't you spend your time coming up with techniques to sell your services that aren't deceptive?

Don't bother shopping at drugstore.com

Our family recently made a purchase from drugstore.com online.  No problems with the actual purchase, but somehow we didn't unlick some box during electronic checkout and we were signed up for a $12 monthly recurring bill for a service called 'Complete Savings'.   We didn't want anything from 'Complete Savings' and didn't even know they existed until a bill showed up on our credit card.

After a few minutes on the phone today with our bank and then finally Complete Savings the charges will supposedly be reversed and our 'account' with Complete Savings closed.  I found it ironic how quickly and easily they removed the service. There was even an option on the primary phone menu to remove yourself.  I surmise they get a LOT of requests for removal.   I suggest you not do business with either completesavings.com or drugstore.com.

Some of you may say I should just read the terms of service and be more careful when shopping online, but I'm calling bullsh*t on that.  One should not have to be concerned with accidentally being charged for extraneous external services.  If your company chooses not to act in a respectful manner, so be it, but don't complain when I tell others not to shop at your company.  I only want to watch Ferengi on TV, not interact with them in real life.

If you google 'complete savings scam' you will see other companies have been caught in this scam of tricking their own customers in a desperate attempt for more revenue.