Well I started my company about 1 year ago, I then decided about 6 months ago to start some advertising campaigns. One of the websites I signed up with was CitySearch. I did the online method and let the ads run. Well I was unhappy with the results and after several months at $250/month, I decided to cancel. I canceled my service on 2/17/10, two days after my renewal period of the 15^th. Well I did not want to continue my service an be billed another $250 for that month, I was only two days past the renew date and I think its only fair I should not have to pay $250 for something I don't want.

I sent this email to my account manager listed on CitySearch's website.

“to: mark.moore@citysearch.com

date: Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 7:38 PM

subject: Problem Canceling Account

Customer ID: 304492

Just canceled my account,

says I have to wait till 3/15. I don't want another $250 bill, please cancel my ads now!

Thanks,

--

Erin O'Meara

Salmon Bay Technology”

I sent the message and never received a response. Until I started to receive collection notices for the amount + late fee + collection fee. Well as you can imagine I was upset so I called the number on the collections notice and after some heated discussions and some transfers I was told the only person who can reverse the charges are my account manager. I was really now now. This guy figured when he saw my email asking to cancel that the that last charge of $250 would go unnoticed so why do the right thing and cancel it early?

I called up Mark Moore of CitySearch and gave him a piece of my mind. He kept repeating that I agreed to the term of service and that I was obligated to pay. I told him I understand that there are terms of service and that there has to be a line. And that Its not like I called 2 days before I was going to be billed, I sent him a message two days into a 30 day billing cycle. I would not charge one of my customers for a 30 day service if they canceled in the first two days. Would you?

After I told him I was never going to pay, he finely said he was going to take care of it and that it would go away but he had to talk with the accounting department but every one I talked with before Mark Moore said he was the decision maker. Mark called me back and said that everything was taken care of. All this happened on July 1^st.

July 13^th rolls around and I received another collections notice, sent an email to Mark Moore again with no response.

“to: mark.moore@citysearch.com

date: Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 10:23 AM

subject : Re: Problem Canceling Account

Just got another collection notice dated July 7th, that's several days after we talked are you sure you got this taken care of?

Account #304492

--

Erin O'Meara

Salmon Bay Technology”

Well fast forward to today, I get a call from the collections agency telling me they want to rectify the situation by taking a payment. I told them that the problem is already sorted out and that they need to contact Mark Moore my account manager. The person at the collection agency asks if that means I'm declining to pay? Yes, call the account manager if you really want to “rectify the situation”.

How hard would it have been for Mark to take care of this properly the first go around when I sent him my first email? How much time could he have spent more productively with other clients? Do you think I'm ever going to use CitySearch again?

I would never have done this to a customer, previous or present.

In today's world we have all read about someone loosing a laptop or having it stolen with sensitive data that should never get out into "the wild". Well the solution to this problem is simple, whole hard disk encryption. That requires a password at boot-up to load the Operating System. As long as the computer is stolen/lost while its off it's pretty much impossible/impractical to crack any encrypted drive particularly if your password is strong.

I recommend TrueCrypt if you are looking for a great and easy solution to encrypt a standard desktop or laptop. It works with Windows, OS X and Linux also note that its Free and Open Source. I won't get into details about the software their website has great documentation and its very easy to use. Download the installer and follow the wizard to enrypt your entire hard drive.

What you don't want to do is install it and just create a encrypted virtual drive to store your “sensitive” files on, because windows creates all kinds of temporary files so opening a file might create a cached version on your system that is unencrypted. So simply put encrypt the whole hard drive will create a very secure environment that will keep your information secure.

I have only touched one feature that TrueCrypt provides, for most people it will be the only part of the software they will need but its a pretty full featured tool.

If you have a small business with 1-40 people you do NOT have to pay for email. All you need to do is use Google Apps (Standard Edition) What this basically does is give you Gmail for your domain. You get Email, Calendar, Documents and Sites all for free as long as you have less then 50 users. When you compare Google Apps (Standard Edition) to Microsoft Exchange Server its a no brainier for small business. You get your email address at your domain (you@yourdomain.com) with calendars that work very similar to Exchange Server. Create Events and invite other users (from your domain) and see if they are available for your meeting, Just like Exchange Server.

I currently use Google Apps for Salmon Bay Technology.com and love it. Number 1 is the price, you can't beat free. Its easy, I could train just about anyone to manage the account creation and deletion in minutes. Think I could do that with Exchange Server.

Don't pay for email if you have 40 people or less and don't expect to add any more people to email any time soon. Setting it up is trivial and can be done in a few hours, well worth the initial cost for the long term cost savings. And its one less thing you have to worry about being broken or your server dieing and you have backups to restore it from.

What happens if you go over 50 people, well Google charges $50/user per year. Which is well worth the price in extra storage and the other features that Google offers if you take advantage of them. Google Sites is a great place to create Intarnet sites to manage shared content or do basic data collection.

Before you buy a new computer, first and foremost evaluate your needs. Are you a power user ? I would say that 98% of the people I know are not. Just because you use your computer a lot does not make you a power user. Do you have 1-5 programs open at a time or less? Do you mainly surf the web, manage photos from a digital camera, check email and work with programs like Microsoft Office or other similar software? If this describes 90% of what you use your computer for I would say you are not a power user.

Now that we have established what type of computer user you are I will address what type's of computers to buy if you are not a power user. If you are a power user there are a lot of variables to decide what kind of computer you would need so I won't get into that here. I'll save that for another blog.

My advice is simple. Buy the cheapest computer or laptop that you can find. The best way to get the least expensive, quality computer is off the Internet or a big box store like Best Buy or Costco. The last laptop I bought was only $249. I mainly use it when I go around to clients and for business and it works great. Why do I advise the cheapest computer? Simply because computers are now a consumer item like a cell phone or clock radio. It will cost you more to repair a laptop/desktop then to buy a new cheap one.

Rather than buying a $1000 computer or laptop that I expect to last me 4 years, I can buy a $300-$350 laptop and expect to get at least 2 years out of it. After 4 years and two laptops totaling $600-$700 I come out $300 ahead and I have had two laptops. What happens if I have an $800 laptop or computer that has a hardware problem? It s going to cost you money to fix. Labor + Parts = more then $200, why not just by a new $300 computer?

 One of the biggest problems with security today is people still choose terrible passwords. Using your dog or kids name as your password is not secure. In today's social networking world (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter), names of family members or other personal information like where you were born, your birthday, anniversaries, etc are not good choices. The list of what not to use is enormous but here are some key points. Any word in the dictionary is bad even compound words with numbers or symbols.

Here is how to create a strong password that you can remember and will not easily be cracked. Create a phrase to remember, "I walk to the bus every morning". That's pretty easy to remember right. All I have to do is remember "I walk to the bus every morning". Here is how to turn that into a password. Simply take the first or last letter of each word in the phrase. Using the first letter my password would be "Iwttbem", or using the last letter it is "Iktesyg". Look at those passwords. Who is going to guess one of those? They contain nothing a brute force dictionary attack would have.

Want to step it up even more? How about this, I hate to pound nails into concrete . Transform that into "Ih2#nic" instead of using the "t" from "to" we replaced it with the number 2 and we added a # (pound symbol) where the word pound was. You can use all kinds of symbol word replacement, using these words in your past phrase. Add dollar, percent, carrot, and star, dash and minus just to name a few. I will give you one more example with the above technique and the symbols above. I paid a dollar at the store for carrots , could be "Ipa$@tsf^". That's one of the strongest passwords I have seen in a long time.

Wrapping up, I have shown you a really easy technique for creating and remembering strong passwords. Yes that means you have to change your passwords but a lot is riding on the strength of your passwords. How many bank websites do you use that are using weak passwords as described in the first paragraph?