So recently I switched phone companies for one of my lines and it just so happened that I received a bill from the old provider even though my number is no longer attached to them. I then phoned in to question about it and sure enough it was an error on their part. Their reasoning was that it was a semi automated process and so they didn’t get around to stopping the billing process.
As a result, I had a balance to pay and questioned whether or not that I should pay for it still. The lady mentioned that I would be credited the amount charged in the next month’s billing and so it would be up to me to pay it or not. The thing is though, for these situations I always pay for it anyways and then wait to receive say the credit check.
The reason for this is that if I don’t pay it then I wouldn’t be surprised if they started charging interest on it while only crediting me the amount of the initial bill. Hence, you will have to go in circles again to get it straightened out. Sometimes it is just better to safe than to potentially go through all the hassle when it comes to these types of bills.
I had an interesting conversation with another person not too long ago on how he always goes out of his way to help people in business. Until he finds out without a shadow of a doubt that he is being used by someone, till then he will be entirely trusting. Sure enough, he has been taken advantage of many times.
I personally used to be always trusting where I believed if you simply do good things for people then you will most likely receive the same back from others in a naive way. Or similarly, if they seem so nice in one way then surely they should be the same when it comes to other things. There is this one incident though that sort of completely changed my perspective to a certain degree where a person who I have known for over 20 years needed substantial help financially and sure enough I gave in.
As you may have guessed it, the first opportunity he got where he initially thought that he could do the royal screw job on me he did it. Too bad for him that he has horrible memory and so the stories he tried to come up with were contradicting and made no sense which just made him look more guilty.
What I learned from that though was how in business or even life general, trust is something that needs to be earned in every department. For example, in the past if someone was say reliable when it came to always meeting deadlines and was true to his word, then most likely if he say asked to borrow money then I would assume it would be no big deal. Nowadays, it would be if I never lent you any money before, you haven’t earned my trust to do so and therefore I will need some kind of guarantee that it will be paid back or in the meantime I will keep a valuable possession of some sort.
That doesn’t mean you should stop doing good things for people without turning everything into like a negotiation as even I will be one to say that I have met a lot of great people this way. But, making people earn that trust from you in everyway will lessen the odds that they are simply trying to get on your good side in one way in an attempt take something from you on the other side without you even seeing it.
Recently I have been getting a string of e-mails from what it is made out to look like it is from Google to inform me that I have an outstanding balance in regards to an advertising campaign. Although it pretty much smelled like a phishing scam, here is the e-mail:
X-Account-Key: account3
X-UIDL: 1226436490.2587.pt01
X-Mozilla-Status: 0001
X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000
X-Mozilla-Keys:
Return-Path: jaye @brady-business.com
Received: (fqmail 2586 invoked from network); 11 Nov 2008 20:48:10 -0000
Received: (fqmail 2586 invoked from network); 11 Nov 2008 20:48:10 -0000
Received: from [81.196.161.83] ([81.196.161.83])
Received: from [81.196.161.83] by mx2-new.virtu.nl; Tue, 11 Nov 2008 22:48:09 +0200
Message-ID: <01c9444f$91715a80$53a1c451@jaye>
From: “Google AdWords Team”
Subject: Google AdWords Alert
Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2008 22:48:09 +0200
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary=”—-=_NextPart_000_0007_01C9444F.91715A80″
X-Priority: 3
X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1409
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1409
Our attempt to charge your credit card on Tue, 11 Nov 2008 22:48:09 +0200 for your outstanding Google AdWords account balance was declined. Your account is still open. However, your ads have been suspended. Once we are able to charge your card and receive payment for your account balance, we will re-activate your ads.
Please update your billing information, even if you plan to use the same credit card. This will trigger our billing system to try charging your card again. You do not need to contact us to reactivate your
account.
To update your primary payment information, please follow these steps:
1. Log in to your AdWords account at: http://adwords.google.com.session-2=2525374183818924502.88451603238622346497.com69.ru
2. Click the ‘My Account’ tab.
3. Click ‘Billing Preferences’ link.
4. Click Edit next to the appropriate ‘Payment Details’ section.
5. Enter your new or updated payment information.
6. Click ‘Save Changes’ when you have finished.
In the future, you may wish to use a backup credit card in order to help ensure continuous delivery of your ads. You can add a backup credit card by visiting your Billing Preferences page.
——————————————————————
This message was sent from a notification-only email address that does
not accept incoming email. Please do not reply to this message. If you
have any questions, please visit the Google AdWords Help Centre at
https://adwords.google.com/support/?hl=3Den_GB to find answers to
frequently asked questions and a ‘contact us’ link near the bottom of
the page.
—————————————————————-
Thank you for advertising with Google AdWords.
We look forward to providing you with the most effective advertising available.
Sincerely,
The Google AdWords Team
Aside from the fact that I haven’t used the service for a long time for myself personally, one dead giveaway on how this e-mail wasn’t legitimate is that the IP address of the e-mail did not seem to originate from Google and at the same time it looked like the sender used Microsoft Outlook to send the message which is something that I have never seen Google do before.
At the same time, I fail to see how the person would benefit in anyway from this as normally for phishing scams the intent is to make you visit a phoney website in an attempt to harvest your personal information. In this case, the url just leads to the Google site.
The Internet might make it a lot easier to do business in, but at the same time that means you will see whole lot more shady practices as well.
I thought this would be fun thing to do. Not too long ago I was reading about this online event called the “Open Web Awards” where people vote and submit what they think is a deserving site based on various categories.
What made this one a little different for me was that it was run by Mashable which is a pretty popular site on its own. As you all know too, I seem to get hit all the time with those “Pay to get recognize” offers and so that was another reason that this interested me. So, I decided to sign up as a blog partner to help spread the word about it and if you have or know any worthy sites you can use this little widget below to cast your nominations.
I received an interesting tip today on a possible way to save a lot of money which made a lot of sense. For myself I usually have a busy schedule and sometimes there just doesn’t seem to be enough time in the day to eat everything that you need (Especially since I participate in a lot of physically active activities as well).
A few years back as a result I decided to try out raw juicing as it just sounded like a good idea from a health and time point of view. I can definitely say it has been a great addition throughout the years and as a result people notice that I go through a lot of fruits and vegetables. So today I was told that since I use so many items such as carrots for the sole purpose of juicing that I should try checking out some local farmers and buying these items through them directly instead as it should be way cheaper than what the stores charge.
I was just thinking how this made perfect sense as similar to other items you usually pay a markup by going through the middle man. The main question on my mind was the travel time as one place that was recommended to me seems like it is about 27 km away from where I live and so I would have to factor in the travel costs as well.
But this definitely sparked my interest though as I’m always looking for better ways to save money and in this case I wouldn’t be surprised if you could get better products as well. I’ll probably make a post in the future about it once I get some good price comparisons and the opportunity to check a place out.
