House of Jorob

American Debt: It's How Much?

ICR, an independent research company, recently released some scary figures.

The amount of Americans who owe half their monthly incomes or more: 68%.

Forty-three percent owe three-quarters of their monthly incomes or more.

To banks.

You know, the ones that got the billions in bailout money.

Loans and credit cards.

NOT taxes.

I don't know how to digest something like this.

I think it means almost half of the American population are living on a quarter of their monthly earnings.

Which explains why not too many people are going on shopping sprees these days.

Then there are those who are at the top of the survey.

Debt royalty.

The ones who owe MORE than their monthly incomes.

20% of the population are in that boat.

Two out of ten people.

Owe more than they make.

They need a bailout.

It ain't coming.

Credit Card Rigging

Philadelphia Daily News opinion columnist Elmer Smith published a story yesterday dealing with credit card abuse.

Abuse, as in abuse of the consumer by the credit card issuer.

He missed one.

The practice of card issuers to reduce one's credit line.

Works this way:

Customer gets a nice letter from the card issuer discussing how rough these economic times are on banks these days.

It's so very hard on their customers, too.

To that end, your card issuer wants to help you manage your credit.

To you can keep your credit rating nice and high.

Thanks to them.

So they're reducing your line of available credit.

What they don't tell you is what that does to your credit score.

Because of FICO.

FICO pays a lot of attention to the ratio of credit consumed to available credit.

FICO likes it when there's a lot more credit available than consumed.

It works this way:

You've got a $5,000 line of credit from PawYourWallet bank.

You've used $1,000.

You've used 20% of your line.

This is good.

Now PawYourWallet informs you they are helping you out.

They reduce your line to $2,000.

To help you out.

Without spending another dime of your credit line, you are now consuming 50% of your available credit.

If FICO used color, you are now an Orange Alert.

When you go to buy a car, or finance anything else big ticket, you're not going to get the preferred interest rate.

That belongs to people who can manage their credit.

Which you obviously don't know how to do.

You've rung up half your line already.

Integretel: How I hate thee

Integretel.

The name's a pariah to me.

Especially if you actually read your phone bill.

Not according to Integretel, of course. Consider: "Founded in 1988, Integretel addressed a significant billing and collections need by creating a Service Bureau business model focused entirely on telecommunications billing. Integretel established a full compliment of billing and collection agreements with Local Exchange Carriers (LECs) including each “baby bell” and approximately 1,400 smaller, independent LECs. Integretel has been operating from its San Jose, California headquarters since the company’s inception and has processed over $6 billion in client transactions."

They are the best representation of what when wrong with telephone deregulation.

They are a third-party biller.

You know, the one responsible for making sure your telephone bill carries the charges from outfits like Enhanced Long Distance, or Solo Communications, or OAN.

The ones whose charges can not be refused by the phone companies.

By law.

So don't go crying to Verizon.

Or Qwest.

Or any of the other surviving phone companies.

Because there is nothing they can do about it.

Except offer you a global block on such things.

But you have to ask for it.

If you don't ask, Integretel--or others, but Integretel is my best example--will continue to slag your phone bill with voicemail bill after voicemail bill, from now until doomsday.

Which might be in 2012.

Still, that's a couple years off.

Could get expensive.

Talk to Integretel reps, and they make sure you know that *you* are the one responsible for the goofball charges.

They'll even read you back the name of the website that slapped you.

The site that uses Integretel to affix the charges to your phone bill.

It'll be something innocuous:

FunGameLandWorld.

SurveyMeisterBeener.

Yep.

You got the charges when someone used your computer and hit a survey site, or a free-games site, or a travelquest site.

Couple of exchanges of personal information later (your phone number, a name) and boom.

Your phone account has just been tapped for an "enhanced setup fee" or a new monthly "enhanced voicemail account" charge.

Odds are, the person on your computer never saw the 6-point type disclaimer that said they were signing up for the voicemail account or long distance services by playing the game or interacting with the survey.

It is usually buried far, far, far down on the screen.

And they--Integretel--are very happy to have the charges removed.

The process takes one or two billing cycles.

And that's what makes Integretel so special.

They take the whole two billing cycles.

Which is actually THREE cycles, thanks to the way phone companies bill.

So when you short-pay your phone bill, paying only the legitimate charges (as if you really wanted the Enhanced Voicemail fromFunGameLandWorld) and notifying Verizon (in my case--what, like I could make this stuff up??) that the charges are being disputed, your next bill--AND the one after that--accumulate late fees.

From Verizon.

Who puts a disclaimer on the bill that says one is not obligated to pay disputed charges.

No wonder people are cutting their land lines.

Don't laugh, Mr. and Ms. "I-Cut-My-Landline-Two-Years-Ago."

Just wait until this kind of deregulation hits the cable industry.

And this crap starts hitting your cable bill.

The telephone portion of the cable bill.

Taxes I: Something's happening here

I got my borough tax bill earlier this week.

Borough real estate, sewage, and trash removal.

Real estate 10.1780 mills.

Roughly a hike of four percent.

Sewage is 5.70 mills.

Two percent hike.

But that's calculated against my water bill. Inbound water.

They figure most of the water that comes in goes back out again through the sewers.

After all, how much water can two people drink in a day?

But the trash removal is worrisome.

It spiked by over 12%.

The borough, bless their community-based hearts, included substantial explanations in the tax bill for the increases.

From what I read, my trash bill could have been worse.

Last year, Delaware County charged Lansdowne $600 for trash taken to the incinerator in Chester, PA.

For 2009, the County has raised the fee it will charge Lansdowne.

To $91,000.

Lansdowne is 1.2 square miles.

Home to 11,000 people.

The County covers 191 square miles.

Has 550,000 people living in it.

Lansdowne is just one of 49 municipalities inside County borders.

And my little town's bill is $91,000?

Here's the clincher.

According to the paperwork delivered by the borough with my tax bill, Lansdowne is not permitted to shop for a different incinerator contract.

Say, one with a lower freakin price?

Nope.

"By County law all collectors of trash, including municipalities, must deliver and dispose of the trash at the COVANTA incinerator facility located in Chester PA."

So.

We've got a price hike that's exponential in size.

And a law locking all participants into one resource.

Somebody stands to collect a bargeload of cash on this deal.

Feeding four cats on less than a dollar a day

In a word, PetSmart.

The price of cat food, like everything else except gasoline this year, has risen steadily through the last twelve months. It's been a bit steep, too. Roughly 30% over last year's prices.

Come to think of it, it would be nice if the price crashed like gasoline has.

But I'm off-topic.

We were paying roughly .37 per can this time last year. Now, .47 per can.

Peeling the act of shopping for the cats out of the weekly household grocery shopping was the first clever thing we did.

Next was shopping around for a bit, to see who would give us the best price on cans of Friskies. We hit up BJ's, PetSmart, Acme, Giant, and K-Mart.

Settled on PetSmart.

They have a discount program that netted us the highest discount--roughly six cents per can on a .37 can, or 20%.

BJ's had the best bulk discount going.

But they carried a variety pack of three flavors in twelve cans. Worked out to be roughly .25 per can.....and the cats just won't eat reliably off of that. Not enough flavors to spread over four kitties.

The discount program has remained pretty solid at PetSmart, too. We're now saving seven cents per can off the current price of 47 cents each.

The other half of the cat diet is a goodly amount of dry food.

We use Meow Mix. Not a bad ash count, and the cats will eat it. Most of them, anyway. Gabe has to be the finicky one, so we keep a side bag of Nutro's Max Cat dry food around for him. At one time we fed them all Max Cat dry, but the costs just got out of hand, there. Gabe's the sole holdout from those days. He seems to flip between the Meow Mix and the Max Cat on a daily basis.

Anyway, here's how it all breaks down, with the PetSmart discount in play:

• Thirty cans of Friskies, spread across 10 flavors: .47 less .07 = $12.00
• One 21.6 pound bag of Meow Mix, 12.79 less 2.00 = 10.79
• Total for the month: 22.79.
• Divide across 30 days = .76

And that's how it works out. If we have to buy another bag of Nutro, it'll be a small one, and it'll boost the daily cost to roughly .80 day.

Either way, four cats for less than a buck.

LOL Phone bill

I keep a honeypot in the house.

It's my old land line. My dialtone service from Verizon.

Costs me all of $7.40 a month.

It'll go up soon.

In March, 2009.

To $7.87 a month.

I have a generous local calling allowance on the line.

0.25.

Total.

At 0.05 per minute, that's five minutes in local calls before I have to pay anything beyond my $7.40.

I had to fight like hell to get Verizon to give me this rate.

The first-line sales rep had never heard of it.

Her manager had, however.

It has nothing on it.

• No call waiting.
• No calling plan.
• No caller ID.
• No long distance.
• No toll calling.

It exists in my house for one purpose: Every bank, car dealer, political party, charity, and window replacement company in the country uses it to call me.

And I call 800 numbers on it.

Here's the part that galls me:

The telephone service costs me $7.40.

The taxes and fees are $8.42.

My monthly phone bill is $15.82, and over half of it is made up of taxes and fees.

• 0.41    Federal Excise Tax
• 0.35    PA Gross Receipts Surcharge
• 0.08    PA Relay Surcharge
• 1.00    E911
• 0.67    Federal Universal Service Fee
• 5.91    Federal Subscriber Line Charge

There was a time when a lot of this stuff didn't exist, or when it existed, it was absorbed by the telephone companies.

It was called overhead.

Now, it's a pass-through.

According to my phone bill:

• The 5.91 "Federal Subscriber Line Charge funds part of the cost of providing long distance companies access to local telephone networks." Otherwise......what? The long distance companies would have to pay more for access to the local telephone networks?
• The 0.67 "Federal Universal Service Fee helps keep telephone service affordable for high cost areas, rural health care providers, and library internet access." It costs less to wire libraries and farms with telephone service than it does to let long-distance companies connect to local telephone networks?
• The 1.00 "E911 charge funds my community's 911 system." According to my phone bill, this fee is sent to my state/county treasury.
• The massive .08 "PA Relay Surcharge funds telecommunications service for people with disabilities."
• The 0.41 Federal Excise Tax and the 0.35 PA Gross Receipts Surcharge just plain suck.

There's a shiny pony in all this horse manure, if I could just figure out how to play it: There's enough altruism in some of these fees, I should be allowed to deduct it under charitable contributions on my income tax.

Unca George, All I need is a l'il bit.....

Uncle George says its gonna take 700 billion dollars to bail out all the businesses that make up the country's economy, or we won't have much of an economy.

Seven.

Hundred.

Billion.

700,000,000 freakin' 000.

I don't know about you, but all I need is 50,000. Way fewer zeroes.

Maybe if I incorporate?

Verizon WTF?

I've been paying my bills for a long time now. It keeps people from getting mad at me.
Most times, I use my electronic checking account. My bank is PNC, and their web billpaying service is very good. Has a payment-delivery guarantee that's so good, its scary. They guarantee your payment will be there on time, or they eat your late fees. And they honor it.

But sometimes I use a bill-paying service. Like Checkfree.

I stumbled onto this outfit a loooong time back, thanks to my utility bills.

My electric company is PECO. An Excelon Company. Couple of years ago, they were in the throes of the whole get-your-customers-to-take-their-bills-electronically craze. Wherein they convince you to let them stop mailing you paper bills, thus transferring the cost of printing and postage from them to you. While not letting their customers have any chargeback rights.

Well, okay. They didn't transfer the cost of postage.

Just printing.

Anyway, this was also back in the days when, if PNC couldn't make an electronic transfer to a company  you set up in your checking payment program, they'd have to mail em a paper draft.  For some odd reason, PECO was, at the time, receiving drafts.

So when I get the PECO invitation I think, "Hmmmm." And go check it out.

PECO'd partnered with Checkfree for this. You'd sign up with PECO for the billpaying service, and their website in turn routed you to Checkfree, where you had to sign up for a Checkfree account. Then you'd link the two.

You can see the issue. Why even bother with a PECO signup when a Checkfree account will accomplish the same thing? So I bailed on the PECO aspect, and went right into Checkfree.

Only to find that I still ended up signing away my paper bill when i completed my Checkfree signup.

Ok.

Live and learn.

Like PECO. Because within two months, their electronic billpay signups were no longer sending you to the Checkfree site, but wanted you to redo the whole thing with another billpaying firm.

No thank you. I kept Checkfree. Their structure looked remarkably like the way PNC was paying things, even down to the security confirmation codes at the end of each transaction.

My Verizon bill is $15. Taxes included. And, about a month after I signed up for Checkfree, I put the Verizon account on it, too.

My family lives on cell phones, not land lines. I've completely cut the house phone down, down to the barest essential I could convince Verizon to sell me. No long distance. No intralata. Local calling to exactly one zone. People call us on the land line and talk to an answering machine that I check once a week, or I call 800 numbers, and that's it. Emergency only, basically. For when the cell networks have had a tower meltdown. With a stripped down bill like that, who needed the paper bill?

Verizon and I have gotten along just fine these past couple of years. Each month I Checkfree em $15, and each month they leave me a dial tone.

Until this month.

This month, I log onto Checkfree, and upon choosing to View My Bill, I get a Brick Wall Screen--originating from the Verizon site. Citing regulations that went into effect August 2007, Verizon says I now have to register with and sign in to the Verizon website in order to view the bill that I agreed should be placed into the delivery custody of CheckFree.

Right now,  Checkfree is showing me the amount due, but detail?  Nuh uh. Verizon was not going to let me see my bill, unless I registered with them.

Okay. Let's all look at our calendars together, shall we?

April.

2008.

August.

2007.

Well, okay. They both begin with "A". I can see where that would confuse things a bit.

I should be upset because I can't get at my bill. I either give Verizon my email address so they can send me a temporary password, or I have to wait 5 snaildays to get my password by USPS. That's it. Those are the only two ways I can view the bill I gave them permission to provide me electronically two years ago.

But, in my time as a customer I've grown numb to Verizon behaving this way. I'm more annoyed that they're citing regulations from the middle of last year.

I can't help but feel like there's a twist in here, somewhere. Like I'm looking at a reflection in a funhouse mirror and not seeing the warp.