10 Golden Rules of E-mail Etiquette

I am completely exhausted with emails. My friend, it is time for you to lend me a hand and review the "10 Golden Rules of E-mail Etiquette" BEFORE YOU HIT SEND:

1. If your email is a forward, or
   
2. If you didn't physically write the email, or
   
3. If your email (or your thought) start with "just thought you might be interested", or
   
4. If your email has a link to the greatest web page you've ever seen, or
5. If your email is TO or CC most people in your address book, or
6. If your email is "funny", "cute", "incredible", a "public announcement", or
   
7. If you wanted to let me know may have won a prize, or
   
8. If you notice that my replies to you are brief or non-existent, or
9. If you just want to say hi, or
   
10. If you believe there is even a fraction of a chance that I won't read it

DO NOT SEND IT.

I don't want it.
I won't read it.
I'm not laughing.
I will delete it immediately.

If I sent you to this page by email, it is probably because you aren't familiar with the 10 Golden Rules of E-Mail Etiquette. Please familiarize yourself with them, or your lack of consideration will result in me banning your email permanently.

Goodbye Google Checkot - We don't want your new high fees

For quite a while now, Google Checkout has offered uniquely simple and competitive credit card processing for online merchants. 2% + $.20 / transaction with no monthly fees. And for those who advertise with Google, FREE processing for up to 10x your advertising spending. This offer was one of the best deals available for small businesses.

Just today, Google has announced that they are raising their fees... a hard hit against new or smaler merchants. The base fee of $.20 is now raised to $.30 and the discount rate is raised as high as 2.9%. For small business, this means upwards of $200-$300 in new fees each year. For small-medium sized merchants, this is an increase of close to $1000+ each year. For those taking advantage of Google's free processing, this increase may be more than double those figures.

Those that have searched for credit card processing know that it is a cut-throat industry where the goal is to take as much money as possible from the merchant. For a while, Google offered a refreshing new option that received high praise. With this change, Google is just another greedy company extracting every penny out of its customers.

What we REALLY want to know

I don't even remember what I was going to search for... but Google's search suggestions stopped me right in my tracks.

Take a look:

I could have guessed that "how long to boil an egg" would be on there. but "how long does cocaine stay in your system?!"

Why you should 'lose' your credit card before you cancel

Did you know that your credit card company will accept charges on a canceled card?

Today I had some very interesting conversations with GoDaddy and my credit card company. It started out with a renewal on a domain that I didn't want anymore, so I called GoDaddy to cancel it. The representative told me that I can expect a refund to a card ending in 5005. "I don't have a card ending in that number," I told him, "are you sure of the number and that it was processed?" The representative assured me that he was correct, and that he had no authority to provide a refund other than to the card the charge had originated on. This made sense, but I needed to know how they had received approval to charge this phantom credit card.

So I called the credit card company. After verifying my identity, she told me that I had three cards with them. One business, one personal, and one canceled. Turns out the canceled card is the one that matched the GoDaddy transaction. "If the card is canceled, why did you accept a charge to it," I asked. She explained that they must honor charges on automatic rebills as they are a 'third party agreement.'

This really bothered me. Certainly it is not the credit card company's duty to oversee any third party agreements I make. I asked how I would be aware of a charge for a card that is canceled. She assured me that they would send me a statement if the card ever had a balance. "How would a card with $0.00 balance that is canceled ever have a balance?!" Again, the 'third party agreement' thing. What if I move and do not receive the bill? What if I had changed emails and had not been aware that GoDaddy had just charged me? What about companies that have a terrible reputation of NOT canceling their rebills (like gyms, tanning, security monitoring).

Clearly the agent had no way of changing the company policy, but I decided to ask another question. "What if I report a card as lost or stolen?" Then the card is INVALIDATED and cannot accept any further charges, even rebills. This was the answer I was looking for.

To me, it is pretty clear that when I CANCEL a card, that I will not accept any further charges. Apparently, the credit card company does not interpret it this way. So from now on, I will report my card as lost or stolen immediately before canceling.

Dropbox Beta Invites

Eric Martin was kind enough to pass on an invite to me recently for the new service "DropBox". The service allows you to synchronize files between computers quite easily. This makes it quite easy to collaborate between projects, or any computers you may have. It also allows you to publish items to the web and share them with friends quite easily.

Unfortunately the service requires an invitation to join at the moment. I have decided to also share my invites online, so I will send invitations to the first 9 people to request. I would request that if you also have a blog to please also share!

So you think your income tax pays for government services?

Occasionally when I overhear tax discussions, I inevitably hear someone ask,

Don't you use X that is paid by your taxes?

Or,

We wouldn't be able to have X if we stopped paying taxes.

Lets clear that up...your taxes go to DEBT...thats it. Kinda like when you have a maxxed out credit card and make a minimum payment. Lets take a look at some services that people often think are paid by our income taxes.

1. Roads. Perhaps you haven't noticed, but much of all major new road construction is for TOLL ROADS. These are not temporary tolls, it is a permanent toll (that will probably increase) to be a source of continued profit for the State. For our convenience, they are placing automatic toll readers that will just bill it to your credit card. Its really nice because if you forget to pay, it is a crime...not a late fee like on a cell phone bill. But the BEST part about it, is that we pay for roads with the gas excise tax! Did you know the government collected close to $37 Billion in 2006 from the excise tax? http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=401
   



2. Schools, firestations, police, etc. Your federal income tax does not pay for these, it is paid by property taxes. If you rent, you may not know that you ARE paying property taxes; you just don't see it because its part of your rent. The MEDIAN property tax is about $5,750 PER YEAR or around $478/mo. So you see that quite a bit of your rent is going to property taxes, without it, your rent would be hundreds of dollars cheaper each month! Oh don't forget sales tax. Texas alone pulled in close to $2 Billion in sales tax last year. http://www.window.state.tx.us/news2008/080711-salestax.html
   



3. More about schools. Did you know that schools make alot of money through other means besides property taxes? Perhaps Coke bought an exclusivity agreement for the school that only allows coke products to be sold there. Many school supplies are not included, and must be purchased elsewhere. The school can also rent out its facilities when classes are not in session. Summer school is another money maker. Most sports events have gate fees, concession stands, and more. Yes, although you THOUGHT you were paying for schools with your income tax, you are actually paying for them with your other property tax, and then even more from all the other revenue generators of the school.



4. Courts, judges, etc. I was the lucky winner of a speeding ticket a while back. Guess what, all the deals they presented to my lawyer included some lovely COURT FEES. Local police districts love to pass out moving violations to generate revenue for their precinct. Isn't that great? The more tickets they give out, the more money they make! On the other hand...catching criminals does not produce revenue that revenue- so perhaps it makes more sense for those to be priority 2.



5. Ambulances. Someone told me this, and I was absolutely stunned. If you are taken by an ambulance, it is NOT a free service. Typical costs are around $750 for a ride. You will get the bill in the mail a few weeks after the ride. This made me think...wouldn't it be great if there were user fees for Fires? "Sir, you have a 1,000 SF home, and the fee is $10/SF, bringing your total to $10K. Sign here to approve the charges, or we can sit here and watch your house burn down."



6. Military. This may be changing due to recent EXCEPTIONAL increases in military spending. But the military is actually paid by CORPORATE TAX. Take Dell Computers for example. Their revenues are $42.5 billion. After costs, they have a profit of close to $3 billion. This means they will pay over $1 billion in taxes to the IRS alone. Overall, corporate taxes result in hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue for the federal government...historically an amount EQUAL to the military budget. Of course the current president, and likely the next, won't give a damn about budget...in which case we pay for it through INFLATION (the system that has caused us to lose 95% of the value of our money since 1917)



7. Social security. If you're my age, you are probably already aware that social security is NOT part of your income tax, but is actually an additional deduction from your paycheck. You may also be aware that our generation probably won't see a dime of that money.



8. Health care. You should also notice that there are additional fees on your paycheck for medicare, medicaid...this is what pays for these...not federal income taxes. But wouldn't we all love to see another 10%-20% of our paycheck start disappearing and going to socialized health care! I think that would be great, because instead of having the option to pay $100 a month to an insurance company...I could have the luxury of being forced to pay $300 MORE a month to the government to give me FREE health care. Oh I CAN'T WAIT!



9. National and State parks I absolutely love these places. If you haven't visited a national park any time recently, you should. An when you do - I guarantee you will be charged an admission fee. This fee covers their operating expenses, and since the trees, mountains, wildlife, scenery etc are free, the fee usually isn't too expensive. Never the less, your income tax does not pay for these.

My question to you is...if federal income tax doesn't go to roads, schools, police, fire, courts, health care, emergency response, social security, parks, or the military.

WHY ARE WE PAYING?

I would love to hear your educated responses.

Finally, a PBX phone system every business owner will love

I hear it all the time, but it never fails to blow me away. A small business owner who hardly uses the phone is paying $600/month on their phone bill. They probably even signed a 3 year contract for the privilege of paying the exorbitant pricing. Those that refused to pay, may have found themselves spending countless hours searching on google. "voip reviews", "skype vs gizmo", "virtual pbx", "business phone system." Its time to find something better and end the hunt.

First, lets make some assumptions.

1. You are a small business owner with 5 employees who need phone service.
2. You want a flexible, crystal clear and easy to use phone system for your office.
3. You want it to work the same whether you or your employees are in the office or on the other side of the planet - so digital phones are the way to go, and the way of the future.
   
4. You might be growing your business, so you want the ability to add a new branch or new employees easily. You want to sound like a million bucks without paying alot...
   
5. Most of all... you HATE contracts, and you hate getting screwed by your phone company.

Lets compare some PBX and VOIP services

Skype, by fare the cheapest for phone rates alone, but with several large drawbacks. their proprietary system only works with other skype users. you can only message other skype users and only get free calls to other skype users. and even though you only pay $2.95/month for regular call out phone service, the pbx will cost you much more. For a virtual pbx with on-state.com, service runs $38/mo PER AGENT. So if you have 5 employees, you now have $2.95 + $190 for basic office functionality! On a side note, the fact that skype is owned by Ebay troubling. You can't port your numbers out in the future, so if Ebay later decides to gouge Skype users, alot of people may find that trusting a company owned by Ebay wasn't such a great idea.

Vonage and many other voip providers may look like a deal at first glance. It is possible that the Vonage unlimited business plan may work for some. If you use alot of minutes and don't want much flexibility on your system, they may work for you. But, usually there's a catch, a missing feature, or at least - some sneaky hidden fees. In particular, something like vonage will not scale if your company grows, or your use changes. A search for voip providers almost always yields the same garbage. Misleading sales tactics, lots of hidden charges, contracts, poor service, 100% frustrating experience. Lets not even go into the sunrocket scandal.

Packet8, is definitely a player in the industry. They have most of the features you may want, but then there's the lovely 2 year contract. Did you read the contract? Its 20 pages...LITERALLY. And yes it is packed full of some wonderful fees for the privilege of using their service. Speaking of fees, lets take a look at the cost. For a basic system for your five employees, you can expect to pay $24.99/month per extension, plus auto attendant $14.99/mo, plus overage 2.9 cents/minute. $139.90 for two years minimum. This assumes each of your agents only use their allotted 200 minutes. Assuming you the phones at all, you can expect $50 more in connection fees each month. Don't forget that there will be excise fees, federal fee, cost recovery fee, 911 fee, and plenty more I'm sure. $200/month is likely. Oh, did i mention that setup will cost another $200+?

Ring central. They used to offer very clear, clean cut pricing. Now it is a total mess, and I'm not sure anyone really understands what they will need to shell out to use the system. Lets take a stab at it. Their basic plan only includes 500 minutes, so we'll just skip it. The "Business Power" plan is $49.99/mo and 4.8 cents per minute after 1000 minutes INCOMING. The trouble here is that they seem to assume you will forward your calls to another number, so they over bill for incoming calls at 4.8 cents per minute. You will also need to be able to place calls out, so you can opt for their Digital line unlimited for $24.99. But, ring central does have some nice perks. They include a toll free or local number at no charge. they also include a fax line at no charge. The system is fairly intuitive and robust, with lots of nice to have features. After all's said and done, you would pay around $75/month plus overages. Assuming your office averages 2 hours a day of calls, this could add up to $100+ a month in overages. Definitely worth a look for some with lower call volume, but getting expensive at over $100/month for businesses with a moderate call volume.

Asterisk, Trixbox, Freeswitch, and the like. Certainly the most flexible and low cost option. However, learning to build, operate, and maintain such a system is next to impossible for most. There is a ton to learn, and the only place you will find help is by spending countless hours searching online. Further, since your system is not hosted, it is vulnerable to power and internet outages that may affect your location...bringing the whole system down. Certainly not a good thing for a business. Having used these systems for several years, I definitely wished there was another way. If you do choose this route, a good option is to purchase your phone number(s) with a wholesale origination and termination provider. You will also need to buy digital phones or softphones. Express talk is an excellent, free, softphone that includes call transfer. For businesses, a phone without transfer is next to useless! You can expect to pay around $2-$10/month per phone number and 2 cents per minute.

Gizmo5. Now we're getting somewhere. Here's a relatively cheap service. 2 cents per minute on outgoing calls. incoming number costs approximately $3/month. good call quality, open standards "SIP" protocol. and to top it off, you can instant message almost anyone (AIM, yahoo, google, jabber, etc) all through the gizmo5 client. if only they had pbx... well there is a solution: onsip.com

Onsip.com is a hosted sip pbx and may be the next big deal for phone system. Remember, hosted means it is reliable and you don't have to manage it. SIP is an open protocol that allows you to really expand on their platform. And PBX is the system that historically costs big companies hundreds of thousands to buy. But that still doesn't cover onsip.

First, they let you try out the system free. No credit cards, no extensive questionnaire. Just create a login, and you can see exactly how the system works. Despite having never seen the system before, I was able to fully create a basic office setup in a matter of an hour or so of playing with the system. Better than that, there are no per-seat or per-extension fees. You could have an office of 500 sales agents and your base cost could still be $0. The system has many features that you will want, but still has a bit further to go to become perfect. They offer the option to buy services a-la-carte, or in convenient packages.

Their SoHo package is an excellent plan for a small business. You pay $39.95/month for your pbx and 2.9 cents per minute. This should have you completely covered. Unfortunately, they charge for incoming calls which was disappointing...but with some creative tweaks, we can get around that! since onsip is entirely sip based, you can purchase your phone number (DID) anywhere and have it forward to your onsip address. One such company is voicenetwork.ca who offers flat rate DID for $3.95. So if you use say 2000 minutes a month, and half are incoming, your total cost with onsip would be $39.95SoHo + $3.95DID + $29connectiontime = $72.90. If you really wanted to cut back, you could opt for their a-la-carte plan and reduce your $39.95 to $10 or $20 per month. How about that. What could easily cost $600 or $200 a month elsewhere, you can get for around $50/month - over 90% savings!

Of course, onsip isn't perfect yet.

1. Maybe I'm dreaming, but I still believe 2.9 cents is too high. It isn't hard to find an origination provider that will charge less than 1.8 cents per minute. That is an extra $10/month for every 1000 minutes. For those who are on the phone alot, or are just starting out, cost per minute is a certainly factor.
   
2. There should be no charge for incoming minutes. Obviously this is straight profit, but I'm sure onsip would receive exponentially more benefit and publicity by offering the service free.
   
3. We all love our unlimited plans. Frankly I have no idea how skype offers unlimited (10,000 minutes) for $2.95/mo (3/100ths of a cent per minutes). It would be fantastic if onsip offered an aggressive unlimited plan.
4. There are still some features that need to be added to make the system sound like a million bucks to callers.
   

Want the lowest cost possible? Suppose you didn't care so much about the pbx, but simply wanted absolutely rock bottom prices. Bundle voicenetwork.ca with gizmo5. Purchase your DID (phone number) from voicenetwork, or port your current number. Remember, you can't transfer numbers in or out of gizmo. By purchasing with voicenetwork you will pay roughly the same price ($3.95), but you won't be locked in. You can set voicenetwork to ring your gizmo account or any other device you may choose later on. Then you can purchase outgoing caller id with gizmo for $4 per year ($.33 per month). Your outgoing calls will be billed at Gizmo's low rate of 1.8 cents per minute. With this setup, you can use any number you wish, and your monthly cost is only $4.28 plus usage. Most importantly, you still have the freedom to keep your number or direct it elsewhere if your situation changes in the future!

I am definitely a fan of pay as you go systems, assuming the provider is not price gouging. The problem with monthly plans is that you always lose. If you go over, there are hefty overage fees. If you go under, then you paid for service that you didn't use. With onsip, you don't have to do any of those calculations, you don't have to check and make sure you are on the best plan, you pay for what you use...simple as that. Unlimited plans are great, but usually high priced. A typical $40/month business plan common to many voip providers would require you to have over 2,222 minutes OUTGOING each month just to match 1.8 cents per minute. And in all likelihood, they cap their unlimited plan at a slightly higher number; meaning it is very unlikely you will save any money at all! Even worse, many require you to purchase an account for each user, which utterly destroys any chance of a good value.

It seemed like it might never happen. Countless hours of research sweat and tears. Well, perhaps no sweat...or tears. But its finally here! Movingto voip is now very much a viable option for many businesses. Goodbye old phone company, hello digital!