Businesses Be Good, You Never Know Who's Watching

In this day, where everybody is blogging about their experiences, one embarrassing move could go viral on YouTube, places like Planet Feedback are there to take your complaints, and Mystery Shoppers abound, it's amazing how often people still get terrible service. I suppose that it would be understandable in an economic downturn where businesses are cutting costs and people are flocking to whatever is cheapest, but this has been going on for many years.

People are often quick to complain, but they don't compliment as readily. Perhaps if people complimented and spread the word about how good a company was, more people would go to the good places in favor of the bad places.

In this case, I have a compliment. I won a $100 gift certificate to Lickety Split Scrapbooks about a month ago. I won it off a blog site that gives away prizes, I think primarily from small businesses that are trying to get promotions by giving out prizes. Anyway, I think Lickety Split Scrapbooks is a small business that is probably run out of the home of some enterprising mom. I'm not sure, but that's the impression that I get.

Anyway, I won the gift certificate on a Saturday. When I won, I was given an email address from someone at the company and she was supposed to give me the coupon code to get the $100 in products. She responded that day with my coupon code, and I had the fun of ordering from her that day.

When I received the order, her products were wonderful. I've had a lot of fun with them.

Just today I had a question about a monthly page kit that I had ordered, and once again, she emailed me back... on a Saturday. Now, I don't expect someone to be sitting at her email answering business emails on a Saturday, but I'm quite impressed that she did.

Anyway, I've been an author at Epinions.com for the past 7 1/2 years. I go through periods where I don't write very much, but then there are times when I'll write a lot. Right now they have a promotion going on where for every 10 reviews you write, they'll give you $10, and if all 10 are very helpful reviews, they'll give you another $10. They also pay income share every month, which isn't a whole lot of money, but it's something. Maybe if I don't win a Wii I can buy one with the Epinions money I make in about a year.

I've been trying to think of things that I can write reviews on. I always strive to write very helpful reviews, based on the ratings that people that read your reviews give you. I end up writing quite a lot about a product, which seems to usually give me a very helpful rating, but I can't exactly write about every topic in as much depth.

They have an online stores and services category, and you can suggest an online store to be added to their database to review. While I don't exactly have the disposable income right now to shop from this great store, I figure the least that I could do for her providing me with such a great prize and having such terrific customer service is to write about my experiences. Hopefully I can drive some business her way.

For good or for bad, in this day of the internet, you never know who is watching. And lots of people love to tell others of their experiences.

Squatters Flocking to Foreclosed Homes

Last month I wrote about how some banks were trying to sell their foreclosed homes at auction, but they weren't getting the prices that they wanted for them, so they'd just let them sit. In a declining housing market, I thought that was a bonehead move (they're not going to get any more valuable, but today on Excite.com there was an article about squatters living in foreclosed homes. Yet another reason that the banks should be selling their foreclosure inventory rather than sitting on them.

Not all of these people occupying foreclosed homes are nice families who just got down on their luck one day and lost their places to live. Some of these vacant homes are being taken over by prostitutes and drug dealers. Just what your average suburban family wants living next door, right? One person interviewed for the article said that she was living in abandoned homes because she kept getting kicked out of shelters for violating the rules of the shelter (i.e. no drugs).

I don't have a problem with the homeless in general. I've met some very nice people who were previously homeless. My brother was once friends with some nice boys that were homeless. The church that I used to go to had homeless dinners.

However nice the homeless people are that are occupying these houses, it can't exactly be a good thing for the value of the home. Is having a crack-house operating out of a home going to make you want to jump for joy and bid up the price of a house at auction? I don't think so. Even if you get a nice person squatting in the house, there is the potential for damage to the house, as people try to keep warm by lighting fires, or have light by lighting candles. Homeless people also don't have as much access to things like curbside trash pickup. While I'm sure many clean up after themselves and don't make a mess, the likelihood is that many squatters don't pick up the trash before they move on to another home.

The sad thing is, there are more foreclosed homes in some areas than there are homeless people. In Cuyahoga County, Ohio, there is an estimated 4,000 homeless people, yet 15,000 foreclosed homes remain vacant.

So it leaves me scratching my head wondering why businesses won't sell these homes at what the market will bear for them. They're probably just being greedy, don't really want to cut their losses, but if it's greed, it's not helping them. Houses do not increase in value when they are occupied by homeless people, whether they are nice, or whether they are operating a crack house out of it. Neighborhoods do not increase in value when someone is running a prostitution ring out of a nearby abandoned house. Homes do not increase in value during a declining market. It's common sense.

Here's A Bit Of Irony For You...

Life Decisions International, a pro-life group, comes out with a list of charities and businesses that support Planned Parenthood. If you click on the link you can see some of the highlights from the new list.

I found some of the businesses and charities that support Planned Parenthood to be particularly disturbing:

• Walt Disney - say it isn't so! I guess that they give de facto approval of "gay day", so I shouldn't be too surprised, I guess.
  
• Johnson and Johnson - you make baby products, yet you support a company that makes you lose business by providing abortions? Doesn't make much sense. My husband joked that people make corn oil out of corn, peanut oil out of peanuts... what do you think they make baby oil out of? Ha ha.
  
• Council of Churches - Christians for killing babies. Nice.
  
• National Education Association - well, not so surprising. But if you come to think about it, by supporting Planned Parenthood, they are also costing themselves business.
  

And, for the #1 most ironic charity to support Planned Parenthood...

• Save The Children - the name says it all. If it wasn't so sad, it would almost be funny.

Thank You Janet

Normally, I'm not a very big fan of Janet Napolitano. I have to say, however, that this week I'm pretty happy with her. So I take back a couple things that I've said ;-).

Janet Napolitano signed a very tough law that will deal very harshly with businesses that hire illegal aliens. Those who knowingly or intentionally hire illegal aliens will have their business license suspended for the first offense, and will be put on probation for a period of time. If they knowingly or intentionally hire illegal immigrants during their probationary period, they will have their business license revoked for good.

To that I say, bravo!

We have a system that will check social security numbers with a federal database, but many companies, up until now, do not use it. In a prior job, my husband worked with the payrolls of several companies, many of which hired illegal immigrants. He would often run into cases where people had invalid social security numbers or with people who had stolen SSNs from other people.

A law like this is going to have very broad implications:

- It will probably be a good idea to check SSNs for everyone in the family, including children, on a yearly basis. You can get free credit reports at Annual Credit Report.com. It's about time for me and my husband to check our credit reports, and I plan on getting one for my 5 year old and 7 1/2 month old as well. You never know these days. I suppose that with this new law coming online, it will be even more important.

- It will discourage illegal immigrants from coming to this state, and perhaps get some of them to leave. This will of course, create another ripple effect in our state, affecting schools, health care, labor, and law enforcement.

- It will also affect the economy in different ways. A few years ago, I was looking for an evening job so I could stay at home with my daughter and work while my husband was at home to care for her. I went to apply at several places, but Taco Bell, Wal Mart, Burger King, McDonald's, the movie theater, etc. was just not interested in hiring me. Could that have been related to illegal immigration? Perhaps. But if you dry up the supply of illegal immigrants, you also deplete, to some degree, people that are going to work in these places. Which may mean raising wages, which in turn may raise prices to some degree. However, we will end up saving money in the areas of education, health care, and law enforcement. I think that it may take some time to balance all of this out, but I think that it eventually will balance out. And if the wages of construction workers goes up... at least that may become a viable career again. I think that construction wages have been artificially depressed because of the supply of cheap illegal labor.

- Some businesses may leave the state. If they do, then they probably were involved in hiring illegal immigrants in the first place, and I'd have to question how much overall good they were doing to our state in the first place.

I know that many illegal immigrants are over here just trying to make money. However, for every person who came over here illegally, there is someone in Nigeria, India, or even Mexico waiting to be let into this country legally. Some businesses argue that without illegal immigration, we would not have enough workers in this country. Perhaps that is true. But if we don't have enough legal immigrants coming into this country, wouldn't the best solution to be to increase the quotas for legal immigrants coming into this country, rather than turn our heads and look away when people sneakily (or sometimes boldly) disobey the laws of our country by coming over here uninvited?

Hopefully this law will go into effect. I do realize that there are some problems that need to be fixed, such as not allowing vital services like hospitals to be closed down and whole chains being closed down due to one franchise's transgression, but at least we have something to work with. I think I'll send the governor a thank-you note.

The law goes into effect January 1st.