Bank of America: Thinks I’m A Moron
Feb 27, 2006 Unordered Miscellany
Sometimes a guy needs to rant. Bank of America’s marketing tactics are deplorable. I’ve had to replace my debit card with them twice, once because the magnetic strip died and the other because I left it in one of their ATM machines. The latter happened because I am human, the former happened because I am not.
Once I received my replacement cards, I had to call an activation number. No big deal, I pick up the phone and dial. I enter all the magic numbers, it confirms I am indeed human, and then says “please wait while we process your card”. Then it takes 1 and 1/2 minutes of processing so that they can get an entire scare-tactic message about how my credit and identity theft are at risk (probably because I am human) and how I need to subscribe to their monthly credit check service or someone will rob me blind.
I say no.
Eerily Human-Like Automated Voice Prompt: Are you sure?
Me: No! I mean yes! I’m sure!
EH-LAVP: Oh so you DO want to go ahead and subscribe to our credit monitoring service?
Me: No!
EH-LAVP: Are you sure? (Evil Laugh).
So that was months ago. I feel like I have a stupid stalker now. Not that the stalker is stupid, but that the stalker is tracking stupid (i.e. ME.)
EH-LAVP (from above): Are you sure?
Me: Damnit! Go away already!
Today I received a call to my work number. Some telemarketer had to actually search me out on our corporate directory tree to get my extension. I pick up and immediately I am blasted about a term-life offer that they could so conveniently add to my account.
Me: Who are you people?!
EH-LAVP (from above): Ever see the Matrix?
So I turn the dude down, but he reluctantly tries to keep me from hanging up (I see cartoon like arms and legs come out of the earpiece and push back against the hangup like a cat entering a bathtub full of water).
It gets worse. I get home today and check my mail. I see a letter from Bank of America (Higher Standards Yo!). Usually BofA doesn’t send me anything unless there is something horribly wrong with my account. And to that note they are pretty good too. They once stalled me from moving half way across the country because someone (me) was using my card too much for Gas. I had to sit at a Gas station for 3 hours (it was early early morning) while their customer service line decided to wake up. Then I’m told “It looks like someone is traveling with your card. We sent you a letter about it.” You think? Friggin Sherlocks, all of you.
But todays letter wasn’t their sleuth anti-fraud team looking out for me. No, it was a: GIFT CARD! Oh so happy! $20 dollars to spend anyway I wanted at Lowe’s! Think of all the caulk guns I could buy!
I wasn’t amused. Their marketing letter went something like this: “If your claim card matches one of these three sets of numbers, you won a $20 gift card! If you won, call the blah blah number and claim your card now. If you don’t like your CompleteHome membership, you can cancel anytime!” Of course the numbers matched the claim code on the card. This was a miserable attempt at getting me to subscribe to another add-on service that I could conveniently tack on to my existing account.
EH-LAVP: We call it Stumble Marketing.
Me: Are you trying to make me feel stupid?
EH-LAVP: For a shinier card, press 3.
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New Category: Lookatme, I’m Web 2.0!
Feb 20, 2006 Lookatme, I'm Web 2.0!
Well, I finally dunnit and added a new category to this ancient 1.0 blog. The category is what I feel is appropriately titled “Lookatme, I’m Web 2.0!”.
I seem be following the web 2.0 “industry” more and more lately and it is approprate that I have a nice little file for all things web 2.0. Soon before long this blog will be like driving down a pastel highway in my AJAX car, with bubble roadsigns and mashups happening all over the place.
I’ll still cover things geek and funny and seo. Especially since Web 2.0 seems to be the new SEO (another thing to think about).
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Talk About Micro Affiliate Payments
Feb 13, 2006 Business & Marketing
I’ve now officially received my two smallest affiliate checks ever. The checks are from AdBrite and when they say there is no minimum balance to receive a monthly payment, they mean it.
Last month I received a check for $0.11, eleven whole cents! I still have it. I’m not sure if I want to cash it or just hold on to it as a trophy until I receive something smaller. This month, I received a check for $0.49. May not seem like much, but I’m an optimist. I’m fine with quadrupling my earnings each month. If the trend holds on I’ll be nice and retired within (pause! gotta do some quick math!) within 12 MONTHS! From 49 cents to comfortably retired within 12 months sounds like a worthy challenge. My affiliate payment on month # 12 would be $7,381,975.04 to be exact. Who says micro-payments don’t rule?! Added to the previous 11 months, I’d have earned an annual side-income of $9,842,632.8 How’s that for a challenge Mr. Tew?
Seriously, its not really going to happen. I know how trends work in the online marketplace. I’d have to bootstrap some serious traffic (unheard of amounts, greater than the bandwidth MySpace pours out) to my sites to potentially be able to make that much off PPC clicks within 12 months. Doable? I don’t really think so. Am I going to try? Let me get back to you on that.
So this originally started out as a post to tell everyone about AdBrite and how much I admire them for keeping their word of no minimum payments. Now, based on that premise I wonder if they also have a policy of Maximum payments? Watch out AdBrite, here I come.
(Which reminds me, I should probably put AdBrite Ads on this site too.)
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