I was watching Cops on hulu just now, and at about 2:42 into this episode embedded below) as they’re pulling a perp out of the foliage it sounds like one cop is saying “easy, easy, easy, camera, camera, camera” which makes me think they’d be a little more rough on him if there wasn’t a camera around. Any thoughts?
Hollywood Video sent me a coupon for “erase your late fees” that I used the other day. Their system for some reason had to print out a list of every late rental on the receipt. Kind of a long one…
I’ve been thinking about the “economic crisis” lately and have come up with such a simple way to solve it that it’s not even funny.
There’s 2 major issues in play: Yes there are more, but these are the 2 major ones. Fixing these will fix the others.
- Consumers & businesses need $ in their pocket so they can go spend it. A few hundred here and there isn’t going to do anything.
- The government can’t keep shelling out $ or it’s going to cause higher deficit we have to pay back – aka higher & more taxation in the future
The problem with any proposed solution including the current “solution” presented by the government is that it doesn’t fix anything. It’s just a band aid, and one that is way too small for the wound at that. It may slow the bleeding but what we really need is a tourniquet first and then cauterize the wound shut.
But how? Well, I have an idea:
My solution will:
- Put $ in every American’s pocket
- Put $ in the government’s pocket WITHOUT increasing taxes
- Create jobs and business spending
The government should force banks to modify all existing credit to aggressive interest rates in a manner that helps everyone and still rewards those who have been diligent in trying to keep their mortgages and other credit in good standing. This means a tiered scale based on your current credit score, but the point is that it needs to be aggressive across the board.
Example Proposed Mortgage Credit Rates:
- Excellent credit: 3%
- Good credit: 3.5%
- Fair credit: 4%
- Bad credit: 4.5%
- Horrible credit: 5%
Sure, the banks will hate it. Guess what – we hated giving them money which hasn’t helped anyone. Now it’s their turn. And we’re not asking for a gift, we’re asking for them to give us a helping hand when we need it. And I’m not talking for forever, but say a 3 year period – should be plenty of time to get the economy on track.
Here’s an example of what I mean:
- So, say the average mortgage is 8% on $300,000 financed
- Simple interest is 24,000 first year in interest payments
- At 3% that interest drops down to 9000
- $24k minus $9k = $15,000 back to the consumer
- $15,000 less tax deduction means you have to pay tax on that
- Assume 40% income tax bracket = $6000 back to the government in taxes
- Total $9000 in the consumer’s pocket from just this one loan modification
Now do the same thing with credit cards, car loans, equity lines, business loans, etc. Different interest rates for different types of credit of course. Imagine dropping some people’s credit card rates from 24% (which is outrageous! no wonder folks can’t stay on top of their bills) to say 12%. I bet this would eliminate the need payday loan almost overnight.
The result would be TENS OF THOUSANDS AFTER TAX DOLLARS in the pocket of the AVERAGE CONSUMER and similar benefits for businesses. Not to mention, that the government would get some quite large percentage of tax revenue also.
If the government gave you $10-30k per year for 3 years after taxes, would you be on board?
If so, leave a comment here. I will periodically auto-email the Whitehouse as people comment to let them know that taxpayers are on board for this help that we deserve!
Or maybe you have a better plan? Or reasons why you think this wouldn’t work to kick-start consumer spending, business profits and stopping layoffs and unemployment.
I’d love to hear your views in the comments.
I got this from Panda Express today. I thought it’s pretty timely because lately I have had this feeling that something great is going to happen real soon for all the work I’ve been putting into things. I can’t let the cat out of the bag yet though.
I have to admit, when Twitter first launched, I didn’t really see business value in it. I thought, sure, you can get all your friends signed up and have mailing-list type of collaboration via SMS – yay. Just another time suck online that extends to your cell phone.
I have changed my mind.
Not in a personal sense, but for actually useful business applications. I still don’t use Twitter on a personal level all that much.
Here are 4 practical and useful business applications of Twitter that can save you money, generate revenue, increase customer satisfaction, and possibly even a combination of these things.
1. Customer Support:
I’m an Enom Reseller, mostly because it allows me to help my customers without me having to keep track of different logins for all my clients. I can log in to my account and get access to all my clients’ accounts to make any changes that I need to through my main profile. Yes, it works great. Until Enom is down for hours upon hours, as happened about a week ago. People are calling me. I’m calling Enom. I’m looking for a non-existent system status page on Enom. I’m looking for a blog post that says “we’re down but working on it.” I search Twitter for #enom. No luck. So I’m on the phone for 15 minutes on hold, probably due to countless other people on the phone for the same reasons. If Enom had a Twitter account that was updated, they could have broadcast a message that said “we’re down, but working on it. Keep following on Twitter and we will post status updates” which would have eliminated my phone call to them, plus countless others. A very similar situation happened with Tmobile’s 3G service a few days ago. How many phone calls did they get? Each 800 call costs money, and each minute of a CSR’s time on the phone costs money, not to mention the dissatisfaction for customers waiting 20 minutes to talk to someone. If you had Twitter, you could have published a message and decreased the amount of calls and been proactive in letting your customers know about the issue. Folks talk about being proactive in the boardroom all the time, but it’s rarely implemented – and I don’t know why.
2. Promoting Yourself:
Gasp! Did I really say that? Don’t folks on Twitter want it to be spam free? Of course. It’s not about spamming, it’s about providing relevant information to your customer base. One example that has stuck in my head has been a restaurant that has a blue-plate lunch special, or information about opening a new restaurant (or other service). If I follow the restaurant, and they post “Today’s special is X” every day, I can get useful information about what their special is for the day and make a decision on whether I want to go there for lunch or not. The same concept can apply to bars for happy hour specials, band of the night, etc. You’re not spamming since you’re only sending the information to those who have opted in via following you. Keep it relevant and keep it useful as a part of an overall strategy to inform your customers and you’re golden.
3. Concierge service:
Travel Portland has started utilizing a Twisitor’s Center to work as a concierge type of service for people looking for information about PDX via Twitter. This is genious in my opinion, and a great way to provide people with instant access to answers. If you’re a visitor’s bureau or destination marketing organization, you should learn from this and follow suite.
4. Customer Feedback:
Any organization who actually cares about what their customers/vendors/partners think should put a little effort into monitoring, if not interacting on Twitter. You can get valuable information about the issues that your non-internal relationships are facing. As an example, I made a phone call to Wells Fargo the other day to resolve an issue, and totally got the runaround. It took me 4 people and about 2 hours to resolve it, due in no small amount to someone who actually a) cared and b) acted on it. The problem was solved in 10 minutes through this person’s efforts. I want to commend that person and at the same time let Wells know how jacked up the rest of their stuff is. They spent a total of 2-3 man hours to fix a 10-minute problem. They frustrated a customer. This, unfortunately is the norm. If you use Twitter to listen to what people are saying about your organization, you can learn from it to improve and make changes that save the organization money, and also improve customer satisfaction. Sure, everyone is about phone surveys and other crap, but what about having someone who can make a decision and effect change listening via Twitter and able to reply and talk directly with your customer? Anyone see value in this besides me?
Most of these are simple to implement. Sure, I get the fact that it’s just another thing to update but that’s not really the case. If you set up a blog, you can automatically tweet via your RSS from the blog (or just one category of the blog) using something like EasyTweets.com and you have an automated machine to at least post status updates, at a minimum. You can also tie Twitter to Facebook and extend that reach.
These are just a few random ideas. I’d love to hear thoughts from other people on practical applications for Twitter via comments on this post and hopefully other people take notice of this so they can implement these ideas and be more efficient, save money, and provide better customer service.
It’s been a while since I’ve been out at the Oregon Coast (no, it’s not the “beach” since beach implies sun and warm weather, at least to me) and I’m looking forward to heading out there in a few weeks.
Bill & Rebecca have 2 rental houses in Seaside, where we’ll be staying the nights, but most of the time we also spend a lot of our time eating out and hanging out at the shops and restaurants in Cannon Beach. It’s nice to be so close and still have an alternative place to stay as opposed to in a hotel in Cannon.
This time we’ll be in the big house again, since there’s going to be a larger group. I really love the little house too, since it’s so cozy and a perfect size for 2 people. The dogs are going to love it too – they haven’t been to the coast in ages.
I know of a timid but friendly Golden Retriever for adoption here in Portland. His name is Bentley, and he’s about 3 years old. Apparently he’s been abused and is very timid and will need someone with patience to help him get over his fear. If you are (or know of someone who is) interested, leave a comment on this message and I’ll respond to you via the email address.
UPDATE: Bentley has gone to a new home thanks to this post! Yay, it makes me feel so powerful :-P
Here’s a photo of Bentley:
Hilarious!
