Free from 9 to 5

Wanting to replace a 200,000 mile clunker, I came across two good websites on how to buy a car for the best price, Fighting Chance and CarBuyingTips.com. I had the chance to put the tips to work this past week. I didn’t use everything they offered, but enough that I think I got a good deal.

CarBuyingTips.com is just loaded with information on buying a car. Spend a few hours reading through the site and you’ll be a more informed carbuyer. Fighting Chance is a pay site that will provide you with information and market data to help you determine the best price for a particular car make and model. They’ll also make themselves available by phone for any coaching you want or questions you have. I didn’t use the pay portion of Fighting Chance, but their website is still has some information you can use to gain an advantage in negotiations.

Tips from these websites, coupled with my wife’s negotiating skills perfected through years of bargain shopping and my willingness, nay, eagerness, to just walk out when the salesperson started playing games, got us a Honda Pilot 2WD LX for $1700 below the invoice price. And not that sticker price means anything anymore these days, but it’s about $4000 off the sticker price.

The most important tip I used was to buy at the end of the month, when the dealership wants to meet their quotas. If they meet a certain quota, they get a kickback from the manufacturer (not sure if “kickback” is the right term but you get the drift). Knowing this and sensing that they were just trying to hold out for that last two hundred dollars, we left the dealership, asking them to call us back if they want to sell to us at the price we gave them. We were in no great hurry or need (another advantage for us). They called us back 2 days later. After the deal concluded, the salesperson admitted that they were trying to meet a quota before January and having a car sold was more important than the price it sold at, even at a loss. If they meet their quota, I’m sure the kickback they receive will more than make up for the loss (if any, I’m not so sure) on the vehicle they sold us.

During that 2 days waiting for them to call us back, I also did the so-called “Fax Attack”, where I faxed several other dealers in the area, seeing if they would beat the price we wanted for the car we wanted. This wasn’t very successful. Only one dealer responded, with a higher price. So either I didn’t do it quite right, or we got lucky in that we happened to visit the one dealer that really needed the sale.

Internet access is vital to the majority of small businesses these days, especially home-based businesses. Only with the Internet can I put up a storefront, albeit a virtual one, in a matter of hours. VoIP makes long distance and international calls very affordable. It is a shame that corporate greed is being allowed to trump national and local progress in broadband connectivity. However, the time seems ripe for the right outfit with the right know-how to replace these businesses that rely on outdated laws to stay in business.

Business models that depend on hostage taking really irk me.

Last week, my fiance and I took studio portraits for our wedding later this year. I got a package that contained 2 portraits, a big album, 2 small albums and various other sundries, but I could only choose 30 photos out of the 150+ that were actually taken that day. All the photographs were great; it was hard to choose 30. After 90 minutes, we got it down to the final 30 that would be professionally touched up and used in our package.

We felt these 30 were the best. But I still would have liked digital copies of all the others, but the studio charged up the nose for each additional shot. $40! To get the other 120 would cost $4800! Granted, that would have included professional touch-up, but the studio refused to consider releasing them to me untouched-up. I asked for low resolution copies, so that I would have to come back to them for the high resolution originals in order to print them out properly. Refused, as well. I asked for a proof sheet where each photo is a tiny 1″x2″ on regular white paper. Refused again.

I understood the package I signed up for, but what are they going to do with the other photographs of me and my fiance? Annoying your customers like this is apparently the status quo among photography studios. But as Dan Sherman has also experienced and written about before, there is a business opportunity here.

Update: I totally agree I should have negotiated more upfront to get the original digital copies of all the photos. Lesson learned.

I use Yahoo Mail and one thing that always bugs me is, when my session expires, they show me a page explaining why my session expired with a link that I have to click on to re-login. Why can’t the login form be on that very page? Yes, it’s just one click, but I’m lazy and it seems to make for better usability, no? So I send them feedback suggesting this and I get a canned response that doesn’t address the issue. Thinking maybe I wasn’t clear enough, I sent the following feedback again, reworded to make my point clearer:

Right now, when my mail session expires, I have to click a link to login again. It would be nice to be able to login again from that very page that is telling me why my session expired.

Please note that I understand the need for expiring sessions. I’m not complaining about this safeguard. I’m just suggesting that a login form be added on the page that explains session expirations so that users don’t have to click a link to login again.

But I got the exact same canned response. I would prefer a simple “No thanks, we don’t want to do this” to this gobbletygook that doesn’t address the issue at all, especially after I made it a point to clarify that I understand session expirations and have no problems with that:

Hello Eric,

Thank you for writing to Yahoo! Mail.

You will see the message “Your login session has expired” if it has been
more than eight hours since you last signed in to Yahoo! Mail and you
did not click the “Sign Out” or link at the end of your session. We
display this message and request password verification as a safeguard
for Yahoo! Mail users who use public or shared computers.

You may also want to check your Account Information. If you have chosen
to be prompted for a password more frequently than every eight hours,
your session will expire after the specified amount of time. To change
this, please follow these steps:

1. Sign In to your Yahoo! Mail account.
2. Click the “My Yahoo!” link, located at the top right-hand corner
of the page.
3. On the password verification page, enter your password in the
field provided.
4. Once you are at your “My Yahoo!” page, click the “Account
Information” link.
5. On the Yahoo! Account Information screen, click on the “Edit”
button next to the Member Information section.
6. Under “General Preferences”, change your Password Prompt to
whichever time you wish.
7. Click the “Finish” button to activate your changes.

Please note that opening another browser window and signing in to a
second Yahoo! Mail account will automatically sign you out of the first.
When you return to the first account, clicking on any link will give you
the “Your login session has expired” message.

If you repeatedly receive the message “Your login session has expired”
or are repeatedly cycled back to the “Sign In” screen with no error
message after entering your ID and password, your user cookie is
probably not being set properly.

There are a number of reasons why your cookie may not be set properly.
We have listed these reasons in order from easiest to hardest in order
to save you from taking unnecessary steps:

I. The date on your computer is set incorrectly. Since cookies rely
on dates, a computer with an incorrect date may “mislead” your browser
into forgetting about your cookie. To fix this, simply set the correct
time and date on your computer.

II. You have installed an application that monitors/blocks cookies
from being sent. These include virus protection software, etc. To remedy
this, simply disable the monitoring application before signing in.

III. You are behind a firewall that doesn’t allow you to receive
cookies. This is sometimes the case for users connecting from a business
intranet that limits cookie acceptance for security reasons. To check if
this is a factor, contact your Systems Administrator.

IV. Your browser is not set to accept cookies. Most browsers have the
option of either accepting all cookies, showing an alert before
accepting a cookie, or not accepting cookies at all. In order to use
Yahoo! Mail, your browser must be set to accept all cookies without
alerts. If your browser gives you the option to accept all cookies, you
should choose it. If your browser gives you the option to show an alert
before accepting a cookie, you should not select it. Below are the
setting instructions for several popular browser types.

When making these adjustments, be sure to confirm any changes you make
by clicking the “OK” button in the Options window.

Netscape versions 7.x:

1. Click the “Edit” menu and select “Preferences”.
2. Click “Privacy & Security” in the left-hand column then “Cookies”.
2. Check “Enable cookies based on privacy settings”. Clicking the “View”
button will allow you to set your privacy settings. Be sure these are
set to Medium or Low.

Netscape 6.x:

1. Click the “Edit” menu and select “Preferences”.
2. Click “Privacy & Security” in the left-hand column then “Cookies”.
2. Check “Enable cookies based on privacy settings”. Clicking the “View”
button will allow you to set your privacy settings. Be sure these are
set to Medium or Low.

Netscape versions 4.x:

1. Click Options/Network Preferences/Protocols
2. Un-check the option “Show an alert before accepting a cookie”

Internet Explorer 6.x for Windows:

1. Click the “Tools” menu and select “Internet Options”
2. Click on the “Security” tab
3. Make sure the security level is at either Medium or Low

Internet Explorer 5.x for Windows:

1. Click the “Tools” menu and select “Internet Options”
2. Click on the “Security” tab
3. Make sure the security level is at either Medium or Low

* Other:
If you are running a browser other than those listed above and would
like more information on whether your browser supports cookies, please
refer to your browser’s help file.

V. Your browser’s cookie files are corrupted. Corrupted cookie files
sometimes cease to support Yahoo! Mail. Try shutting all of your
browser’s windows, and then deleting the cookie files in your browser’s
directories. Usually, these files will be called simply “Cookies”. As
always, be sure that you have selected the proper files before actually
deleting them.

VI. Your browser is corrupted. If the above suggestions have not
helped you to solve the problem, it may be that your browser itself is
corrupted. The easiest solution may be to try another browser (if you
have one) on your computer. You may wish to reinstall your current
browser as well by finding the original installation file and repeating
the install process. As a last resort, you can download a new browser,
or an updated version of your present browser, from the web. Note that
this may take a while, depending on the speed of your Internet
connection.

The Netscape browser can be found at:

http://home.netscape.com/download/

The Internet Explorer browser can be found at:

http://www.microsoft.com/ie/download/

Thank you again for contacting Yahoo! Customer Care.

Sigh. Never mind. It’s free, what can I expect? But I would hope that even if my businesses grow, I don’t acquire a faceless drone image that Corporate America is infamous for.

Email spam, comment spam, phishing schemes… these are some of negative things we must contend with even as we take advantage of the power of the Internet. This week’s I, Cringely column proposes a very simple way to tackle at least one of these problems. When confronted with a phishing email, go to the site and enter false information. If enough people do this, the phisher would have too much false data to sift through, thus foiling his criminal intents. It’s somewhat analogous to returning junk mail to companies in their own prepaid envelopes. Make things unprofitable enough for them and maybe they’ll quit bothering us. Anyway, I just wanted to help spread the word on this.