Chase Rate Increases Letter

In light of Chase deciding to increase my purchase APR by 9% despite my flawless payment history, I have written them a letter in an attempt to get them to reduce it back to its original level. My argument is that they are punishing their reliable customers and are discouraging these reliable customers from using their services in the future. Especially when I have received no rate increase notification from any other bank or lending institution. This is my second letter, my first letter was greeted with a fairly standard "Sorry, but we aren't breaking the law, and we think we are competitive enough, you can decline the rate increase, but we will immediately close your account, peace!". That is unacceptable, so I am sending another letter and invite everyone else to do the same:

Hello,
I do understand that you review your practices in accordance with the law, but I would hope that you would feel compelled to treat your responsible and reliable customers a little better than what the law requires; especially considering that these customers, including myself, are the customers that will carry your company (or not) through these tough economic conditions.

I have received no notifications of this sort from any of my other credit card or credit line providers, indicating that you are at least not staying competitive with them, despite your claim of reviewing your competitive position in the industry.

When looking beyond the economic slowdown, my company will look back on this decision and evaluate it in comparison with your competition. Your actions have indicated that despite our reliable payment history and responsible uses of credit, you feel the need to increase our rates for future purchases. How can we trust your organization not to do this again, especially because we have given you no cause to do this on our behalf?

I do not want to close my account, but I also do not want my rates to increase. So I will leave my account open, with the hope that your company will see the error in your ways, and will decide that its reliable customers are worth treating well. I will consider this fulfilled if you do not increase my purchase APR and keep my account open. If you have already increased my APR, I would request that you lower it back to what it was before your notification was sent. That, to me, would mean that you are a trustworthy and reliable organization that my company (and myself personally) can do business with in the future.

Robot Icon

In more important news, I have an awesome robot icon

Conficker Panic Mongering

So we usually see virus/spyware infections daily, and we have already noticed an increasing trend of these infections. So even though conficker could potential infect a lot of machines, various other spyware programs are already at work. In fact Webroot reported that 89% of machines were infected with some form of spyware in 2006.... and the trend has increased since then. So obviously the media is just selling fear again, and even though you should be running anti-virus software on your computer, you actually should have been doing that already... so no major shocker there.

My tips would be the usual:

• Don't click on links that you aren't 100% sure of the source... actually just don't click on links unless you programmed the HTML yourself.
• Don't browse to unknown websites; or rather just don't use the Internet for a couple days... yes you can do it you Internet addicts.
  
• Keep your Anti-virus up to date, and maybe add SuperAntispyware to your arsenal of tools. Check out our free resources for some additional ideas.
  

In all honesty this really just means we all need to get off our computers and go read a book or walk in the park or something, yeesh!

Company Kool-Aid

Yes, I had to copy and paste Kool-Aid into word to make sure I was spelling it correctly. And no, I didn't spell it correctly because there is a dash in the middle. Why is there a dash I ask you, WHY?
But I digress.

I'm pretty sure that phrase is the ultimate homage to terrible office-isms. And I've caught myself thinking of it way too often. It sticks in your head like an expired can of peanut-brittle left in a black car in August. Just think of all the potential sentences you could ruin with that deplorable phrase!

"Hey Kurt, are you really excited about this sales push or are you just drinking the company Kool-Aid"
"Sandy(generic 50s name) keeps getting promoted, I wonder if I should stop moping around and start drinking the company Kool-Aid"
"I bring my own plastic jug thing to work because I don't trust the company Kool-Aid"

I think that last one was a little paranoid, but the opportunities are endless.

Travian!

I've been attempting to play this game called Travian, it originated in Germany and pretty much gives me a huge false sense of accomplishment. At least it is structured in a way that doesn't allow you to spend all day on it. It takes like 45 minutes to build something! Well apparently people get really into it and check it almost hourly, but I don't think I have the dedication for that. The servers are broken up by the country you live in, I play in the US on server 5.... wow I sound like a huge dork. I guess "play" is the relative term, because I'm probably getting attacked at this very minute, ohh well!

They've got to be making a killing though because they do this whole, free to play but you can pay to get better functionality and features. If you want to be a top player you would probably need to pay to get these features. The first time I am tempted to spend real life money on this game, I will be forced to quit. I'm already wasting time, why waste time AND money? :D

MIKE ARE YOU OUT THERE?

Hey Mike, even though I sent you a link to start participating on this blog like two seconds ago, I expect you to be as obsessive compulsive as me and to use that damn Iphone for something besides Pandora Radio! I guess you did tip me off to that Email Sync App... what was it called again? It's in my email somewhere, so it is probably lost forever. There I go capitalizing things again!

Editing Blogger Template

I have to figure out a way to edit this blogger template to make it look.... less like a template! There HAS to be a way to change it without using the edit HTML button. Maybe I should stick with HTML seeing as how the last time I messed with web design was pre CSS, XML and PHP. Who can I pawn this work onto?