Whooie!

Just a few notes, randomly...

1. Apologies for not blogging lately. No excuse, just busy.

2. I am NOT happy with Great Southern Bank. My longtime bank, First Federal, recently changed its name to Vantus for no apparent reason. Shorly after that, they were bought out by Great Southern Bank, based not in my hometown, but rather in Kansas City. Not only are they adding more fees and service charges, a very confusing online banking system to replace a very intuitive system, a change to the schedule on when all our bills come out of the account (NOT a good thing!), but they also forced all their customers to replace debit and credit cards. The new cards are ugly, but I can live with that. They have new PIN numbers for us to learn, but I can live with that. What really bites is that they made all their customers "activate" the cards on the same day. So last Monday I had to troop down to the bank to get my new cards "activated" before I could use them. Of course it was well below zero outside, and of course the bank couldn't "activate" the cards indoors but rather made us all go stand outside at the ATM.

Now for the REALLY sucky part -- the new bank made a mistake and locked up all the business accounts. "That's okay," I said, "I'll just use my old card." Turns out they'd already arrogantly deactivated my old card -- leaving me with no way to access my business funds, pay bills, accept payments... My business is dead in the water, financially, until they get this straightened out. It's been nearly a full business week now, and I still can't access my funds.

As much as we enjoy the ladies at the local branch office (they're terrific to work with, personally) I can't afford to have this sort of thing happen. We're switching banks.

3. On the other end of the spectrum, I've had terrific experiences with the online print company VistaPrint lately. They've really gone out of their way to get orders to me on time, and when a customer did get an order late due to the blizzard, VistaPrint refunded the shipping costs without any question. I've also had good dealings with real-live print company Record Printing (I used to work there, so when I have a customer who needs something printed that Record Printing can do, I always recommend Record).

4. I highly encourage anyone whose insurance is denying coverage to send their bill to Senator Joe Lieberman (I-Diot), who is currently grandstanding, posturing, and greatly enjoying his moment in the limelight -- much to the dismay of the 70% of Americans who want Health Care Reform to pass.

5. Had a great time at the Chesterfield last weekend -- photos at www.chesterfieldlive.com.