Customer Loyalty Died

My cell phone carrier is T-Mobile. This post is about how to lose a customer. Every 22 months T-Mobile offers what they call a "full discount" on a new phone. To get the full discount you simply have to agree to a new 2 year contract. I called in October to make some changes and see about a new phone. I ended up with a couple of changes, a discount equal to about a month of service and no new phone. I also ended the conversation with a new 2 year contract and my full discount still intact and ready to use when I want. Now if a full discount requires a new contract, and I update the contract without utilizing the discount, I should be able to get a new phone at any time without a contract extension, right? I mean I already did that part. NO! If you do a new contract and don't use the discount at that time you will AGAIN be required to extend the contract in order to utilize the discount. What sort of BS is that? First a new customer already gets a better deal on everything and then a customer who has been loyal for ten years gets hosed. The moral to the story? NEVER extend a contract with a phone company. You can take your number with you, so take it and your money from one to the next until they reward loyalty over new business. This will never happen so travel the companies and shop them hard. Play them against each other. I left Qwest about ten years ago for t-mobile because the qwest guy was like "if cheap minutes are all you care about go ahead"...now I care about other things yet I was duped into a worthless contract extension just 2 months ago and it's almost worth paying full price for a new phone to ensure I done spend another day with t-mobile than I have to.

Missing It?

We travel this earth every day of our lives.  From the day we're born until the day we die we learn, we live, learn to live and live to love.  Or something like that.

We begin by learning to crawl, then walk and finally run. Somewhere along the way we also learn to laugh, talk and some of us learn to sing.

Somewhere along the way we accept that what we are learning, or what we've learned, is actually real.  We learn numbers, letters, words and math.  We learn how to spell and never give a thought that the rest of the world spells the words the same way.  We write, we read and we speak - taking for granted as children that our communications will be widely understood. We never give thought, and we might be missing it.

We might be missing the opportunity to skip rather than walk or run.  Perhaps the sight of a grown adult crawling through the aisles of the grocery store seems too much to take, society doesn't exactly encourage us to be different.

If only more people invented the words they were using, as they speak, we could be confused about something worth being confused about. Imagine how difficult communication would be if we couldn't discern when a person we're talking to needs to use the toilet, and we keep them standing in front of us trying to understand.

We take our world very seriously, perhaps too seriously. Maybe we shouldn't go crawling through the aisles at the store, or invent our words as we speak, if we take it too seriously we might be missing it.

Found

I found an old journal from a communications class I took back around 2002.  I think I'm going to post some of the entries - for my own liking if nothing else.  I'm not sure exactly how I want to go about them so I think I'll make a label or group or however it works to keep them all in the same place.

Keep in mind they're my thoughts from 10 years ago, but you might realize my way of thinking doesn't change much.  I kind of liked reading through them and hope you will too.  If you don't it's ok - move on.
If you like something leave a comment.

I have a lot of random thoughts.  Some of them mean something and some don't.  I'm not sure if I'm safer to write them down this way or say them out loud - no difference maybe.  Tendency with me is if it runs through my brain it comes out my mouth. Sometimes that's good and sometimes it's not.

Just the same keep your eyes open for the random thoughts of a casual observer and partaker of life. If you're sitting you ain't living.

Christmas with the parents

Mom and dad came for Christmas this year.  It was a surprise for several reasons.
First - sometimes they don't plan ahead much, and so travel this time of year is difficult.
Second - they're getting older and both had surgery in the past month so driving here in winter weather wouldn't have been a great idea.  Lack of planning means flying would be too expensive.
This left the bus - yep.  They got on the bus and rode more than 20 hours to spend Christmas with us.  The kids loved having them and so did I.
When was the last time someone did that for you?  That doesn't even mention the things they did for us while they were here, but simply getting to and from us for Christmas was more than I'd ever ask of them and they did it, and it was their idea.

Whatever you did for Christmas I hope it was meaningful to you.  Family is something we're stuck with. Some are better than others and some are fantastic.  Irreplaceable even.  That's my parents - irreplaceable.  I wouldn't trade them for any others if I could.  Sure was nice having them here.  Those times are too few and far between - and the kids loved every minute of them being here.

Rules for Living

So I've read several lists, by notorious and famous people, of rules for living.  After some thought I decided there's some validity to creating such a list.

Indeed the value isn't in the list itself, but rather in the self-discipline of actually living by the list...and if it's a list of rules to live by I really need to be mindful of living by it right?

My list isn't those things I do automatically each day, and some of them I don't even do well on a regular basis.

Grandpa always said "Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy wealthy and wise".  I know this wasn't grandpa's saying, but he's where I heard it.  Not something I'm great at, but there's value to it for sure.

Exercise is good for your body of course, and your mind and even your emotional well being.  Exercise gets your juices flowing and keeps your body healthy and feeling alive. 

Eat well.  Three meals a day isn't eating well.  If you're overweight and cutting meals in your attempts to lose weight what you might not realize is that you're destroying your efforts.  There's no good to come from skipping meals and not eating enough food during the day.  Your body is an engine that needs fuel.  Food is your fuel - don't cheat yourself of 6-8 meals per day.

Work hard.  It doesn't matter what you do, work hard at doing it.  I've always been told it doesn't matter what you do be the best at it. If you're a boxcar hobo be the best boxcar hobo there ever was...and if you're a doctor be the best doctor ever.

Play.  What's life without some enjoyment?  Don't get me wrong, I love working and I love working out.  I might enjoy both of those things more than I like sleeping even.That said there's nothing like a break from normal, or reality, and taking some much needed time off.

There's an acronym - HALT - that fits for maintaining your emotional health and stability.  Never allow yourself to get too Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired.  One of these things is easy to maintain a sense of sanity.  Two of them is more difficult. If you're three of them all at the same time I'd say seek a friend and do it now. Do whatever you need to do in order to protect yourself from these things, and do your best to never even be 2 of them at any given time.

It's not an exhaustive list, but it's a start.  Do these things faithfully and then add what you feel is important to you.  Drink in moderation, don't smoke or do other drugs, play and work equally hard, dance like nobody will ever watch you and love like there is no tomorrow. 

I don't like funerals

As much as I don't like funerals I attended one Saturday that I really appreciated.  It was for the wife of a guy I know.  The guy is Frank Guliuza, and his wife Kathy had died in September. 

I was shocked and surprised at the low attendance.  It had been a while since I had seen Frank, and didn't even realize he had moved out of the state and it was indeed the third such service for Kathy.  Just the same Frank was such an influential person inside the local Southern Baptist community as well as Weber State University and the Utah republican party I did expect a pretty packed house.  Made it seem all the more important to have been there.

I've skipped a number of funerals I really should have attended.  People who I knew better, and who meant more to me than either Frank or Kathy, and yet I didn't attend the funeral.  Today I'm ashamed to say I skipped funerals when the family left behind was going to continue to be in my life, and that should never have happened.  Won't happen again.

Here's what I learned from this latest. 
First - the funeral isn't supposed to be fun or enjoyable. 
Second - attending the funeral isn't always about the person who died. Sometimes your respects to the family remaining is much more important (maybe even change the sometimes to always)
Finally - The funeral is never a place to be seen for the sake of being seen

I won't be skipping any more funerals, at least local funerals where logistics of getting there don't prohibit me going. I'll be more mindful of paying my respects to the family left behind - I have been sincerely lacking in that in the past.  If indeed we are all in this together then we always need to make sure people know what they mean to you, and being there in their time of grief is among the important times for that.

Roy and Weber County Real Estate

My last blog was about the entirety of the real estate market in Weber and Davis Counties.  If you know northern Utah these 2 counties make up a good portion of the state's population so using the entire county it's hard to know how your specific city or neighborhood measures up.

Let's take a look the Roy Utah home market,
203 single family homes on the market - total. 203 homes for sale in Roy.

That's nothing when you see what's next:
The past 30 days
50 homes under contract and 38 SOLD.  That's 88 homes leaving the market because of sales. 
Contrast that against 48 homes new to the market and we're negative 40 for the past 30 days. 
At that rate in 5 months there won't be a home for sale in Roy.

Now let's compare Roy to Weber County as a whole.
1588 homes on the market.
374 were new in the past 30 days. 
During those 30 days 266 went under contract AND 266 SOLD - what a coincidence of numbers right?  That said 532 homes left the market through sales and only 374 were added. 
Again - at that rate in only 10 months there wouldn't be a home left to buy in all of Weber County.

Thinking of selling?  Seems like a good time - there's almost no competition for you.