All Posts Tagged With: "convenience store"
The Fed says that banks need to get customer consent before imposing overdraft fees
Jennifer McClelland | RSS | Thu, Nov 12 2009 | 1 Comment
After all the uproar that banks have started regarding overdraft fees for ATM and debit card transactions, the Federal Reserve has put a new rule in place that requires banks to get their customers’ consent before they are able to charge fees due to an overdraft. The rule is to go into effect on July 1st.
The rule came after consumer groups kept getting complaints from customers and members of Congress even said that the overdraft fees were unfair.
Many people believe that if their debit card is cleared for the charges, then there isn’t a problem with the amount of money in the bank.
I have always found it odd that overdraft fees always come from the smallest of charges and it is often something like a cup of coffee. I can only remember getting an overdraft fee once and it was for a soda from a convenience store. The only problem I had was the bank, which I had just visited and checked my balance, said I had more than $25 in my account.
It turns out some banks participate in a strange accounting practice that allows for small transactions to go through while deposits get put off.
I am really happy that the Fed got involved and decided to put this rule into effect. I wish it would have been put into place a bit earlier than July 1st of next year, but I suppose better late than never. Now if only some people were able to recover some of the overdraft fees that have been collected over the years for the “funny” accounting rules I was talking about earlier.
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Tags: consumer groups, cup of coffee, debit card transactions
Electricity and Your Business
Jennifer McClelland | RSS | Fri, Oct 16 2009 | 1 CommentElectricity is important for your business and maintaining a constant power source is extremely important to your business especially if you run your business online. Electric services typically come from a local power company or regional carrier. Sometimes the lines are old and should be replaced.
You may not have an extremely reliable power source in your home (I know that we don’t, it seems like every single time the wind blows just the right way our power goes out) but wherever your servers are located, they need to have constant power and backups whenever possible.
Because of the power situation at my own house, I have often talked to Chris about maybe getting a generator. In June, a tornado made the decision to roll through our neighborhood, and while it was small, it knocked power out to our neighborhood for over a day and then when the power did finally come back on, it was intermittent.
I get tired of worrying about the electricity and having reliability issues with the company. I mean, the neighborhood I live in has only been here since 2004. That means the power lines aren’t that old and the power constantly goes out, more than when we lived in our last apartment which was well over 30 years old.
It is important for any business to have some kind of back up generator to maintain operations during a power outage, particularly if perishables are involved. When the tornado came through a few months ago, a local gas station was completely out of power and without a back up source, all the ice cream that they kept in refrigerators in the front of the store melted and was ruined. Luckily, the convenience store has a walk in freezer in the back and was able to keep the remainder of the food intact while the power was out. Also, the store got its power back hours before we did at our house which is less than half a mile away.
If power goes out to your servers and your business is online, it could cause confusion with your clients. They don’t know what’s going on because they typically have no idea where your servers are located and what is going on. All they know is that the website that they are trying to visit is down and when the server is down, you may lose those clients permanently.
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Tags: reliable power, half a mile, local power company
