Regions Bank Fraud

I received an email today telling me to update my Regions Bank account info. That's just suspicious under any conditions. I KNEW this was fraud because I don't have an account with Regions Bank. The url pointed to some similarly named site that was not the regular regions.com.

So then began the insanity. Within 15 minutes of the email getting to my gmail account, I was on the phone to warn them of the scheme. One problem: there's no way to reach a human. They even had a REPORT FRAUD number that I dialed but it just went to regular customer service. The only fraud it mentioned was lost/stolen cards or strange charges.

I called a couple more numbers and finally called the online tech support. I thought I was getting somewhere, but the number just rang for five minutes until I finally hung up.

So now many more of their customers will pay for the fact that they do everything they can to NOT answer the phone.

I sent in a message via their online form. There was no fraud option there, so I had to put it under "other". It'll probably get lost in other stuff until late tomorrow. I put "FRAUD ALERT!" at the top to get their attention, but they'll probably think I'm spamming them.

Hmmm, maybe there's something to having solid, open communication with your customers and the public.

Golf Carts on the Road in Texas

Found this article about the growing popularity of electric cars. Most of it is pretty standard copy, but the last paragraph was interesting.

"Sharing the road with bigger cars requires extra caution and alertness, say owners. And drivers of normal-size cars sometimes get impatient with the slower, tinier vehicles. Dr. Peters recalls one driver who screamed an expletive-laced version of "get that thing off the road." Generally, though, faster drivers just pass him by. Then, Dr. Peters says, he usually catches up to them at the next light.'

That last bit is the essence of Hypermiling and saving gas.

Transparency Tyranny

Interesting article on Transparency Tyranny. It's tyranny for the producers, but a triumph for consumers. Producers won't like it because it limits their ability to arbitrage information. However, as with everything, this is a huge opportunity for new businesses and some existing one's as well.

The website has an RSS feed of new companies. I had it in my google reader for a couple days, but had to cut it off. I just couldn't read about 50 new companies a day. Sheesh.

Google Reader

After GTD Inbox, one of the best pieces of software I've started using is Google Reader: http://www.google.com/reader/.

You can aggregate all the stuff you look at on the web onto one page via RSS. You can even get slick and google a term on Google News. That search is available as an RSS Feed that you can add to Google Reader.

Now if I can just get BOTW into Google Reader. Hmmm.

Anyway, I've added a share from my Google Reader account to this blog (down the left side column). I can add items that I find easily to my public GR profile in one click. Cool.

GTD GMail.

I've implemented GTD (Getting Things Done) and Inbox Zero. So far, this only extends to email. I'll have to work on the rest of my existence later. I feel like a newly sober drunk. I've kept my gmail inbox clear for 2 days. Two whole days.

Whatever. We'll see if I can keep it up for a month.

Checkout this GTD plugin for Firefox/Gmail: http://gtdinbox.com/. I'm using that to help out. So far, so good.

Rambles On

Attempt 3 at rambling. :-)