June 10, 2005

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  $A Cautionary Tale$:

  
  

  It's been difficult lately trying to mastermind my financial responsibilities. Through no fault of anyone but me, I have dug myself into a deep pit of "spiraling credit card debt" and have only recently begun to see some kind of faint dim light at the end of a tunnel that perhaps I might not even live long enough to pass through, and every "solution" seems to hinge on the not too exciting prospect of borrowing even more money. At one time in the not so distant past, my friends and colleauges would tell me with a concerned look and a wag of the finger, "You don't know what you're doing" as new computers, cars, bigscreen televisions, expensive digital photo gear, and other geegaws of a life fit for a king would appear on my doorstep. "Sure, I know what I'm doing". I would lie. "I enter all this in my Money Program, and it tells me I have nothing to worry about."

  
  

  Garbage in, Garbage out, as they say.

  
  

  There was really no way I could "know" that at some point in my somewhat excessive buying spree of the late 90s, which included many trips around the country on "lovesearches" and stays at Las Vegas casino hotels for a week each year on "vacation", that the "bubble would burst" and I would suddenly stop getting raises and bonuses, and that when I started missing credit card payments the suppliers would ever so gradually raise my APRs till I was essentially paying nothing but the percentage rate and never touching the premium on almost 30 thousand dollars worth of debt, because I couldn't afford to pay "more" than the minimum amount on each of eight credit cards.

  
  

  The most I owed on one card was $13,500.00. Other cards had $3,000.00 to $6000.00 charges. In the early aughts, which are not over yet, I began to use one credit card's checks to pay for other cards. The "fun" I would get out of using one card to pay for another stopped when the APRs all shot precariously high, and my "Money Program" always showed my accounts in the RED.

  
  

  The "fun" disappeared. "Panic" began to settle in, as each month became worse than the last. I wrote a "budget". I "scaled back" wherever I could, but still, when the amount coming in is less than the amount which is supposed to be going out, troubles pile on troubles, and now those same friends and colleagues, besides being able to say "I told you so", would "advise" me to go bankrupt. Heck, everybody's doing it.

  
  

  I'm not "everybody" and I don't even want to admit I have a problem, much less actually give the problem over to others, so I bit my lip and perservered. As I mention, the light, however dim in the distance, is shining a bit.

  
  

  That is, until this past Monday.

  
  

  I received an email from the hosting provider for my website, Valueweb, mentioning that the latest payment was declined by my credit card. That makes sense, I reasoned. I had told the credit card provider not to make any electronic payments, and I thought I had contacted all the companies involved, but must have missed Valueweb. I called them and told them I would send in a check for the $119.00 I owed. Usually I pay around $238.00 a year for my website hosting, due in two payments. I had already paid the first in February, and this should be the second.

  
  

  Look again. The "amount' listed as "owed" was a whopping $560.00, not my regular payment amount. I gulped, and told the nice young man at the other end of the phone line, "There must be some kind of mistake. This amount is too high. I can't owe this much."

  
  

  The "nice young man" explained, rather nicely if curtly, that I had "exceeded my bandwidth allocation", to which I claimed no knowledge or understanding. "What's that? Why wouldn't you guys have notified me if you were going to start charging me more?" The guy left the line for a few moments to speak to a supervisor and then he returned. Everything was "in order". I had exceeded the bandwidth by a very high percentage in May, and my "contract" stipulated that I pay a certain amount for each time I exceeded this "bandwidth".

  
  

  I knew what had happened, and I started to feel stupid. "I put a movie online for streaming video last month," I offered, "Could that have been the reason." "That's probably why. I'd take the video offline if you don't want to be charged anymore."

  
  

  "Okay, but can you give me some lenience because I didn't know about it." "No, we can't. I've already spoken to the supervisor, and everything is spelled out in the contract. You can have the service send you an email when you are about to go over, so this doesn't happen again."

  
  

  Thanks, buddy.

  
  

  The color drained from my face, and I had to go get a glass of water. I maneuvered to the Valueweb site, and typed in my account number and password. Yes, it seems that by offering the MikeVideo "Renaissance Day" (which I promptly removed from my website), a rather large 23 minute video file that I "offered" for "free" to my readers, I was cutting my own throat as regards to the "bandwidth issue". Besides paying for the "amount" of space I have online for my website, I also pay for the "traffic" if it exceeds a certain amount. That amount is spelled out in my contract, which is for a personal website. If I had a business website, and expected more traffic, I would have to pay more.

  
  

  I can't afford to pay for what I already pay. My site is at the limit for space, and has been for two years, so each time I "add" something, I have to "subtract" something else. I noticed on the ValueWeb site that the bandwidth issue wasn't hidden in any small print either. It was BIG AS LIFE on the account page, and the supplier essentially states in a VERY CLEAR MANNER that if I exceed bandwidth, I will have to pay for it.

  
  

  My site has never been that popular, but thanks in part to this Xanga blog endeavor, my site has gotten more popular, and my "readers" dutifully did what I asked and watched the "free" movie. "Free" to the readers. "Expensive" to moi. (Now I know why most sites make their readers "pay".) I had even told ValueWeb to send me an email when I exceeded the bandwidth issue.

  
  

  I told them to send the mail to my old address, one which has probably been shut down for lack of use for years. I forgot to update the email address.

  
  

  Well, I did so immediately, and I also changed the credit card number to my own bank account. I removed the video from AllThingsMike. I will have to be careful about streaming video from my site in the future. I'm starting to wonder if the mp3 files I stream from my site to the Xanga blog for the Jukebox this Week feature are eating up bandwidth.

  
  

  I always said that AllThingsMike will remain online for as long as I can afford to pay for it. This $560.00 charge for "exceeding bandwidth" had hopefully "taught me a lesson". As Mr Rogers is saying at the top of this article, "Let the Buyer Beware." It should be a lesson we learn early in life, but sometimes we fail to listen.

  
  

  This month AllThingsMike is featuring new Betty Boop composites on The Betty Boop Pages section. They don't cost as much as movies.    (Photo of Fred Rogers is courtesy AP)

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