Category Archives: Basic Business Concepts

Royal Camera is a star in the firmament of "bait and switch" retailers. They have a long history of rip off sales and substitution of damaged or used equipment. They make the worst used car salesmen look upright and honest … Continue reading →

If you are a typical hardworking employee who doesn’t like to play politics, your best raises will come when you change jobs. Here is what you can do about this.

It takes a rare combination of employee desperation and management insight for an employee to effectively communicate why the company should increase the employee’s salary to match the employee’s contribution to the company.

Too many managers have learned that showering "attaboys" and "attagirls" on their help can forestall reasonable requests for pay increases.

I’m not talking about pay increases based on time spent on the job. I’m talking about raises based on the fact that you are doing more than anyone in your pay grade.

Most companies are unwilling to recognize employee performance when it comes to paying more to high performers. As a result, pay raise differentials are typically kept to the narrowest range possible.

What this means to you is that, in most cases, your pay is determined almost entirely by your starting salary.

Most of you will never be in a better bargaining position than when you interview for a job, so you need to take your best shot during the interview process.

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I wrote an earlier post, Clueless ISPs… about Verio’s attempt to collect money for unauthorized charges.

Verio ignored my emails and only went away when my credit card company agreed that Verio’s business practices were not appropriate and reversed the charges.

Months goes by, then I got a letter from a Verio minion who is pretending to be a bill collection agency.

I write a brief explanation why the bill is invalid. I use one and two syllable words and don’t get into a short version of Business Law 101 and don’t go into the essential parts of a valid contract (which are all missing, by the way.) I merely state:

If you had read my previous emails, you would know that you are trying to collect for services that were not authorized, were not wanted, and have not been delivered.

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