903 posts tagged “creeva's world 2.0”
So I signed up, handed over the credit card number, and suddenly I was logged in. I was iffy because they never prompted me for a password, yet there was a log out button at the top of the screen. This was supposed to allow for unlimited searches for 60 days, so how is my account secured? Not wanting to close the window I was actively working in (just in case) I opened another browser and attempted to login. It asked me for my email address and click next. I was then logged in - no password at all.
Now it doesn't seem that you can review your look up history, since all historical lookups are sent to you via email and they are not stored on the server. What it does allow is people to bypass account security since if you know an email address of someone with this service you can get your own searches for free. You would think this would be at least slightly more secure since it's run by one of the largest credit agencies.
Original From: The Authentication Hole in Autocheck.com
No Prices?
Now I know the gimmick is that if the price is not on the car it will force you to talk to a salesperson. I don't like to talk to salespeople though, no matter what the purchase. If I'm browsing new cars I can see the sticker price, why is this not the norm for used cars? I would at least like a ballpark of what the car is going to be. You can jack up the price 20-30% and have wiggle room for me to talk you down and negotiate, but if I'm browsing and your closed - I'm not coming back if there is no prices. The only way this would be otherwise if the dealership had a car I just felt I had to own - which 99.999% of the time I look at cars, this is not the case.
I can say quite a few dealerships lost my chance to come back and look at their cars and actually talked to a salesperson because I do most my browsing at night or on Sundays. I don't feel the dealerships have to be open when I shop around and browse, but I want to be able to know what I'm looking at and what it will cost me. The irony is some of these sites have the prices online, so the Internet savvy are somewhat aware at these dealerships, but the guy off the street has no idea.
No Prices = Bad Form
Internet Databases Out Of Date
We researched where we were going to go look at cars by searching online databases, we knew that there would be other dealerships around where another was, so we could hit many at once. Some of these dealerships were 40 minutes away. We would get to the dealership and the car they had online was nowhere on the lot at all. Now in some occasions you could say it was sold before we got there or it was out for a test drive. For the Sunday searching, the dealership was closed.
There is no reason the online databases can not be in sync 100% with the current stock on hand. There should not be any cars on the lot that are not in the online database (quite a few). Cars that are sold should immediately propagate and removed from the available car database. We live in a world of just in time information, there is no reason that Wal-Mart can pinpoint every object in their store which encompasses millions of items and a car dealership can not do the same for there inventory of hundreds.
Trying to Hide Problems
I mentioned in my previous story that one dealership pointed out problems to the car before I took it for a test drive. Granted he did miss some problems (or didn't alert the customer to them). This should be the norm. Almost every dealership has a mechanic go over the car before they buy it or sell it. This helps them pinpoint what they can get out of the car. There is no reason not to share this with the buyer. With Lemon Laws becoming the norm, sellers could cover themselves by showing a buyer this information and signing off on it beforehand.
With information being more available via Carfax or AutoCheck major issues can't be hidden away like they used to be.
Online Buying
There is a small market for buying cars online, and granted there is small room for buying a car without test driving it, it should still be available. I can go out during the day and look at and test drive a few dozen cars. When I get home at night I should be able to login to the site and make my purchase. I wouldn't waste the salesperson time by trying to haggle, if I'm willing to pay the asking price without negotiation, I should have that option by purchasing online. I could arrange my own financing and not take up a salesperson time - freeing them to other more difficult customers that are trying to knock the price down and eat into profit.
I really do not seeing any of the changes taking place any time soon, but if I was going to start a used dealership - these would be the first changes I would implement
Original From: Would More Transparency Help The Used Car Market?
The one car we did test was a 2000 Buick Lesabre (or is that LeSabre or Le Sabre?) (similar to the picture above) anyways the ride was great in it. To give you a brief background, we did backgorund research on things that can go wrong with the car and what to look for. One of the major problems with the 2000-2005 Lesabre's seems to be window regulator motors. Many people online have complained that these fail quite often and some people have had to replace all of them multiple times. This was one of the things I knew I had to check out for.
The dealership we test drove from has a mechanic's inspection of all cars (since they are trade-in's at their main new car lot). The salesperson set us down and discussed the issues they had found with the car before we took it for a spin. The only thing somewhat major that he mentioned (and stuck with me) was that the rotors would need to be replaced soon. He scanned my driver's license, made sure the car started and handed it off to me.
It ran strong with 109k miles on it, then the problems started creeping in. Problem number one when entering the car, the driver's side seatbelt wouldn't latch. It seems it got stuck in the locked position and wouldn't relatch or open at all. I even got out of the car trying to jury rig this to work. Nothing, no way - so I got to break the law by driving without a seatbelt (ok I'm not the biggest wearer of seatbelt's - but I expect them to work when I do). Getting down the road, the pick up was good and the ride comfort was great.
We parked at a local mall so I could find a dry area where I could look to see how much rust was underneath the car (got to love Ohio). We popped the trunk open and it seems that the one of the motor mounts was probably going to go within a year or so since there was unnecessary movement in the engine when the car was sitting still and idling. The next thing I checked was the rear windows - they didn't budge. This didn't bother me too much, since they were stuck in the up position I could replace the motors at 49.95 a pop (aftermarket) in the spring. I could also get them done at the dealership for 500-600 (not something I would like t0 do). The driver's window worked perfectly fine. We then tried the front passenger's window. It went down, but never came back up. So at this point, that was all she wrote for this car.
We drove back a couple miles in the middle of an Ohio winter with the passenger side window down (at least the heating in the car was good). I told the salesman about the windows and he acted like he didn't believe me. He attempted to lower the rear windows and blamed the switch on the driver's side door (it wasn't the switch). He managed to lower the rear driver's side window about an inch and then it gave up. He didn't manage to get the passenger side window up at all. He then went on about the great ride a buick has, and I agreed as we shuffled away.
Later today Xie is supposed to be test driving a Cadillac similar ot the picture above. We'll see how that works out.
Original From: Car Shopping Over The Weekend
Hey, I just told a story about you today at work. I told them I didn't babysit when I was young because the first time I changed my nephews diaper it took me 30 minutes because I was gagging soooooo much from the smell! :)
So hopefully my child won't inherit the same smell factor. On the other side, imagine what my child gets to look forward to changing when I'm old, senile, and wearing Depends.
Original From: It Seems My Diapers Didn't Smell Too Good
Posting by e-mail is the easy way to take over your blog, at least in the content side of things. For someone that crossposts, this could be a doubly evil attack. This is why I have no good method for posting by e-mail on Wordpress. Essentially it is either on or it's off. Currently I have mine turned off, even those this could be a real boon to me when I am mobile.
There is one simple method they could do to adjust this and make it usable without worrying about someone finding out your "secret" e-mail posting address and posting things on the front page of your blog; give you an option to allow the posts to show up as drafts (since I would also like to do some final formatting before publishing an article anyways). There was a plugin called Postie which I used for my life archiving project, but I could never get to run automatically - so I gave up on that solution. It is still a function that I desperately want.
I received advice once that if you posted to your blog via e-mail from an unknown e-mail address that it would post it as a draft post (i.e. not showing on your front page). I did some testing on this, it's a false rumor. It so gave me hope.
So which version of Wordpress is going to plug this whole and just give you the option to set e-mailed in articles as drafts?
Original From: Wordpress Post By E-Mail Sucks
I'm not sure I even have a podcast voice - so it all may just fall flat on its face right there.
We'll see the feedback I get from the two I've e-mailed and go from there- I'm so bad at reporting. I haven't given you a single who, only a vague what, and there is no where. I'll keep everyone updated though with less vagueness (maybe) as we go forward.
Original From: A New Blog - Maybe?
My first Palm based device was the Handspring Visor Deluxe, which I got at Best Buy in 2000. While Handspring wasn't owned by Palm at this time, it was the superior device. It had a licensed Palm OS and it was expandable. It had more memory and features, that was the selling point for me. I never actually bought any of the modules (I wanted the Ethernet jack one), but when I purchased it I thought i would. It was great for my train commute at the time and I finished quite a few e-books by using this device. I synced my outlook, and wrote e-mails offline and synced them when I got to the office. It used triple A batteries and would last a week or two before they needed charged (mind you I used this thing all the time.
My second palm was from the Zire line, I think it was the Zire 31, but I'm not going to go hunting through boxes to find out for sure. The expandability of an SD card slot was great for me, I used to watch movies on this and once again synced my contacts and e-mail for offline work. This was my substitute for an Ipod, so it was my all around media player and business like gaming machine when I was consulting.
The Palm TX was my final Palm device. The main selling points for me were wifi and bluetooth access. I used this a bit during my final ruin in consulting. I used this and the Zire as universal remotes, but other then an e-mail machine it wasn't much use. The technology wasn't keeping up with my activities. It was a great machine and will always have a place in my heart, but I replaced it with my N810 and I'm not looking back.
Over the years I've played with literally thousands of palm titles, some great, some not so great. It was always an interesting experience for me. While the Palm Pre has piqued my interest, I'm not sure I'll go with it. I still like my phone to be a good phone and would rather have a secondary device for everything else. I also know I'm in the minority for this.
Palm OS - RIP - you were a great friend, and a great experience. You will be missed.
Original From: Mourning The Death of Palm OS
A salami sandwich on some sort of healthy bread from Trader Joe's (I didn't pick the bread I prefer white bread)
Here I have some Dill Mustard from Grandpa's Cheese Barn
Dill mustard, please meet mister sandwich - of course the contrast in this image makes the mustard look really nasty (it isn't).
Add in some Low-Fat Cheezits
For desert a Little Debbie Nutty Buddy.
I have this if I need a snack later...
And to wash it all down with.
Original From: What's For Lunch Today?
This is the word we live in, the better you can push out and alert people when something happens, the more people trust you can do it. Almost every day I'm getting questions about the state of the baby, if it's here yet, is it healthy? I field these question as they come in, since it only takes me a second. You can rest assured that no matter where you follow me on, the announcement will (should) be available. We'll find out how good of an architect I really am when it's done.
P.S - that's me in the picture
Original From: More Baby Prep Work Completed
The picture is going with "love is with your family" motif. That's my father with my brother and myself (I don't think he is really asleep). Happy birthday dad. Happy Valentine's day to everyone else.
Original From: Happy Valentines and Happy Birthday Dad
