Nick Griffin
Forum Replies Created
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Justine-
Since you’re looking in on our little community I’d like to offer congratulations and my sincere admiration for the team of writers and producers who first thought up then executed last nights “Dow breaks 10,000” piece. The effort of capturing the footage must have been stupendous and the end product one of the funniest pieces on television this year.
Can we assume that this clip will soon be available on your website?
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Just to be up-front about it, “Skank of America” was Bill Maher’s term (or one of his writer’s). He also had a great name that rhymed with the name of another of the too big to fail, “Sh*ttyBank.”
And fresh off something circulating in email recently,
“The economy is so bad that if the bank returns your check marked ‘Insufficient Funds,’ you call them and ask if they meant you or them.”
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We had a 15 plus year relationship with one of the nation’s largest banks (let’s just call them Skank of Amerika) because they had bought the bank who had bought the local bank where we originally opened our accounts. Knowing that our line was coming up for renewal in May I started asking them if everything would be OK and business as usual when it came time for renewal. I asked this the moment I had our corporate tax return in hand and sent to them in late February.
“Oh, of course everything will be fine,” I was assured. “Why you’re one of our best customers. We’ll just have to go through some formalities when it comes time to renew.”
Not being the sit back and wait type, I began to shop around for a new bank… just in case.
Jump ahead to a month before the line comes due and lo and behold the “private banking” officer who had been in charge of our account calls to say that the Skank was being re-organized and that her job had been eliminated. “But don’t worry. I’m sure someone will be contacting you… (say it with me) REAL SOON.”
Two weeks to go before the line would expire and come due in its entirety, a telemarketing clerk from the Skank called to say that they were FedEx-ing me renewal papers and would need them back quickly to prevent any “interruptions in service.” What I had to wait for the papers to learn was that our prime plus a quarter of a percent rate was being raised to prime plus one and a half to two percent (variable at their option) and that there was now an annual fee of $500 — for the favor they were granting us of having the line of credit.
I called the “clerk” and asked how it was that I had been told for months everything would be fine, only for this to suddenly be sprung on me. Her answer was something along the lines of “We have had to change our policies for some of the riskier parts of our loan portfolio…” and basically “that’s the deal, take it or leave it.” Being as polite as I could I pointed out our history with the Skank, never having missed a payment, bounced a check, or having any problems whatsoever for 15 years in addition to having a pretty healthy tax return and accounting firm-prepared annual statement. “Well, be that as it may, that’s still our new policy.”
“Do you read any financial publications,” I asked the clerk. “Why?” she asked. “Because I’ve been reading where one of us lost over 120 BILLION last year and IT WASN’T US!” That was literally followed by 20 or more seconds of silence. Then “Well, the rates and the fees are still our new policy with small businesses.”
I changed banks within days. Now the rate on our line is three quarters of a percent over prime and the annual fee is $100. Not the deal we had, but far better than the one offered by the Skank with a gun to my head.
Lines are a good thing to have when you want to be able to stay current with your own vendors and not live hand to mouth in down times. So if we’re a healthy business why have I been carrying and slowly paying down a large balance on our line of credit?Funny you should ask. It’s because the investment arm of a large New England-based bank a few years back had bought one of our clients and, after a year of operating them, determined that it would be better for the bank to put the company into bankruptcy, thereby stiffing the company’s vendors and letting them “liquidate” the company’s healthy pension fund. That put us into a $120,000 hole, for which we were able to offset some what we owed to others on behalf of this client by dipping deeply into our line of credit. And here’s the truly amusing part (he typed, gritting his teeth) the New England bank was later bought by the Skank so we were, in essence, screwed by our own bank — the same one who held the sizable balance on the note.
Like I said, I changed banks but I have little trust in the financial sector. 2008 has shown most of them to be pond scum.
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Mike-
Unless you’re crazy busy and/or the hottest ticket in town I would err on the side of being more likely to have the face-to-face than not. At tge very least it can be educational. Just try not to give away too much free consulting. -
Thanks, Flo. Good answer. I automatically assume back-up means later recovery and your point is immediate failure for which a level 5 RAID would not provide any protection.
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[Wickham Strub] “So… you went for both eh?”
In for a dime, in for a dollar. First day in awhile that something didn’t have to go out the door, so might as well seize all the pain, I mean joy, at once.
While I remembered to update the AJA drivers I completely forgot that the CalDigit RAID also needed a new driver to work with 10.6, that is unless one were to like continual crashes, then staying with the old driver would make perfect sense.
Wick, thanks again for your guidance both online and off.
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[Kai Cheong] “Who holds the final decision on making edit changes – the director, producer, EP, the director’s mother? ;]”
Kai nails it with this comment with the key being FINAL say, preferably coming to you from a single voice. Each of those parties, along with perhaps a couple of others, can give notes, but you will go crazy if you’re the one in the middle trying to make sense of multiple, and sometimes conflicting directions.
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Thanx, Wick. (As always.)
Hey, gang. Is it just my perception or is everything NOTICEABLY faster with Snow Leopard and the latest rev of Media 100? Not just some things like the Finder but the app opening, bins opening, moving on the timeline, EVERYTHING seems MUCH faster and more responsive.
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Floh-
Wouldn’t a level 5 RAID provide that measure of back-up safety?
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From my perspective meeting face to face is almost a no-brainer. I’m not selling a product or one time transaction, but rather a long-term relationship. OF COURSE I want to meet with them even, on occasion, at my own travel expense. And of course this is after I’ve pre-qualified them. Then again it’s seldom that someone calls me who I don’t already know about — the nature of working within a niche market.
Mike, I think the best thing for you is to spend time on the phone asking a LOT of questions before setting a face to face meeting. Try to keep the information flow one sided with you asking the majority of the questions. For anything which they ask which heads towards them fishing for information or looking for free consulting, simply say something like, “That’s a great question. We should talk about that in depth when we meet in person.” You should be able to verify if the prospect is real or not if they have two things: a budget and a timetable. Without both the chances of the inquiry being real are slim.