On 2005-06-21, TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to mc :
> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Not: They are, and yes it is. Customer incon-
>> venience is not a big issue with them when they are threatened with the
>> possible loss of a few dollars in fraud. PAT]
> Ah, the noose around their own necks! Between loan-shark practices of
> raising interest rates sharply on little notice, and this new practice
> of cancelling cards at the drop of a hat, they're quickly losing our
> confidence. Maybe we *will* learn to live without credit cards.
I went through our credit card bills yesterday. LLBean Visa 27% APR. Delta Skymiles AmEx 25%. I paid them both off in full and won't be using them again. AmEx charges $15 for an over-the-phone eCheck but the INTEREST on the damn card was several dollars per day. By the time the physical check would arrive and clear, I would have that much in interest.
And this is sort of telecom related too. I'm in New York, ConEd country. With a Cisco 7206VXR for a router, and highly reliable but older servers and SCSI raid arrays I discovered that I am paying about $500 per month for electricity ( this includes home usage as well ).
I'm about to dump all my Cisco switches (2900 Catalyst series, 5000 series) and the RAID stuff onto eBay. Simply shutting them down and replacing them with a 100 watt ReadyNAS 600 will save me hundreds of dollars per month even if I just threw them out.
Cost of ownership seems to be more than cost to buy plus cost of maintenance. Ah well, the education of a new small business owner continues ...
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