The Cost of One Mistake

My mom does not like the gifts I get her. She says I get stuff that just clutters her house. Not wanting to be a poor gift giver, I asked my mom what she actually wanted. She said she loves flowers. Great.

I have a local florist who delivers. For a while I have been calling them up, and having them send my mom flowers for her birthday and mother's day and Christmas.

This works out for all involved. My mom gets what she wants. I don't have to do much. And the florist makes some decent cash. Everything was going well until their last delivery.

My mom called me up last Christmas and said the florist delivered some dead flowers to her house. She called the florist up to complain. They sent a replacement set the next day.

However the damage had already been done. I was pissed off that I was paying $50 or $60 for some dead flowers. At that moment I decided to stop using this florist. They had to deliver top quality flowers for the high price they were charging. One screw up cost them me as a customer. That's a lot of lost revenue. I was paying upwards of $150 a year for a few flower deliveries. It is a tough business.

Research and Development Tax Credit

The US government has a tax credit on the books that companies can take if they invest in research and development. If you use a development process to create new functionality, then you qualify for this credit. Good stuff.

There are some legal stipulations you must meet to claim the credit. But most software development activities qualify. The work must be technical in nature. There must be a probability of failure. And you need to be doing some experimental research.

Your business should file Form 6765 with your taxes to claim the credit. This is something your CPA should know about. The R&D credit is an old one dating back to the early eighties. Cash in now.

Freelancing

It can take a long time working on your Micro ISV before you turn a profit. During that time you need to eat and pay bills. One way to deal with this is to save up some up money beforehand. Or you could just work your Micro ISV on the side while you have a day job. A final technique is to freelance while you develop your product.

I read a book on becoming a great freelancer. There are many issues involved. The term freelancer comes from a being soldier for hire. A freelancer is free to choose the work they do. They are their own bosses. However they have clients that they work for, even though legally they are their own bosses.

Another name for a freelancer is a contractor. Freelancers frequently have more than one client. They run their own business. To be a good freelancer, you must be good at what you do. It is hard to get started in freelancing. But after a while you will have repeat clients and a solid code base to draw upon.

If you decide to freelance on the side while working a normal job, don’t do freelance work while on the clock for your employer. This might sound like a good way to double dip. But it will hurt you in the end. Good luck freelancers of the world.

Web Failure

Some guy came out with a service on the web. You are supposed to be able to compose letters on his web site. Then he will actually print out the letter and mail it for you via postal mail for a flat fee of 99 cents.

Now this is not an entirely new idea. I’ve seen the same service being rolled out this past year. The nice part about this latest version is that you get to mail your first letter for free. That at least got me interested to give it a try.

The web page had 4 tabs on it. They were “How It Works”, “Features”, “Types of Letters” and “FAQ”. I tried clicking on Features. Nothing happened. It still displayed the information from the How It Works tab. What the heck?

I guess this guy’s stuff is either broken or does not work with my browser. Come on. I am using Internet Explorer. And with that the guy lost my business. If he can’t get the web page to work, what makes him think I will trust him to deliver a letter for me? Ouch.

Desktop Support

I work for a big consulting company. We are supposed to report all problems to our Help Desk. The last time I rebooted my laptop, I got a message stating the Windows Service Pack 2 was not installed. It is now required at our company. So I called up the Help Desk. A local desktop support guy came and ran some command on my machine. He told me to reboot the machine in 5 minutes and I would be set.

After rebooting I got the same error message. So I called the local guy back. He did not return my call. I had to call the Help Desk again. The same guy came back and tried some more things. It looks like he needed to manually install an upgrade. He got impatient and told me the last download he did would take 15 or 20 minutes. So he left. That was the last I saw of him.

Come on. Stay here and complete your task. This last visit got crazy. The guy was complaining that my machine was slow. He had some precious ideas on how to fix that. He recommended I defragment my hard drive or clean up some temp files. I would have preferred that he just actually fix the problem he got called in to do already. It has gotten to the point where I am doing the upgrade on the machine myself. It is hard to get good help these days.

Fulfill Orders Quickly

There is a mail order company that I have been using to buy my clothes. They are sending me more and more mailings. I find stuff I like in just about every mailing. However they are not getting extra business from me. Why? They can't fill my orders fast enough.

I generally don't want to place a new order with a company until I have received my previous order. Normally companies like Amazon rush my orders out immediately. They get repeat business very quickly.

However my favorite clothing mail order company takes its time. They often back order my clothes. That is fine with me. But they are losing out on sales. I got a stack full of offers from them. But I am not going to act on any of them until I get my goods.

Let this be a lesson to all you mail order companies. Ship me my stuff fast. You will be rewarded.

Krispy Kreme Delight

Previously I had written about the weak guarantee provided by Hostess for their doughnuts. As a result, I refuse to buy any Hostess products. The company is just too sleazy for my taste. I still want to eat some doughnuts. This time I tried Krispy Kreme.

Krisy Kreme cost about the same as Hostess. However their box did not have any bogus quality guarantees on it. I ate up most of the doughnuts. They were not as fresh and good as Hostess. However there was not marketing mumbo jumobo involved. Out of principle, I am going to stick with Krispy Kreme. These guys even get a doughnut link from met. Good job guys.