Free-For-All Friday 11/26/10
Decatur Metro | November 26, 2010Feel free to use this post to make comments and ask questions about local and/or community issues not discussed here in the past week.
Comments close on Monday.
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Latest from Decaturish
Woooohoo! 1st post, last one in is a rotten egg!
Stores and restaurants on The Square were locked up tight yesterday, all except for The Square Pub, which was open for a friends and family Thanksgiving dinner cooked by the proprietors, and served upstairs, family style, on one long table beautifully decorated for the holiday. Candles, wine, good food and company (and the football games playing in the background, down at the bar, and on the mezzanine)… this place is going to be a home-town bar with great food that knows how to value its Decatur family.
They’re open to the whole community today.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Decatur-GA/The-Square-Pub/129650343743469?v=wall&ref=ts&__a=47&
Did anyone else go to YDFM yesterday, only to find them closed? We thought they were open 365, but the police officer informed my husband otherwise. At 9am several other folks were parked in the lot and learned that the market is closed on Thanksgiving. Just wondered if anyone else tried to make a last minute dash to the market.
I know they’re closed on Christmas, but wasn’t aware of Thanksgiving. Those might be the only two days of the year, though.
We went to pick up a last-minute bottle of wine and found the lot empty. I thought they were open 365, too!
Nah, they’re closed Thanksgiving and Christmas. Those are the only two days though; all other days are 9am-9pm. Been that way for the 8 years I’ve been shopping there.
Cleaning the house, trying to get ready for Christmas relatives.
My teenage kids, who normally won’t be awake before dawn, got up early to go hit some bargains at Urban Outfitters. Looks like Krispy Kreme got some Black Friday business.
Anybody know how to properly pressure wash vinyl siding, or is that truly and really a hot weather thing?
only 1 hr and 40 minutes left of work! wooooooooooooooo
then to decide if i want to be lazy @ home or go shopping
I hear that Mingei and LSOS are participating in AMEX’s Small Business Saturday. Anyone know who else is playing?
I heard that any small business that takes Amex will qualify. I need to look into it.
Your post led me to some Facebook and Internet searching to try to identify who else is participating. I noted that the wording states that the registered Amex card owners have to shop at at PARTICIPATING small business not just an ELIGIBLE small business. Couldn’t find much except that Taqueria El Vecino and Carolyn’s Cupcakes seem to be participating and that LSOS is a mutual friend of mine and SBS. I began to wonder how good a promotion this could be if it was so hard to find participating businesses. My concerns were confirmed when I hit upon the CBSMoneywatch.com website which has an article titled “Small Business Saturday: Buyer Beware”. It maintains that this promotion is problematic because the credit is limited (many “registered” Amex card holders may not get the credit because Amex is only providing the credit to the first 200,000 who have registered; Amex does not routinely inform registrants of whether they made it in under the wire), there is no list of “qualifying” merchants (as I had already discovered), and credit may be delayed. See http://moneywatch.bnet.com/saving-money/blog/devil-details/small-business-saturday-buyer-beware/3383/?tag=col1;saving-money-river.
On the other hand, if you happened to naively and hopefully register your Amex card as evidently some of us did and you were going to shop anyway at a business that you somehow know is participating, might as well do it on Small Business Saturday on the chance that you are one of the lucky 200,000.
I’m disappointed in Amex. I remember when I considered it a safe, reliable, helpful company. In the last couple of years, I’ve felt that it is no longer so straightforward to deal with Amex.
I beg to differ. Amex DID send me an e-mail – “Thanks for registering your Card in an effort to support the first-ever Small Business SaturdaySM…”
And when it comes to customer service, Amex is ‘DA BOMB. We flew last year on DELTA, and after pre-paying our bags, Delta said one bag was not registered and that we had to pay (again), or leave the bag. Not wanting to argue and miss our flight, we caved-in, figuring it would all be straightened out upon our return. WRONG! I was furious, Delta was stealing from us. I contested the charges with Amex, twice, and Delta twice refused to admit their error. In the end, Amex said Delta would not conceed their error, but because I was such a good customer, THEY would give me a credit for the $30.00. Now if that is not GREAT customer service, then I don’t know what is!
Thanks for doing the legwork, Karass. Suddenly I’m not 100% confident in this promotion. I called AMEX customer service, the representative was a little vague at first but ultimately assured me that I was eligible for the $25. She could not tell me the participating businesses in my area. She said the number of cardholders was limited to 300,000. Your article cited 100,000, and elsewhere I’ve seen 200,000.
Claire, I’ve always had good service from AMEX, but if I do not get the refund I will feel tricked. And nobody likes to be tricked.
Despite all that, I have no trouble spending in Decatur today. I’ll keep my fingers crossed and be optimistic regarding the promised refund.
I got that email too but, if you read the fine print somewhere in all this Small Business Saturday mess, being “registered” does not guarantee that you are going to get the credit. Initially, you had to be one of the first 100,000 registered, i.e. if you were 100,001, you would be registered and not get the credit. Then, after CBS Money Watch got involved, they increased the number to 200,000. Evidently, by the time Parker Cross called, they increased the number getting the credit to 300,000. Maybe everyone who registers will get the credit, but Amex sure isn’t making this easy to follow.
For me, the lack of a list of qualifying businesses is especially odd and frustrating. Thanks to this blog, I now know that a couple of local stores are participating, not just eligible. Otherwise, I would have no where to find out which small percentage of local businesses were actually participating. That might not be bad for local businesses in general, if everyone were to shop locally hoping that at least some of that shopping would result in a credit. But I have limited time and need a more focussed approach. Luckily, some of the stores mentioned on this site are exactly where I would like to go. Too bad for the other local businesses that are participating but I have no way of knowing that they are.
Re Amex customer service: I too have some wonderful stories of Amex customer service. Unfortunately, most of them are in the past, not recently. More recently, I have felt that Amex was hawking some of its promotions in ways that were not straightforward and I have found it’s late payment options and penalties not straightforward. But I still have the card so I haven’t totally lost faith yet. I especially like its Lost/Stolen credit card registry feature and Membership Rewards program.
Yes, thanks for looking into this karass. I was just doing some research to put together a post, but after 10 minutes of researching the concept sounds sorta half-baked. Something about a $25 credit and a Facebook page. Seems like a low-budget, social media ad campaign.
Too bad, because it’s a great concept.
BTW…am I the only one who consciously avoids using an AMEX at local businesses and instead use my debit card? From what I’ve gathered, the shop owner is only charged $.35 for a debit purchase, instead of something like 3% of purchase price for an AMEX.
Debit is the cheapest for small biz owners. depending on the card/who they run the cards thru % can be 1.5-3 or higher. local biz i always try to use cash or debit if i dont have cash on me, big box stores, i use whatever
For debit sales, the business is charged a flat fee per transaction. For credit card sales, the business is charged a transaction fee AND a percentage of the transaction price. That’s why debit purchases are easier on small businesses, and why credit card companies encourage their customers to charge everything as credit.
Cook’s Warehouse/Sherlock’s Wine on Ponce in Decatur is participating in the Small Business Saturday. They are stocked to the ceiling (!) with great gift ideas for the foodie on your shopping list!
And the people there are so helpful! Happy Holidays!
AMEX charges a much higher fee to the merchant than Visa or MasterCard. AMEX is usually 1.5% HIGHER (AMEX fee is around 3.5%) than the other credit card fees and more of a pain to the merchant to process. We don’t really like to accept it for those reasons. Thankfully, most folks have the other credit card “brands” and are willing to use them instead of AMEX.
Credit cards have smoothed out the purchasing transaction at retail – almost no one pays with cash or checks any more, but the credit card fees that retailers are charged to accept those cards is significant!
GO DAWGS
Re Amex Small Business Saturday: I registered my card back when this site mentioned the promo, got the email that I was registered, and spent over $50 on SB Saturday at Cooks Warehouse which says it qualified for the promotion. Will report if and when I get the $25 rebate from Amex. Cooks Warehouse seemed psyched and hopes that the promotion is improved next year.
I am curious about that tax credit mentioned in your plea for support for the lap top for DHS graduates project. (BTW, count me in on that). As a renter, I guess I will never see that money, but the owner of my rental complex well get a rebate of $70 times the number of units he owns in Decatur. Can that be right?
FYI: Unclaimed Property truly might be yours! This is no spam!
Recently went to check my UPromise account and found out that, due to dormancy (only 6 years!), the accumulated funds (albeit a small amount) had been turned over to the Georgia Department. of Revenue. I pursued the UPromise link to the Department and sent an email asking to claim the funds. Not only did the Department immediately send me a response with a claim form, the claim form ALSO listed another bit of unclaimed property–a $50 check from an insurance company that had mailed it to a previous defunct address that I hadn’t lived at for four years. I never remembered this check was missing (that’s how long the insurance company must have taken to issue a check!). So now I get to claim the whole sum…it’s not whopping, but it’s mine!
Given that I could have easily never realized that I was missing either sum of money, I highly recommend that everyone try querying the Department of Revenue every 10 years or so to see if they have any of your property. I used to read about doing this is Clark Howard or elsewhere over the years but was sure it didn’t apply to me. Wrong!
The contact info I have is below. There may be a better way to do this but I have found the email contact to be quite easy.
Georgia Department of Revenue
Local Government Services Division
Unclaimed Property Section
4245 International Parkway Suite A
Hapeville, Georgia 30354-3918