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Why am I being bribed to use direct deposit?

TheOnlyCoolTim — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 21:03:25 -0800

Why is my bank bribing me for using direct deposit? So I moved & got a new checking account. When I'm setting up my account they tell me that I will eventually receive $200 or so total of bribes in actual money in my account if I keep having direct deposits put in. I have no choice but to be paid by direct deposit, so I'm getting this bribe, but I can't figure out the cui bono of it all. I know, for example, that they give me stupid useless kickbacks ($3,750 = a movie ticket) for going to the hassle of using my debit card in Credit rather than Debit mode because they make, say, $0.30 + x% per Credit transaction rather than just $0.30, but I can't figure that they're saving $200 by not having to process a couple checks each month even if I had this account for decades, unless they have some grand scheme to eliminate the paper-check-cashing machinery entirely, which seems unlikely.

The best I can figure is that they're trying to keep me on since I won't want to change all my direct deposits but it seems like a lot of money for that and I feel like there's probably some more direct benefit to them. I didn't find that they were making big money off each ACH transaction, for example.

Help me find a credit card that won't bend me over unlubed

clango — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 08:53:59 -0800

Are there any credit card companies with reputations for being decent to their customers? I've gotten the "free for 90 days auto-enrolled credit protector" crap for the last time. Currently running without a balance, planning to dispute this nonsense and then deny the company my continued business if possible. Visa/Mastercard are preferred, but my annoyance has opened my mind to other options.

How do I get my domain name back?

sour cream — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 14:39:21 -0800

Help me get back my domain name. It was stolen. My company had a .com domain. Due to a clerical error, we failed to pay the renewal fee and it expired (it was billed to an expired credit card and the reminders wound up in the secretary's junk folder for some reason).

We immediately contacted our registrar, who is in Japan. They told us that there is a cooling off period or grace period of 30-45 days during which *nobody* can register this domain. Including us, the rightful owners. I couldn't believe it, so I also asked another Japanese registrar, who basically confirmed this. So here's my first question:

1) Is it normal that the previous owner of an expired domain cannot (re-)register it during the grace period or is this a Japanese thing? How does it work in *your* country?

Now the 45 days are over and during the last few days we tried to register it every day. Alas, we were too late. It turns out that now the registrar is a company called zigzagnames.com which is possibly a subsidiary of another company called snapnames. Anyhow, I called zigzagnames.com and the nice lady that I talked to explained to me that they are only the registrars and that our domain was registered by a company called oregonnames.com . So here's my second question:

2) What's my best course of action to getting my domain back from oregonnames.com?

A little research suggests that oregonnames.com is in the parasitic business of snapping up expired domain names and trying to extort money from their previous (rightful) owners. A post to a bulletin board also suggested that if there is not much traffic to the site, they might just let it lapse after a few days. It's hard to guess, but I don't think my site draws much traffic, probably less than 10 legitimate hits (i.e. without spiders). I mostly want it back for my email, i.e. there may be a couple of people (including clients) that may contact me through the domain in the future.

I wonder whether contacting the parasites might be a step in the wrong direction, because that will prove my interest in the domain, so that they'll hold on to it. But supposing that I contact them, how high is the extortion fee that I'm looking at?

Also, I prefer dispute resolutions without lawyers or hired goons, but just out of curiosity -- what's the legal angle to this? The domain name was essentially a part of our company name. Can I derive rights to the domain from that? What if I register a trademark on our company name in the US? Too late now? (Yeah, I know a lawyer is better prepared to answer these last questions, but I thought I'd query the hive mind first...)