• Posted 12/19/2024.
    =====================

    I am still waiting on my developer to finish up on the Classifieds Control Panel so I can use it to encourage members into becoming paying members. Google Adsense has become a real burden on the viewing of this site, but honestly it is the ONLY source of income now that keeps it afloat. I tried offering disabling the ads being viewed by paying members, but apparently that is not enough incentive. Quite frankly, Google Adsense has dropped down to where it barely brings in enough daily to match even a single paid member per day. But it still gets the bills paid. But at what cost?

    So even without the classifieds control panel being complete, I believe I am going to have to disable those Google ads completely and likely disable some options here that have been free since going to the new platform. Like classified ad bumping, member name changes, and anything else I can use to encourage this site to be supported by the members instead of the Google Adsense ads.

    But there is risk involved. I will not pay out of pocket for very long during this last ditch experimental effort. If I find that the membership does not want to support this site with memberships, then I cannot support your being able to post your classified ads here for free. No, I am not intending to start charging for your posting ads here. I will just shut the site down and that will be it. I will be done with FaunaClassifieds. I certainly don't need this, and can live the rest of my life just fine without it. If I see that no one else really wants it to survive neither, then so be it. It goes away and you all can just go elsewhere to advertise your animals and merchandise.

    Not sure when this will take place, and I don't intend to give any further warning concerning the disabling of the Google Adsense. Just as there probably won't be any warning if I decide to close down this site. You will just come here and there will be some sort of message that the site is gone, and you have a nice day.

    I have been trying to make a go of this site for a very long time. And quite frankly, I am just tired of trying. I had hoped that enough people would be willing to help me help you all have a free outlet to offer your stuff for sale. But every year I see less and less people coming to this site, much less supporting it financially. That is fine. I tried. I retired the SerpenCo business about 14 years ago, so retiring out of this business completely is not that big if a step for me, nor will it be especially painful to do. When I was in Thailand, I did not check in here for three weeks. I didn't miss it even a little bit. So if you all want it to remain, it will be in your hands. I really don't care either way.

    =====================
    Some people have indicated that finding the method to contribute is rather difficult. And I have to admit, that it is not all that obvious. So to help, here is a thread to help as a quide. How to become a contributing member of FaunaClassifieds.

    And for the record, I will be shutting down the Google Adsense ads on January 1, 2025.
  • Responding to email notices you receive.
    **************************************************
    In short, DON'T! Email notices are to ONLY alert you of a reply to your private message or your ad on this site. Replying to the email just wastes your time as it goes NOWHERE, and probably pisses off the person you thought you replied to when they think you just ignored them. So instead of complaining to me about your messages not being replied to from this site via email, please READ that email notice that plainly states what you need to do in order to reply to who you are trying to converse with.

Things I hate...

WebSlave

WebSlave

The world looks differently to me now.
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I'll start this off with a letter I got yesterday. From the IRS. :ack2:

Well, they are claiming they did not get a return from me for 2020. Curiously enough they are indicating that I have a tax account credit in exactly the amount of the check that was attached to that aforementioned return. We also have a copy of the cancelled check showing they certainly deposited that check attached to that return. Now how do you suppose they came to the conclusion that we did not SEND IN that return?

And this is also besides the point that we sent in our return via USPS CERTIFIED MAIL, and have a signed receipt for the return by the IRS.

Again, did we REALLY not send in that return, or do you think there is the tiniest little bit of chance that perhaps the IRS just LOST it?

So they want me to send them another copy. Yeah, I have to print it out, stuff it all in an envelope, attach explanations of why there is no check attached to this LATE return, pay for CERTIFIED MAIL AGAIN just knowing that this will get royally screwed up. Besides the fact that neither Connie nor I really want to have to run into the post office during their normal business hours with this omicron version of COVID running around.

Perhaps I will just send them copies of the cancelled check and the CERTIFIED MAIL receipt and as gently as I can, suggest that they just FIND that return of ours that they obviously LOST.

Anyway....... Is the whole damned world just going insane? :angry:
 
WebSlave said:
Perhaps I will just send them copies of the cancelled check and the CERTIFIED MAIL receipt and as gently as I can, suggest that they just FIND that return of ours that they obviously LOST.
Click to expand...
I would send the above with the copy of the return.

Besides, it could be worse, they could have lost your tax return when you were due a refund!

The IRS is so slow and backlogged with processing returns that I make sure I owe a little bit. I don't want to have to wait until next year to get my money back.
 
Something else I hate

Snap rings.

WTH? The other day I had to remove a couple small ones to change some rollers on my knurling tools. I know very well their reputation as "Jesus! Clips", so I was taking every precaution. In the middle of the garage, the floor was clean. I was on one side of the work area and one of the vehicles on the other. Moved slowly and deliberately, with my hands surrounding the ring nearly all of the time in case it tried to fly away. I was able to get both of them off without a hitch, which actually surprised me. My snap ring pliers just barely would catch on them. So I am feeling pretty good about all this. I had to straighten the rings a bit as they got bent a little bit removing them. I was working on the first one, trying one tool after another till I found one that seemed like it would form the ring around the post the best. I got it partially on, and then went to reposition the pliers so I could push it all the way in place. I even hesitated to make sure the ring was going to stay in place when I moved. OK, looks good.... **PLING**!! I was looking right at it but didn't even see it move.

I keep the floor to the garage pretty clean, and I looked EVERYWHERE for it. I mean crawling on my hands and knees EVERYWHERE. Even places I thought it couldn't possibly have gotten to. Never did find it. I had hoped the two robot vacuums I have that run in the garage every night might pick it up, but no such luck there neither. So I have an order in with Harbor Freight right now for a snap ring assortment, hoping that one of the sizes will fit that tool. Actually, I pulled out the plastic bag with the remains of the tool in it to show a friend of mine the size of that snap ring, and it seems to have escaped that closed plastic bag too. When I try another one, I am going to smack it with a hammer first to kill it.

Damn these things are evil!
 
WebSlave said:
Perhaps I will just send them copies of the cancelled check and the CERTIFIED MAIL receipt and as gently as I can, suggest that they just FIND that return of ours that they obviously LOST.
Click to expand...

My 2 cents: They are bureaucrats, and what do you think the chances are that they will
1) Admit they were in error and go look for the document the was either lost or destroyed/deleted so it may actually not be subject to be found; or
2) Escalate the issue in the way that only bureaucrats can do, making you responsible for their mistake, perhaps even threatening penalties.

Your reasoning and logic of the issues are impeccable as is your proof. While they may ultimately prevail, a bureaucrat on a bad day can create a lot of misery. After all, what's to prevent them from also (conveniently) losing your reply?

It appears you are stuck between Covid and the IRS, and truly between a rock and a hard place. My thoughts and prayers are with you.
 
Yeah, you can't fight people who are above the law. And the IRS certainly qualifies for being in that category. Even if I would "win" the battle, I could still wind up losing the war, one way or another. People rarely like having their noses rubbed in their errors.

So with that in mind, I will do what has been suggested above. Just send in another copy along with the proof that I already paid the tax bill, for which they have that credit for. So hopefully that will just be the end of it, having bowed low enough and did their bidding.

Sometimes you just have to choose to NOT die on that hill you would really like to defend.
 
Quite a few years ago, I received a letter from the IRS, regarding a small business I had closed a couple of years before. The letter alleged that I had failed to pay payroll taxes for the now-closed business. With penalties and interest, the letter said, I now owed several hundred thousand dollars, and that the IRS was liening my house and property. Former employees also received similar letters, requesting their shares of the taxes (those were fun conversations).
Fortunately, I still had copies of everything, and was able to prove that I had paid the taxes and filed the paperwork.
Would you believe that the IRS did the exact same thing to me the following year?
And the year after that?
 
Herpin Man said:
Quite a few years ago, I received a letter from the IRS, regarding a small business I had closed a couple of years before. The letter alleged that I had failed to pay payroll taxes for the now-closed business. With penalties and interest, the letter said, I now owed several hundred thousand dollars, and that the IRS was liening my house and property. Former employees also received similar letters, requesting their shares of the taxes (those were fun conversations).
Fortunately, I still had copies of everything, and was able to prove that I had paid the taxes and filed the paperwork.
Would you believe that the IRS did the exact same thing to me the following year?
And the year after that?
Click to expand...

So basically, you were guilty until proven innocent.
 
Anyone else REALLY hate talking to phone bots when trying to get through to a company? I have been trying to get an issue resolved with having a new cable modem activated, and it is about to drive me up a wall trying to get through to Comcast. They funneled me over to a app on my cell phone, and that was just as bad, if not worse, than their internet interface. So I am scheduled to have a tech come out here just to activate the new modem. It used to take about 15 minutes to do this, either over the phone, or sometimes just done automatically via the web interface.

Lord have mercy on that tech if he says they have to charge me for that visit. Not his fault, for sure, but he would be the low hanging fruit on that tree.

Of course, this is all because that 1gb service I am paying for with Comcast is giving me usually no better than 30 to 80 megabits per second. And that is even in the wee hours of the morning when there should really be no traffic to speak of around here. So they can't blame it on traffic congestion.

Any bets on that new modem not making any difference? Even after the headaches of just trying to get it activated so I can test it?

:hot: :hot: :hot: :hot:
 
Well, OK, here is another one I am not really fond of as a developing trend.

PC software. Seems that a lot of companies are going to the leasing paradigm of the software they used to sell to their customers. Basically you pay your money for their product, and used to be you could keep on using it until some OS upgrade or something caused it to become non functional on your PC. I have software I have been using for quite a number of years, which work just fine on my current Windows OS level.

With this leasing gambit the software industry seems to be migrating to, you pay your money (which in many cases seems to be about the same as when you were buying the product outright), but you can ONLY use it for one year. After that, it becomes disabled until you lease it again for another year. I believe that Adobe is the first one to use this method, and I pretty much stopped using their products as a result. Except for those products I still had versions of that remaining working all along for me, of course.

Used to be I might have one application I really needed a particular bit of software to do, right NOW, and I didn't mind buying the product as I thought perhaps I might need it again some day, and I would already have it. But heck, to pay that money for a product for a single use, and next time I might need it, if over a year later, I have to lease that software product again? Thanks, but NO thanks!

So what am I going to do if they ALL go with this new MGA style marketing strategy? Well, real good question. I guess I need to keep what I have concerning PC hardware, OS, and purchased applications for as long as I can.

And here is a thought. Suppose the server operating systems and applications go the same route? I am already paying monthly for Cpanel for my server, which comes bundled with the monthly lease of the hardware.

But I guess that is a bridge I will have to consider crossing when I get to it. Since I am already leasing the hardware anyway, that might not be quite so bitter of a pill to swallow.
 
That subscription business model is now being used for cars if the option is not related to safety. Features like heated seats, remote start, etc. are nice to have but there will be a monthly fee to activate them.
 
bcr229 said:
That subscription business model is now being used for cars if the option is not related to safety. Features like heated seats, remote start, etc. are nice to have but there will be a monthly fee to activate them.
Click to expand...

Well, I certainly would not go for that, neither. I would tell the salesman to shove that sales contract where the sun don't shine and walk out.

Does everyone HAVE to be so greedy? Aren't those cars expensive enough, as it is? So people would have the monthly payments for the purchase AND those options that people most likely would want?

And I wonder how many people will get that foisted upon them via the "fine print" in the sales contract? "Oh, but it is in that sales contract, and you DID sign it. Didn't you read it? Well, sorry, nothing we can do about it now. Here are your keys. Oh gee. Looky there. Your first payment came due while we were standing here talking."
 
Sheesh!! Been trying to activate a new credit card account with a current company I have had an account with for years. I use the current one for business related purchases and want another one (kind of as a backup for another account I have with a second company) for personal purchases.

So I got a card issued, and went through the process of activating it. I can see the new card account online, but it says that this new account is currently restricted. I needed to call in to get it straightened out. Oh, before I forget, each time I go to the online access for this account, I am asked to have a code sent to my mobile device. Claiming that they do not recognize my logging in through this device. Which is my laptop, which I use ALL of the time, but apparently they still don't recognize it.

Anyway, I called the phone number. They asked me for the last 4 digits of the credit card number. Gave that. Then the last four digits of my social security number. OK. Passed that, which means they must obviously have my information on file, including my social security number. Get a person on the line. She wants my full name. OK. Then she says she is going to send me a code to my mobile device to verify my identity. She asks me for that number. ??? Doesn't she already have that info? If not, how would she know who I am based on whatever number I give to her? Anyway, I gave her the number, and she claims it doesn't work. I told her I just did that very same thing logging in online, and it worked fine. Well, she is obviously following a script that she cannot deviate from. So she wants to do another form of ID. This time she wants a photo of my driver's license, front and back. I reminded her that I already have an existing account with that company dating back years, and am just adding another credit card to that account. Again, must not deviate from the script. After some back and forth, I just hung up the phone, figuring I was just dealing with an idiot robot.

So I tried again. Got someone with an Indian or Pakistan accent. But at least I could understand him. Went through the same rigamarole. Still could not send a code via the cell phone. And we got to the next line in his script about the driver's license. He explained that it is really easy, that he would send me a link via a text message (??) that I could click on that would prompt me through the process. When I asked him how I would receive that text when he claimed he could not send me the code via text, he stumbled a bit, but got back onto the script. I swear, if I hadn't initiate this call, I would swear this is a phishing attempt to get my identity info. Anyway, I decided to go with the flow.

So I had to use my cell phone to take a pic, front and back, of my driver's license. Submitted them. Get a message saying that they could not be processed. Guy says there was a shadow on the pics. No, there was not. But I tried it again. This one got rejected as well. The guy said there might be a problem with the background. The instructions said to use a dark background, so I used a black mouse pad. Not good enough, I guess. So I tried again, using a wood grain dark brown background. Still rejected. Guy says the pics look perfect, but maybe it was because the card was not perfectly parallel in the pics. Screw this. I asked for a supervisor. He said he was transferring me, but after a few minutes, my patience quota ran dry and I hung up the phone.

***Expletives deleted*** This is just downright ridiculous. Credit cards are supposed to be a convenience, but this process sure as hell is not. So screw it. Guess I will just have to put personal purchases on my business credit card and deal with it during tax time to segregate them as needed.

Sometimes I feel like my head is just going to explode. I would expect this sort of thing living in a third world country, but damn....
 
If you want an AmEx Blue Cash let me know. I can always use a referral bonus.
 
bcr229 said:
If you want an AmEx Blue Cash let me know. I can always use a referral bonus.
Click to expand...

Maybe later. Thanks.

But right now I am fit to be tied dealing with that previous credit card company. Not sure I have the stomach for another go-around any time soon with these brainless robots just reading inflexible scripts concerning their options.
 
Oh yeah. I LOVE how customer service for so many online businesses has taken a nose dive lately. I am on Best Buy's website right now to ask them a question, and here is what I get in their customer service chat system.

Waiting for an agent
We'll be with you in about 139 minutes.
We apologize for the delay.
Click to expand...

:face_palm_02:
 
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