Keeping our Phone Numbers, but Lowering Bills: Moving Musing #4

New technology proliferated in our old home, clumsily grafted onto older systems. That is how we wound up with 3 land lines, 2 cell phones, a fax, hardwired internet, and cable. Seemed like there had to be a way to cut down on all those duplicative services and bills. We didn't care about the land lines themselves, but did care about the phone numbers, since we each use them for business and didn't want to be getting each other's calls or notifying a gazillion people about new numbers. Moving required us to pay attention and redesign our communications systems.

We were able to add a second digital phone line onto to our Comcast, so we get one bill for cable, internet, and phone. The second line is about $15 a month, includes long distance, and I was able to hook up my antique phone/fax/answering machine to it. Works great. This was about half the price of our dedicated landline and long distance service. We were able to port the old phone number, so the change was seamless. Comcast doesn't let you add a third line without bumping you up to Business and doubling the price. (Don't get me started on Comcast!)

Enter Ooma. Ooma is not a movie star, but rather a technology which mysteriously connects your internet to your landline phone wiring and provides you with VOIP (voice over internet protocol) phone service. If you prefer old receiver phones to cells, this technology is for you. It took about an hour of an electrician's time to set it up, and did require a few calls with guys in India to work out kinks, but it's working perfectly. The system costs around $199, plus a $40 charge to port your phone number. Here's the magic: after you pay those charges, you essentially own your phone number and never pay a monthly bill again. Pays for itself in about 6 months.

Mr. Beams Motion Detector LED's - Moving Musing #3

Along with all the pleasure of a new house (you bought it because you liked it, right?) come challenges. Each house has its idiosyncrasies and problems to solve. Our new house is super-illuminated - tons of ceiling lights not found in older homes, so much so that my first task was removing lightbulbs to tone it down.

The builders screwed up some of the double light switching, so the 2nd floor lights cannot be turned on from the first floor. The stairwell is dark going upstairs, dangerous. The electricians' estimate for the wiring fix: $1500.

Nosing around online I found a great product which worked so well I ordered a half dozen more: motion activated LED lights. They stay on for 60 seconds - LED's are super-efficient so three C batteries will last 1500 hours. They have light sensoring, so only are activated when it's dim or dark. At 60 seconds a piece, the lights can go on 90,000 times. Even if they overstate the case, and they only last 45,000 times, not bad. I like that you don't need to turn them off or on - just moving in range does that. Since I can't find the right light switches most of the time, this is remarkably helpful! Also I often have my hands full. They were perfect for a walk-in closet, as well as stairs. Using 3 per stair well works fine. We didn't bother mounting them - each just sits on a step. These would also be great for people who get up during the night and need enough light to be safe, but don't want full illumination.

They average $24.99 (+ 3 batteries @ about $1.50 = $4.50). That comes out to $.00003 per use. Found them for $19.99 a piece at TechMall.

Comcast Triple Play: Inefficiency, Incomprehensibility, Insanity!

Moving generates mountains of paper and endless to-do lists, along with requiring a redo of all one's basic systems. Since we had Comcast Triple Play (internet, cable TV, and digital phone) in our old house, you'd think transferring our account to the new place, just 5 blocks away, would be simple. But you'd be wrong.

First, the inefficiency of their customer service system. There are long waits - typically 15 minutes or so - to talk to a customer service rep. The system is set up so you never talk to the same person, so each time it's an endless repetition of the latest set of problems. The reps are unfailingly polite, and that fooled me. Seemed like at least half the time the next series of steps they assured me would happen had nothing to do with how Comcast actually proceeds. Big waste of Comcast time, and mine too.

Then there's the incomprehensibility of their protocols. We had already opened an account at the new house, since one is required for a burglar alarm. That meant we couldn't TRANSFER our account. Instead they closed our account. Closing accounts generates a whole slew of problems that transferring would have solved. For example: it knocked out our automatic credit card payments without notification. Naturally I stuck the first new bill in my credit card file. A few weeks later I started receiving hostile overdue payment notices. Seems like Billing could have looked at our many years of credit card payment history and figured this out, rather than sending harrassing letters.

Then there's their irrational behaviors. We set up a time to install the new service - that side of Comcast works very well. What they didn't mention is that they charge for all the equipment from our old house. While their technicians blithely installed new boxes et al, Comcast threatened to turn off our new service for non-payment for this old equipment - to the tune of $950.00. Our problem was that our old cable boxes were packed away in one of about 75 stacked cartons. You'd think that if they know customers are moving, they'd instruct them to carefully move the equipment to the new place, or risk this charge. We paid.

In the meantime, a lovely Comcast equipment recovery specialist phoned us to try to pick up our old stuff. Each time another piece of equipment surfaced, we called and he'd be here within the hour. He assured me they'd be credited to my account. Ultimately we returned $1000 worth of equipment. At the same time they were threatening to turn off our service, they had both our $950 plus the $1000 in equipment. When I pointed this out, they said to expect the refund check, not an account credit, in 4-6 weeks. I gave up talking to them at that point. A few days later the refund check came. Seemed like no one had really given any thought to this system.

Some of these issues could have been resolved online. Except that I could never manage - despite the fact that I bank my mail and successfully execute 100's of transaction electronically - to access my account. I finally talked to them about this obstacle and a customer disservice rep explained the problem was that I was using my normal email, not the email that Comcast had assigned me. So - they assign you a unique email address, don't tell you, and then have customer service reps go through this with you. Insanity!

That said, their products work very well....

A Successful Short Sale: Moving Musing #2

"A short sale is really a long sale", explained our realtor. She certainly nailed it. Last spring I found a new, lovely home not far from our old house, ideal for the next stage of our baby boomerdom. Smaller house, smaller yard, new infrastructure, insulated windows - after 24 years living with radiators, that alone was appealing. But when I walked into the sunny, state-of-the-art kitchen, real estate lust kicked in. I wanted this house. Not so fast - it was a short sale.

A short sale is a stage which precedes a foreclosure. The out-of-town owner had purchased this property at the top of the market, overpaying even for those crazy times. Both he and the tenants had run out of resources to pay, and there were two bank mortgages. That means this short sale was even more complicated, dealing with four entities. Real estate agents hate short sales, since the bank squeezes their commissions and so few of them close.

Our low ball bid was accepted. We had the house inspected without a contract Risky, but it got a good report card, so we agreed to buy As Is. Then the drama began. Bank #1 needed to talk to Bank #2. One bank was a descendant of the infamous WaMu; the other was Saxton, first absorbed into JPMorgan Chase, which then became Chase. Neither bank had a clue how to proceed and our scheduled July closing finally took place one day in early November. The hang-up was a negotiation between the two banks for $10K, which was accomplished in 5 minutes. It's just that it took four months for each bank to locate a person with authority to talk to the other bank. It's no wonder our economy is in shambles!

Most short sales fall apart because the buyers run out of patience, so my first piece of advice is just that. Be patient. You should never attempt this unless your move is optional.

Second to patience, you need extreme flexibility. It's really challenging to simultaneously organize your life when you might move and you might not. You can't put your house up for sale, since you have no idea when the short sale will come through, if it comes through at all. Then you need to be able to carry two houses, since you can't put it on the market and expect it to instantly sell. And if you own a house which you'll need to sell, you need to be fixing it up for the market knowing it you might not be selling it after all. This is all hard on one's sanity.

Bottom line is we bought a beautiful new home at a significant discount. It is a stressful way to make a move - don't attempt it unless you really love the short sale property, but don't love it soooo much that you become irrational.

We had a hilarious denouement. We'd lined our mortgage up in advance, knowing that the mortgage broker would sell our mortgage soon thereafter. When we signed the papers, the broker already had the name of the purchaser of our new mortgage: CHASE! Apparently even if they don't know how to do short sales, they still know how to buy mortgages.

Musings on Movings #1: Yay UHaul!

Done! We are now ensconced in a house 1/3 smaller than our old house, on a piece of property about half the size of our previous house. It may not sound like much of a downsizing, but our old house was enormous - we got rid of about 1500 square feet of house, which would make a pretty decent size home all by itself. We went from a free standing two-car, two-story garage to an attached one car garage and my office is in our new home's finished basement, so we lost a whole floor of storage. We passed along a ton of useful things, as well as recycling endless stacks of papers and periodicals.

Setting up our new household proved an interesting project. We were committed to reusing as much as possible, but at the same time determined not to move anything that didn't have a clear use or purpose. Just because we owned it didn't mean it was entitled to a parking space in the new digs; this meant unloading a stream of surplus dishes, books, linens, appliances, and furniture. Through curb-gifting (a term I just coined), freecycle and other neighborhood listservs, we found homes for nearly everything, and managed to limit our trash to just a few garbage cans full. And a lot of the stuff in those cans was junk the previous owners had left!

This is the first of many posts about all our discoveries, good and bad. My first award goes to UHaul. We hired folks to pack our enormous library (husband is an academic) and while I got super cheap boxes online at Uline, it became clear that we needed more, on a Sunday afternoon. One of the packers mentioned that UHaul sells boxes which are returnable. They were open, and just a few miles away, with an immense inventory. Book boxes come in 25-packs, returnable with your sales slip. I had about 30 left over, and easy as could be - they took them back, not even requiring that they be bundled. The boxes have information about reusing and recycling printed on them.

Not such a great purchase: our highly rated Tanita Solar scale. It has read-outs accurate to the .5 pound, a nice thing, but in the winter it doesn't power up unless you have a light on. Seems dumb to need to turn on an overhead light to weigh yourself, unless you need the light on anyway.

Conserve Rain Forests on Ebay's Dime!

Ebay is a wonderful instrument for both selling your gently used or general surplus items. Likewise, it's a great resource for buying used items. Whenever I find a buyer for my oddball stuff, I get a huge charge out of the Ebay matchmaking miracle. Like finding a new household for the Farberware pot insert my friend didn't know what to do with, since when it arrived and she finally opened the box (a year later!), it didn't actually fit in hers. Now it lives in New Mexico, married to a new pot with which it is very compatible.

Ebay is finally strutting its green cred. Join the Ebay Green Challenge and they will contribute $$ to rain forest conservation.