So, our financial situation for a number of reasons took a turn for the worst a while back. We kept building debt, and some of our credit cards went over their limits. Granted it was not an ideal situation, but we are now in the process of paying down our debt considerably. My the end of next month we will have between 65-80% of all our credit card debt paid off.
Now, here is what is upsetting me so very much at the moment…
First, I will need to explain a little more of the back story. We got one credit card about 6 years ago. It wasn’t exactly the best card in the world. It had an $89 annual fee right from the start, and the interest rate was in the neighborhood of 17% or so. We got this card from Providian. As I said we have had the account for about 6 years.
Thanks to the whole banking crisis fiasco some of you might know that Providian was taken over by Washington Mutual (Wamu). Wamu was then taken over by Chase. Ahh, good old Chase. I had a previous issue with then many, many years ago too. So, I never really liked them. Of course we didn’t have any choice as to which company absorbed what other companies.
Now as I said, this card was a little over the limit for quite some time. The credit limit was $871. the card usually carried a balance of about $1000-$1100. The reason it first went above the credit limit was because of that annoying yearly fee of $89. So, we were close to the limit, got hit with the yearly fee which put us over the limit. This meant they tacked on an additional over the limit fee of like $39.95. We were living on a pretty tight budget for a number of reason I won’t get into. This meant we wound up paying just the regular monthly bill. Can you see where this is going? It remained over the credit limit, and each month they charged an addition $39.95. Meanwhile the monthly payment was somewhere between $25 and $40. So each month there was a finance charge, and principal payment of $25-$40, while every month the was the $39.95 penalty.
It worked out that we could pay a little extra here and there over time. This meant that we would usually get very close to being at the credit limit again. The problem was, oh look it took just about 12 months to get to that point… so here is the $89 annual fee, thanks for doing business with us. The cycle would continue.
Along the way through the three companies the interest rate kept going up and up. The current rate is a ridiculous 31.99%!
As I said we are paying down our credit cards right now. The balance on this card was actually down to $904, so was about to be under the limit anyway. Instead though we just paid $600 on this card, leaving a balance of $304.
At this point I emailed the “wonderful” people over at Chase. You always see those stories about people just having to ask to have their percentage rates lowered and having a bit of success. So, my email basically requested that they lower the percentage rate to something a bit more reasonable, and perhaps somehow do away with the $89 annual fee.
I get a brief response saying that they cannot fulfill my request because the account is closed. When I say brief I mean it basically said, “Sorry we cannot fulfill your request because that account is closed.”
Oh, really? The account is closed? Nice of Prov-Wamu-Chase to notify us that the account was closed. At this point I got a bit pissed of. 
 I sent back another email to them congratulating them on their stellar customer service, and communication skills. I also asked why we were not informed of the account closing in any way. I got back a somewhat longer email response. It explained how the credit reporting companies were notified of the account being closed within 60 of it being closed. It went on to explain how the remaining $304 balance would continue being charged interest and that there would be a monthly bill until the balance was paid off in full.
So, now the company with the brilliant customer relations that couldn’t take 5 minutes to send an email or snail mail notification that the account was being closed feels the need to explain to me in full detail how a credit account works.
Regardless, if they said no to the percentage reduction we planned to pay off the remaining $304 and then let the account site there until September (the month before the $89 annual fee is usually charged) before closing it. So, we will indeed be paying the Prov-Wamu-Chase card off in full by the end of next month.
Maybe Chase should have been absorbed by some other company so they could maybe have their customer relations staff retrained or something.
Anyway, I would like to give my rating of the Chase Bank (Now JPMorgan Chase Bank I guess). I give them two great big thumbs down…or perhaps two other digits pointing straight up.
I wanted to start this post by saying thank you to anyone I haven’t personally thanked. Either because you were just a friend or family member of someone I directly contacted about voting, or if you were someone we don’t know at all that just came across my post and took the time to go and vote. Also, thank you to those I already personally thanked!
My wife did indeed come in 10th place in the voting for the education microgrant which means she was one of the winners.
The prize was $200 cash, and a Flip Video Camcorder. We now know the camera itself has a retail value of about $99. Below are some stock photos of the camera included.
Flip Video Camcorder included in the grant.
We haven’t used it extensively yet to test it out, but it really is a cool little camera.
It has 1GB of internal memory which allows it to record up to 30 minutes of digital video. I do wish it was possible to put in one of those memory cards to increase the amount of time it can record. It is however supposed to be extremely easy to copy any video from the camera to the computer.
I am thinking the camera gets its name from the feature you see in this image. With the shift of one button a USB port flips up out of the camera. you can then just slide it into the USB port on your computer and copy the video files over.
Just below that is a cable input that connects to a set of audio visual cables. This allows you to plug the camera directly into your TV.
All in all it seems like a really great little camera. With easy to use controls on the back of the camera as seen in the next picture. It runs on two AA batteries, which were also included.
Now the plan for the $200 was to purchase as many digital cameras as possible.
My mother-in-law managed to get us three digital cameras. Woohoo!
Those cameras were Vivicam 5022 5.1megapixels cameras with flash. They retail at Wal*Mart and similar retailers for $39.99.
We weren’t sure just what type of camera we were going to choose, but after seeing these we kind of made the decision.
They come in 3 colors, are lightweight, and have the flash we wanted them all to have. The controls are also easy to understand, even for 4th grade students.
So, we now had a jumpstart of three free cameras.
We went out and got four more of these cameras, for a total of seven. I was hoping to come out with a bit more than that, but it is definitely a good start. for now students will just have to use them in shifts, 7 at a time.
The setback of these cameras are; a)they all need memory cards to take more than one picture at a time, b)they all use 3 AAA batteries.
However, the one place my mother-in-law can order stuff from has 2GB memory cards for just $5 a piece! We are being given 24 – 2GB memory cards for the cameras. (Yes our goal over time is to have enough cameras to have one for each student in the class to use.)
This left about $30-35 of the grant money unused. We needed batteries though. We decided that buying regular batteries again and again would basically make it impossible to do to many projects using the cameras. So we went with a rechargable battery system.
We got a Duracell charger for about $12 at Target. It came with 4 AA Pre-Charged Rechargable NiMh batteries. Yes I said above the cameras use AAA, but the Flip Cam needs the AAs, so it works out. We also lucked out and happened to be at Target while they had an incredible deal going on the AAA Pre-Charged Rechargable Duracell batteries. These things are anywhere between $12 and $17 for a 4-pack. For some reason Target apparently marks them down to just $6.45 from time to time. (We talked to the one girl about this.) So, we gravved up six packages of them. That took up the remainder of the money, and a little extra we had to put in.
The charger we got takes 8 hours to charge, and can do four batteries at a time. You can see how this will be a pain at times, and especially when we eventually get 20+ cameras rolling. So we have our eyes on a better Duracell charger. It runs $39.99, but can charge four batteries at a time in just 15 minutes!
That will simplify the charging process a bunch. I could charge all the batteries in one night for her to take back with her the next day.
These batteries are supposed to last more than twice as long as regular batteries, and are specifically made for high draining devices like MP3 Players and digital cameras.
They also say that they can be charged about 1,000 times. so if you do the math that is about the equivalent of more than 2,000 sets of batteries! What a huge money saver, while also being an extremely green choice for the environment!
We are extrmely fortunate to have such generous people, and the WeAreTeachers.com people to have helped us get all this great stuff that will benefit my wife’s classroom for many years to come. As well as having people we do and don’t know willing to take the time to go and vote to help her win the grant. We really do appreciate all the help!
Now while we do appreciate all the help thus far, we also know that it is going to take quite a bit of time to come anywhere near 24 cameras, with batteries to match. Because of this fact I am about to ask for some more help.
If you would like to donate money to purchase more cameras and batteries, or donate the actual cameras and/or batteries, or just an old camera that you no longer use it would be greatly appreciated.
I mean I am sure there are some peope out there reading this that perhaps upgraded their own digital camera recently. Some of which now have their old cameras that still work fine just sitting around collecting dust. Why donate these cameras to a good cause?
As for purchasing any of the items listed above, that would be fine too. It is my understanding that you can recharge any brand of battery in any charger, but I am not 100% certain of that. We chose Duracell because it has been our experience that they last longer than everything else, even the pink bunny! Also, at $6.45 a four pack it was a hard deal to beat. (Of course that price sticker said it expires on September 21st.)
I do not want to put our address/shipping info here in the post for obvious reasons. If you would like to ship us any items on the list, or your old working digital cameras please contact me (Gene) at blogamerica123@aol.com and I can send you the shipping info.
for those that just want to donate some money to pool it together and get the stuff on the list you can use the PayPal Donate button below. It is easy, safe, and secure. Please remember even a dollar or two would help. We don’t want you to send $40 for a whole camera. . . unless you really want to, but every bit helps.
I will update things as we go along.
We are going to have her class record a thank you message of some sort. We are just checking to make sure we can share the video, I mean they are just 4th grade kids. Luckily the school does have all parents sign a media release that says their child’s likeness might be recorded for one reason or another. The reason they do this is because from time to time a news crew might do a story at the school, and one year they even had one family involved in that show Wife Swap which they recorded at the school a bit.
I am also hoping to share the video she has to make showing her first project that the grant money is used for. That project, unless she has changed it without my knowing, is going to be each child making a 3-5 minute autobiography presentation.
Well, twitter isn’t a total waste of time. While I have spent way too much time on there today while I should have been doing any number of other things – it turned into some time well spent. I am rather new to twitter, but am now following like 140 people already.
Two of the people on that list are Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore, yes I am one of those 2,000,000 plus followers he has. I bet I am one of only a few that actually picture him wearing the football helmet from That ’70′s Show while he tweets though.
Seriously though, today I saw them both tweeting about ending hunger in America. I did some searching around and got more info on the whole thing and decided to try and help, if even in my own little way. I mean I don’t have thousands of people hanging on my every typed word, but every little bit helps.
I am upset I hadn’t heard about this all before now, apparently you need to have the videos in ASAP. It is important to get them in though. It seems “a major U.S. corporation” is going to donate $10,000,000 in food if we can all create an awareness campaign to End U.S. Hunger.
Here is a 15 minute video of Ashton Kutcher explaining it all.
Basically here is what we need to do -
Record a video:
1. Ask the camera a question like “Hungry?” or “Are you hungry?”
2. Answer: “Eat!” or “Go ahead and eat!”
3. Then you physically eat something on camera. Once you have your video recorded you can either send it to endushunger@gmail.com , or upload it to YouTube.com and tag it with “End Hunger Now”.
Here is one clip of people from Feeding America ( www.feedingamerica.org ) explaining it all in case you don’t want to watch the entire 15 minutes of Ashton Kutcher above. The second video was made by the Feeding America offices.
So get making those videos and sending them in to endushunger@gmail.com or posting them to YouTube.
I know many people that read this are in Australia or other parts of the world, but just because you aren’t here in America doesn’t mean you can’t help.
One in eight Americans is hungry – help make a difference no matter where you are.
www.feedingamerica.org
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