What the E!

With all the economic turmoil that has taken place in the last year, I am sure we will see a number of people looking for “secret” methods to obtain positive returns and increase portfolio values. This methods may be successful for short term periods, but very few products will prove to have long term value.

A traditional method that almost no one in the financial services industry wants you to hear about is investing in index funds. Most investors for the long term are still going to find it tough to beat an index fund. Check out this story from the NY Times that details the continued fundamental strength of index funds. Index Funds are still winners.

When I was a kid I specifically remember that we had recess right after lunch and then another 20 to 25 minute recess later in the afternoon. We played on the swings, merry go round, played touch football, and generally had a good time. Well it appears that kids are getting less and less recess as the focus on standardized tests and other instructional time.

A new study that was mentioned in the NY Times, The 3 R’s? A Fourth Is Crucial, Too: Recess , reinforced the importance of the classroom time paired with some good ole healthy recess.

In the continued saga of my effort to remove charges from third party SMS company, Cyclon, LLC, that I mentioned in my last couple of blog posts (1, 2, 3) I may have finally reached a resolution.

When I called Sprint I was extremely fortunate to reach and agent named Lisa. She was able to remove the charges from my bill and then blocked any bills from other third party SMS companies for other lines on my account. However, to stop the bills for Cylon she mentioned something that may be helpful to others calling, “Opt Out”. Lisa mentioned that she had just learned from another customer service agent that you need to “Opt Out” and block to prevent charges to an account that may have already “subscribed” to one of these fraudulent services. Hopefully this is the last call I will have to make related to this issue.

So the keywords for anyone getting ready to call Sprint on this issue are Opt Out and Block.

As a followup to the update on my experience with Sprint customers service I received a phone survey today.  It was specifically asking about my experience on Monday.  So I gave the person reasonable review since they were so helpful.  Overall, customer service number not so great. 

Just now I logged on to my sprint account to check out my usage and guess what I found:

03/14 Cylon LLC: Alerts - Info Text 38146

Round Two of customer service roulette is just getting ready to take place, arggh!

Here is an update from my earlier post. Never received a response from the “Customer Escalation Support Team.” So I decided to push my luck and call again.

Talked with a really nice lady name Shannon today. Explained my situation and frustration at the lack of response. She was able to refund the charge, block future charges, and was very pleasant to deal with on top of it all. Took less than 7 minutes from the time that I started calling to finish. If only Sprint could clone her, they might have more customers.

I guess the morale of the story is if the first agent you talk with isnt helpful, just hang up and try again. As a side note calling in the early afternoon seems to lead to short wait times.