David Wilcock
08-05-2005, 02:59 PM
Hey Group,
For those of you who want to know more about the archive situation, here's
the latest deal:
We're actively designing style sheets for the new website, how it's going to
look, sound and feel, and everything. I can tell you that it's going to be a
massive improvement over what we've got up there now - just no comparison.
I'm VERY excited about this.
In the meantime I got hit with an unexpected disaster. I got out of the
shower wet and naked and looked in the mirror... (hey, thanks a lot, THAT
wasn't the disaster, OK? Sheesh...) and the phone was ringing. For some
weird reason I got the call, and it was Bellsouth telling me that they would
need an ADDITIONAL $1,200 dollars, RIGHT NOW, before they could proceed any
further with my order. They claimed that this was simply because I had not
been a "business customer" with them before, and that it would credit
towards my last two payments before the end of the first year, with *gasp*
six percent interest tacked on for good measure. (72 bucks- What a deal!
(Curious that it would be exactly the same amount as the one-year discounted
subscription, huh? I just noticed that now.))
Anyway, they suddenly were asking me for almost precisely the same amount
that I was going to liquidate to fund this month without taking clients. And
if I had to do it TWICE, that would have been about it, and I wouldn't have
had enough to buy the new computer that the in-house server would require.
It was starting to look REAL squirrelly. Feeling cold and vulnerable and not
having time to really think it through, (i.e. the idea that I "had to" do it
this way) I said, "OK, I'll get you the money, man. Somehow." (Shades of a
burned-out, shifty-eyed youth haggling with his pimp-daddy-mack dealer. It
was insane.)
Then I started to talk to my software developer (for the integrated PayPal
secure server that is hopefully VERY hacker-proof so the "alphabet-soup
spooks" can't take it down or mess with it) and found out that after seeing
my contract, he realized that he really didn't want to have to be
responsible for all the work that maintaining the site from hackers would
entail (about an hour a day, at least, if you really want to keep the site
healthy.) Plus, he said, "this may be your way to exit the contract and find
a much better deal."
WELL - little did I know how right he was until I started doing the math! To
make a LONG story short, there's a company in Canada, iWeb, that is
promoting an AMAZING deal. With Bellsouth, I would have had 0.75 megs per
second of bandwidth. With iWeb, you get 10 megs per second of unmetered
bandwidth - meaning that you could be having people pull the maximum load
off the server 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 25 THOUSAND gigs a month, and
you're never going to be charged any additional fees! (That was my biggest
concern with a private server.) And they give you a nice computer that they
run it on, dedicated all by itself - a 2.4Ghz system with 1G of RAM and an
80G hard drive. Best of all, you can order Tier 5 technical support, which
means that they spend 150 hours a month - three hours a day - analyzing your
site and protecting it from hackers. They promise that any needed repairs
will be made within 4 hours or less, guaranteed. So there's very, very
little downtime, if ever.
They are in Montreal, a very earth-changes-neutral area, and the server runs
on hydroelectric power, not fossil-fuel based (which is good since there may
well be "scheduled rolling brownouts" for fuel-burning power plants in the
future) and a huge diesel-generator backup. And for 133 times more
bandwidth, unmetered, a robust dedicated server computer for a 99-dollar
setup fee, and tech support that I thought I would have to pay very dearly
for (if I could even find someone good enough to really do it), the grand
total comes out 229 dollars LESS than what I would have been paying
Bellsouth per month! Plus, I don't have to be stuck in KY if I need to move
on, and I can exit the contract any time I want if something better shows
up. Or, in a really extreme scenario where my site got super-hugely popular,
they also have the option of upgrading us to 100 megs per second, (which
admittedly would be over 2000 a month but by then it would be easy to
afford,) so there's room to grow if needed.
So you see where this is going. The last thing in the WORLD I wanted to do
was to have to follow through on the contract that I had already signed, in
great haste, BEFORE I realized I could take a vacation and actually stop the
insanity. Things were hopeful, since the representative had admitted to me
that he had misinformed me; I was never told that other setup fees could hit
like this.
I had just recently been through a nine-month battle against identity theft,
including contracts with two different telecommunications companies (and
this was Bellsouth, for vastly more money at stake) who were fighting me
absolutely to the extreme that is humanly possible over 450 dollars in both
cases. They made me jump through ENORMOUS hoops, taking HOURS of my time,
when many people would have just caved in since it's actually cheaper to pay
them for their fraud rather than stand up for yourself and go through the
shatteringly unfair amount of paperwork, police reports, fingerprinting,
telephone calls, emails, faxes, more paperwork, more police reports, more
research, fighting creditors who call your house 2-3 times a day to try to
harass you, et cetera that I had to go through.
I did WIN both of my cases with the identity theft, hands-down, but it was a
tremendous battle. So I had no idea what to expect. Someone in my position
could have easily been wracked with fear, since this contract would require
money not even available, force a three-year commitment to a place I'm not
even sure I want to stay at, and involve bringing in people who might "flake
out" on me to do tech support, which could lead to me being burdened with
all of these responsibilities myself - at least an hour a day of babysitting
my server.
Yet, I had gone way out of my way to make a human connection with the guy I
was talking to from Bellsouth about all this. He was interested in this type
of material but couldn't talk about it on the phone, and Bellsouth had
blocked my website from his server so he couldn't even see it.
Then he calls me.
"Hey David, this is *** from Bellsouth. I've got good news for you!"
"Uh-oh," I thought to myself. "Larry Seyer had warned me about this last
night. A good negotiator is going to come back and say that the whole extra
1200-dollar fee has been waived. Then I'm right back to the same old,
far-too-expensive contract that keeps me stuck in KY for three years."
Again, at this point, most people in my position would probably surge with
paranoia and fear. And if you come at someone with that type of energy,
you're bound to tick them off, and they'll go after you - and they might
win.
He proceeded to tell me that he had AGAIN screwed up, having "checked the
wrong box" on the application form, and now the fee would either magically
disappear, possibly reduce or possibly stay the same, pending a "full credit
check," which they had not done before. I realized it was "now or never,"
and I thought I would have had a lot more time to prepare myself for this
moment - so I didn't even really have time to think it through and feel fear
about it. This is what happened:
"You know, I really like you, ***. I really don't want to have to get angry
on the phone with you or argue with you, but I've got to say that I really
made a mistake signing that contract. If there is any way that I can free
myself of this contract I want to take it."
Here's the amazing part - he was TOTALLY cool (slightly disappointed since
this would have been his first commission on such a deal) but didn't offer
me ANY resistance. I was dazzled. After nine months of bloody battle with
Sprint and AT&T over completely ridiculous things that I was not responsible
for, here I was breaking free of something that had just become larger than
life, making me feel like a prisoner in the same way that the insane
schedule of readings had made me feel for the preceding 2.5 years. I wasn't
even really psychologically prepared for the fact that I might actually win
that easily. So, I just proceeded to tell the guy all about the deal I
found, and only then did I realize that he already knew that such deals
existed. That made me feel even better about him not getting any commission,
because he was clearly playing a dodgy game of ethics by not mentioning that
fantastically more competitive options already existed. (I know some people
in sales are OK with this, but I'm not one of them.) It was clear that I
wouldn't get any karma for him not closing this deal once he admitted what
he already knew.
In fact, he actually laid all his cards on the table by saying that because
of these errors he had made (multiple errors), I would have had to sign a
new contract anyway and basically start from scratch with the 30-day wait
period after it was over - AFTER the credit check and everything else. So no
matter what kind of energy I brought to him in the call, I would still
probably have succeeded. Nonetheless, I did sign something, and I do
acknowledge that if someone WANTS to tangle with you because you upset them,
they can pull all sorts of tricks, and then claim to themselves and their
friends that you 'owe' them the commission money that they would have gotten
if you had followed through on your end of the deal.
So the old saying "you get more flies with honey than with vinegar" is
really true here.
The idea of being tethered to KY for three more years, no matter what, was
VERY unappealing. I realize that the only reason why I even considered it,
originally, was because it was a mirror of how I already felt in life - just
very stuck. So you can only imagine how much this totally changes the way I
see my own future! What a great tension-resolution cycle to kick off my
month of down-time. Again I realize that we make CHOICES every step of the
way, and at some point we ALLOW ourselves to get stuck into whatever we get
stuck into. No one forces us to do anything, ultimately. Children, perhaps,
but once you're an adult that's it - you can make up your own mind, direct
your own will, and do what you want to do, ultimately.
So here's to freedom. We'll talk more tomorrow.
Peace be with you -
- David
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
For those of you who want to know more about the archive situation, here's
the latest deal:
We're actively designing style sheets for the new website, how it's going to
look, sound and feel, and everything. I can tell you that it's going to be a
massive improvement over what we've got up there now - just no comparison.
I'm VERY excited about this.
In the meantime I got hit with an unexpected disaster. I got out of the
shower wet and naked and looked in the mirror... (hey, thanks a lot, THAT
wasn't the disaster, OK? Sheesh...) and the phone was ringing. For some
weird reason I got the call, and it was Bellsouth telling me that they would
need an ADDITIONAL $1,200 dollars, RIGHT NOW, before they could proceed any
further with my order. They claimed that this was simply because I had not
been a "business customer" with them before, and that it would credit
towards my last two payments before the end of the first year, with *gasp*
six percent interest tacked on for good measure. (72 bucks- What a deal!
(Curious that it would be exactly the same amount as the one-year discounted
subscription, huh? I just noticed that now.))
Anyway, they suddenly were asking me for almost precisely the same amount
that I was going to liquidate to fund this month without taking clients. And
if I had to do it TWICE, that would have been about it, and I wouldn't have
had enough to buy the new computer that the in-house server would require.
It was starting to look REAL squirrelly. Feeling cold and vulnerable and not
having time to really think it through, (i.e. the idea that I "had to" do it
this way) I said, "OK, I'll get you the money, man. Somehow." (Shades of a
burned-out, shifty-eyed youth haggling with his pimp-daddy-mack dealer. It
was insane.)
Then I started to talk to my software developer (for the integrated PayPal
secure server that is hopefully VERY hacker-proof so the "alphabet-soup
spooks" can't take it down or mess with it) and found out that after seeing
my contract, he realized that he really didn't want to have to be
responsible for all the work that maintaining the site from hackers would
entail (about an hour a day, at least, if you really want to keep the site
healthy.) Plus, he said, "this may be your way to exit the contract and find
a much better deal."
WELL - little did I know how right he was until I started doing the math! To
make a LONG story short, there's a company in Canada, iWeb, that is
promoting an AMAZING deal. With Bellsouth, I would have had 0.75 megs per
second of bandwidth. With iWeb, you get 10 megs per second of unmetered
bandwidth - meaning that you could be having people pull the maximum load
off the server 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 25 THOUSAND gigs a month, and
you're never going to be charged any additional fees! (That was my biggest
concern with a private server.) And they give you a nice computer that they
run it on, dedicated all by itself - a 2.4Ghz system with 1G of RAM and an
80G hard drive. Best of all, you can order Tier 5 technical support, which
means that they spend 150 hours a month - three hours a day - analyzing your
site and protecting it from hackers. They promise that any needed repairs
will be made within 4 hours or less, guaranteed. So there's very, very
little downtime, if ever.
They are in Montreal, a very earth-changes-neutral area, and the server runs
on hydroelectric power, not fossil-fuel based (which is good since there may
well be "scheduled rolling brownouts" for fuel-burning power plants in the
future) and a huge diesel-generator backup. And for 133 times more
bandwidth, unmetered, a robust dedicated server computer for a 99-dollar
setup fee, and tech support that I thought I would have to pay very dearly
for (if I could even find someone good enough to really do it), the grand
total comes out 229 dollars LESS than what I would have been paying
Bellsouth per month! Plus, I don't have to be stuck in KY if I need to move
on, and I can exit the contract any time I want if something better shows
up. Or, in a really extreme scenario where my site got super-hugely popular,
they also have the option of upgrading us to 100 megs per second, (which
admittedly would be over 2000 a month but by then it would be easy to
afford,) so there's room to grow if needed.
So you see where this is going. The last thing in the WORLD I wanted to do
was to have to follow through on the contract that I had already signed, in
great haste, BEFORE I realized I could take a vacation and actually stop the
insanity. Things were hopeful, since the representative had admitted to me
that he had misinformed me; I was never told that other setup fees could hit
like this.
I had just recently been through a nine-month battle against identity theft,
including contracts with two different telecommunications companies (and
this was Bellsouth, for vastly more money at stake) who were fighting me
absolutely to the extreme that is humanly possible over 450 dollars in both
cases. They made me jump through ENORMOUS hoops, taking HOURS of my time,
when many people would have just caved in since it's actually cheaper to pay
them for their fraud rather than stand up for yourself and go through the
shatteringly unfair amount of paperwork, police reports, fingerprinting,
telephone calls, emails, faxes, more paperwork, more police reports, more
research, fighting creditors who call your house 2-3 times a day to try to
harass you, et cetera that I had to go through.
I did WIN both of my cases with the identity theft, hands-down, but it was a
tremendous battle. So I had no idea what to expect. Someone in my position
could have easily been wracked with fear, since this contract would require
money not even available, force a three-year commitment to a place I'm not
even sure I want to stay at, and involve bringing in people who might "flake
out" on me to do tech support, which could lead to me being burdened with
all of these responsibilities myself - at least an hour a day of babysitting
my server.
Yet, I had gone way out of my way to make a human connection with the guy I
was talking to from Bellsouth about all this. He was interested in this type
of material but couldn't talk about it on the phone, and Bellsouth had
blocked my website from his server so he couldn't even see it.
Then he calls me.
"Hey David, this is *** from Bellsouth. I've got good news for you!"
"Uh-oh," I thought to myself. "Larry Seyer had warned me about this last
night. A good negotiator is going to come back and say that the whole extra
1200-dollar fee has been waived. Then I'm right back to the same old,
far-too-expensive contract that keeps me stuck in KY for three years."
Again, at this point, most people in my position would probably surge with
paranoia and fear. And if you come at someone with that type of energy,
you're bound to tick them off, and they'll go after you - and they might
win.
He proceeded to tell me that he had AGAIN screwed up, having "checked the
wrong box" on the application form, and now the fee would either magically
disappear, possibly reduce or possibly stay the same, pending a "full credit
check," which they had not done before. I realized it was "now or never,"
and I thought I would have had a lot more time to prepare myself for this
moment - so I didn't even really have time to think it through and feel fear
about it. This is what happened:
"You know, I really like you, ***. I really don't want to have to get angry
on the phone with you or argue with you, but I've got to say that I really
made a mistake signing that contract. If there is any way that I can free
myself of this contract I want to take it."
Here's the amazing part - he was TOTALLY cool (slightly disappointed since
this would have been his first commission on such a deal) but didn't offer
me ANY resistance. I was dazzled. After nine months of bloody battle with
Sprint and AT&T over completely ridiculous things that I was not responsible
for, here I was breaking free of something that had just become larger than
life, making me feel like a prisoner in the same way that the insane
schedule of readings had made me feel for the preceding 2.5 years. I wasn't
even really psychologically prepared for the fact that I might actually win
that easily. So, I just proceeded to tell the guy all about the deal I
found, and only then did I realize that he already knew that such deals
existed. That made me feel even better about him not getting any commission,
because he was clearly playing a dodgy game of ethics by not mentioning that
fantastically more competitive options already existed. (I know some people
in sales are OK with this, but I'm not one of them.) It was clear that I
wouldn't get any karma for him not closing this deal once he admitted what
he already knew.
In fact, he actually laid all his cards on the table by saying that because
of these errors he had made (multiple errors), I would have had to sign a
new contract anyway and basically start from scratch with the 30-day wait
period after it was over - AFTER the credit check and everything else. So no
matter what kind of energy I brought to him in the call, I would still
probably have succeeded. Nonetheless, I did sign something, and I do
acknowledge that if someone WANTS to tangle with you because you upset them,
they can pull all sorts of tricks, and then claim to themselves and their
friends that you 'owe' them the commission money that they would have gotten
if you had followed through on your end of the deal.
So the old saying "you get more flies with honey than with vinegar" is
really true here.
The idea of being tethered to KY for three more years, no matter what, was
VERY unappealing. I realize that the only reason why I even considered it,
originally, was because it was a mirror of how I already felt in life - just
very stuck. So you can only imagine how much this totally changes the way I
see my own future! What a great tension-resolution cycle to kick off my
month of down-time. Again I realize that we make CHOICES every step of the
way, and at some point we ALLOW ourselves to get stuck into whatever we get
stuck into. No one forces us to do anything, ultimately. Children, perhaps,
but once you're an adult that's it - you can make up your own mind, direct
your own will, and do what you want to do, ultimately.
So here's to freedom. We'll talk more tomorrow.
Peace be with you -
- David
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]