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7 Tips To Avoid Costly Surprises When Travelling Abroad 7 Tips To Avoid Costly Surprises When Travelling Abroad by Jerry Durham

Have you ever wondered if what you know about vacation rentals is accurate? Consider the following paragraphs and compare what you know to the latest info on vacation rentals.

Try to buy your vacation travel package from a business you know.

If possible, deal with businesses that belong to professional associations such as the American Society of Travel Agents, the National Tour Association or the United States Tour Operators Association. If you're not familiar with a company, get its complete name, address and local telephone number.

Be cautious if the names of the seller and travel provider differ.

You may be dealing with a telemarketer who has no responsibility to you after the sale. And be wary of ads in the newspaper, on the Internet or that you receive by unsolicited fax that offer deeply discounted vacations. These 'deals' often contain hidden costs or don't tell you that you may have to attend a sales presentation to qualify for the discount or the travel. Avoid buying from a firm that wants to send a courier for your payment or asks you to send your payment by overnight delivery. The business may be trying to avoid detection and charges of mail or wire fraud.

Verify arrangements with your travel agent before you pay.

Get the details of your vacation in writing and a copy of the cancellation and refund policies. Ask if the business has insurance and whether you should buy cancellation insurance. Get the names, addresses and telephone numbers for the lodgings, airlines and cruise ships you'll be using. Don't accept vague terms such as 'major hotels' or 'luxury cruise ships.' Call to verify specific reservations, too.

Sometimes the most important aspects of a subject are not immediately obvious. Keep reading to get the complete picture.

Use a credit card to make your purchase.

If you don't get what you paid for, you may be able to dispute the charges with your credit card company. Some telemarketers may claim they need your account information for identification or verification. They don't. Your account number should be used only to bill you for goods and services.

Be wary of prepaying for long-term arrangements.

Timeshares, campgrounds or travel clubs may offer to sell membership vacation accommodations for five years or more, or until you resell your interest. Unless you're certain you'll stay healthy, both physically and financially, and that the company selling the memberships will stay in business, prepaid vacations may not be right for you. In addition, annual membership and maintenance fees may rise. If the seller claims the fees will stay the same, beware. Beautiful properties today may be run-down in five or 10 years without sufficient maintenance. If you decide to buy a timeshare or membership in a vacation club, be aware that resales are difficult, if not impossible, because there's no secondary market. As for timeshares as investments: they rarely appreciate in value.

Learn the vocabulary.

'You have been specially selected to receive our SPECTACULAR LUXURY DREAM VACATION offer' doesn't mean you'll get a free vacation. It means you'll be offered an opportunity to pay for a trip that may fit your idea of luxury - or not. 'Subject to availability' means you may not get the accommodations you want when you want them. 'Blackout periods' are blocks of dates, usually around holidays or peak season, when no discount travel is available.

Watch out for 'instant travel agent' offers.

Companies may offer to sell you identification that will 'guarantee' you discounted rates. These companies have no control over discounts. Only suppliers of travel - cruise lines, hotel companies, car rental companies, or airlines - can decide to extend professional courtesies, and to whom.

When word gets around about your command of vacation rentals facts, others who need to know about vacation rentals will start to actively seek you out.

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Marketing's Magic Bullet Marketing's Magic Bullet by Harry Hoover

Hundreds of 'consultants' make millions of dollars each year teaching seminars and boot camps, and selling newsletters about marketing's magic bullet - that one simple thing you can do to fill up your register with virtually no effort on your part.

People buy this tripe because they want 'simple' and 'no effort' ways to move their business forward.

All those magic bullet consultants are wrong. I have the secret and I am going to share it, but you won't be happy about it. My marketing magic bullet: focus, discipline and consistency. Yes, my magic bullet involves some work on your part.
Focus requires you to define your audiences, learn about their behavior, and then provide relevant and believable information, communicated in an original, impactful fashion.

Discipline necessitates developing a marketing plan and implementing it aggressively. Your plan must also include a sales element. I know businesses that market and then just expect clients to flock to them with wallets in hand. Unfortunately for these businesses, it requires some effort on their part. Sorry, no passive income.

Finally, we come to consistency. This means implementing your program even after you are tired of it. And don't change your message and marketing tactics on a whim. The race goes to the marathon man, not the sprinter.

Some other smart people agree with me. Business Coach Brent Dees says, 'You can do anything, but you can't do everything. If you focus, you can accomplish your goals.' Friend Bill Loeffler used to tell clients, 'We can't do everything. Let's pick three marketing tactics and do them right.'

Remember: focus, discipline and consistency. Unlike those other consultants, I won't bill you for that magic bullet. Lock and load.

Harry Hoover is a partner in My Creative Team, http://www.my-creativeteam.com. He has 30 years of experience in crafting and delivering bottom line messages that ensure success for serious businesses like Bank of Commerce, The Bray Law Firm, Brent Dees Financial Planning, CruisingTheICW.com, Duke Energy, Focus Four, Levolor, North Carolina Tourism, TeamHeidi, Ty Boyd Executive Learning Systems, VELUX, and Verbatim.

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Safety Light Curtains - A New Kind Of Protection For Your Home Safety Light Curtains - A New Kind Of Protection For Your Home by David Faulkner

In these times when crime is becoming increasingly rampant, people fear more for the safety of their families and their homes. That is why so many different kinds of burglar alarm systems have been developed for private residences over the years.

In the beginning, these alarm systems were quite simple, but as technology evolved, these safety mechanisms have grown much more complex and sophisticated. Because of these additional features, alarm systems now cost a lot more than the average home owner is able to budget for.

However, in many cases, homeowners do not really need to purchase an elaborate alarm system to protect their home. All that they need is to increase lighting around their property, and this is exactly what the safety light curtains do.

Safety light curtains use a very simple yet effective concept in preventing potential robbers from entering your property, particularly during the night. The brightness that a porch light or street lamp provides at night is usually not enough to scare away crooks.
Safety light curtains can give you this much brighter light that will illuminate the areas around your home and keep burglars away.

Safety light curtains are actually not curtains at all. They are series of lights strung together to provide additional light to any given area. The light that they emit has to be quite bright to discourage robbers. In order to maintain a strong glow, your safety light curtains must be connected to a powerful electricity supply.

Because safety light curtains are just a series of individual lights, you can easily shorten or lengthen the extent of coverage, depending on which areas you wish to illuminate. Of course, it is best if you can extend your safety light curtains all around your property, although this might be a bit costly if you use regular electricity.

An option you can take to save electricity is to make use of solar energy. Instead of connecting your safety light curtains to your regular power supply, you can use silicone panels. Wind turbines may also help you save energy, but they have recently been reported to be the cause of many avian fatalities, so you may want to reconsider that option.

You can also find more info on Safety Light Curtains and Sheer Curtains. Homecurtainsonline.com is a comprehensive resource to know about Curtains & Drapes.

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If I Did It: Would You Write It? If I Did It: Would You Write It? by JHS, Esq.

Consider this observation by Tim Rutten, writing in yesterday’s LA Times:

'O.J. Simpson’s trial and acquittal on charges that he murdered his ex-wife and Goldman have spawned a small library of books. . .

This week brought perhaps the strangest of all the additions to the Simpson library — an odd and repellent book called 'If I Did It: Confessions of the Killer.' You can search the cover in vain for the author’s name, though making your way through the cast of listed contributors is a bit like sitting through the technical credits at the end of a George Lucas film, something you do purely out of inertia.'

Released Friday, September 14, 2007, the book was listed as the top seller by Barnes and Noble within two days, while Amazon reported it was in the number two sales spot. But many booksellers, large and small, refused to include it in their inventory. Some cited moral objections, while others characterized their decision as motivated solely by the low demand for it they anticipated.

However, what those booksellers apparently did not anticipate was the “Oprah factor” which seems to account for the book’s surge in sales following the appearance on her show the day before publication of Fred and Kim Goldman, as well as the prosecutors who failed to secure O.J. Simpson’s conviction, Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden.

While insisting that she has not and will not read the book, Oprah shared salacious details, contending that they were provided to her by her staff. She also interviewed Denise Brown, who has been and continues to be outspoken about her belief that the book should never have been published. In light of their change of heart about the book’s publication after a Florida bankruptcy court awarded them the rights, Ms. Brown refused to share the venue with the Goldmans.

Originally as repulsed by the idea of Simpson’s allegedly hypothetical tale being in print as Ms. Brown, the Goldmans now insist that they are punishing Simpson by “taking something away from” him, i.e., the sales proceeds that will go toward satisfying a portion of the $38 million wrongful death judgment they won.

“It’s sending him a message,” Kim Goldman said. “He put hours putting together this confession about how he killed Ron and Nicole, and he worked hard thinking he was going to make millions off of it. And we snatched it right out from under him.”

The Internet is buzzing today with debate about whether or not the book should have been published, whether or not the Goldmans should have been involved and whether or not the American public should purchase it.

But from my vantage point as a writer, what seems to be missing from the dialog taking place is any consideration of the issues surrounding authorship of the book. After all, Simpson is not a writer.

Enter the ghostwriter. Pablo F. Fenjves is a supposed screenwriter and co-author of three prior books, including “A Million Little Lies,” a parody of James Frey’s “A Million Little Pieces” and “How I Broke Into Hollywood: Success Stories from the Trenches.”

Interestingly, Simpson now feigns little involvement in the book’s creation, but Fenjves insists not only that the book is the product of his extensive discussions with Simpson but, in fact, he was informed by the original publisher that it was, from the outset, intended to be a confessional vehicle. Simpson was acquitted of murder and cannot be re-tried on the same charges.

In the book’s prologue, he describes his dealings with Simpson, including the fact that Simpson protested inclusion of the chapter in which the murders are described in chilling detail — but when reminded that the chapter in question was the very reason he had entered into the book deal in the first place, “never said it was untrue or imagined.”

Ponder this: Fenjves was one of the witnesses in the murder case, testifying that he heard the “plaintive wail” of Nicole Brown Simpson’s dog in the evening after the murders took place. Fenjves was one of her neighbors.

So what, if any, are the ethical and moral implications of a writer’s participation in such a project? Is he/she simply a scrivener charged with memorializing the subject’s observations and memories? What considerations should dictate whether or not a writer agrees to participate in such a project?

And what about the fact that Fenjves served as a witness in the criminal trial?

If you were Fenjves, what would you have done when asked to write “If I Did It”? Would you have written what the LA Times calls “a work of pornographic grief”?

To be continued . . .

http://www.jhsiess.com/2007/09/16/would-you-have-written-it/ http://www.take2max.com/writing/2007/09/16/if-i-did-it-would-you-have-written-it/

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