ING Lying To You & Me

I recently signed up for and moved some spare cash to an ING Direct's Orange Savings Account. At the time the rate was about 2.75% APY which ING lowered this month to 2.50% APY.

Not having been aware of the change in rate, while viewing my account online, I clicked on a link to "Get more info on your rate". What did I learn? (click images to enlarge)

I learned that ING Direct still claims to be paying me 3.00% APY on my account not 2.50%.

For a business built online, ING Direct is a Company Acting Badly for having it's online rate information months out of date.

Citi Targeting Kids

As a loyal Citibank customer for almost 20 years now, I get disappointed when I see them acting badly and doing dumb things. Like targeting my son for a credit card. My seven year old son.

Below is the application that arrived yesterday. It's not the first time they've sent him one of these (click to enlarge).

It's not just any card. It's a Citi Gold card. For a seven year old? They'll give him 25,000 points with $750 in spending. That's about five years worth of allowance money. And if you read the fine print on the back... they are offering him a 13.99% interest rate. Not great. Not killer. If a seven year old should miss one payment... it shoots to 28.99%. He'll owe Citi for life.

How did Citi decide to target a seven year old? It's obvious that they bought or bartered for a list of American Airlines Advantage members (frequent fliers). They then determined who on the list didn't already have this credit card with Citi. I got my son his own Advantage number a few years when he flew American.

Innocent mistake? Or stupidity? American airlines knows my son's age as I've purchased tickets for him and flagged him as a minor. Either American can't scrub their list and send Citi only those over 18, Citi didn't think to ask American for a list of those over 18 or Citi actually wants to load debt on kids.

Once Vik figures out how to pay the US taxpayer back for its bailout, maybe he can ask his staff to stop targeting kids for credit cards. Citi, a company that acts badly once again.

You Comment I Follow

Today I read a number of blogs about a movement to remove standard attributes that Google puts in Blogger to prevent indexing for those who comment on your site.

After reading a number of posts and stories, with a most excellent one at Blogger Buster, I have removed all occurrences of rel="nofollow" from my template. Per Blogger Buster, "this means that your backlinks, and links in your comments will now be indexed by the three major search engines when they spider this blog". Tips 4 Blogspot commented that "only the author nofollow hack works". You can read more here.

Blogger Buster notes that Randa Clay created some badges for use on your blog to show that you support this policy. As I needed a smaller badge of 88*32, I have modified Randa's badge and share it here so others can feel free to use it.

Randa's standard logo

is here.

The html code for my modified badge

(on the lower right of my blog) is:

<div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); width: 88px; height: 32px;">

<div style="margin: 2px 2px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0); float: right; width: 84px; height: 12px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; font-size: 9px; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; padding-top: 1px; text-align: center;">
U COMMENT
</div>

<div style="margin: 2px; background-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); float: right; width: 84px; height: 12px; color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; font-size: 9px; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; padding-top: 1px; text-align: center;">
I FOLLOW
</div>

</div>