Birthday cards are expensive. There’s no question about it.

The problem is that a fancy card doesn’t hold a whole lot of value for the person receiving the card – especially if that person is a child.  Every year, we’ll spend a couple of dollars to buy kids a card.  Why not make them a simple little card and put the $3 you would have paid for a commercial card into the envelope instead?  

I know that $3 doesn’t seem like much for an adult.  But to a kid, money is money.  They can do a lot with $3 that they can’t do with a card, especially if everyone who usually buys them a birthday card hands them a handmade card and $3 instead.

It’s just something to think about.

We vote with our dollars.  Every time we spend our money, we aren’t just getting a hamburger or pretty new sweater.  We’re saying, “I support the way this product was made.  I support the way the animals and humans involved in the production of this thing were treated.”  Each dollar is a nod of approval to the practices that go into the production of these items.

I know we don’t really think this way when we’re doing our shopping.  But as we turn more and more to cheaper products as the economy worsens, now is really the time to be thinking of where our dollars are going.

A few easy adjustments in the way we shop could make a few small strides. 

First, consider buying locally made foods at your grocery store.  If your grocery store doesn’t offer local products, ask them why.  Why, for example, can’t I buy tortillas made at a small local business but I can get tortillas from huge factories thousands of miles away?  Or why can’t I get handmade ice cream made in the next town over, but I can get fifty selections from the other side of the country?  I try to make an effort to ask these questions.  If businesses don’t know what the customers want, they won’t change.

Second, you may consider some Christmas shopping at these sites where individuals sell their homemade products.  I was recently given an apron here.  It cost the same as the apron I would have chosen from my favorite purse maker except it was made by an indiviual.  I knew that the profits were going to her and not a CEO who doesn’t even touch the sewing machine.  There are prints, sculptures, holiday cards, decor, clothing, gifts…  

• etsy.com  “Your place to buy and sell all things handmade”
• dawanda.com  “Products with love” and “DaWanda is the place for unique and individual products and people. Buy handmade and hard to find goods, share your discoveries with your friends and create your own collections.”

Those of you who clicked www.makingthishome.com after my last post when I told you I lost the address may have been a little confused.  In Part 1, I told you someone else had purchased the domain name when enom central placed me on their fraud alert and canceled my domain purchased.  But I got the name back, and the website is running.

HOW I GOT MY DOMAIN NAME BACK BY PICKING UP THE PHONE

I hate to admit it, but I had become attached to the idea of calling my blog “Making This Home”.  It sounded perfect, and it was tough to believe that someone else would have thought of the exact same name only four days after I had.  So I decided to call the man who had purchased the name.

“I was wondering what you were planning on doing with that domain name,” I told him.

He laughed nervously and said, “Umm.  Make some money?”

The interesting thing was that he had no idea which domain name I was talking about, though he seemed open to the idea of selling it back to me.  I launched into my sad story instead.  It didn’t make sense to pay the guy for something neither of us had invested anything into.

He took a little time looking up www.makingthishome.com on his computer and said it hadn’t been making him any money.  It didn’t seem like his goal was to sell the website.  I almost wondered if he was seeking profits from residual traffic.  I really have no idea.  But he was very kind to me and said that he would give up the domain name; I could have it back.

The next morning, just as he promised, the domain name was available again.  I bought it, and now www.makingthishome.com is mine, and I do hope you’ll come visit me!

Last week I decided on a new domain name and purchased it at www.enomcentral.com.  I had chosen the company after browsing through the internet, reading about people’s experiences, and speaking with people about their experiences; the company sounded impressive.  I registered www.makingthishome.com, and I never suspected that anything could go wrong.  From there, nothing went right.

I guess my account was placed on fraud alert and my domain purchase was canceled.  The problem was that Enomcentral never contacted me about any of this.  All I had was a confirmation email about my successful purchase and a locked enom account.  As far as I knew, I owned the domain name.  When I called enom to see why my account was locked, the representative I spoke with said I had to email their risk management team.  I asked to speak to the risk management team instead (we all know how well emails to big businesses go).  The representative said e-mail was the only option.  

I emailed risk management immediately.  At the end of the day, they sent me a generic letter requesting a list of three documents to verify my identity.  They would accept this information by fax or email, and no other information was provided to me.

Faxing stuff like that isn’t really an option for me right now–I’m in Germany, so I emailed the requested information.  But I wasn’t totally dumb.  I sent the information Friday morning in an encrypted message.  To open the document, they would have to call me for the password.  I never heard back.

I kept calling their customer help line.  The representatives kept promising that the risk management team was working on my paperwork.  That’s one thing about Americans that drives me crazy–when we don’t know the answer, we make one up.  Wouldn’t you say that’s true?  We’re afraid of saying, “I don’t know.”  In this case, I knew the answers I was getting were wrong.  There was no one working on my documents because no one had the password to open them.

LOSING MY DOMAIN NAME

When I typed in www.makingthishome.com into the webhost, it said it was in process–meaning someone had bought the address and it was being established.  Naturally, I assumed that someone was me.  I’m not a techy person, and I’d been given no reason to believe otherwise.  (I suppose domain name savvy people would know something is up, that it shouldn’t take several days, etc.  But I am not a domain name savvy person.  This was my first time buying a domain name.)

On Sunday, I went to look at www.makingthishome.com and saw an advertisement.  It was clear that someone had bought my domain name.  Someone who wasn’t me.  My husband showed me how to look up the owner–someone named Chad in California.  It was pretty obvious that he didn’t buy the website for the same pretty-picture and girly reason that I had in mind.

The weekend enom representative told me to call back on Monday and ask for customer service.  So I did.  But then the new representative said that she could not forward me to them because my account was locked.  I asked her how to get my account unlocked so that I could speak to someone.  Anyone!  Risk management was being completely unresponsive.  Again, I was told that I should relax.  Risk management was “working on it.”  I resolved to stay on the phone until I was certain things were being handled.

GETTING OFF THE FRAUD LIST

Maybe an hour later, I received an email from risk management.  They requested the same information that was asked of me before.  But now they would only accept a fax of it.  Like I said, faxing wasn’t an option for me.  I wrote back and said I had already sent the information via email on Friday.  As with every email I wrote, I included my phone number, so it wasn’t a matter of risk management being able to reach me; it was a matter of whether they wanted to.

I have to say that putting a password on a document is the PERFECT way to get a real person on the phone with you.  When a risk management team member called for the password, I was absolutely shocked.  I gave it to him, and not even a moment later, he had the document open and said okay–my account was unlocked.

But what about my lost domain name, I asked.  He didn’t seem to care, and he didn’t seem interested in revealing any information about why I was placed on their fraud alert.  

It turns out that anyone using a US credit card outside of the US is automatically placed on fraud alert.  They don’t contact you about anything because then it alerts frauds.  What about the people who aren’t frauds?  Well I guess they haven’t thought about that part.

NOW WHAT?

It’s great to know that I had chosen a company that takes such detailed measures to monitor fraud.  Except if you land in the fraud pile, it’s near impossible to swim back to shore.  They need to work on that.

And they need to work on it fast.  Now I’ve been trying to think of a new domain name ever since.

The town of Albert, Texas is for sale on eBay –current price listed at $50,100.  An investment project?

-Edit- The ending price of the auction was $52,100.00, and it had 24 bidders.

Back in December when I reviewed  Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time, I did not live in a community dotted with a Starbucks at every block, so I have never been to a Starbucks.  I was able to read the book and see the vision Howard Schultz, the CEO, had of the company.  I saw how he wanted the Starbucks image to exist. I wrote my review of his business techniques in the book here.

Now my commute to work passes three Starbucks Cafes, so I decided to check the place out.  My brain carried the image Schultz painted in his book.  The experiences have been totally different.  Yes the employees were great and the coffee was delicious–but it was the other things that were off.  He said they give real cups unless customers ask for to-go cups.  The baristas told me it’s actually the opposite.  They don’t even have enough porcelain cups to accommodate the seats in their shop.  Schultz said his business was green; the places I visited had no recycling for the disposable cups.  The differences between what Shultz said was standard and what I saw were shocking.  But it just goes to show:

A CEO can’t always be in touch with what is really happening in his company.  It’s like a king–does he really know everything his subjects are up to?  There are so many people and so many cups of coffee.

I feel lucky that I read the book before I walked in the coffee shop.  Of course, it means I was disappointed when I walked in while the average person is won over by the experience.  Oh well.  No wonder this book is on clearance at Amazon now.