More phony e-mails

I've gotten similar ones under dozens of bank names and those of major companies. Be careful if you get any like these. Don't open or click on any part of them. Delete! Also this time of year there is a rash of fake IRS scams.

You have received a secure message.
Read your secure message by opening the attachment, SECUREDOC. You will be prompted to open (view) the file or save (download) it to your computer. For best results, save the file first, then open it.
If you have concerns about the validity of this message, please contact the sender directly. For questions about Key's e mail encryption service, please contact technical support at 888.764.7941.
First time users will need to register after opening the attachment.
Help https://mailsafe.keybank.com/websafe/help?topic=RegEnvelope
About IronPort Encryption https://mailsafe.keybank.com/websafe/about
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Attn: Chief Accountant
Herewith we are notifying you, that your latest Direct Deposit transaction (Int. No.460590232341) was rejected, because of your current Direct Deposit software being out of date. Please use the link below to enter the secure section of our web site and see the details::
Click here for more information
Please refer to your financial institution for updates of the Direct Deposit software.
Sincerely yours
ACH Network Rules Department
NACHA The Electronic Payments Association
12154 Sunrise Valley Drive, Suite 559
Herndon, VA 20181
Phone: 703 561 0584 Fax: 703 787 9206
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FedEx
Tracking ID: 7151 44360368
Dear Client,
Your parcel has arrived. Courier was unable to deliver the parcel to you.
To receive your parcel, please, print this receipt and go to the nearest office.
Print Receipt
Best Regards, The FedEx Team.
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You have received a secure message

Read your secure message by opening the attachment, message_zdm. You will be prompted to open (view) the file or save (download) it to your computer. For best results, save the file first, then open it with Internet Explorer. If you have concerns about the validity of this message, please contact the sender directly. For questions please contact the HSBC Secure Mail Help Desk. First time users will need to register after opening the attachment.
About Email Encryption http://www.hsbc.com/secureemail

©Bane-Clene® Corporation 2013 Reprinting or electronically publishing this article is strictly prohibited without permission from Bane-Clene Corp.

I'd like to hear your comments on this article.
Please e-mail me at wfbane@baneclene.com.

When you need a lift

A famous speaker at a Bane-Clene® convention said this:

"You can think your way to failure or you can think your way to success. Belief is a form of thought. You can disbelieve yourself into a frustrated existence or you can believe yourself into a successful business and life.

"We do not half realize the power of thought either to destroy or to create. Thoughts are forces. You can't see them but thoughts are dynamic powers. Think negative thoughts and you activate negative forces, drawing back to yourself negative results. Like attracts like. Send out hate and you get back hate. Send out fear and you get back fear. "Send out defeat and you draw defeat to yourself.

Conversely, send out positive thoughts and positive results will come back. You gain victories by the thoughts you think. All creative, powerful living originates in thought. Get a good thought, build it up, develop it and let it take over. Make a giant of it, and it will make a giant of you."

Norman Vincent Peale

P.S. Happy anniversary to a very special and "positive thinking" lady.

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I'd like to hear your comments on this article.
Please e-mail me at wfbane@baneclene.com.

Less may be better

The president is calling for the minimum wage to be raised again. I've talked with several people in the cleaning business and asked how this would affect them. In nearly every case the answer was the same. "I just won't hire entry-level people to train for the work."

One man said he had helpers on his five truck operation and was going to lay them off and increase the percentage he pays the lead technicians to work alone. Another said he worked on the truck himself and was just going to work with out a helper.

They all agreed that working a little harder and longer would be much more profitable and not expose them to minimum wage laws and the new healthcare fiasco. I believe this is going to be the reaction among most business owners in other industries, too.

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I'd like to hear your comments on this article.
Please e-mail me at wfbane@baneclene.com.

Bureaucrats at work

Watching news commentators talk about California's current money problems, costly fees and high taxes on businesses brought back some memories of earlier bureaucratic malfeasance in that state. In June of 1984, the California legislature passed a law that required licensing of on location carpet cleaners who used the dry process for cleaning furniture and draperies.

The law also required that equipment be inspected by the State Board of Fabricare. Professional cleaners had to be licensed via a test based on a hurriedly published 228 page instruction book. The problem was that in their bureaucratic frenzy to get this proposal into law they forgot that no official test sites existed around the huge state.

Colleen Rhodes, a Bane-Clene® operator from Nevada City, spearheaded a letter writing campaign to the Governor and State Legislators. I asked Bob Quinn, my wife’s brother and a three term mayor of Pacific Grove, for his help in repealing the bill. Bob used his political influence to lobby against this power grab by a few greedy cleaners.

The concerted effort worked and the giant boondoggle ended quietly and mercifully. Governor George Deukmejian signed a bill introduced by Assemblyman Wally Herger that simply eliminated funding for the Fabricare Board. It's a shame simple solutions like this can't be found today to solve some of our economic problems and rid us of some bureaucracy.

©Bane-Clene® Corporation 2013 Reprinting or electronically publishing this article is strictly prohibited without permission from Bane-Clene Corp.

I'd like to hear your comments on this article.
Please e-mail me at wfbane@baneclene.com.

Real numbers

• The official unemployment number is 12.3 million.
• The true number is probably twice that amount.
• In 2009, 32 million were on food stamps.
• Today, 48 million are on food stamps.
• In 2009, 5.5 million were on Social security disability.
• Today, 11 million are on Social Security Disability.
• In 2009, there were 139,143,000 jobs in the US.
• Today, there are 132,705,000 workers a drop of 6.4 million jobs.

For the past few months the feds have been worrying about how to cut 2% from their annual budget, which incidentally, they don't even have a budget. One hasn't been passed for four years.

Does anyone care?

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Please e-mail me at wfbane@baneclene.com.

And the beat goes on

A television station in Louisville, Kentucky reported the arrest of three men who work for a carpet cleaning firm. The customer's mother had missed some rings as the men were getting ready to leave. The customer, her mother and a friend detained the cleaners until police arrived and arrested them with $3,000.00 worth of the missing jewelry in their possession. The owner, who was not on the job, said he has been in business for 33 years and cleans carpets in homes and businesses around Louisville and in southern Indiana.

One of the employees had a police record which means a police background check should have been made before allowing the employee to go into a customer's home. When training new people, they should not be out of a supervisor's sight until they have been with the company long enough to earn the trust of management. With today's technology and equipment, anyone can learn to clean a carpet in a short time. The ability to smile, say please and thank you is readily evident in a recruit, but honesty and integrity take time to prove.

©Bane-Clene® Corporation 2013 Reprinting or electronically publishing this article is strictly prohibited without permission from Bane-Clene Corp.

I'd like to hear your comments on this article.
Please e-mail me at wfbane@baneclene.com.

Mail programs

Make adjustments in your mailing program. Don't include extra zip codes when sending out brochures to increase the radius of a campaign. For example, it's better and more effective to target the same 5,000 households on a bi-monthly schedule than to blow an entire budget sending 60,000 brochures to households in a much larger area once a year.

If your operation is profitable in your primary target area, expansion is fine. To establish a new target area, follow the money. Select well-to-do neighborhoods and establish the total number of residents. Now reduce that radius by 50% and send out the brochures every other month to your new mailing list. Assume no more than a 1/2% response on a mailing.

Sadly, you can spend 100% of your ad budget and have no idea how effective it is. It's important that advertising efforts be measured. Always have an expiration date on special offers and coupons. When a prospect calls for a quote be sure to ask, "How did you choose to call us for service?" The most important part is to keep a record of their response.

©Bane-Clene® Corporation 2012 Reprinting or electronically publishing this article is strictly prohibited without permission from Bane-Clene Corp.

I'd like to hear your comments on this article.
Please e-mail me at wfbane@baneclene.com.

Abandoning traditional advertising?

Social networking is the rage right now. Be careful not to get caught up in the idea that it will replace a well-planned advertising program. I've had e-mails from several of our associates around the country who abandoned their ad programs for social networking. Besides a loss in sales, some of them reported collateral damage among their friends.

No matter how large your circle of friends, it may pay you in friendship to go against the social networking trend that is so popular today. Don't openly try to interest your friends in doing business with you. If they do it on their own that's wonderful, but otherwise you may just give them a reason to avoid you.

©Bane-Clene® Corporation 2012 Reprinting or electronically publishing this article is strictly prohibited without permission from Bane-Clene Corp.

I'd like to hear your comments on this article.
Please e-mail me at wfbane@baneclene.com.

Advice on carpet cleaning

An Indianapolis television station, WTHR, did a program on low prices being too good to be true. They didn't call it bait and switch, but the story featured Angie Hicks of Angie's List® and a local carpet cleaner. An Angie's List patron had filed a report that said she regretted it when the carpet cleaner showed up at her door. Here's an excerpt from her report:

   "Good price. I needed the bedrooms done and four rooms, so I just bought it." "It was awful. You know, he told me that because my carpets were so dirty they would need to do a deep cleaning and that would be extra."

Angie said, "As always, it's important to do your homework on the company you're thinking about hiring. Check out online reviews and know that a good company will return to clean spots that re appear within a short period of time." There were some other good tips on selecting a service company. Overall the advice on the program was pretty good until they got to the carpet cleaner's comments. He said:

   "You want to try to move as much as possible in the areas that you want clean. If there are any couches or sofas or magazines, everything you can do to help it move faster when they come to clean your carpets."

This statement goes against the teachings at Bane-Clene Institute. We teach that the customer is not a servant, we are. Expecting a customer to move a sofa is wrong and indicating that the quicker they get in and out the cheaper it will be is equally wrong. That statement by the cleaner indicates that speed is of the essence and this represents a serious flaw in our industry.

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I'd like to hear your comments on this article.
Please e-mail me at wfbane@baneclene.com.

Heart-warming e-mail

Dear Mr. Bane,

It is hard for me to write this. You are an avowed conservative and I was raised in a very liberal household in Maryland. I first started reading your blog 3 years ago for some of the good business advice it offered even though I was sure you were a right-wing zealot. Everything you wrote about politics was like a page out of the Tea Party handbook. If you had to talk about politics, I wondered why you did not talk about social issues that affect all of us. But some of the things you said made sense and made me take a hard look at my party.

Some of the things you did NOT talk about encouraged me vote for Mitt Romney. I am a Catholic and was offended by my party's positions on religion and the spread of Islam and the threat of Sharia law. The new health care law and the cover-up on the Libyan Ambassador's murder also turned me against Obama. I had been interpreting everything you wrote about from a liberal point of view including the debt this administration is running up. I think you should have gone a lot further, especially on the social issues. Thank you for speaking your mind.

A converted liberal,

Joanne Cramer

Thanks Joanne, your e-mail is very much appreciated. I don't write about social or religious issues because this is essentially a business related site. When politics infringe in a negative way on business I feel obligated to talk about it even though it isn't always popular or best for our company's customer relations. Social issues would get me into even more trouble.

One of the best things about America is that we can differ in opinion, have open discussions and still do it legally. Without sounding like a "right-wing zealot," I hope that doesn't change. The constant attacks on our Constitution and Bill of Rights are troubling.

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Please e-mail me at wfbane@baneclene.com.

More hokum?

Today there are people who aren't even cleaners telling professionals how to clean and what to use to do the job. Consumer Reports® tested carpet cleaning equipment and chemicals and the CRI™ came up with their vaunted SOA testing program. Now a company has announced a new way of measuring exactly when a carpet needs cleaning and how clean the job is when it's finished. The new program assesses and measures the cleanliness of a carpet's surface.

This is nothing new. Back in the '70s, Ed York was pushing the sale of a "Dirt Gauge" invented by Keith Williams so an operator could tell scientifically how much dirt was in a carpet. Pretty soon the whole industry will be walking around with little hand-held devices to tell us where and when to clean and what to use. Then after we're finished, we can walk around and stare at our little monitor and see how good we did our job. I'm glad I'm old!

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Please e-mail me at wfbane@baneclene.com.

Axminster™ Carpets

The company was founded in the English village of Axminster in 1755. Early Axminsters were like tapestries formed by creating hand made knots of wool. I visited their American cousin, U.S. Axminster in Mississippi, a few years ago. They made beautiful carpets.

Axminster Carpets is fighting for its life now. The company has called in administrators (the English version of bankruptcy proceedings), blaming a tough economy and resulting financial problems. Carpet sales in England have fallen 24% in the past few years.

Up to 400 jobs will be lost if the company goes defunct but they have pledged that they are "committed to working to achieve the best possible outcome for all concerned and most importantly for the staff and suppliers." Time will tell.

The UK has been suffering through a deep recession and a sluggish recovery in recent years along with on-going problems of social unrest. The pound lost 10 cents against the US dollar in just a few weeks recently and Moody's downgraded their credit from AAA to AA1.

Back in the prosperous 1980s, Maggie Thatcher said, "The trouble with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money." That day may have arrived in England. Mrs. Thatcher was one smart lady. Do you think there's a lesson to be learned here?

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Please e-mail me at wfbane@baneclene.com.

Appropriate for this date

Kevin Stark sent this to me the other day and I thought it was fitting to publish it on April 1 for obvious reasons. It's interesting that a bank has a sponsoring ad. But it shows us how they feel about cleaning carpets. No one in the cleaning business should bank with them.

It reminds me a little bit of the 1970s when nearly all carpet retailers were telling people not to clean carpets because it would cause them to re soil faster. Some of them are still putting out that bogus advice. Click on this link for an enlightening bit of advice:

Keep Your Carpet Clean for Less Savings Experiment DailyFinance

PS ... Okinawa .... Marines landed ... 1 April 1945.... This was no joke!

©Bane-Clene® Corporation 2013 Reprinting or electronically publishing this article is strictly prohibited without permission from Bane-Clene Corp.

I'd like to hear your comments on this article.
Please e-mail me at wfbane@baneclene.com.