• boostmobile.com - pre-paid cell phone service in more states

Boost Mobile, the Australian based pre-paid cell phone company, is now spreading its wings in America. Previously, we had Tracfone in the pre-paid market and that was it. Then Virgin Mobile came along. And now, Boost is here. Boost’s prices are better than Tracfone’s and similar to Virgin Mobile’s. It’s 25 cents a minute to use the phone with no monthly fee. If you go beyond a certain number of minutes in a day, the rate drops to 10 cents a minute. No roaming charges apply, and that includes long distance. So, it’s a great deal for anyone, including older people who just want a phone for emergency purposes. Boost was formerly only in Nevada and California, but they have expanded to Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Florida, Texas, Minnesota, Illinois, Texas, Washington D.C., and New York. There is one wrinkle in the Boost plan that makes it different than the others. It comes with “push-to-talk” technology, which can get very expensive at about $45 a month. So, stay away from that capability if you go with Boost. Every once in a while, Virgin Mobile discounts its time cards. You may find them at 10 to 20 percent off in some electronics stores and often in warehouse clubs. This means that the peak calls go from 25 cents a minute to 20 cents a minute, and the off-peak calls go from 10 cents to 8 cents a minute. Good to know!

If you’ve ever had to buy a hearing aid, you know they are very expensive. There are governmental rules in place that control these prices, so people with moderate hearing loss suffer even more. It costs about $2,200 to be fitted for hearing aids in the States. But there are hearing aids out there for $50 or less. One Clark has talked about is called the Songbird. But we can’t just go buy these devices because the laws require that we go through intermediaries, which charge massive mark-ups. Luckily, there is a fellow consumer and inventor who is on a mission to make it affordable hearing aids possible in the United States. Mead Killion, a hearing-aid pioneer and physician, recently found very sophisticated hearing aids in a foreign country for about $60 each. He brought them back to the States and sold them to his patients for very affordable prices. They work just fine. More consumers are also buying hearing aids from Web sites and they’re saving a fortune. Now, Killion is “battling a tight-knit group of licensed specialists who by law are the only people allowed to dispense hearing devices,” according to the Journal. The hearing aid industry has been able to convince the FDA that people should not be able to buy their own hearing aids. They claim it’s risky because the gadgets need to be tested and adjusted to fit various hearing types. It’s simply not true, as was proven by Killion at a recent seminar where he had people test expensive devices and over-the-counter ones. The over-the-counter aids, which are found at sporting goods stores, worked much better than the $2,000 ones. For everyday moderate hearing loss, this is great news. Think about those reading glasses you can buy at drug stores that cost very little but help a lot. Why can’t we buy hearing aids over the counter? It’s ridiculous.

We have more people flying today than we did before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. Security lines can be horrendous and it’s hard to tell when you need to be there early and when you don’t. The inconsistency has business travelers in a tizzy, and many decide to have a teleconference nowadays instead of flying. For that reason, Clark has been an advocate of “trusted traveler” programs that allow certain travelers to be “expedited” through the security process. These travelers are put through a background check similar to the very thorough one used in Israel. After the initial check, they are cleared and issued a special ID that allows them to move through the airport very quickly. The Feds are very close to doing a pilot of this program, according to the Dallas Morning News. It will be a three-month program tested in Dallas, Boston, West Palm Beach, Knoxville and Washington, D.C. It’s going to be called the “Registered Traveler Program,” according to the Department of Transportation, and Clark thinks it’s a great idea. We waste tons of time screening people who don’t need to be screened and not enough time checking out people who do. The alternative would be to provide spy data on passengers under something called CAPS II, a very probative program that invades our privacy and could invite a lot of fear into the public.

Clark’s most recent poll was about how people are going to Asia for non-emergency surgeries because the cost is so much less. The procedures include nose jobs, hip replacements and heart bypass surgeries. Basically, the trip combined with the surgery is less than what it would cost in the States. About two-thirds of the people who responded said, “no way!” and a quarter said it depended on what the surgery was. So, not a lot of our listeners are into the idea, but lots of people are doing it. In our new poll, Clark wants to know how long you’re willing to wait for a table at a restaurant. In the restaurant business, it’s been understood that you might have to wait for a table at a hip restaurant. The managers know that you will wait, so they inflate the wait time, hoping you’ll order pricey drinks until your table is ready. Well, this strategy is no longer working. People just get up and leave if they have to wait too long. So, some restaurants have started “call-ahead” seating for people who arrive and only have to wait a few minutes. How long are you willing to wait?

You’ve probably heard Clark refer to customer service as “customer no service.” It seems companies try to treat customers as badly as possible so that they become ex-customers. It costs companies a fortune to try and capture a customer, but they do nothing to keep the ones they have. The University of Michigan’s Customer Satisfaction Index found that the average customer service score among 40 industries was a 57. The perfect score is 100, so that is really sad. In fact, the survey found that companies handle complaints so badly that more than 80 percent drive customers away. The other big trend in customer no service is call volume. Companies judge their customer service reps on how many calls they handle per hour. So if you feel you’re being rushed off the phone, you probably are. If these companies invested more money in keeping customers, they would see so many benefits. But they don’t seem to realize what other companies that put a priority on customer service have proved.

Did you know that the banking industry has a kind of check prison? It’s not a prison that keeps you locked in, but that locks you out of the banking system entirely. Basically, a bank can arbitrarily decide to punish you if it suspects you have “misbehaved” with your checking account. It’s called “Chex Systems,”and once you are in this system you cannot have a checking account for five years. Now, if you don’t balance your checkbook and you commit overdrafts, there is a reason behind the bank’s decision. But if you make a mistake or the bank makes a mistake, there is no recourse. Say you move and close your account and a check bounces later, there should be an alternative. But right now there is not. If you get put into Chex Systems, there is no appeals process. It’s highly controversial, and consumer advocates have been fighting it for years. Under recent revisions to the Fair Credit Reporting Act, you can now appeal to Chex System itself. But the banks can still send you to Chex Systems prison on a whim. Thankfully, about a dozen states around the country allow you to get out of the program by taking a course in budgeting and handling finances. You receive a voucher to go open a checking account once you finish the course. Go to getchecking.org to see which states offer the class. But if you live in a state that does not have this “out,” appeal to Chex Systems directly.