Article Base Review; articles submission

I started writing for Article Base in my “green” years when first conducting my business and providing my decades of aquarium and pond experience on the internet (about 2006).

I read much in SEO forums about the importance of submission to these directories in getting your content recognized and and improving your main website and blog sites up in search engine results.

HOWEVER, over the years I have learned much and tracked many statistics and found NO BOUNCE for these articles placed on Article Base.
This includes articles from Hydroponics Lights, UV Bulbs, and much more

WHY? Well for one I started investigating and found that they have discretely placed “no follow” tags in the code (which i did not agree to).
Worse is Article Base does not ensure that those “borrowing” my copyrighted content (albeit first drafts of my constantly updated full content articles) place correct hyper links WITHOUT “no follow” tags.
Sadly I man finding my content plagiarized all over the internet, without ANY legal reference to the original source vie true hyper links. This in turn has traced back to Article Base.

WORSE, Article Base along with these plagiarizing websites use my content to place Google Adsense on, without ANY revenue sharing (which Article Base dishonestly claims that they share revenue over a certain amount of hits, which I had 1000s).
As well while all these scammers including Article Base are making money of my 3 decades of experience and 1000s of hours researched article, Google Adsense is denying my such an account and illegally not responding to DMCA complaints as to content used without proper accreditation and revenue sharing.

IN SUMMARY; do not be fooled by Article Base or any other article publishing directory; THEY ARE NOTHING BUT SCAMS!
Do yourself a favor if you have good content that others may find helpful, publish them on your site, do NOT share.
If Google Adsense denies you revenue while placing their crappy ads on your content that has been plagiarized, boycott those adverting and write them that their ads are being placed on plagiarized content and if they continue you will cite this in public view on your website.
Also directly sell Adverts on your website (there are brokers who will do this for you too).

The bottom line is you will not improve your SEO (search engine optimization) position on Google, Bing, etc with Article Base, so save yourself the time and many, many futures headaches and do NO waste your time with these people who are only there to TAKE from you with nothing in return!!!

FedEx Claims (& Mishandling), Technical Support; Review

 

 

I first will point out that in general FedEx has great shipping rates, great personnel (especially our agent), and generally does an excellent job in both handling & shipping time.

 

 

Updated 12/22/11

 

Update with the viral video shown of a FedEx driver throwing a computer monitor over a fence, even though the recipient was currently home. FedEx Delivery Goes Terribly Wrong First, I will defend FedEx in that this problem from our experience of shipping 1000s of packages and as well knowing many FedEx drivers and other staff is rare. That said, there is a lot of pressure on the driver this time of year (Christmas), as well their are always going to be “Bad apples” at any company. My complaint (after doing more reading) is really not with the driver, rather what this post/article is all about; FEDEX CLAIMS. The recipient reported that he attempted to get this quickly resolved, yet FedEx Claims balked as is often the case in the very rare breakages we incur. We have had agents make up dishonest reasons to deny a claim when it is obvious a package has been mishandled somewhere along the way. Hopefully FedEx learned a valuable lesson in PR, as this proves my complaint; and with this lesson they will shake up their claims department in what is otherwise an EXCELLENT company to do business with (far better than UPS or USPS from our experience). Claims is clearly the “Weak Link”, not the occasional bad driver or other employee in the delivery system.

As I previously noted, FedEx is a great company in most instances.
HOWEVER, it you ever need technical help or worse if one of the relatively rare instances of FedEx breakage occurs; LOOK OUT!

FedEx’ claims department is like Obama on steroids as per their integrity, honesty, lack of returned calls, lack of follow-up, misinformation, etc, etc, etc.
We had a Monday in early May of 2011 where at least 5 packages were damaged. We resolved 3 of these on our own (at our cost both in time and product repair cost), in fact one of these had the box severely damaged yet the product was in usable condition, so the customer told us he was “good” with it.
This resulted in us only filing claims on two packages that also had declared value placed on them. I should point out that we have shipped literally over 1000 of these UV Sterilizers and even more noteworthy on the particular UV Sterilizer in question, we un-box and the re-box with layers of bubble wrap, THEN another couple of layers of bubble wrap outside the main box before adding another box over this. This particular UV Sterilizer is shipped to us form the UK with only the outer cardboard box and to this date only one has arrived broken.

However attempting to get FedEx to honor this claim, you would think WE committed murder with every excuse being used and disinformation, and lying the standard of the day. I once had a car accident that was my fault and I was treated vastly better than this, yet this was clearly FedEx mishandling.
If FedEx had any integrity in their claims department, they would fire half the staff to start with, then also look into how much a business ships versus their claims percentage. FedEx would quickly realize that we make only 2-3 claims (usually low dollar) versus $40,000 plus in shipping (up to this point it comes to .005 in dollar value of claims versus shipping expenditures with FedEx)

Another silly aspect of FedEx claims is why bother placing declared value on an item if FedEx is going to find every excuse to not pay for their own mishandling. Just on this one UV Sterilizer alone we have paid about $1500 in these fees (not all the sterilizers or other products that we add declared value), this is well above all claims for every item ever shipped and damaged by FedEx in 6 years of using their services. This logic of FedEx’s claims department is just incredible IMO!

Here is a list of Reasons FedEx lacks any integrity/honesty in their claims department:

1. Asking for information then changing the rules and asking for more but then only when contacted by the FedEx customer. Providing a completely different answer depending upon who you speak with. Basically; LYING!!
2. (Similar to above) Lack of communication/ability to contact the FedEx customer when further information is necessary.
   Even when contacted few calls are ever returned, even from upper management!
3. Looking for any loop hole to disqualify a claim (Basically; no integrity!!)
4. Ignoring the statistical facts
5. Ignoring Customer Shipping History (come on FedEx; .005% claims versus amount spent with FedEx certainly shows our ability to pack well, especially considering 70% of our shipments are fragile)
6. Treating customers that have spent Thousands of $$ like criminals
7. The scam that is declared value

Further;
I will also point out in dealing with FedEx’ Technical department, while not as dishonest, they are rather condescending with little interest in providing the businesses such as ours what would improve our business efficiency (such as a usable and reasonably sized Address book and ability to cross use this between our employee sub accounts).
There is more, but I will leave it at that as we have come to learn to deal with this aspect of FedEx shipping and could “live with it” if it were not for the extreme lack of integrity of their claims department especially Debbie (beside being clearly in the wrong line of work, she cannot accept any responsibility for hers or her companies actions).

In fact Debbie kept attempting to call this a UV Bulb when it is more better defined as a UV Filter that has a bulb inside it, this was her dishonest attempt to use legal fine print to get out of paying a claim that was clearly the fault of FedEx. This attempt to mislabel this product was ludicrous and the same as attempting to get out of paying for a damaged laptop computer based on LCD “lights” and similar that are part of the computer.

Updated 9/30/11
In another case a package with lights and an aluminum reflector, FedEx dropped something heavy on this box, crushing the neck of this reflector.
The dishonest claims person never made any attempt to contact us with any questions (which is typical) & denied the claim based on e a picture where the customer attempted to put together the shipping box, leaving the bubble wrap to the side (which she lied about as we and others looking at this picture could clearly see).
This FedEx employee cited paper as the reason for denial, ignoring the stated fact that this box had bubble wrap and layers of card board over this neck. She also ignored the fact that we have shipped literally 100s this way (and so does our distributor, MINUS the bubble wrap!!).
Her manager had the condescending audacity to state we should contact a department at FedEx to learn how to correctly pack; WHAT? In fact I and our shipping manager have been working in shipping together for over 8 years, including a couple years at Candy Factory where we listened to this same lame story from another FedEx employee. In that case in 2004, we stopped using paper as a spacer and instead substituted styro peanuts as was suggested in this recent case. The result you might ask? The candy shifted much more resulted in this high end candy looking very scuffed and resulting in many un-salable boxes. In the end we went back to paper.
This is not to say we do not use styro peanuts as these are great for single light bulbs which we wrap in bubble surrounded by peanuts and whip 100s per month with only very rare breakages, but with larger items we have found using bubble wrap around the items, followed by cardboard dividers and paper to fill the gaps and finally extra layers of cardboard works quite well, but to FedEx this is a way to deny a claim which is ludicrous at best and dishonest at worst

In summary; as I noted FedEx has a lot to offer a small business that needs reliable reasonably priced shipping, as well our account manager (Trevor) is awesome (& hopefully if any reader either has a FedEx account or is getting one is lucky enough to have a good FedEx representative).
I will also point out another positive is Sharon at the Atlanta CAT (CAT stands for Customer Advocacy Team if I am correct); was VERY polite and understanding, so my hats off to her too.

However if you use FedEx as a shipper or are thinking of using FedEx and your items are even remotely fragile (assuming you package very well too I might add), I would recommend taking a step back and re-considering the cost of the time to package (the item I referred to we spend almost 40 minutes re-packaging, only for FedEx to make every attempt to not take responsibility for their poor handling in this incident), the cost of your time in dealing with FedEx (we have lost over 8 man hours from this one bad day of shipping by FedEx), and simply the aggravation of dealing with persons with absolutely no integrity to do the “right thing”.

Obamanite; The Definition of

These points define a person that can be addressed by the description of an “Obamanite”.

Updated 5/07/12

Not all points need to be observed in a person to be described as an Obamanite, although at least 50% should be present.

It is also noteworthy that just because a person voted for Obama in 2008, this does NOT necessarily make this person an Obamanite.

A reader might ask my reason for even writing this post? A fair question, so in a nutshell I have worked in a field of business (Aquarium Supplies & Resources) for over 3 decades that is probably one of the most liberal fields one can work in and while being liberal does not make one an Obamanite (I know many liberals who are most definitely NOT Obamanites!), I do get so many lazy and nasty emails, phone calls, etc from persons that then get upset just because I attempt to help them help themselves (they want their aquarium information spoon fed and refuse to read many of the articles I send them to back up what I tell them in an answer to a question) or get upset when I call the out on their false accusations or anecdotal information; I felt such a post here was necessary to clear the air from my perspective.

1. If you are offended by this post/article, you likely are an Obamanite (even if you fit less than 50% of this points)

2. Truth has no meaning, Lying is a means to an end
3. A person who cannot see truth and is believes they are in the right even when the facts are presented otherwise
4. Often condescending to others, yet rarely can see this themselves and think that they are the nicest most reasonable person you would ever meet
5. Narcissistic Behavior (similar to above point), where these person act and may even think the world revolves themselves, all the while showing no respect for others and their talents and knowledge.
   These persons are the type that will post on Facebook all about themselves yet NEVER take the time to look at others activity, even family and even when receiving “likes”. In my particular case, my online business depends upon a Google algorithm that includes Facebook popularity, however even though I have spent the time looking at others endeavors, I can find weeks where I track only 1 click from Facebook (versus 1000s elsewhere as a comparison). Sadly even my nieces act this way, but this is in part based also on other condescending Obamanite world views IMO
6. Narcissist who thinks they are “all that”, their poop does not stink, and that they most important person.
   
   Often simple “Body Language” will ‘tell much’ as to this very common symptom of an Obamite as displayed with this sickening and disgusting picture of President Obama.

   See this excellent article:
   Analysis of Obama’s Psychological Make-Up

7. Makes up falsehoods about others, often believing their own lies.
   Often text book Sociopath behavior typical of what may seem on the surface as likeable, ordinary persons, but in reality only have intentions to make themselves look good, OR WORSE!
   I have met a few of these persons in my life, with one causing great harm to my family, the other more person destruction that still hurt me and others around me.
   As is obvious Barack Obama also shows these traits, but he is not only destroying one family, but a nation.
8. Accuses others of not providing help for themselves (or others), when never looking into the facts that scream otherwise
9. Believes others are placed on this planet to help them, at any time, hour, etc.
10. Refuses to read anything for themselves, believing others should provide all the information they desire
11. Believe rules are for others to follow, as they are above rules or policies (I see this constantly in business with persons who leave phone messages that make running my business unprofitable because they are above the rules/policies).
12. Others are not entitled to make a living from their hard work (this is one I observe constantly where persons treat my time as worthless and then get upset when I attempt to get them to help me help them, all after putting in 14 hour days)
13. When they fail at something, it must be someone else’s or somethings fault.
    Again I see this when a product I have tested, which few if any other in my business ever perform for customers prior to shipping; then will state that I am screwing them or sending defective products when in reality it is their application, installation, or product that they have placed the new product in that is not functioning (this is especially common with UV Replacement Bulbs and a recent sale of T2 Lights where the person made false accusations and when the lights were returned they were fully functional [sadly 95% of returns, since I pre-test, end up not being defective!]).

    Often such a person will look their inability to make something work or inability to perform a task and despite overwhelming statistics of others succeeding with this same task will still blame others, the product, or the task itself.
    This person I referred to with the T2 lights is an example as even after returning the fully functional & tested lights for a second time claims the lights cannot/will not work. A reasonable non-Obamanite person would realize that maybe they simply are doing something wrong in installation.
    This analogy applies to all aspects of life an politics and is sadly how many persons think; just listen to all the clueless persons in the early stages American Idol who get mad at the judges when told that they simply cannot sing (I for one cannot either, as well cannot perform other tasks such as hanging dry wall correctly, but I do not blame others correcting me or the dry wall as being defective!!!)

14. Believe Government is the answer to many if not most problems (the government is not your “Daddy”)
15. Refuses to read or believe anything for themselves, even when the truth or references are right in front of their face!
16. Rarely can apologize
17. Will Personally Attack those they disagree with when confronted with known facts.
    I do NOT mean this specifically in the arena of politics either.

    As an example, I have read the forum “Reef Central” many times where nearly everyone will pile on in criticising well written articles about the use of LED Fixtures often using the “straw man” complaint that the articles are biased toward a specific brand (in particular TMC AquaRay LEDs).
    So What?? If I or others have done their research including my personal use and consulting with my professional “sister” aquarium maintenance companies whose use of many different LED fixtures have found one brand to shine well above others, why should I or these other authors not be biased??
    These are ridiculous Obamanite responses. What would be dishonest would be for me or these other authors know the facts about a TMC LED Aquarium Fixture yet recommend others LEDs just so as to appear unbiased.

    The facts are these types “biased accusations” are a popular Obamanite “Straw Man” argument thrown about in many aspects of life.

18. Google by definition is an Obamanite company with many Obamanite minions.
    So while this is not actually a definition to apply, this is more an example OF an Obamanite and based on my dealings with dishonest Google staff, chances are if you work for Google; you ARE an Obamanite!