August News Today is:

To Buy or Not to Buy, that is the question!

Close to 3 years ago now the company leased me a vehicle.  Some of you might remember I wrote an article describing my experience and how I gained some insight on pricing and quality through the Internet.  In July it was time to decide to turn the car back to the dealer or buy it. 

When you lease a vehicle they establish the price you will be able to buy the car for at the end of the lease.  According to http://www.edmunds.com/ and http://www.kbb.com/ two of my favorite sites for obtaining the True Market Value (TMV) of any vehicle, the price was $4,000 more than the current TMV.

While the dealer was calling the leasing company I noticed him penciling two numbers when he asked for the buyout of the lease.  The first was a price that mirrored the buyout at the start of the lease the second was about $5,500 less.  I asked about the second price which was the lower one and persisted until he told me that price was what he would pay to buy the car. 

I offered to allow him to add $1,500 to his buyout price and I would buy the car from him saving myself $4,000.  He acted totally disinterested at the prospect of reselling me that car rather than a new one so I went to a third party dealer of the same name brand and they were glad to make me the same deal. 

I learned a couple of things in this experience.  First, the websites above are where you want to do your home work when preparing to negotiate with a dealer.  Second, GM is willing to take a severe loss at auto auctions for leased vehicles but you can ask the dealer to buy your lease vehicle and resell it to you for much less than the original buyout price.

Timothy J. Kilkenny

Founder & CEO

tim@fullnet.net

Differentiation

In today’s market, it is critical to differentiate our product from the huge number of Internet providers vying for our customer’s attention.  FullFilter helps us provide that distinction.  It is a benefit that identifies us as a provider of value.  As more and more companies and individuals continue to spam the web, we are acting as a security gate protecting the customer’s time and investment.  It is done in a user-friendly manor that allows the customer to go in and look at the mass of spam that we gated out of his everyday life at his leisure.  The additional security we provide against email viruses is also significant.  For pennies, the client has a defacto firewall built into their Internet mail system. 

We are continuing to look at additional options to help us create a true premium dial-up service.  In the future we may provide tools that can double the speed of your 56kps dial-up service.  You will be told of incoming telephone calls while you are on-line.  You will be able to switch over to the call and back to your place on the web with a click of your mouse.    We may also be providing a Master Instant Messenger program that can pull messages in from the eight or more instant messengers currently on the market - all at the same time!    

Today, we need to make sure that our present and potential customers know more about the remarkable benefits we currently provide.  Along with FullFilter, we make available a Family Values Internet Filtering Service that helps parents restrict access to objectionable sites on the web.  We provide the very popular Google Search Engine that helps our customers search through the vast holdings of the Internet at blazing speed.  For only one dollar per month we allow our customers to pay by mail instead of a direct ding to their checking or credit cards.  (I can foul up my checking account all by my self.  I don’t need outside help!)  We provide five free email accounts and can even host their personal web site at no additional cost! 

Differentiation is indeed the key to success.  We are well on our way to becoming a premium provider that people will tell their neighbors and friends about.  In the mean time, look for more and more great tools and ideas from FullNet.

If at any time in the future you want to subscribe to the FullFilter service for only $1 per month, please send an email to fullfilter@fullnet.net or call Customer Service.

Wayne D. Gray

Vice President of Sales

wgray@fullnet.net
 

Be Kind To Your Email Friends (Part II)

Last month we discussed the problem of "Too Many Forwards!"

This month we're going to give you a tip that will help protect your email address from unwanted spammers.

Problem #2:  Protecting the Privacy of Your Email Address

Okay, so you want to send the same message to more than one person.  You use the CC (short for Carbon Copy) field right?  CC lists everyone who received the message to everyone else.  Messages sent this way provide SPAMMERS with a great many email addresses for little effort on their part.  The end-result is that your email address is now propagated throughout the Internet at an almost exponential rate.

Solution:  BCC

I introduce to you the wonders of the BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) field.  What is BCC?  How is that different from CC?  Glad you asked!  BCC does exactly the same thing as CC-that is, it sends copies of the same email to the addresses you list there.  What makes BCC so special is that none of the other recipients can see who else got the email!  Why haven't you heard of BCC before?  Because Microsoft, Netscape, and most other makes of Email Clients have the feature cleverly tucked away.  Assuming that you have Outlook Express 5.0 or Outlook 98 (or higher)*:

i. Click on the "Create Mail" button

ii. Click on "View"

iii. Click on "All Headers"

This will add the BCC line underneath the CC line on your messages now.  For those who are feeling even more conscientious, put your own email address in the To field, and only send to people using the BCC field.  This way nobody sees any address other than your own.

"How does this help protect my email address," you ask?  You may notice that this doesn't hide your email address, but rather everyone else you sent to.  This is both a courtesy to your friends and you for the following reasons.  First of all, your friends' email addresses are not being redistributed all around the Internet without their knowledge.  Secondly, you know exactly who will see your email address and you can request that they also adhere to the BCC rule.  If everyone used BCC, the world would be harder place for SPAMMERS.

*For those of you who do not use Outlook or Outlook Express (and for those of you who do), consult your email client's helpful Help files for assistance in using BCC.

Stay tuned next month when we'll talk about the spread of junk email (that is NOT spam).

Randen Swartz

Customer Service

support@fullnet.net